She took it from him, their fingers brushing in the exchange, and Sin felt the shock of that touch—so simple—so innocent—in an electric pulse that shot up his elbow and landed in an ache in his ballocks.
Callie glanced down at the manuscript. “This is the last installment ofConfessions of a Sinful Earl,” she noted, sounding surprised.
He nodded. “It is. Your former publisher returned it to me, at my request. But I want you to have it.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because it is yours.”
She gazed back up at him. “But why now?”
“It was wrong of me to keep it from you, just as it was wrong of me to get sotted at my club and spend the night at Decker’s townhome.” He paused, struggling for his words. Everything he had rehearsed on the carriage ride here dissipated in the wake of her glorious presence. “It was also wrong of me to abduct you. Wrong of me to blackmail you into becoming my wife. Hell, Callie, I have committed a great deal of wrongs in my life. But one I swear I have not committed against you—and never would, for that matter—is adultery. Whatever you think you saw between myself and the Duchess of Longleigh was purely friendship. Nothing more.”
“You were embracing her,” Callie said. “Holding her in your arms as if she were made of finest porcelain. Telling her you would always care for her and be there in whatever she needs. And this, after you were so protective of her. After you revealed to me that she had once been yourmistress, and lest we forget, you had just spent the night carousing. Tell me, Sin, what was I to think?”
“You were to think that I spoke vows and intend to uphold them,” he countered.
“For how long?” she asked bitterly. “You were more than clear with your expectations. You told me you would bed me until I provided you with an heir, and then we could live our lives separately, however we wished. As soon as I was pregnant, you were gone all night long, and then I caught you in the arms of the duchess, making promises to her.”
Tilly’s story was complicated. He had promised her his utter discretion, but he could not keep the truth from Callie. Not when doing so could cost him his wife.
“Longleigh is a despicably cruel man,” he said, struggling to give voice to the ugliness Tilly had revealed to him yesterday. “He is unable to perform his husbandly duties, but he requires an heir. There was a time when he allowed Tilly to live as she wished, to discreetly take lovers. However, he decided he was no longer willing to take the chance that she would, as he phrased it, birth him a bastard that was not of his stock. He forced her into bed with one of his nephews.”
Callie gasped. “Are you saying he allowed his nephew to rape his own wife?”
“That is what it was to have been, yes,” Sin said grimly. “However, at some point before their affair began, it became something more for the two of them, and they fell in love. Now, the nephew is suddenly, inexplicably missing, and Tilly is convinced Longleigh had something to do with it. She asked me for assistance in finding him. That is what you saw. She is worried over her lover, the father of her child. Terrified what Longleigh has done to him, and worse, what he may do to her. I was doing my best to reassure her, and to promise her that I will aid her in whatever fashion I can.”
“That is despicable,” Callie said, her voice hushed with shock, her countenance reflecting the same disgust swirling in his own gut. “I feel so badly for her. You are going to help her however you can, are you not, Sin? We can also speak with Benny about it—given all his connections at Scotland Yard, no one would be more capable of looking into the disappearance of Longleigh’s nephew.”
“It is indeed despicable,” he agreed. “I have promised to do what I can in that regard. I am, however, quite certain your brother does not hold me in the highest esteem at the moment.”
That was rather an understatement, he thought wryly. Westmorland had been eying him like an executioner ready to start sharpening his blade.
“Benny is exceedingly protective, but when I explain everything to him, he will see reason. Believe me.” Callie paused, then worried her lip again. “I feel so foolish now. I was terrified that you had chosen her. That you would no longer want me now that I am pregnant.”
Her confession slayed him. It required every modicum of restraint Sin possessed not to groan and cover that much-abused lip with his. There was far too much at stake to lose himself in kisses just yet. Later, there would be time for that. Hehoped.
“Never, sweet. I will always, only choose you.” He flashed her his best attempt at a smile. “Forever. And I want you now more than I ever have.”
“I had thought for certain you were still in love with her.”
He held his wife’s stare, willing her to read the sincerity in his. He had never meant anything more than what he was about to say. “I promise you there is only one woman I love.”
Callie stilled, her gaze searching his. “Sin?”
He moved forward, closing the remaining distance keeping them apart. Her scent filled his senses, her wide eyes all he saw. That sooty fringe of impossibly long lashes. The flecks of honey in the dark-brown depths.
“You, Callie,” he said softly. “You are the only woman I love.”
“You…love me?” Her eyes glistened. The manuscript fell from her fingers, fluttering all over the floor around their feet.
She did not remove her gaze from his.
He took her hand in his and held it over his madly thudding heart so she could feel how she affected him. “I did not just bring the manuscript back to you. This belongs to you also. My heart.”
Her fingers curled in the fabric of his coat. “Sin…”
“I never wanted to fall in love with you,” he continued, praying she would not reject him. That she would believe him. That she would trust him. “From the start, I was determined to hate you. I told myself I was using you, that you were a means to an end. That I was only marrying you to solve my problems. But from the moment I first kissed you, I knew that was a bloody lie. I thought I was marrying a treacherous witch, that this marriage would be no different than my last, and similarly doomed to misery. It did not take me long to realize how wrong I was and how rightweare, together.”
