Chapter Fourteen #3
Montague nodded curtly. ‘Indeed. Her painting is the superior, as you can see, and I wish the results to reflect that. Even if the public is distracted by…other factors.’
It had been a mistake, he realised now, to put his name on the damned landscape. Of course the people of Brighton would wish to bow and scrape to a marquess. A young lady of no family, of no reputation in Brighton? Who was she to flatter?
No, this was the right thing to do.
Mrs Gower looked warily over his shoulder, presumably at Calliope, then back to himself. ‘She might never forgive you, if she found out.’
‘Then let’s ensure she never does,’ Montague said stiffly. ‘She will win. It will be close, but she will win. Are we agreed?’
For a heart stopping moment, he almost thought Calliope’s aunt was going to disagree with him. Precisely what he would have done such a thing occurred, he was not sure.
As it was…
‘Agreed.’ Mrs Gower’s smile was too knowing. ‘You are a good man, my lord.’
‘He’s the best,’ John said quietly, his face burning red.
Montague was not supposed to feel such happiness at the short pronouncement and so it was quite inexplicable that he did. ‘Yes. Well. Right.’ He coughed. ‘Announcement in ten minutes, Mrs Gower?’
Without waiting for a reply, he turned on his heels and marched back to the woman he now knew he cared for.
Cared for. The plan had never been to do anything as foolish as falling in love!
Forcing Calliope to marry him, winning her like this… Well, it would not be winning her at all.
But then, Montague thought as his whole body tingled just standing next to Calliope, the plan had been to tease and to tempt a young woman into falling into bed with him. It had not exactly been the most honourable of plans.
And now, after all they had shared, she surely loved him and would understand it was her choice to return his affections.
This was, Montague thought grandly, the best plan he’d ever had.
The ten minutes of waiting was absolute torture, but eventually Mrs Gower approached them with John at her heels.
‘—but a larger canvas is always better, isn’t it, Aunt Louise?’
Montague could not help but raise an eyebrow at the older woman. ‘Aunt Louise?’
‘John has always wanted an aunt,’ Calliope’s aunt said blithely, as though she offered her auntship to any wandering child who might need it. ‘I thought you two would like to know the final tally, now that nice gentleman is about to close up.’
Pulse skipping a beat, hands strangely warm, Montague nodded and tried his best not to look at Calliope.
He failed. She was pale, her hands twisting before her as he watched her resign herself to the loss.
Dear God, he loved her.
‘The winner, by only ten votes,’ Mrs Gower said, her eyes glancing down at her tally as though to ensure the veracity of her statement, ‘is…Miss Calliope Oliver.’
Montague made sure to look astonished, to turn away for a moment as though to collect himself. When he turned back, Calliope’s eyes were shining with unexpected joy and he knew he would spend the rest of his life making sure she was this happy.
‘What—me?’ she said in a breathless voice. ‘Are you—are you quite certain, Aunt Louise?’
‘I’ve counted up the tallies twice, and John checked my working,’ said the older woman with a quite impressive display of lying, Montague thought. ‘You are the winner, my dear.’
‘Oh—oh, yes!’ Calliope clapped her hands in uncontrolled excitement and immediately flushed as eyes darted their way. ‘Oh, I did not think—when I saw your landscape, Montague—’
‘A well-deserved winner,’ he interrupted her, finding much to his surprise that he meant it. ‘And I suppose this means I have an advertisement to take out in the Brighton Herald, declaring you the superior artist.’
Calliope’s eyes glittered. ‘And one thousand pounds to send me! Oh, this is—I could never have dreamed—I feel so…so…’
How she felt, Montague knew, was nothing compared to how she was about to feel. Knowing she was about to have a day that would utterly change her life, he slowly took her hands in his and lowered himself to his knee.
Calliope’s laughter faded away. ‘Montague—my lord, what are you—?’
‘You might have won this competition, Miss Calliope Oliver,’ Montague said grandly, ‘but you may not have realised you have also won my heart.’
Her cheeks were pinking now and the whole art gallery was fading, Mrs Gower and the boy disappearing until it was only then. Only himself and Calliope, and the happy future that lay before them.
‘Montague—’
‘I might have hoped to have won you in the art competition,’ he said, magnanimously, ‘but I do declare I think it even better that I now ask you for your hand in marriage and you can give it to me freely.’
Montague looked up at Calliope expectantly.
She was smiling, though the smiling was—now he came to think about it—a little forced. Perhaps a public proposal was a bit much. She was a private creature, after all, and—
‘No. Thank you, though,’ Calliope said quietly, delicately extricating her hands from his own and taking a hesitant step backward.
Montague blinked. ‘No?’
‘No,’ said the woman he loved softly. ‘I’m sorry, Montague. But I will not marry you.’