Page 19 of Lady Constantine & the Sins of Lord Kilgore
Peter’s words dwindled off, and he looked as if he wanted to say more, but he pressed his lips together and departed the room.
If she needed help? Something about the way Peter had said those words struck her as odd, but she wasn’t sure why. She might need help. After all, she knew nothing about dependency on opium and even less about weaning oneself from it, but Peter had told her a bit of what he knew while she was cutting his hair. According to Peter, Callum would sweat and empty his stomach, possibly run a fever, rage at her for not getting him the drug, try to leave to obtain it, shake, and experience anxiety, stomach cramping, and coughing. In other words, she needed to be prepared for anything and everything. That had to be what Peter was referring to, and yet she didn’t think it was simply that. She was too tired to go after Peter and try to persuade him to explain.
Callum’s restlessness went on for an hour and then seemed to dissipate, but close to midmorning, he bolted up straight out of bed with a bellow. Constantine jerked up once more, as well, and stumbled to her feet and over to him. The covers had fallen away to reveal his nakedness. For a moment, her gaze was drawn between his thighs, and she stared in dazed curiosity and wonder. What would it be like to be with him? To have him within her? Her cheeks heated at the thought, and she looked up, lips parting when her eyes collided with his. His mouth was set in a grim line, and his pupils looked overly large in the morning light, making her wonder if it was an effect of the opium, and if he was in his full mind at the moment.
“Why are you here?” His words were slurred still, and when he stepped away from the bed, his left leg seemed to buckle underneath him.
She lunged to help him, sliding a hand around his waist, the feel of his burning bare skin a shock to her, but she didn’t hesitate. She gritted her teeth, unable to hold all his weight, but managed to lean him toward the bed, which he fell backward onto with an “oof.” He grappled with the coverlet for a moment, clawing at it, and then yanked himself halfway on the bed, swearing at it, himself, and finally her.
“Why are you bloody here?” he roared.
“You’ll not scare me away,” she said quietly, shoving back the hair that had fallen over her right eye and straightening her night rail, which had slipped off her left shoulder. As she did so, she noticed Callum’s attention riveted there. Heat unfurled in her belly with the memory of his mouth on that shoulder, singeing her, claiming her, awakening in her feelings she had never been able to forget. It was the most inopportune time to recollect such a thing, but there it was in her head, a thought she could not stop.
She went to help him pull his legs up onto the bed, but he pushed her hands away. “I can do it,” he growled as he tugged his left leg up, his wince noticeable, and swung his right leg up onto the bed. He then reclined, crossed his arms over his chest, and lay there, scowling at her. Blast her eyes. They went back down to his crotch where every inch of what made him a male was on display. He might be ill, but that particular part of him appeared very healthy.
His dark chuckle caused her to jerk her gaze to his face once more. “Do you want me to cover up?” he taunted. His lip curled back as if in challenge.
This, she decided, was the first of many likely similar tests her husband would give her. She couldn’t say why, but it seemed vital that she show him, in this very moment, that he could not drive her from his side. “Certainly not. I’ve wondered what you looked like many times.” Heat scalded her face, but she held Callum’s gaze.
“Ah, then look your fill.” He swept his hand toward his crotch.
“When you are well, I certainly will, as we have a bargain that I intend to make you uphold, despite what you said yesterday.” Her heart beat wildly in her chest. She didn’t know what had made her say that just now, but she wasn’t about to take it back.
“That bargain,” Callum said, pulling the coverlet up over his groin, “is null and void, as is your right to be in my home.”
It wastheirhome! Ire made her grit her teeth. She moved behind him, set her hand on his bare back, and pushed, telling him with actions and not words to lean forward. His skin was slick with sweat and heat, and worry shot through her. He was not fine, despite what he was trying to convey.
With a grunt, he complied, and she started to plump his pillows, catching her breath and barely stopping herself from crying out at the lash marks on his back, more proof of the torture he’d endured. She arranged the pillows for him with trembling hands and spoke. “The moment you returned, our agreement was once again instated. I gave you my fortune when I gave you my hand, and you shall give me a child. Or at least try.”
She gasped when he caught her by the wrist and jerked her around. He grabbed her arm and tugged her onto the bed and into his lap. He took her hand and set it between his legs, where the hard proof of his desire pressed against her suddenly throbbing fingertips. “This is what you want?” he growled, his gaze boring into her and his body shaking beneath her. He was sick—hurting and striking out at her.
She licked her lips and took her time answering him. “I will want it.” She slid her hand up to his chest and over his heart, which thumped steadily under her touch. “I will want you. And our bargain is not null and void. We are still married.”
He turned his head and coughed, the deepness of it worrisome. When he quieted, he looked back at her. “You were about to wed my cousin.” The sentence was an accusation underlain with pain that struck her in the heart. Tears filled her eyes, and she quickly blinked them away.
“Our marriage still stands,” she said, her voice quivering. “I did not wed Ross.”
“But you would have.” He neatly scooped her off him and onto her feet with a surprising show of strength. She would have not known how much it cost him had the veins in his neck not bulged as they did. He yanked up the coverlet again, and as he did, she noted his shaking hands.
“Callum, I—”
What could she say? How much of herself did she want to lay bare for him here and now in hopes of salvaging, if nothing else, an amicable marriage? She nearly laughed at that miserly desire. She’d once thought they could have a grand love, for heaven’s sake!
“I was lonely,” she said simply, quietly.
“You could have wedanyman but him.” Callum rolled onto his side so that she was staring at his back.
“I didn’t even want to wed him, but he was there, and he kept returning over and over to search for you,” she said, unsure if she was offering the explanation for herself or for Callum. “I wanted a child to love, and—” She stopped short of telling him how she’d longed to feel loved her entire life and how she hoped having a child would give her what she had been robbed of by her own father and mother. “And the gossip was horrid. Anyone who is respectable has long since written me off.”
He turned over slowly and faced her once more, his chest now heaving with the effort to breathe. He was sick, very sick, but she knew better than to push the subject of it just yet. “He returned over and over again so he would not look guilty,” Callum spat. “You were about to wed a man who tried to take my life from me, who tried to leave me to rot in hell.” Before she could answer, Callum rolled off the bed suddenly, dropping to his knees, and grasped blindly in front of him. “Pot,” he said, and she realized he was asking for the chamber pot.
She secured it quickly, shoved it in front of him, and then watched helplessly as he was sick. It seemed a great while before he stopped, and when he finally did, he rolled onto his back, panting and staring at the ceiling.
“Let me help you back into bed.”
“No,” he mumbled. “I’ll lie here. You should not be here. You were not supposed to be here still. That was not the plan.”
She felt her brow furrow. “What plan?”
