Chapter 26- Callum
Callum closed the heavy front door behind him and sighed.
Albie scampered about, delighted to be home, jumping up and down with the customary thunk produced by his tiny leather leg.
Callum bent and affectionately ruffled the dog’s ears with both his hands and was rewarded with a vigorous licking that made him chuckle.
The smile slid from his face as soon as he stood.
Callum had meant to tell Margaret everything that morning, truly he had.
He thought that if Margaret cared for him enough to use his given name in public the other night—even by accident—then he certainly owed it to her to tell her the truth about him finding her journal.
However, at the park, their conversation had blown so far off his intended course and then beached in such a pleasant place that he hadn’t dared bring up the diary at all. He didn’t want to destroy their fragile peace just as soon as it had developed.
“Mrs. Blake, could I have a moment?” he said.
His new housekeeper was perhaps older than most, but Callum didn’t care.
She’d come highly recommended for her honesty, discretion, and ability to bring a wayward household back in line.
It hadn’t escaped Callum’s notice that since he’d hired the woman, several of the staff had quickly been replaced.
Ellis hadn’t complained about spies or gossips since the changes had been made; Callum took that as an excellent sign.
“Of course, Your Grace. What can I do for you?” She folded her fingers over her serviceable navy dress and pursed her thin lips.
“Ladies’ hair pins.” He handed the housekeeper several folded bills. “Please send a maid out immediately and buy me a single set of all the different kinds on offer, please.”
Without so much as a blink of surprise, she took the bills from his hand, glanced through them, and handed all but one of them back. “Of course, Your Grace. Will there be anything else?”
“That will be all. Thank you, Mrs. Blake.”
The woman gave a respectful nod and retreated. Every interaction Callum had with the lady only reinforced his decision to hire her. He gave a little sigh of relief and tucked the bills back into his pocket, then went to hunt Ellis down.
Late that evening, Callum and Ellis sat on either side of a table with a chessboard between them, though Ellis was the only one playing.
The fire glowed and Albie had taken his customary spot in front of the grate.
Callum thought that in terms of domestic comfort, there was little that increased one’s sense of contentment more than a dog curled and snoring gently before a nice fire.
When Callum had produced three dozen hairpins from his pockets, Ellis had said, “First a children’s book and now ladies’ hair pins? Callum, I daresay you’re the strangest person I know.”
“That’s quite the distinction, considering the company you keep,” Callum mumbled, holding up another hairpin.
This one was in a u-shape with delicate twists along each end. He understood the concept, but such tiny ridges were useless in the face of Margaret’s abundance of hair.
He could hardly describe the emotions he felt toward that hair. He wanted to touch it, to thread it through his fingers. Heaven help him, he wanted to bury his nose in it and just inhale. Callum tsked his distraction and set his attention back to the pins.
“I’ll have you know that I have many elegant friends, thank you very much,” Ellis said.
“And yet you’re always with me.” Perhaps the words would have been cutting if they hadn’t been offered with a smile.
“I confess I do find them all dreadfully dull these days.”
Ellis took another white piece from the board. Black was winning by a landslide, and Callum was starting to doubt whether white was putting up any form of resistance at all.
“Why is that?”
“They’re all courting or getting married,” he mumbled.
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to do,” Callum said. “Courting with the goal of getting married.”
“Well, yes, but up until today, the lady seemed dead set against you, which made it far more interesting.”
Callum looked up with a frown from where he was now taking a pair of long-nose pliers to a thick gauge of brass wire.
He’d decided that all the pins in the marketplace were faulty.
Most of them were far too short, too spindly, or simply ridiculous by design.
What good could a single crimpled piece of iron do to hold back Margaret’s wealth of heavy waves?
“I’d say I was sorry to disappoint you, but that would be a lie,” he said.
Ellis knocked over the white king and began setting the board up again. “I’m glad for you. Truly I am. It’s only that perhaps I feel a bit jealous, too.”
“Jealous?” Callum frowned. “Ellis, you are charming, witty, and altogether welcome with the ladies wherever you go. Certainly I have an advantage in height—”
“And handsomeness, and title, and fortune,” he muttered.
Callum stopped short. Though Ellis often made fun of such things, their disparate statuses in life had never truly come between them. Now Callum wondered how much truth Ellis had said in jest over the years.
“Look,” Ellis said on a sigh. “Your happenstance of birth is no more your fault than mine is.”
“And yet each comes with its own set of challenges,” Callum said slowly.
“Indeed. You must manage the lot left to you and I must find my place in the world.”
He frowned. “Your place in the world is secure, Ellis.”
“Not in terms of vocation. I know that Father always wanted me to take the cloth, but I think I’d make a dreadful clergyman.
You know how hard it is for me to stay awake in church.
And it’s no fault of the minister—intriguing or dull as I may find the sermon, I still have to pinch my own knee relentlessly toward the end. ”
Callum grinned at his earnest tone. “I know. I agree with you—I don’t think that would be a good fit. Is there something else you’d rather do?”
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. Only, I’ve no idea what it is. And it’s not as if one can try different things out to see what suits. The army rather frowns on soldiers who decide they’d rather not be enlisted anymore.”
Callum huffed his agreement. “But you know you could always come and live with me.”
“I don’t want to live on someone else’s charity. Despite the many surface benefits, it grows stale quickly.”
Callum’s frown creased his forehead. “That’s not how I think of you, Ellis. Not in terms of charity. You’re my family. I hope you know that.”
Ellis waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, we’re cousins—”
“No,” Callum said firmly. “I’m not simply speaking about how we’re related. You are my family. The closest family I have left, save for my sisters.”
Ellis’s lips were pressed together. He stared down at the chessboard.
Callum couldn’t read his expression as he continued, “And if you’d like to marry the poorest parlor maid—if that would make you happy—then feel free to bring her home to Yardbrook.
The house is far too large; it’s ridiculous.
You can raise your family in the east wing and I’ll take the west, and our children will run amok through the hedgerows together. It’s the way it should be anyway.”
Ellis finally raised his head, and Callum was surprised to see a sheen of moisture in his eyes.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Callum scoffed—for he knew Ellis, and scoffing was the fastest way to restore his equilibrium. “I’m only amazed you needed me to put such a thing to words. I always thought you knew you and your family were more than welcome.”
“There’s no need to rub your superior graciousness in, along with everything else,” Ellis said, sounding much more like himself than he had.
Callum frowned. “I do have one request, however.”
“What’s that?”
“When you do come, could you please refrain from chucking mud clods at the staff? Especially Mr. MacCubbin. He’s dreadfully sensitive about it, for some reason.”
“You’re kidding. He’s still about? I thought the last time I saw him…what has it been, two years already? I thought that would undoubtedly be the last.”
“I’m sure he hoped it was, but yes, he’s still puttering about the stables when he has a mind to.”
“He doesn’t still work for you—the man must be seventy!”
“He’s seventy-four, and very sprightly for his age. He has his same cottage, and will until he’s gone.” Callum took the length of wire with bent ends and twisted it carefully around a small wooden rod.
“Dead, you mean.”
“I’d never be so crude to say it, though.”
“Would I be just as welcome without a wife?” Ellis asked with a careful casualness that Callum knew meant he was truly serious.
“Of course you would. But I thought perhaps you were coming around to the idea of finding a wife.”
“Again, you mean?” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to trust someone a second time.”
Callum blinked. This was perhaps the most honest conversation he’d had with Ellis, at least in recent memory. He wondered if his cousin realized just how set Callum was on marrying Margaret and thought their time together coming to a close.
“Ellis, there are a hundred women who’d love to have you as a husband, whether or not your three older brothers die off in a tragic accident.”
Ellis exhaled a smirking sort of laugh. “Heaven save me from such a thing. Their collective widows and children would pester me into an early grave.”
“In all seriousness, if you wish to look for a bride, do so. My only advice is to be honest from the start about your fortune.”
“My lack of it, you mean.” Ellis began his relentless assault against the white pieces once more. “Is that what you did? Were you honest with your Margaret?”
Callum winced, thinking once again of the journal.
“I take that as a no, then,” Ellis said. “I confess I did wonder how you were going to work that into polite conversation. How did you come by it, after all?”
“What?” Callum blinked.
“You must remember, cousin—I’m a decent pickpocket. Not that I could make a living on Bond Street without being caught, but it’s a passable parlor trick, good enough to entertain at parties.”
Reflexively, Callum’s hand went to his breast pocket.
“You see,” Ellis said, pointing. “It was that right there that made me wonder. I kept thinking perhaps you were having chest pains. Then I realized it wasn’t that—you were keeping something important on you. I had no idea what it was until I swiped it the other evening.”
“You took it off my person?” Callum gaped.
“No. Like I said, I’m only a decent pickpocket, not truly skilled.
I waited until you were in the bath.” At Callum’s expression, he held up his hands.
“Before you throttle me, you should know that I only did it because I thought you were holding out on me regarding the book you enjoyed. The second I figured out what it was, I didn’t read another word, I promise. ”
“How many entries?” he gritted out.
“Two or three short ones. They were all on the same page. At first I thought it was your diary. Your penmanship is very feminine, after all.”
“No, it isn’t,” he snapped.
Truthfully, if Ellis had looked a bit harder, he might have found Callum’s journal—the one he’d started keeping during his search for Margaret.
He’d continued it after he found out who she was.
It was odd—he’d never kept a diary before, certainly had never poured his heart out to one.
It felt natural now, and he wrote down his thoughts of Margaret and their courtship at least once a day.
“I can tell you aren’t in the mood for joking. I won’t tell anyone—not that it even exists, much less that I read it. And it was all very boring—one entry was mainly about her missing waffles for breakfast, if you can believe it.”
Callum knew the one—it was one of the many that made him smile. He wasn’t smiling now, however. He didn’t know who he wanted to knock upside the head more—his cousin or himself.
“Look,” Ellis said again. “I promise, I never would have even known who’d written it by what I read. It’s only that you were so taken with her from the very beginning, even when she was giving you fits. That’s the only way I made the connection; it was the most logical deduction.”
Callum sighed, all his anger deflating at once. “You thought I had a good book I was keeping to myself?”
“I thought it might have pictures.” Ellis waggled his eyebrows, but when it failed to make Callum laugh, he stopped immediately. “I’m very sorry. It’s been weighing on me ever since it happened. I truly regret it, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Barely.” He ran his hand through his dark hair. It was getting long again; he needed to cut it. “I accept your apology. To be honest, most of my anger is pointed at myself.”
“How on earth did it come into your possession?”
Callum sighed. Then, as he curled more wire around the wooden dowel, he relayed the story of how he’d found Margaret’s journal in the shop.
“What are you going to do?” Ellis finally asked.
“I need to tell her. I just…have to find the right time.”
“You should.” Ellis nodded. “For your conscience will get the best of you and you’ll tell her eventually. Knowing you, it would burst forth at the worst possible moment—at the altar, for example.”
Callum smiled and shook his head. “Ellis? Please tell me you don’t make a habit of coming into my room when I’m in the bath?”
He scoffed. “You should be so honored.”