Page 29 of Making of a Scandal
“Beauty,” he said. “Striking, blinding, otherworldly beauty. Intelligence. It can be heard in your manner of speech, but it shows in your eyes, too. There is a brightness to them, a sharpness.”
Her brow furrowed as if that confounded her, but she merely went on staring at the card, her thumb smoothing over one of the hearts.
“I am flattered, but you are the exception to my little problem, not the rule. Do you want to know what most men see when they look at me? A conquest, that’s what. The half-breed heathen daughter of a viscount who only became one by chance. A bit of skirt perfect for warming their beds and sating their lascivious needs. A lady in name, but not one they would marry or sire legitimate sons on. I have received over a dozen proposals since my coming out, you know … one of them even from a duke. But, not one of them was for marriage.”
Nick’s hands faltered and his cards went flying, spilling over his legs and down to the floor. He couldn’t think of a time he’d been more stunned—save, perhaps, for the moment Benedict had told him why Calliope wanted to hire him.
“I don’t understand. You are as much a lady as any other. Your father is a viscount, your sister is a countess—”
“And my mother was a Bengali whore who worshiped heathen gods and latched onto an officer of the East India Company, turning him into a scandalous defector.”
“You cannot truly mean that about your mother. I’ve heard the story of your parents, and it sounds to me as if they were very much in love.”
“Of course I don’t believe those things. But, it’s what everyone thinks. And I am her offspring—too Indian to be considered English, and too English to be considered Indian. I’ve never really belonged anywhere, though I have tried my best.”
A strange ache blossomed in his chest in reaction to her words, but he stopped him just short of reaching for her. “Calliope—”
“Do you have any idea how it felt to reach my third Season and realize all my years of schooling and lessons would amount to nothing? To have Diana come out that same year and gain a proposal from Hastings … to stand up at her wedding and realize I might never have my own? My father meant well when he brought me here, ensuring I had the best of everything, and that I was given the same opportunities and advantages as the other young girls. While it was enough to make them accept me, it wasn’t quite enough to erase my lineage. I could be friends with their daughters, but never marry their sons.”
Nick swallowed, his throat burning with acidic bile. Her words stoked something in him, something ugly and primal and dark. It made him want to do bodily harm to anyone who had ever tried to make her feel shame for something she had no control over.
“I can see now how difficult it has been for you,” he ventured, wanting to kick himself for such a gross understatement. “But, I cannot imagine any man wanting you and not being willing to do whatever it took to have you. I find it hard to believe that in all the years since your coming out there hasn’t been a single proposal of marriage.”
Calliope laughed, the sound harsh and humorless. “Oh, there were a few overtures, but directed only at my father and not at me. Mostly from fortune-hunters who’d heard rumors of a dowry. No one knew the amount, but they were willing to take the chance in order to find out. My father sent them all away, content to allow me to choose my own husband. Only … well, until now I had given up hope that I’d ever get to make such a choice.”
Her expression softened as she stared at the flowers filling a table near the door … the largest bouquet in the bunch looming over the rest.
“Lewes is different, then?”
The corner of her mouth twitched in the beginnings of a smile, and for the first time Nick noticed that her upper lip was slightly plumper than the lower. It was more obvious in profile, and quite the most mesmerizing thing he’d ever seen.
“He is kind, and has never once given me a lascivious glance, or masked innuendo with flowery speech. We have become friends of a sort, and I think that is what I would want in a husband. Someone I actually like.”
“And you like him very much.”
“I do.”
“Then you will have him. With my help, he’ll be begging you to marry him in no time.”
She offered him back the card. “That was an interesting trick, Mr. Burke … and an illuminating demonstration. But you understand now why I must present myself a certain way in public? Why I cannot flirt or flaunt my bosom, or brag about the amount of my inheritance? If I do those things, I will not be treated like the other women who do them. I won’t be laughed off or called silly, simpering, or gauche. The names they will label me with would be far worse. My spotless reputation is all I have. It is the one thing that allows me to move among society with any sort of respectability.”
Nick gathered the cards he’d just plucked from the floor and sifted them into order, before stashing them back in his pocket.
“Of course, I understand. We will simply think up other ways to force Lewes to see you as something other than the sister of his friend. I think we are off to a good start already.”
“Indeed, Mr. Burke.”
Nick draped an arm along the back of the loveseat, “Come, goddess … may we dispense with the formalities now? At least, in private. If we are to be co-conspirators, we can very well use one another’s first names.” He trailed his first finger idly along the back of her arm awaiting her response.
Calliope stiffened in reaction to his touch, and Nick froze, the pad of his finger hovering at her elbow. The gesture had seemed completely harmless, done only because if he wasn’t doing something with his hands he became restless. He’d acted without thinking, without realizing the effect it would have on him.
Every hair on his body seemed to stand on end, reacting to an invisible current flowing from where he touched her, to where the smooth, slender arm broke out in gooseflesh. The sound of her breathing had halted, her large eyes widening. He drowned in those deep, dark eyes, searching for some hint, some inkling of an answering response in her.
It wasn’t as if he’d never touched her before. Hell, he’d had every inch of her pressed against him, had filled his palms with the firm globes of her buttocks. Yet, that sensitive, bared patch of skin at the back of her arm felt like the softest thing he’d ever touched.
“Very well,” she said, her sudden words jolting him back to his senses.
Nick curled his hand into a fist and pulled it away, relieved that she’d spoken when she had. Another moment of silent staring, and he would have done something unforgivably stupid.
