The virulence of Benny’s words sank deep into Callie’s heart. They found her fears and mingled with them, until her stomach was an endless, churning sea. What if her brother was right? What if she had allowed the glimpses into Sin’s softer side to blind her to the truth of the man that he was? They had only been married for a month.
She must not allow herself to forget the manner in which their marriage had begun. He had abducted her from London, bound her wrists, and even gagged her. And then, he had blackmailed her.
“Callie?” Isabella’s worried voice cut through her madly spinning thoughts. “Are you well? You look dreadfully pale all of a sudden.”
No, she was not well. She felt…dizzy. Sick. Overheated. Her skin was hot. The room seemed to spin. Her eyes could not find a safe place to fall. It was as if she stood still whilst everything and everyone else was whirling around.
The edges of her vision went dark. Benny and Isabella seemed suddenly too far away. Their voices were hushed and strange. And then Callie was falling, falling, falling.
Backward, into the abyss.
Darkness claimed her.
Sin paced thehall outside his wife’s apartments, trying to tamp down his rage and his worry. Callie had swooned. His strong, fierce, fiery wife had bloody wellfainted. It still seemed impossible to believe. He had abducted her, bound her, dragged her through the countryside, done his best to frighten her, and she had remained stalwart.
Ten minutes in the presence of her brother and sister-in-law, and she was requiring smelling salts. By the time word had reached him, she had already been awake, propped with half a dozen pillows which had been fetched from God knew where, in a chair in his study. Her pallor and the sheen of perspiration on her forehead had convinced him she was ill.
Dreadfully so.
She had told him she had a terrible megrim.
Sin had summoned a physician.
A physician who had been attending her, along with the Duchess of Westmorland, for…
He plucked his pocket watch from his waistcoat.
One whole fucking hour.
“Have you done something to her?”
The question, more snarling growl than respectable query, emerged from his wife’s brother. The Duke of Westmorland had taken news of Sin’s marriage to his sister worse than he had supposed. He had taken Callie’s sudden fainting spell even harder.
But no harder than Sin. He had broken into a run when the news reached him, so desperate had he been to reach her.
“You believe I have somehow done my wife ill?” he asked, doing his best to quell his inner fury and failing. “What is it you think I have done to her? Have I poisoned her? Pushed her down the stairs? Good Christ, man. I was not even near her when she grew ill. If anyone should be asking questions, it should be me. I left her alone with you for scarcely any time at all, and suddenly I need to summon the physician.”
Westmorland was pale. He stalked toward Sin, and Sin held his ground, remaining where he was, refusing to back down. The duke’s eyes were wild, his upper lip curved into an unforgiving sneer. “Do not think I will not kill you because you are a peer, Sinclair. Or because you have somehow ingratiated yourself to my sister, and cast your spell over her. She is too kindhearted to know what manner of snake she has married.”
He had never had any quarrels with the duke before now.
“What manner of snake am I, hmm?” he asked. “You seemed happy enough to receive me on prior occasions when I visited you at Westmorland House.”
That was true enough, but he had known quite well that the duke was merely tolerating him, not that he liked him. Sin had been so caught up in his desire to gain proof against Callie that he had not given a damn. His call had not been a social one. Rather, it had been the means by which he had sealed Callie’s fate.
And his own.
How long ago that seemed, almost a lifetime. So much had altered between then and now.
“That was before you blackmailed my sister into becoming your wife, you bastard,” Westmorland growled. “You are a rakehell and a scoundrel. Do you deny being a member of the Black Souls?”
Sin refused to flinch or retreat. “No. Of course not. I have never made false claims about myself. Not to your sister, and not to anyone. I am a member of the Black Souls club. I have been for years. It hardly signifies.”
The Black Souls was a private club. Their reputation for depravity and licentiousness had been well-earned by some members, it was true. But the club was not solely a bastion of sin and wicked excess as all the rumors suggested. Rather, it was also a safe haven for lords with dark souls to convene. There was no judgment within the walls of that club.
And Sin had been grateful for that. He had done some things of which he was not proud, none of which had anything to do with the Black Souls. They had rescued him from his lowest depths. He could not lay the blame for his sins upon the Black Souls. Some of his best and oldest friends were members. Men he would trust with his very life. Decker, among them, who owned the club itself.
“Everyone knows the members of the Black Souls are depraved,” Westmorland insisted, his nostrils flaring as if he scented something unsavory. “If you have harmed my sister in any way, I will not hesitate to end you.”
