When She Said I Do

by Celeste Bradley

  He turned suddenly, his eyes shadowed by the mask as he turned his head as if searching the crowd, as if he felt her gaze on him. Betrice dropped her eyes and fluttered her fan nonchalantly, but she shivered in the warm room.

  He was still every bit as dangerous as he’d ever been.

  So she smiled and complimented and gossiped and asked after everyone’s children, crops and ailments, details that only came from a lifetime in the community. Match that, Lady Porter!

  Yet for all her ties to the people of Amberdell, she’d never felt so alone among them. When she knew them all so well, how could not a single person there perceive the seething discontent that twisted inside her?

  No one but Unwin.

  Henry came back with Callie on his arm. Betrice pulled herself together and smiled warmly at them both. “You looked to be having a marvelous time. Henry, you must fetch Lady Porter a cool drink—she’s absolutely”—sweating like a horse, really, she’s a scandal!—“glowing!”

  Henry dutifully sprang to milady’s rescue, scurrying away to fetch a glass of champagne from one of the ubiquitous staff—Betrice’s envy rose to near unbearable proportions at the thought of such a wealth of servants—and Callie smiled joyously at Betrice.

  “Henry’s such a dear! You’re a fortunate woman.”

  I will not twitch. Ladies do not twitch.

  Betrice frowned. “Oh, Callie. Couldn’t you convince Lawrence to spare you more than one dance?”

  Callie’s smile faltered slightly. “I’m sure he’ll beg another waltz … eventually. His injury…”

  Betrice put her gloved hand on Callie’s. “Of course, of course! And … if I may be so bold? It actually appears that matters between the two of you have … improved?”

  Callie blushed instantly and Betrice knew. The marriage had been consummated. Then Betrice noted the well-kissed plumpness of Callie’s lips and the betraying burn of beard upon the exposed portion of her bosom. Factor in the shining eyes and the easy smile and it was clear that Callie was now most completely in thrall to her husband. Betrice wondered if Ren even knew. Men could be quite stupid that way.

  Betrice took a deep breath. Then another. She favored Callie with her best future-lady-of-Amberdell smile. “That’s wonderful news.” She tucked her arm into Callie’s and drew her aside. “But, as one married woman to another—there is more to the union than the physical. Have you earned his trust? Has he begun to confide in you?”

  Callie blinked. “Well … he is not one for words.”

  Betrice chuckled. “Not like my dear Henry, then. One can hardly stop him!”

  Callie nodded and smiled uncertainly. “Henry certainly seems to consider communication to be important.”

  “Heavens, yes! Why, I’d scarcely known him a week before I knew every single thing about him—and he about me!”

  Callie’s smile slipped again. “A … a week?”

  “Why, I thought with the two of you rattling around in the manor by yourselves—What do you two do all day?”

  Callie’s shrug fell just on this side of miserable. “Not … talk.”

  She was melting like a neglected candle. Silly, lonely child. She’d be better off back in London with her family, truly.

  “Marriage can be so difficult,” Betrice commiserated. “If only you had your dear mother to discuss it with. She must be missing you terribly right now, as well.”

  “My mother?” Callie’s eyes grew wide. “How odd that you would mention her just now. I … I did not think I would miss my family so. But I cannot go now.” She shook her head as if shaking off a temptation. “No, now is not the right time. I need … Ren and I need to…” She trailed off, biting her lip, with a glaze of dampness in her eyes.

  “My lady, if I might interrupt?”

  It was that insufferable little dressmaker from the village. Betrice had walked out of his establishment when that ridiculously beautiful young man had taken her back behind the curtains—why, he’d wanted her to remove her gown to be “properly” measured! Proper, indeed!

  It was that and only that which had spurred her decision to reject the new gown that Henry had assured her they could very nearly afford—not the fact that she’d been wearing an old chemise beneath, the one with the tear in the seam she’d mended with mismatched thread.

  Mr. Button had a lady on his arm—and there was not a doubt in Betrice’s mind that this was a lady, indeed—whom he introduced to Callie as “Lady Raines.”

  Betrice looked askance at the little man and he smoothly introduced her, as well. Everyone curtsied, Betrice the lowest, being merely “Mrs. Nelson.”

  “Welcome to our home, my lady,” Callie said easily. “I hope you’re dancing—the music is wonderful, is it not?”

  Gushing. Appalling.

  To Betrice’s astonishment, Lady Raines gushed right back. “Blissful! I’ve danced my slippers to the absolute last strand of silk!” She turned to Betrice with a smile, but there was a definite razor’s edge to the glint in her eye. “Mrs. Nelson, you must step out. Your husband is the most delightful dancer.”

  Betrice blinked. “You … you danced with Henry?” Oh, horrors. She was going to make a “kindly” remark about his red-faced, sweaty-handed prancing now. Betrice couldn’t bear it, not in front of Callie.

  But Lady Raines only smiled. “But of course.” Then she turned back to Callie. “Lady Porter, forgive us for forcing ourselves on your conversation, but you looked quite distressed just now. Mr. Button would suffer nothing but to fly to your rescue at once.”

  Button shot a scythelike smile at Betrice, then warmed it for Callie’s benefit. “I hope you are not displeased by any of my little surprises, my dear. I only hoped to further your enjoyment of the evening.”

  Callie glanced at Betrice, then shook her head. “Certainly not. Your arrangements will be the talk of the village for decades! Everything is absolute perfection—and I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Raines. Mr. Button has such a marvelous capacity for making friends, does he not? The entire village adores him.”

  Lady Raines laughed. “It is very easy to like Mr. Button when he has supplied every lady in the village with a one-of-a-kind Lementeur creation!”

  Lementeur?

  Callie had such a look on her face. Betrice suddenly realized it was precisely the same one as on her own.

  “Le—Lementeur?” Callie looked around. “But…”

  Then Betrice saw what she’d been too distracted to notice before. Every lady in the village did not simply look nice. Every lady in the village, from the butcher’s wife to the rough-handed laundress, looked fabulous.

  Oh, my God. Betrice fought to inhale. “You?”

  Mr. Button swept her a deep and graceful bow. “At your service, Mrs. Nelson.”

  I walked away from a Lementeur gown.

  Tricked. That young man had known and he had let her stalk out of the shop anyway. The sounds of the ball faded, then swelled.

  Callie was distracted from her astonishment by the pale cold marble of Betrice’s complexion. She put a comforting hand on her new cousin’s arm. “Are you all right, dear?”

  Betrice drew a deep breath and favored them all with a glinting smile. “Do excuse me. I find myself with an overwhelming desire to dance with my husband.”

  Callie frowned as she watched Betrice move gracefully away. “She wasn’t one who received a new gown, Mr. Button?”

  Button spread his hands. “The lady declined.”

  Callie looked down at her hands. “She likely thought she could not afford it.” Then her gaze rose to meet Button’s. “How did all the ladies afford them?”

  Button beamed pleasantly at her. “I have billed all and sundry to Sir Lawrence. I have it on good authority that he can well afford it.”

  Callie blinked and stared and then grinned like a child. Gazing around the room at the beaming faces and outrageous masks of the village populace, Callie judged it well done. “Every penny well spent!”

 
; Lady Raines tilted her head at Callie. “Button, occupy yourself elsewhere please.”

  The great Lementeur bobbed a bow and slipped away in the crowd as if he loved nothing more than serving Lady Raines. Callie slid her gaze back to the pretty, plump, dark-haired Lady Raines. “Who are you?”

  The lady waved a ringed hand. “I? I am old news, really. I’m much more interested in you, Lady Porter.”

  Still distracted by her musings, Callie shook her head. “‘Calliope’ will do. Or ‘Callie’ if you like. ‘Lady Porter’ still sounds like some bosomy matron in widow’s silks to me.”

  Lady Raines snickered. “I know the feeling. I am Agatha.” She tucked her arm into Callie’s. “Let us take a stroll about the floor, shall we?”

  Callie strolled obediently. “Are we headed somewhere in particular, my lady—er, Agatha?”

  “Oh, no … nowhere at all.”

  Looking ahead, Callie noticed that their current path would carry them across the view of a small group of very well dressed people who looked nothing like the butcher’s wife or the laundress. In fact, they looked almost like royalty. There were three gentlemen and two ladies. The men, two dark and one blond, looked like lords and the ladies, both tall statuesque blondes who resembled sunlight and moonlight respectively, princesses.

  “I really must talk to Mr. Button about inviting unknown dignitaries to my balls,” Callie murmured. “First there’s just one or two, and then suddenly the place is crawling with them.”

  Agatha laughed, a startled sound. “Just a few old friends of Button’s, truly.”

  “Who I am being paraded before for inspection?” Callie dug in her heels, forcing Agatha to stop, as well. “My lady, it is clear that there is something you wish to know. Ask, I pray you, for I have nothing to hide.”

  Agatha sighed. “Well, Button wasn’t wrong about your mind, that is for certain.” She withdrew her arm from Callie’s and turned to face her. “It is only that I worried for a dear friend and I wished to reassure myself—that is, we wished to reassure ourselves—that our friend was not being taken advantage of by a pretty face—”

  “Masking an evil heart?” Callie shook her head. “My lady, while I am terribly fond of Mr. Button, he doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to be swayed by a pretty face—unless that face belongs to young Cabot.” Callie gestured to the somber young man holding up a pillar to one side of the dancers.

  Both ladies took a moment to appreciate the fellow’s astonishing beauty, then resumed their conversation.

  “Ah, yes … Button.” Agatha narrowed her eyes at Callie significantly. “Well, anyone who would attempt to interfere with Button would quickly discover themselves in a great deal of very hot water.”

  “Without a doubt!” Callie folded her arms and scowled. “Point me at them. I’ll call my brothers and we’ll make short work of them. Worse still, I’ll set my sisters upon them!”

  Agatha blinked at her for long moment, her brow furrowed in confusion. “You would call upon your siblings to defeat anyone who slighted Button?”

  “Did someone make jest of him because he is different? Call him a name? Was it here? In my house?” Callie swung a sharp gaze about the room, wild for battle. “Who?”

  “Hmm.” Agatha cast a glance over her shoulder at the group Callie had mentally dubbed the “Royal Handful.” Did she shake her head ever so slightly, in some sort of signal? Callie turned to face the room and searched out dear Button, who was quite safely speaking to Ren by one of the potted palms brought in for the occasion. Faithful Cabot lurked nearby.

  Callie relaxed. No one would mock Button with Ren and Cabot in his corner.

  A gentle hand alighted upon her shoulder. Callie looked down into the wide brown eyes of Lady Raines.

  “I’m sorry, my dear. I certainly didn’t mean to distress you. No one has attacked our Button, truly. I simply wished to make sure that you were … that you were a loyal and stalwart friend.”

  “Oh.” Callie shook her head. “Of course I am. He’s done a great deal for me, and for my husband. Just look at Sir Lawrence—standing here, among all these people, as straight and proud as can be!” She sighed proudly, gazing at Ren. “Isn’t he magnificent?”

  Ren looked up just then and caught Callie’s fond gaze. The one he returned to her burned.

  Lady Raines gazed across the room at Ren, then let her eyes return to Callie’s blushing face. “It seems there is more behind this transformation than merely the admittedly mystical powers of Lementeur,” she said quietly. “Another sort of magic entirely, I should think.”

  Chapter 28

  Betrice stalked through the ballroom, every step like walking on broken glass.

  “Oh, Mrs. Nelson, did you hear? We’re all wearing Lementeur! I can’t wait to tell my sister in Locksbury that I’m all the rage, la!”

  “Dear Mrs. Nelson, how tragic that you didn’t order from that marvelous man! Tragic, simply tragic!”

  “Well, dear, I’m sure if Lady Porter puts in a good word for you—”

  Betrice could only fix an arch smile on her lips, laugh a meaningless little social laugh, and make her escape, finally diving behind a curtain to hide in a dim alcove to escape the we-love-Lady-Porter barrage.

  She pressed her clenched fists against her forehead. Her own skin burned her.

  Something small and round rolled beneath the sole of her dancing slipper. Distractedly, she bent to pick it up. The orb was the size of a gooseberry and shimmered in the dim light.

  Someone had lost a pearl.

  * * *

  Callie saw Lady Raines across the ballroom, talking to a statuesque blond beauty—the silvery, moon-goddess one in a mask made in the pointed russet and white features of a fox. The two women shifted their heads slightly the moment Callie spotted them, and Callie knew they had been watching her.

  “May I have this waltz?”

  She turned to find Ren bowing low, his hand held out. He lifted his head and shot her a steamy glance. Her heart stuttered and she quite lost her breath.

  My, what a handsome husband I have.

  She lifted her chin and placed her hand in his. It only trembled a little bit, surely. “Why, yes, I do believe I have this dance free—but it is not a waltz.”

  Ren lifted one hand carelessly and snapped his fingers, his gaze never leaving Callie’s. The spritely music segued instantly into the lyrical strains of the waltz. “It is now.”

  It was a bold lord-of-the-manor gesture—not the action of a man who felt he was a horror, that he needed to apologize for existing. The transformation was indeed miraculous. The power of confidence, to be sure.

  Or was it? Lady Raines’s voice echoed through Callie’s mind. Another sort of magic entirely.

  Then Ren swept her into his arms. She promptly forgot everything and everyone when he pulled her closer than was entirely proper and whirled her about the floor.

  “You look beautiful when you dance,” he murmured. “Almost as beautiful as when you…” He trailed off, but the look in his eyes said it all.

  Callie’s heart skidded around in giddy circles in her chest, but she managed a haughty tilt to her head. “Almost? I’ll have you know that I am attired in a genuine Lementeur original!”

  “I know,” he said with a twist to his lips and a glimmer of humor in his beautiful eyes. “I’ve been informed I shall be receiving a bill long enough to paper the upstairs gallery.”

  She bit her lip. “Do you mind? All the women are so happy—it’s really so generous and they’re truly grateful—”

  “Hush, Callie. I do not mind it.” He twirled her so fast she was lifted from her feet. He bent his head to whisper in her ear. “Besides, I’ve decided I shall merely add it to your account. Twenty-five, perhaps thirty gowns? A pearl apiece, yes?”

  Thirty pearls.

  Thirty more nights in his arms, in his bed, in his life.

  Callie turned her head and caught his lips with hers, a quick, hot theft. Then she drew away and smi
led. “Oh, I think a Lementeur gown ought to be worth at least two pearls each. But not tonight, if you recall.”

  He lifted his head and met her gaze. “I recall perfectly,” he murmured, his voice a rumble of promise.

  With their gazes locked and their hearts pounding in unison, they danced out the waltz he’d commanded, whirling gracefully about the room until the musicians looked at each other, shrugged, and began the tune again from the beginning.

  * * *

  When the waltz ended at last, Ren almost couldn’t bear to allow Callie out of his embrace. Dancing with her gave him a sensation of flying. He hardly felt like a monster at all with her in his arms, in the ballroom or the bedroom—or the library! She made him believe he could truly be a man again.

  But he’d danced her simply breathless. She hung on his arm, flushed and fanning herself, and quite unmistakably limping.

  “Damn. Your ankle. Why did you not remind me?”

  “And miss the opportunity to dance with you?”

  He led her to one of the ornate little chairs that had magically appeared in his ballroom. “Sit down, Callie. I’ll find some champagne … where are all those minions of Button’s anyway?”

  Callie looked up and caught at his hand. “Oh! That reminds me—we must look after Mr. Button, Ren. This isn’t London, after all. Lady Raines said the oddest thing—”

  “Callie, every fellow here just found out that Button provided a gown fit for a queen to each of their wives for the price of flour-sacking. Those men have been drinking toasts to Button for the last hour!” He spotted a well turned-out servitor and beckoned urgently. Damned if the fellow didn’t spin right about and walk the other way!

  “Bloody hell.” Ren patted Callie’s hand. “Stay here. I’ll fetch the damned champagne myself.”

  He set off to where he was sure he’d seen another servant pouring from magnums of the stuff. It wasn’t until the crowd closed behind him that Callie’s words registered fully in his hearing.

  Lady Raines said the oddest thing.

  Raines? Wait—what?

  He spun on his heel and strode back to the little chair, but Callie was gone.