Violet’s palms went clammy as she turned to see the man shaking hands with Timothy. Sir Phineas’ watery blue gaze met hers and held. “Well, Trembly, well,” he said. “Miss Waverly, might I have a word?”
Timothy gave Violet a long look, which she returned with a tight smile. “Of course.”
She felt her friend’s eyes boring into her back as she left the library with Sir Phineas, who led her out of doors into a small courtyard. Pebbles crunched beneath her feet as he walked to a stone bench bracketed by boxwoods under the shade of a wisteria, the first purple blossoms beginning to bloom.
“I thought you weren’t arriving until tomorrow,” she managed as he sat by her side.
“I was in the area sooner than expected,” he grumbled, smoothing his hand over his waistcoat, and her stomach curled.
“Why is that?”
His jaw tightened. “I was gathering my Margo from Gretna Green.”
She pulled in a breath. Margo, Sir Phineas’ half-sister, had debuted a year before her, but the quiet, mousy girl attended a single ball before fleeing to the countryside with a distant relation, at least according to rumors. “Was she—”
“I was too late, unfortunately.” He spat the words. “Or fortunately, depending upon one’s perspective. She’s likely to be the source of gossip for some time, which is why I wanted to see you.” His exhale was sharp. “She married the Duke of Avondale.”
“Avondale?” Good lord, it was no wonder he worried about the scandal. The playboy duke had disappeared from England and had remained missing for nearly a decade. “He’s returned from hiding?”
Sir Phineas’ mouth twisted. “And has fallen in love with my sister, it seems. While I cannot condone the manner in which she came to be his bride, there are certain benefits. I know that your reputation has been… smudged, Miss Waverly, and while I would never hold that against you, society has not been so gracious. But doors will be wide open to you if you were to have a duchess in your family.”
Violet would have thought a bolt of lightning or dramatic music would accompany this momentous moment, not the melodic chirping of warblers in the wisteria overhead. He’d handed her a chance to reset everything, to turn back time to before her disastrous engagement, to erase the sins she’d committed against society. Sir Phineas was still talking, as though negotiating their marriage was akin to selling livestock. “The extended family of a duke is given far more grace than that of a viscount. Your relations would be welcome in every drawing room in England, not an ill word spoken of you again.”
Her hands were suddenly cold, and she tucked them into her skirts to warm them. “Sir Phineas, I—I don’t know what to say.”
He gave her a weak nod. “Say you’ll consider. I’ve been patient, but I will not wait forever.”
The back of her throat burned as she looked at his retreating form. Her family had made mistakes, but her actions had put themin peril. They’d never stopped loving her, despite the havoc she’d caused. Marrying Sir Phineas would fix everything she’d destroyed. Even though she’d be miserable, she would be selfish to refuse him.
Her mind flashed to Callum, the way he brought her pleasure, held her close as she fell apart. The tenderness of his kisses, the comfort of his arms. But he would be half a world away before she was fitted for a wedding gown.
She would rather have a cold bed than a cold heart.
Violet swallowed and gave him a slight nod. “You’ll have my answer by the end of the ball tomorrow night.”
Chapter 33
Callum swept the perspirationfrom his brow and grimaced. Machine oil coated his hands, coal smoke thick in his nostrils, and despite the heat billowing from his body from his exertions, the frigid air sweeping off the sea chilled his fingertips until they were numb. He sat back on his heels and squinted through the machinery onto the firth. The wind coming in from the North Sea churned the water, frothy white caps clipping the top of the short waves, like an unending line of miniature sailboats in a chaotic regatta. The gray sky pressed down, as though the clouds themselves longed to interrogate him over why he wasn’t in Yorkshire.
Lord knows James had asked him the question enough.
“This a’right, sir?”
The man crouching beside him at the base on the crane looked up, wrench at the ready. Callum winced at the grim determination in McCullogh’s eyes; he’d already made the shipyard foreman redo the fittings twice, and clearly the haggard Scotsman expected hisboss to ask him to do it again. “Aye,” he barked, ignoring the foreman’s sigh of relief. “‘Tis good.”
McCullogh pressed his palms to the base of his back as he stood, groaning and rotating from side to side. “Thank ye, sir.”
Callum shook his head as he checked his watch, hoping the foreman wouldn’t see the tension in his face. “Ye dinnae need to call me that.”
“I called yer uncle that.”
His chest squeezed, the cold air in his lungs painful. “Save the sir for Mr. Taggart.” He walked off before his foreman could object, taking the steep metal stairs into the office building two at a time. Wide, thick windows overlooked the shipyard and the firth beyond; as he sat at his desk, ignoring the grease staining his canvas work trousers, he saw a storm brewing in the distance, lightning sparking high in the clouds.
This was where he belonged, where the constant noise and threat of danger kept him alert, at sea or in the dirt, bending the land and water to the will of mankind. Where he could rebuild his family’s legacy and ensure his cousin’s future. Not in a ballroom, a lady in his arms. His hand steadying her at the base of her spine, her dark eyes holding his, trusting him—
“I take it the repairs are finished.”
“Aye,” he muttered over his shoulder. Callum refused to turn around to respond to his cousin, instead opening the daily report ledger and copying a series of numbers from the receipts for the parts McCullogh had purchased from other suppliers along the coast. They’d be able to cover the expenses, only because the othershipyards had provided the materials at cost, a posthumous testament to his uncle’s legacy, he supposed.
