CHAPTER9
Callum felt like he was going to vomit as he handed off his horse, explained the plan to his butler and then waited at the top of his stairs for Valaria’s carriage to pull through his gate.She had not come out and said Silas had harmed her, but Callum could see the truth of it in the way her face had twisted with pain and horror when he asked the question.And he believed her, even before she told him one word of the explanation that he didn’t deserve.
Why hadn’t he seen it?Why had he been so blind?Was it willful on his part?After all, it had never affected him, Silas’s cruelty.Didn’t that make him complicit?
Callum smoothed his hands along the front of his waistcoat and struggled to contain his roiling emotions as he watched Valaria be helped from her carriage, then her maid, who was now stone-faced.He had to force himself to stay where he was, perched on the top step leading to his home.He wanted very much to go down to take Valaria’s hand, himself, but considering what they were about to discuss, he doubted she wanted his touch.
And this wasn’t about him and his thoughts on the matter at any rate.He couldn’t make this about him and how he felt.
She moved toward him, her expression taut and nervous.“It is an even prettier prospect during the day,” she said, a little breathlessly.
He inclined his head toward the house and allowed her to start off on such a benign topic if it pleased her.It lessened the tension at any rate.“I’ve always thought so.Please, come in.”He pivoted toward Morris as she did so.“Please show Her Grace’s maid to the servant area for her tea.Is ours awaiting us in the east parlor?”
“Yes, Your Grace.It should be ready now,” the butler said.
“Good.Please don’t allow disturbances,” Callum said as he motioned Valaria down the hall to the back of his estate.They entered the parlor and she immediately moved to the window that looked over his garden.
“Oh, Callum,” she breathed as she took in the winding paths and sparkling fountains and bright blooming flowers.“Your compliments on my own garden seem a little silly in comparison to this paradise.”
He frowned.“Ilikeyour garden.This is massive and bright and lovely, of course.But it’s too outlandish to keep myself.Youcan actually be a part of growing your own escape.”
She turned toward him.“You could be too.Perhaps not the whole garden, no, but you can always claim a little corner of your own world, Callum.”
His brow wrinkled at that thought.One he hadn’t actually considered before.Sometimes it was so easy to be all or nothing in life.He didn’t let his mind find halves very easily.
“May I get you tea?”he asked, motioning to the set.
“Perhaps shortly,” she whispered, and her hands shook before she clenched them before herself.He could see how nervous she was.How she worried her lip, flexed her fingers, how her breath came a little shorter and she wouldn’t quite meet his eyes.
Clearing his throat, he took a long step toward her, once again having to force himself not to touch her in comfort.“Valaria, you owe me nothing.No explanation.You don’t have to cut yourself open and bleed for me if you don’t want to do so.I shouldn’t have pried in the park.I just…” He trailed off and shook his head.
Her gaze flitted over his face slowly.“You just what?”
“I want to know how blind and selfish I have been,” he whispered.“How much I enabled the bad behavior of a person I called friend.”
“You-you would blame yourself for something Silas did behind closed doors, specifically so that no one would see?Youwouldn’t see.”
He drew in a long breath.“You sound like Theo.He says the actions of another are not my fault, as well.”
“Then Lightmorrow is wiser than he pretends to be,” Valaria said.“Let me make something clear to you, whatever Silas was…whatever he did…” Her voice broke slightly.“It wasn’t your fault or your responsibility.I don’t know you very well, but your reaction now tells me that had you known, you would have taken him to task if you’d understood.”
“I would have ended my friendship with him, had I seen him be cruel to you,” he said, and meant it.
She worried her lip.“He would have hated me for that,” she whispered at last.“I think you were the only person he actually gave a damn about when it came down to it.”
He bent his head.Once he would have liked that statement.Felt it reflected on their long friendship.But now Silas was tarnished in his mind and those words felt like daggers in his chest.
“Was he always that way to you?”He lifted his gaze to her.“Ifyou wish to share some part of your story.”
She swallowed hard.“He…he didn’t want to marry me.It was all arranged, of course.I didn’t want to marry him, either.But he was not unpleasant to look at and I had no choice, so I think I built some idea in my head that perhaps we could come to an accord.The very first night of our marriage, I realized it would never be.”
He caught his breath.“On your wedding night?”
“He berated me and he…” She trailed off.“Well, he was very cruel.”
Callum stiffened.Was she not sharing more than emotional cruelty?Had Silas gone so far as to physically harm this woman?Worse?
Callum’s stomach turned at the thought.
