Chapter Seventeen #2
“Because you must believe you have something of significance to say if you dare show your face here. You must have waited until my husband was out because the last time you met, he rendered you unconscious with one blow. And you must be slightly mad if you thought I would greet you with even a modicum of civility.” Caroline’s hands fisted in her skirts, and she prayed Callbeck did not notice.
Why couldn’t he get on with it and leave her be?
Hadn’t he already caused her enough damage?
“Yes, well…” Callbeck began in a frigid tone, finally dispensing with all niceties as he plucked a porcelain swan from the nearby table and turned it in his hands.
“I do believe I have an interesting proposition for you.” Caroline gritted her teeth as she waited in tense silence for him to continue.
“I require a sum of money, and I believe you are now in the perfect position to provide it.” He set down the swan with a decisive click, not caring that it now sat at an odd angle.
“You expect me to simply hand over money?”
“Not for nothing, of course.” His smile was evil. How could she have ever thought him charming?
“You already ruined my reputation. You assaulted me. What could I ever want from you?”
Callbeck was the reason her parents had disowned her when she was not yet twenty years of age; he left her life in shambles and destroyed her future.
Mama and Papa no longer wished to see her or speak to her and had deposited her in a small rented flat with no knowledge or practical experience in running a household or hiring what little staff she could afford.
That first night, she had sat alone in her dark home without so much as the knowledge of how to properly set and light her hearth without creating a cloud of smoke.
Rather than live as the daughter of a viscount, she’d been relegated to obscurity and forced to survive off a small annual allowance that would remain intact and paid out in regular installments by her father’s man of business so long as she had no contact with them, or her sister, and brought no further scandal to their doorstep.
Because of him, she’d been called every vile and vulgar name one could think of by her family, Society, and the tabloids alike. She had been branded as the Disgraced Debutante.
“There is still a reputation to protect,” Callbeck replied coyly.
“Swanleigh’s?” she shook her head. Gideon would care nothing for what Callbeck had to say about him. “You do not understand my husband if you think anything you could say might hurt him.”
His gaze flicked to her abdomen, where the shape of her pregnancy was beginning to show, and her blood froze in her veins. She could not stop herself from placing a protective hand there, as if to shield her unborn child from this man’s evil.
She swallowed hard and took a bracing breath. “I am certain all of London has heard of our marriage by special license. Regardless of whatever you might say, this child is legitimized.”
Callbeck’s mouth twisted wryly. “Swanleigh has been rather understanding of your sordid past. A lesser man might have allowed it to color his perception of you. Of your marriage. Of the parentage of any children you might bear…”
“What are you saying?” she demanded, her fist clenched so tightly her nails nearly drew blood from her palm.
“I am saying, Lady Swanleigh, that Society already believes the worst of you. It would not require much work to cast a stain upon a life not yet in existence. Everyone knows of your loose morals.”
“Stop,” Caroline hissed, but he continued.
“Even if Swanlegh believes in your fidelity, a few well-placed comments and insinuations would cast doubt upon the child’s entire existence; they would follow it wherever it goes.”
“Enough.”
“Some may even do the work for me and assume I am the sire, given our illicit history…”
“No more!” Caroline’s voice was only slightly below a scream.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and knew Perry had moved into the doorway, no longer content with remaining uninvolved.
Even that bit of support was everything Caroline needed.
She swallowed back bile brought up by Callbeck’s disgusting threat.
“How dare you come into my house and threaten me? My family?”
He tilted his head and tempered his tone as if speaking to a petulant child. “You hopped from one bed to the other until you finally landed a title worth keeping. D’you think that should really be rewarded?”
“Of all the—”
“Five thousand pounds should suffice,” Callbeck interrupted her.
“You are threatening harm to my unborn child if I do not pay you five thousand pounds…?”
“I think it’s rather a fair amount. Everyone knows Swanleigh’s annual income is at least double that. Eight thousand would be preferable, but I would rather not be greedy. I’ve some debts that need repaying and I’ve found it unbearable to live off the paltry monthly sum I’m afforded.”
“You are a monster.”
“I prefer to think of myself as enterprising.”
Caroline did not think. She did not breathe. She did not pause to consider the ramifications of what she was about to do.
She merely hauled back her fist like Gideon had taught her and sent it hurtling toward Callbeck’s obnoxiously perfect nose.
The man stumbled backward with a howl the precise moment Caroline yelped and shook out her smarting hand.
“You struck me!” Callbeck’s words were muffled by his hands as he held his face.
Caroline hissed through her teeth. “Serves you right!”
“My lady!” Perry burst into the room, eyes so wide that Caroline was concerned the man might expire from shock.
“I am fine,” she told the butler. Her hand throbbed fiercely, but she didn’t think anything was broken.
She looked back at Callbeck. “After what you said, you are lucky that is all I do to you. I owe you a great deal more than that.” A trickle of blood seeped from between his fingers, and he shot her a vicious glare from his watering eyes.
“I strongly suggest you reconsider your threats against my family. If I hear so much as a whisper of insinuation that my child’s parentage is questioned, then I shall seek you out to pay in your pound of flesh.
As a matter of fact, it is likely in your best interest to discourage such chatter.
We will not be meeting your demands, and you are unworthy of a second thought.
” She turned back to her pale-faced butler.
“See that Lord Callbeck is escorted from the house posthaste. He will not be returning, and, if he so much as sets foot on the front step of any of the Swanleigh estates, then he will have greater concerns than a broken nose.” She met Callbeck’s narrowed eyes.
Every one of her nerves sang with adrenaline and elation. She felt triumphant.
Until Callbeck broke free from Perry’s arm on his shoulder and charged toward Caroline.
“You bitch!” he snarled.
Caroline stumbled back several steps, but he was moving too quickly, and her body was too cumbersome. Just before he grabbed her, however, Callbeck was stopped dead in his approach and thrown to the ground with an impressive thud.
Caroline’s shocked mind took a handful of seconds to register that her Gideon had blown into the room like a furious storm and now held her assailant pinned to the ground.
“I thought I already dealt with you,” Gideon growled, jaw like granite and eyes like silver hellfire.
Callbeck swung out wildly but did not once connect with more than the solid block of Gideon’s shoulder.
“I loathed you before, but, in coming into my house and in threatening my wife, you have made yourself an enemy.”
“Go to hell,” Callbeck gritted out through teeth stained pink with blood.
“I will meet you there, Callbeck. The devil has your name for all your cruelties and misdeeds, and he will drag you there screaming one day; I…I will gladly go to hell for her if it means protecting her. That is where we differ.” One swift punch from Gideon’s trained fist, and Callbeck fell silent and slack.