Callum: Regency Rockstars

by Sasha Cottman

  “But I am the group manager,” she replied.

  “Eliza,” he growled.

  Callum caught a glimpse of Eliza as she headed for the door; her lips were set in a hard line. He waited for the moment when she would slam the door behind her, but all that came was the sound of a soft click of the lock. He silently congratulated her on keeping her temper under control. She was the only one not on the verge of having a full meltdown.

  Reid, however, was not finished. “My sister might see you through rose-colored glasses, but I do not. You use what you went through during the battle as an excuse to abuse your mind and your body. Anyone would think that you, the great and brave Sir Callum Sharp, was the only man who has suffered since that day. The only one who has endured sleepless nights. But let me tell you this—each and every one of us has nightmares and demons to battle.”

  How could Reid possibly know what he had gone through? What he was still living, day after day? And what he now had to deal with—watching his own father die?

  The others might well be suffering their own private agonies, but only he had another one looming large and black on his horizon.

  He truly hated Reid. He also hated the fact that he couldn’t tell any of them the truth and make them understand.

  After a time, he slowly nodded. Nothing could be gained by arguing any more tonight.

  “I will come and play with the Noble Lords. I will not miss any future performances. You have my word.”

  “Good.”

  “But you are deluding yourself if you think any of this musical bullshit matters because it doesn’t. And when this summer is over, I will remember how my friends threatened to throw me out of the group, and then we shall see what remains of our brotherhood,” he said.

  Reid sighed. “That will be your choice, Callum. As long as you stay away from my sister, I don’t give a damn what you do.”

  Kendal and Owen stood silently nodding their agreement. They were backing Reid. Callum turned and headed toward the door, pulling the bottle of gin from his pocket, and downing the rest of its contents as he went.

  Out in the foyer, he stopped and spoke to Eliza. “If I mess up again, I am out of the group. And as far as your brother is concerned, if it means I am out of your life forever then he will be more than happy.”

  He made for the door. Sir Thomas had asked him to give up the opium and cannabis, and he was doing his best to honor his promise to his father. But Callum was desperate for something, and that thing was more gin.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Sobriety is seriously overrated. The sooner I go and get toad-faced the better. The last place I wish to be right now is here, and the very last people I want to see are my so-called brother Noble Lords.”

  He handed her the empty gin bottle. “And if you expect me to remain at Follett House after tonight, you had better start serving booze with breakfast.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eliza waited until Kendal and Owen had both retired to their rooms before seeking out her brother. After enquiring as to his whereabouts and being told he was in his study by Mister Green, she headed upstairs to the third floor of the house.

  Reid’s private rooms were at the end of the long hallway, just on the other side of the master suite which he had moved into following the death of their parents. Eliza stormed into the study. Reid was standing close to his desk, a lonely figure amongst the piles of papers.

  She slammed the door behind her, not caring who heard the deafening bang as it reverberated throughout the house. She was done with tiptoeing around men and their egos.

  “What the devil?” exclaimed Reid.

  “I am sick and tired of you treating me like I am a child. Every time I try to talk to you about Callum, you brush me off. I know he failed you all tonight but continuing to pretend that he is not suffering is not helping anyone, least of all Callum,” she said.

  Reid’s face was still flushed red, his whole body stiff with rage. Eliza had seen him in a bad temper before, but nothing like this. Even his hair seemed charged with electricity. He looked for all the world like he was about to explode into a million pieces.

  She met his gaze, refusing to back down.

  “And you marching in here and throwing a tantrum is not behaving like a child?” he bit back.

  She pointed at the door. “Oh, and you are such an adult? Callum has just walked out the front door and you’re the one to blame. You can tell yourself all the lies that you want about giving a damn, but I am here to tell you that you are a bloody hypocrite!”

  Reid started toward her, then stopped. He closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath. It was obvious he was trying to bring his temper back under control and it was proving a challenge.

  When he opened his eyes, tears glistened in them. Eliza put a hand to her mouth. Reid was crying. “I do give a damn. More than you can ever know. But, Eliza, either you don’t understand what this is like for me, or you refuse to and are willing to throw your life away. I can’t let you do it. I will not stand by and see you meet the same fate as she did,” he said, his voice low and resigned.

  She. There was no need for him to say who she was.

  “Mama made her choice to stay with Papa and help him. It was finally working. He was doing so well in the months leading up to their deaths. He was sober and they were in love. Have you ever been in love, Reid? Do you have any idea what I am talking about?”

  The memory of her parents in those last days brought tears to her eyes. The soft smile her mother wore—a smile that Eliza had only started to truly understand as she grew and became a woman.

  Reid’s shoulders slumped, much of the fight seemingly leaving him. “I know what love is; a man does not need to wear his heart on his sleeve for him to know that he is feeling that emotion, that he is living it.”

  His quiet reproach caught her off guard. If Reid had ever been in love, or was in love, he had kept it well-hidden.

  “Then you know why she stayed with him. Why I have to support Callum and do all I can for him,” she said.

  Reid clenched his fingers in and out of tight balls. He lifted his right hand to his face and scrubbed it over the stubble on his chin. He opened his mouth and looked for all the world like he was going to say something, but then he stopped. His gaze dropped to the pale green Abyssinian rug on the floor.

  From the play of emotions across his face, it was clear he was conducting an internal discussion with himself, an argument with no clear winner. After what felt like an eternity, he finally lifted his head and met her gaze. His hands were so tightly fisted that the whites of his knuckles stood out.

  “Have a seat, will you? I think it is time you and I had a talk about our parents. About what really happened that night,” he said.

  Eliza made herself comfortable on one of the deep burgundy leather couches while Reid sat on the other.

  He sat forward his hands still held together. “You, of course, know about the accident, that Papa was driving his phaeton late at night. That the carriage lost a wheel and he was not able to control it and they ended up in a ditch.”

  “Yes, and they were both killed. It was a tragic accident. I don’t see what that has to do with our discussion of Callum or what is happening now,” she replied.

  Reid shifted uncomfortably in his seat and Eliza was suddenly filled with a sense of dread. What hadn’t she been told about the death of her parents?

  “I arrived at the scene not long after the accident had happened. Ahead of all the estate staff. Mama was already dead. But he . . .”

  He screwed his eyes shut and hung his head. Eliza had never seen Reid so rattled, so unsure of himself. She leaned forward and placed a comforting hand on his knee.

  “He wasn’t dead. In fact, Papa was barely injured. What he was, however, was blind drunk. He had taken the corner too fast and the phaeton had tipped over,” explained Reid.

  She gasped. “What?”

  Reid placed a hand ove
r Eliza’s. “He was cradling her in his arms when I got there—crying and begging for God to take him instead. When he saw that it was me, he just shook his head.”

  Their father surviving the crash had never been part of the story she had heard before; Eliza had a multitude of questions in her mind, but she forced herself to remain silent, waiting for Reid to reveal more.

  “He crawled out of the wreckage and got to his feet. I looked at Mama, and it was clear that nothing could be done for her. I went to embrace him, to tell him it was an accident. He pushed me away and dug into his coat pocket. The next thing I knew, he had his pistol in his hand. I foolishly assumed he was going to shoot the horse since it was injured, but instead he cocked it and pointed it at his head. His last words were a hurried ‘I loved her. You and Eliza are my children, but she was my life.’ And then he pulled the trigger.”

  Shock punched through Eliza and she fell forward into Reid’s embrace.

  No. No. It is impossible.

  Their father would never have done such a thing. Never willingly torn himself from their lives.

  Reid’s strong arms wrapped around Eliza, stopping her from crashing to the floor. The tears didn’t come at first. Her brain still too numb to register what he had just told her.

  “I picked up the pistol and put it into my pocket. Then I dragged him back to the carriage and placed him beside Mama. By the time the estate servants finally arrived, I had everything arranged to look just like the scene of a terrible accident. No one ever questioned the story that they had both died in the crash.”

  Reid had been a mere seventeen years old and on that dusty roadside, he had been compelled to cover up his father’s suicide and stay silent about it all these years. All this time he had carried the weight of that secret. He had maintained the lie to save his father’s reputation and protect Eliza.

  “The family doctor examined both bodies, and he had to have seen the bullet hole. Had to have smelt the alcohol on Papa. He took one look at me, sighed, and then wrote the cause of death as being a head injury. He signed the death certificate and handed it over without saying a word,” said Reid.

  Eliza sat back on her haunches and looked up at him. So many things he had said over the years since the death of their parents now made sense. Most of all, his steadfast refusal to even consider the idea of her marrying Callum.

  “It clears up a lot of questions I have carried in my mind since that day. I might have been caught up in my grief at the time, but even I wondered why you were in such a hurry to have the burials over and done with so quickly. And why you had the phaeton burned,” she said.

  “I was trying to protect us, and especially you. The public scandal that would have come with the truth of how our parents died would have had a detrimental effect on your marriage prospects. Even at that tender age, I had to take that into account. Do you now understand why I persist in trying to keep the two of you apart, or why I would love to see you happy with someone like Randolph Ward?”

  Reid feared the same tragic end for her and Callum. He sought to keep her safe. Her brother wanted to go on protecting her.

  But she was not her mother and Callum was not their father. The curse did not have to be passed down to the next generation. She believed that with her whole heart. “I have faith that Callum can be saved,” she said.

  Her visit to Callum’s home this evening had raised enough questions about what was really going on in his life. His mother’s clear distress coupled with the obvious illness of his father pointed to there being something terrible going on in the Sharp family. She was not about to abandon Callum when he needed her most.

  “I want to save Callum as much as you do, but it cannot be at your expense. Don’t make the tragic choice that Mama did,” said Reid.

  This was an argument that neither side was ever going to win.

  “Reid, I am grateful that you have finally told me the truth of Mama and Papa’s accident. I am sorry you carried that burden all those years. But if you think that me knowing what happened to them somehow changes how I feel about Callum, you are wrong. I will not give up on him.”

  Reid looked down at her and brushed his hand over her cheek. “Then everything I did that day was all for naught and I have failed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Eliza was just leaving the upstairs formal drawing room midmorning the following day when Kendal approached her in the hallway.

  “Just the person I was looking for,” he said.

  She gave him a tepid smile. There was every chance that Kendal was coming to her with yet another request for changes to his room.

  “What can I help you with this morning, Kendal?”

  He winced. “Am I really that demanding that you think I only speak to you when I want something?”

  Eliza let her raised eyebrows be the only answer he needed.

  “I do want something. First, I must ask how things went after the confrontation with Callum last night. I did hear the door of Reid’s study being closed rather firmly, and then raised voices,” he said.

  I expect Prinny heard it all the way over at Carlton House.

  Reid’s revelations about their parents had kept her awake well into the early hours of the morning.

  “Reid and I had words. He seems to think that there is little which can be done for Callum, while I happen to disagree,” she replied.

  “I can see how he would have come to form that opinion. He has tried to intervene and help Callum a number of times since we returned to England. Callum can be stubborn when it suits him. As, of course, can we all, but he seems set on the path he has chosen,” said Kendal.

  It was comforting to know that Reid was trying to help, but she had come to the firm conclusion that Callum had to want to help himself.

  “There must be something we can do. I am all out of ideas,” she replied.

  Kendal smiled. “Have you considered giving him something to think about? I mean, with regard to the two of you.”

  Lord Kendal Grant had been a spy at one point during the war, and Eliza suspected he still employed his own select group of eyes and ears in London. He had an uncanny knack of knowing a great deal about many things in polite society. Including, from the sounds of it, the private relationship that she and Callum had foolishly thought they had long kept secret.

  “I . . . didn’t think you knew,” she replied.

  “Of course, I know about you and Callum. I do have a pair of eyes in my head. Though I did note that things seemed to have taken a decided turn for the chilly since we’ve returned from the war. Don’t tell me you are seriously going along with Reid’s mad scheme to marry you off?” scoffed Kendal.

  “When you say give Callum something to think about, what do you mean?” she said.

  “I mean show him what he is missing. Let him see that you are not just waiting around for him to pull his head out of his arse. Have you thought about continuing your friendship with that certain gentleman who has links to Child & Co?”

  Her eyes went wide. Kendal was suggesting she capitalize on Callum’s jealousy.

  “What do you know about Randolph and my relationship?” she asked.

  Kendal raised an eyebrow. “Enough. He and my brother Phillip are close, very close. Snippets of conversations have filtered through to me over time. But that is where they stop.”

  Eliza was dying to ask Kendal what he knew; his steely gaze told her not to bother. Her private agreement with Randolph would remain a secret. But the clock was ticking on their fake romance; Reid’s patience would only last so long. There was every chance that if he eventually decided she was using Randolph as a stalling tactic; her brother would slyly seek to force her hand.

  “So, what are you suggesting I do?”

  “Callum has spent too long listening to the bloody voices in his head when he should have been thinking of you. I am convinced that if he had something good in his life, he might find a way to get himself right again. As I see it, you and Randolph are usi
ng one another to fool society. Phillip tells me Mrs. Ward is keen for her son to wed, but we both know that is not going to happen any time soon, if ever. If I was you, I would go the whole hog and throw your sham relationship in Callum’s face while you still can.”

  She bit on her bottom lip. “Randolph has asked me to accompany him to the Noble Lords concert on Thursday. I wasn’t going to go as I didn’t want to upset Callum, but perhaps I should. If the threat of being kicked out of the Noble Lords doesn’t get him to come to order, then perhaps a spot of envy might. Alright, I will do it.”

  Kendal grinned. “Good. Make sure you are seen being nice and friendly with Randolph. Let’s stir up the green dragon of jealousy and aim its fire straight at Callum’s heart.”

  By appearing at the show with Randolph Ward, she might get Callum to finally come to his senses. Then again, there was the risk that he might head straight to the bottom of a bottle. But if she was ever going to be able to prove Reid wrong about Callum’s willingness to get clean, she had to take a stand. Callum had to be made to see what he was going to lose if he didn’t change his ways.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Callum spent the afternoon with his father. He managed to get through the hours without going out into the garden to smoke a cigar. It was not an easy task; the habit having become so ingrained. In return, Sir Thomas kept a steady flow of gin available. The glasses were not the usual generous size that Callum had become accustomed to, but they were enough to stop the trembling of his hands and for that he was grateful.

  He headed back to Windmill Street a little after seven o’clock. His mother had asked that he stay for supper, but the Noble Lords were performing late at a party this evening. He also wanted to talk to Eliza before he left the house.

  She was spending far too much time with Randolph Ward for his liking and it was beginning to worry him. From what he had managed to glean from the Follett House servants, apart from the dinner at the Earl and Countess Jersey’s home, Eliza had also shared Randolph’s company at two balls and a formal function hosted by the Prince Regent earlier in the week.