"You cheated!"
He looked at her, wide-eyed with feigned outrage.
"I beg your pardon. If you were a man, I would call you out for that accusation.
"And I assure you, my lord, that I would ride forth victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness.
"Are you quoting the Bible to me?"
"Indeed," she said primly, the portrait of piousness.
"While gambling?"
"What better location to attempt to reform one such as you?"
"My mother, she's desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person."
"He joined her on the bench, asking, "How old is your sister?"
"Eight," she said, mournfully.
"Ah. Not ideal."
"An understatement."
"My choices are rather limited."
"How so?"
"I seem able to have my pick of the impoverished, the aged, and the deadly dull."
Nick continued, unable to keep the smug smile form his lips. "Shall I tell you what I would do if I discovered I'd been a royal ass and had lost the only woman I'd ever really wanted?"
Ralston's eyes narrowed on his brother. "I don't imagine I could stop you."
"Indeed not," Nick said, "I can tell you I wouldn't be standing in this godforsaken field in this godforsaken cold waiting for that idiot Oxford to shoot at me. I would walk away from this ridiculous, antiquated exercise, and I would find that womand tell her that I was a royal ass. And then I would do whatever it takes to convince her that she should take a chance on me despite my being a royal ass. And once that's done, I would get her, immediatley, to the nearest vicar and get the girl married. And with child."
"Oh, Callie-mine," Anne said, her voice taking on a tone she'd used when Callie was a little girl and crying over some injustice, "your white knight, he will come."
One side of Callie's mouth kicked up in a wry smile. Anne had said those words countless times over the last two decades. "Forgive me, Anne, but I'm not so certain that he will."
"Oh, he will," Anne said firmly. "And when you least expect."
"I find I'm rather tired of waiting." Callie laughed half-heartedly. "Which is probably why I've turned my attentions to such a dark knight."
"Kisses should not leave you satisfied."
"I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself."
"I enjoyed every bit of the evening. I may not drink scotch or smoke a cheroot again, but I shall always cherish the fact that I did those things. The adventure is well worth the disappointing experience."
"She did not want to be that woman - the one of whom they spoke. She had never planned to be that woman. Somehow, it had happened, however...somehow, she had lost her way and, without realizing it, she had chosen this staid, boring life instead of a different, more adventurous one."
Nick spoke again. "Her legitimacy will be questioned."
Gabriel thought for several moments. "If our mother married her father, it means that the marchioness must have converted to Catholicism upon arriving in Italy. The Catholic Church would never have acknowledged her marriage in the Church of England."
"Ah, so it is we who are illegitimate." Nick's words were punctuated with a wry smile.
"To Italians, at least," Gabriel said. "Luckily, we are English."
"Excellent. That works out well for us."
"You plan to be a challenge, do you?"
Juliana smiled angelically. "I agreed to remain, my lord. Not to remain silent."
"She winced, knowing what was to come, "Calpurnia." She closed her eyes again, embarrassed by the extravagant name - a name with which no one but a helplessly romantic mother with an unhealthy obsession with Shakespeare would have considered saddling a child."
"He smiled, setting his forehead to hers. "you are very bad for me. I am trying to turn over a new leaf--I am trying to be more gentlemanly."
"But what if I want you to stay a rake?" she teased, her fingers trailing down his neck and chest, fingering the buttons on his waistcoat. "A libertine, even?" she slipped one fastening from its seat and he grabbed her errant hand, bringing it to his lips for a swift kiss.
"Callie," he said, his voice thick with warning as she set her free hand to the second button on his coat.
"What if I want the rogue, Gabriel?" the question was soft and sweet.
"What are you saying?"
She kissed across the firm square line of his jaw and whispered to him, shyness in her shaking voice, "Take me to bed, Gabriel. Give me a taste of scandal."
"If I am an empress, he is the only man worthy of being my emperor."
"How is it that one woman is enough for three men?"
"I don't know."
"She must be a very talented courtesan."
"Callie."
"Well, that was what she was. Wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"How very fascinating!" She smiled brightly."I've never met a courtesan, you know.
"I could have surmised as such."
"She looked just as I imagined they did! Well, she was rather prettier."
Ralston's eyes darted around the room as though he was looking for the quickest escape route.
"Callie. Wouldn't you rather gamble than talk about courtesans?"
"But she had dreamed of being his for too long. He had quite ruined her for a marriage of convenience. She wanted everything from him: his mind, his body, his name and, most of all, his heart."
"Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she had found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic plan to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do...who even FIGHTS duels anymore?!"
"It was a terrifying feeling. And if it was love, he wanted none of it.
"The most confident of women are those who believe in every scrap of fabric they wear. They are the ones who are as happy wih their drawers as they are with their gowns. You can tell the difference between a woman who wraps herself in beautiful silks and satins and she who wears...otherwise."
"It didn't matter the quality of the writing - Callie's fantasies about her fictional heroes were entirely
democratic."
"Why now? Why not wait for a man to come along and sweep you off your feet?"
She gave a short laugh. "If the man you speak of had ever planned on coming, my lord, I'm afraid he has
obviously lost his way. And, at twenty-eight, I find I have grown tired of waiting."
"Benedict looked to the ceiling as though begging for divine patience. Or for the Lord to strike his sister
down. Callie couldn't quite discern which. "I forbid you from frequenting taverns, public houses, or other establishments of vice."
She snorted in amusement. "Establishments of vice? That's a rather puritanical view of things, isn't it? I
assure you, I was quite safe."
"You were with Ralston!" he said, as though she were simpleminded.
"He was perfectly respectable," she said, the words coming out before she remembered that the
carriage ride home was anythingbut respectable.
"Imagine, my sister and the Marquess of Ralston together. And he turns out to be the respectable one,"
Benedick said wryly, sending heat flaring on Callie's cheeks, but not for the reason he thought. "No more
taverns. I do not like this taste for adventure you have developed, sister."
"I am afraid I cannot guarantee I shall be rid of it anytime soon."
"Before I merely daydreamed about Ralston. Now I find myself actually with him. Actually talking to
him. Actually discovering the real Ralston. He is no longer a creature I invented. He is flesh and blood
and now I can't help wondering," She trailed off, unwilling to say what she was thinking.What if he were mine?
She did not have to say the words aloud; Anne heard them anyway. When Callie opened her eyes and
met Anne's gaze in the looking glass, she saw Anne's response there. "Ralston is not for you, Callie."
"I know, Anne," Callie said quietly, as much to remind herself as to reassure her friend.
"If I were anyone else, your opera singer, the woman across the hall would you have apologized?"
He looked confused. "No, but you are neither of those women. You deserve better."
"Better," she repeated, frustrated. "That's just my point! You and the rest of society believe that it's better for me to be set upon a pedestal of primness and propriety, which might have been fine if a decade on that pedestal hadn't simply landed me on the shelf. Perhaps unmarried young women like our sisters should be there. But what of me?" Her voice dropped as she looked down at the cards in her hands. "I'm never going to get a chance to experience life from up there. All that is up there is dust and unwanted apologies. The same cage as hers,” she indicated the woman outside "Merely a different gilt."
"How could she go on without him? And, at the same time, how could she go on knowing that every
moment of their time together had meant so little to him She'd so believed he could, that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long."
"That was perhaps the hardest truth of all - that Ralston, the man she'd pined over for a decade, had never been real. He'd never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he'd never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood. Even as she'd come to know the real Ralston, the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth, Callie
had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not
with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston."
He looked at her, wide-eyed with feigned outrage.
"I beg your pardon. If you were a man, I would call you out for that accusation.
"And I assure you, my lord, that I would ride forth victoriously on behalf of truth, humility, and righteousness.
"Are you quoting the Bible to me?"
"Indeed," she said primly, the portrait of piousness.
"While gambling?"
"What better location to attempt to reform one such as you?"
"My mother, she's desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person."
"He joined her on the bench, asking, "How old is your sister?"
"Eight," she said, mournfully.
"Ah. Not ideal."
"An understatement."
"My choices are rather limited."
"How so?"
"I seem able to have my pick of the impoverished, the aged, and the deadly dull."
Nick continued, unable to keep the smug smile form his lips. "Shall I tell you what I would do if I discovered I'd been a royal ass and had lost the only woman I'd ever really wanted?"
Ralston's eyes narrowed on his brother. "I don't imagine I could stop you."
"Indeed not," Nick said, "I can tell you I wouldn't be standing in this godforsaken field in this godforsaken cold waiting for that idiot Oxford to shoot at me. I would walk away from this ridiculous, antiquated exercise, and I would find that womand tell her that I was a royal ass. And then I would do whatever it takes to convince her that she should take a chance on me despite my being a royal ass. And once that's done, I would get her, immediatley, to the nearest vicar and get the girl married. And with child."
"Oh, Callie-mine," Anne said, her voice taking on a tone she'd used when Callie was a little girl and crying over some injustice, "your white knight, he will come."
One side of Callie's mouth kicked up in a wry smile. Anne had said those words countless times over the last two decades. "Forgive me, Anne, but I'm not so certain that he will."
"Oh, he will," Anne said firmly. "And when you least expect."
"I find I'm rather tired of waiting." Callie laughed half-heartedly. "Which is probably why I've turned my attentions to such a dark knight."
"Kisses should not leave you satisfied."
"I've spent twenty-eight years doing what everyone around me expected me to do...being what everyone around me has expected me to be. And it's horrid to be someone else's vision of yourself."
"I enjoyed every bit of the evening. I may not drink scotch or smoke a cheroot again, but I shall always cherish the fact that I did those things. The adventure is well worth the disappointing experience."
"She did not want to be that woman - the one of whom they spoke. She had never planned to be that woman. Somehow, it had happened, however...somehow, she had lost her way and, without realizing it, she had chosen this staid, boring life instead of a different, more adventurous one."
Nick spoke again. "Her legitimacy will be questioned."
Gabriel thought for several moments. "If our mother married her father, it means that the marchioness must have converted to Catholicism upon arriving in Italy. The Catholic Church would never have acknowledged her marriage in the Church of England."
"Ah, so it is we who are illegitimate." Nick's words were punctuated with a wry smile.
"To Italians, at least," Gabriel said. "Luckily, we are English."
"Excellent. That works out well for us."
"You plan to be a challenge, do you?"
Juliana smiled angelically. "I agreed to remain, my lord. Not to remain silent."
"She winced, knowing what was to come, "Calpurnia." She closed her eyes again, embarrassed by the extravagant name - a name with which no one but a helplessly romantic mother with an unhealthy obsession with Shakespeare would have considered saddling a child."
"He smiled, setting his forehead to hers. "you are very bad for me. I am trying to turn over a new leaf--I am trying to be more gentlemanly."
"But what if I want you to stay a rake?" she teased, her fingers trailing down his neck and chest, fingering the buttons on his waistcoat. "A libertine, even?" she slipped one fastening from its seat and he grabbed her errant hand, bringing it to his lips for a swift kiss.
"Callie," he said, his voice thick with warning as she set her free hand to the second button on his coat.
"What if I want the rogue, Gabriel?" the question was soft and sweet.
"What are you saying?"
She kissed across the firm square line of his jaw and whispered to him, shyness in her shaking voice, "Take me to bed, Gabriel. Give me a taste of scandal."
"If I am an empress, he is the only man worthy of being my emperor."
"How is it that one woman is enough for three men?"
"I don't know."
"She must be a very talented courtesan."
"Callie."
"Well, that was what she was. Wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"How very fascinating!" She smiled brightly."I've never met a courtesan, you know.
"I could have surmised as such."
"She looked just as I imagined they did! Well, she was rather prettier."
Ralston's eyes darted around the room as though he was looking for the quickest escape route.
"Callie. Wouldn't you rather gamble than talk about courtesans?"
"But she had dreamed of being his for too long. He had quite ruined her for a marriage of convenience. She wanted everything from him: his mind, his body, his name and, most of all, his heart."
"Ralston didn't care. He turned on his brother as the surgeon knelt next to him and inspected the wound. "She could have been killed!"
And what about you?" This time, it was Callie who spoke, her own pent-up energy releasing in anger, and the men turned as one to look at her, surprised that she had found her voice. "What about you and your idiotic plan to somehow restore my honor by playing guns out in the middle of nowhere with OXFORD?" She said the baron's name in disdain. "Like children? Of all the ridiculous, unnecessary, thoughtless, MALE things to do...who even FIGHTS duels anymore?!"
"It was a terrifying feeling. And if it was love, he wanted none of it.
"The most confident of women are those who believe in every scrap of fabric they wear. They are the ones who are as happy wih their drawers as they are with their gowns. You can tell the difference between a woman who wraps herself in beautiful silks and satins and she who wears...otherwise."
"It didn't matter the quality of the writing - Callie's fantasies about her fictional heroes were entirely
democratic."
"Why now? Why not wait for a man to come along and sweep you off your feet?"
She gave a short laugh. "If the man you speak of had ever planned on coming, my lord, I'm afraid he has
obviously lost his way. And, at twenty-eight, I find I have grown tired of waiting."
"Benedict looked to the ceiling as though begging for divine patience. Or for the Lord to strike his sister
down. Callie couldn't quite discern which. "I forbid you from frequenting taverns, public houses, or other establishments of vice."
She snorted in amusement. "Establishments of vice? That's a rather puritanical view of things, isn't it? I
assure you, I was quite safe."
"You were with Ralston!" he said, as though she were simpleminded.
"He was perfectly respectable," she said, the words coming out before she remembered that the
carriage ride home was anythingbut respectable.
"Imagine, my sister and the Marquess of Ralston together. And he turns out to be the respectable one,"
Benedick said wryly, sending heat flaring on Callie's cheeks, but not for the reason he thought. "No more
taverns. I do not like this taste for adventure you have developed, sister."
"I am afraid I cannot guarantee I shall be rid of it anytime soon."
"Before I merely daydreamed about Ralston. Now I find myself actually with him. Actually talking to
him. Actually discovering the real Ralston. He is no longer a creature I invented. He is flesh and blood
and now I can't help wondering," She trailed off, unwilling to say what she was thinking.What if he were mine?
She did not have to say the words aloud; Anne heard them anyway. When Callie opened her eyes and
met Anne's gaze in the looking glass, she saw Anne's response there. "Ralston is not for you, Callie."
"I know, Anne," Callie said quietly, as much to remind herself as to reassure her friend.
"If I were anyone else, your opera singer, the woman across the hall would you have apologized?"
He looked confused. "No, but you are neither of those women. You deserve better."
"Better," she repeated, frustrated. "That's just my point! You and the rest of society believe that it's better for me to be set upon a pedestal of primness and propriety, which might have been fine if a decade on that pedestal hadn't simply landed me on the shelf. Perhaps unmarried young women like our sisters should be there. But what of me?" Her voice dropped as she looked down at the cards in her hands. "I'm never going to get a chance to experience life from up there. All that is up there is dust and unwanted apologies. The same cage as hers,” she indicated the woman outside "Merely a different gilt."
"How could she go on without him? And, at the same time, how could she go on knowing that every
moment of their time together had meant so little to him She'd so believed he could, that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long."
"That was perhaps the hardest truth of all - that Ralston, the man she'd pined over for a decade, had never been real. He'd never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he'd never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood. Even as she'd come to know the real Ralston, the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth, Callie
had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not
with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston."
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