The Wedding Challenge (22 page)

Standing there, his elbow resting negligently upon a marble pedestal and looking straight at her, was Lord Bromwell.

Callie felt as if she suddenly could not breathe. It had been over a week since she had last seen him and two since she had spent any time with him, and she was struck all over again by his hard, spare handsomeness. He straightened as their gazes locked, and Callie thought, feeling a little panicky, that he was about to walk over to her.

She could not bear that. Not here, in front of all these people. She turned quickly away, touching Francesca’s arm. “I—I am feeling a bit of a headache. If you will excuse me…”

“Oh, dear. Do you want to leave?” Francesca asked quickly. “Perhaps you are coming down with something. I hear that there is a fever going about.”

“No, no, I think it is just a…um, a trifle warm in here. Pray do not worry. Just sit and enjoy the music. I shall return shortly.”

Callie turned, not daring to glance back at Bromwell, and fled from the room.

C
ALLIE HURRIED
down the hallway, paying little attention to where she went. A door stood open to a small library, and she slipped inside, closing the door after her. Letting out a sigh of relief, she sank down into a wingback chair. Her legs, she noticed, were trembling.

She wished she had not fled. Had anyone noticed? She suspected that someone must have. She only hoped she had not looked as distressed as she had felt.

It was so much harder to maintain her air of indifference when Bromwell was there. When he had first stopped calling on her, she had half expected to see him every time she walked into a party. She had been prepared, braced to run into him…as well as still hopeful that when she saw him, somehow everything would return to the way it had been.

But now she had become accustomed to his not being around. She had let her guard down, and the sight of him had been a shock. Moreover, now that she knew why Brom had pursued her and then rejected her, there was no hope in her heart, only pain at the sight of him.

She would have to go back, she knew. She could not hide in here for the entire musicale—or even for more than a few minutes. People would notice her absence, and there would be talk. If she let on how much Lord Bromwell had hurt her, then all of her careful work for the last two weeks would be for naught. Callie closed her eyes and tried to school herself for the ordeal ahead.

The door opened suddenly, and Callie jumped at the sound, her eyes flying open. Lord Bromwell stood framed in the doorway.

She stared at him for a moment, every nerve in her body tingling. Then she rose to her feet, her hands curling into tight fists at her side as though ready to literally fight.

“Lord Bromwell,” she said, relieved that her voice came out much steadier than she felt.

He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him, but did not come any closer. “I thought—are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Callie replied coldly. “If you hoped to find me brokenhearted over you, I fear you are doomed to disappointment.”

“Of course I did not hope to break your heart!” he flared up, his eyes flashing silver. “I—” He broke off, his face stamped with frustration, and began to pace the room. “Blast it! I never thought about you. I only thought to tweak the duke’s nose a bit.”

Callie stiffened. “I am well aware that your only interest in me was to hurt my brother. However, I do not think that a few whispers about my losing a suitor will do much to damage Rochford. No doubt you regret the fact that you were not able to besmirch my name,” she added in a voice that dripped sarcasm. “It would have been a much greater scandal.”

Bromwell stopped in his pacing and whirled around to face her. “I never intended to do that! Is that what you think of me? That I am the kind of man who would shame a lady, just to get revenge on her brother?”

“What else am I to think?” Callie shot back, taut with fury. Her muscles trembled as the anger and hurt, long tamped down, came welling up in her. All the pain, all the tears, all the worry and doubt, swept through her, filling her with such rage that she could no longer keep it from flooding out. “Why else did you pursue me? That is what my brother believes. It is why he warned me not to have anything to do with you. You wanted to put a blot on our good name, and what easier way to do so than that?”

“Oh, really?” Bromwell took a long stride closer to her. “And if that was my purpose, how do you explain the fact that I did not ‘besmirch’ you?”

“Rotten luck on your part, I suppose,” Callie snapped.

His hand lashed out, grasping her upper arm, his fingers digging in. “Rotten luck?” he repeated incredulously. “Is that what you believe? In what way did I have bad luck? It certainly was not in lack of opportunity—and you were certainly not unwilling.” He jerked her to him, his eyes blazing down into hers. “I’ll warrant you still are not unwilling.”

He bent and kissed her, his mouth laying claim to hers with a savage intensity that she knew should have frightened and repelled her. But it did not, she realized with dismay. Instead, the harsh, possessive, ravening kiss ignited a fire inside her. It geysered up, shooting throughout her body, turning her skin to flame, and settled in a hot, aching mass deep in her abdomen.

His arms went around her, pressing her into him. She wrapped her own arms around his neck, and they strained against each other, their mouths clinging, devouring. His hands moved over her body hungrily. Growing frustrated at the cloth that thwarted his desire to touch her, he bunched the dress in his hand, pulling it up and up until at last his fingers were able to slip beneath her skirts.

He spread his hand across the soft flesh of her thigh, separated from him only by the sheer cotton of her undergarment. His hand slid upward, seeking the moist heat of her center, and the path of his fingers sent shivers of passion through her. As his mouth possessed her, he caressed and stroked her leg, sliding back to curve over the soft mound of her buttock, then around to the front, easing between their bodies.

Callie gasped and moved involuntarily in surprise as his hand boldly slid across her abdomen and delved down between her legs. Never had she imagined being touched in such a way, but she found that it excited her almost beyond measure. She moved, wanting more…
needing
more.

Brom made a noise deep in his throat, hunger tearing at him as he found the damp, heated cleft between her legs. His fingers stroked and flexed, aching to touch her skin without the thin cloth between them.

Breaking the seal of their mouths, he kissed his way down her throat and onto the supremely soft flesh of her breast, which rose above the neckline of her dress. He tasted her skin with lips and tongue, tracing hot wet patterns across the smooth flesh and gently grazing it with his teeth.

Callie trembled, sure that she would go mad beneath the touch of his fingers and mouth. The pleasure was stunning, sending the heat within her skyrocketing. She ached to feel him all over her, to take him inside her. She was aware of a deep, primitive longing to circle her hips against him, to open her legs to his hard masculine force.

With his other hand, he reached up to tug at the neck of her gown, working down the dress and the chemise beneath it until at last her breast was free. He grew still, gazing down for a long moment at the soft white orb and the pinkish-brown circle of her nipple.

Then he bent and circled the center with his tongue, causing it to grow even harder. Softly he blew on the nipple where his tongue had touched, and it tightened even more, plucking a cord that ran straight down into her abdomen and flooded her with desire.

Slowly, thoroughly, he loved her with his mouth, using teeth and tongue and lips to arouse the tight bud of her nipple. Finally he settled down to suckle at her nipple, pulling with strong, deep strokes even as his fingers moved in the same rhythm between her legs.

Desire clawed at his loins like a wild beast, and he wanted to pull her to the floor and take her, to rip the clothes from her and sink into her, surging to his completion. He felt her skin flame beneath him, felt her move and gasp and softly moan at the pleasure he was evoking in her, and it filled him with such heat and hunger that he thought he would explode.

Callie’s breasts were full and aching, her loins throbbing with an incessant beat. She arched up against him, wordlessly seeking more. Something was building inside her, intense and demanding.

With a low, soft curse, he broke from her and turned away. She swayed where she stood, staring after him, stunned and bereft. She wanted to follow him, to throw herself at him and beg him to take her, to give her the satisfaction her body so craved. Only some last small vestige of pride enabled her to remain where she was, silent.

Brom leaned over the library table, his hands braced, his chest rising and falling with deep fast breaths. Callie stared at his back. She was trembling all over, her mind benumbed, and she felt incredibly soft and aching, vulnerable, like a creature outside its shell.

Slowly she came to herself enough to pull up the neck of her dress and smooth down her skirts into some semblance of modesty. She moved away shakily, saying, “Well…you must be happy now that you have humiliated me.”

“Humiliated
you?
” he answered through gritted teeth. “I am the one who cannot walk out of this room.”

Her body was still hot and aching, still yearning for satisfaction, but she was not about to argue with him about which of them suffered most from desire. “This is to no purpose,” she said tightly, bringing her hands up to cool her burning cheeks.

She could feel the sorrow rising in her, pushing its way through the heat of her desire. “I will not let you use me against my brother,” she told him, struggling to keep her voice steady. “Whatever mad feeling you may be able to call up in me, it will not be enough to make me ruin my good name and his. I will make certain that we are never alone together again.”

“I did not mean to do that,” he gritted out. “And you need not fear me. Or what I want from you.” He swung around to look at her, his face stark and etched with pain. “I did not consider what would happen to you when I started this, and for that I apologize. I wanted only to tease the duke, to make him worry that I might do to you what he did to my sister. I had some hope that it might even bring him to confront me personally—to finish what started fifteen years ago.

“But I never set out to hurt you,” he went on. “And, God knows, I never intended to—to wind up wanting you so much it’s driven me near mad. I did not expect to spend every day counting the minutes until I could be with you again. Or to become the sort of fool who would attend a dull thing like Lady Whittington’s musicale just on the chance that I might get to see you again.”

Callie stared at him, torn between hope and despair. “But if that is how you feel, then why did you stop coming to call on me? Why—”

“Because there can be no future for me and the sister of the Duke of Rochford!” he exclaimed, shoving his hands up into his hair and pressing against his head as if to keep it from exploding. He swung away, crossing to the wall and turning back. “Your brother destroyed my sister! He led her on. He seduced her and got her with child, and then he refused to marry her.”

“Sinclair would never have done something like that!” Callie cried. “He is a man of honor. He would never hurt a woman that way. I know it. He told me. He never touched your sister.”

Bromwell’s lips twisted into a grim smile. “Of course you would believe that.”

“It is the truth.”

“No. My sister told me the truth. I know what happened.”

“She lied to you,” Callie said bluntly.

His eyes flared with anger. “No.”

“Are you saying that she has never lied? She lied to me. She told me that Lord and Lady Radbourne would be with us that night at Vauxhall, but they were not. When we asked Lady Radbourne about it, she said that your sister told them that the party had been canceled. She tricked me into being there without any sort of chaperone, and then she left me there alone. She tried to—”

“I know! I know. She was trying to help me. She thought that she would please me. She knew how I wanted you, and she wanted to help me. It is different. She would not have lied to me about…about
that.
”

“And my brother would not lie to
me.
”

He looked at her, regret and sorrow in his eyes. “Then you see how it is. You are as loyal to your brother as I am to my sister. There is nothing for us.”

Callie caught her breath in pain as Bromwell walked away. He opened the door, then paused and turned back to look at her. “I am sorry, Callie, for hurting you. I—” He shook his head and went out the door, closing it behind him.

Callie raised her fist to her mouth to stifle the whimper that rose from her. She drifted to a chair and sank down in it, fighting the tears that threatened to overwhelm her.

She could not stay here. She no longer cared whether people gossiped about her reaction to Lord Bromwell. She had to get away to grieve in private.

Swallowing hard, she left the library. In the foyer, she found a footman and sent him to tell Francesca that she was leaving. By the time the other footman had located Callie’s cloak and helped her into it, Francesca came hurrying out of the music room, looking worried.

“Callie, dear, are you sick? We shall go at once.”

Callie nodded, murmuring, “You need not leave.”

“Nonsense,” Francesca replied quickly, already motioning to the footman for her cloak. “I could not stay here, worrying about you. I told Lady Manwaring that you had fallen sick. She will make our apologies to Lady Whittington.”

Callie nodded and pulled up the hood of her cloak, grateful for the concealment it offered. Francesca whisked her out to their carriage and climbed in after her.

“What happened?” she asked as she settled into the seat beside Callie, reaching out to take her hand. “I saw Lord Bromwell leave the room after you did. Did he speak to you? Is that why—”

“Yes—oh, yes!” Callie burst out, no longer able to hold in her emotions. Tears began to stream from her eyes. “It is impossible! It was foolish of me to even retain the hope that—” She broke off, a sob escaping her. “Oh, Francesca! He will never be disloyal to his sister any more than I would break from Sinclair! It does not matter what I feel, or even what he feels for me. It is utterly hopeless.”