The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(16)

“As though that will ever happen.” Of course, it would. Caleb Calhoun was one of the most charming men Seraphina had ever known. He stopped at the edge of the stage, looking up at her, his green eyes serious. “I keep my promises, Dove. I’ll see you through the divorce. I’ll see this place successful and yours. And then I’ll leave, and happily accept my monthly proceeds.”

She grinned. “I shall sleep well knowing that my money will come as a comfort.”

“Our money, partner.”

Within a month of meeting, Sera and Caleb had purchased another Boston pub, and another and another. Between his instinct for location and hers for what made a tavern impossible to leave, they’d put several of Boston’s longest-standing establishments out of business before deciding that London would be their next conquest.

They’d purchased the pub within forty-eight hours of disembarking on the banks of the Thames, after setting their sights on Covent Garden—a neighborhood dominated by a pair of brothers and chock full of low, dark taverns said to host a floating underground fighting ring. Though Sera and Caleb had no interest in competing with a fight club, they did see opportunity for a proper pub in the area. Something like the pubs that were taking Boston and New York by storm. Something with entertainment.

The Singing Sparrow was the obvious answer. An equal partnership between the two, or as equal as one could be while Sera was married. Which was to say, it was an equal partnership between Caleb and Sera’s husband, though the Duke of Haven was blissfully ignorant of this particular holding. Under British law, however, married women could not own property or business. Their husbands owned everything . . . including them.

Divorce was the only way Sera would ever own this business—the only thing she’d cared about in nearly three years, and the key to her self-sufficiency. To her freedom.

The only way she’d ever take back the life he’d stolen from her.

The life he’d chased her from.

Get out.

Tears came, unbidden. Unwanted. How many times had she remembered his words—the cruel disavowal in them, the aloof disdain, as though she were nothing to him—and drawn strength from them?

How often had she vowed to claim her future even as he owned her past?

And somehow, a half an hour with him erased all the strength she’d worked to build. She took a deep breath and looked away, into a dark corner of the pub. “I’ll be damned if he’ll make me weak again.”

Caleb did not hesitate. He never did. It was a failing of his being American. “He can only make you weak if you allow it.” Her gaze snapped to his. “You stand strong and remember why you’re here. And if he punishes you, you punish him right back. But I’ll tell you one thing, if he’s all you’ve described, he’s going to give you a fight for the divorce.”

For all he knew about her past, he had never witnessed it. She shook her head. “He hates me.” The words were honest and real—words she’d clung to every time she’d doubted herself in the last three years. Which was often.

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you.”

Memory flashed, Malcolm’s fingers running over her skin earlier in the week, the shiver of anticipation that came with the touch, the way Sera had ached to lean into it. To the memory of it. To the way those fingers had once made her sing.

To the way they had made her feel for the first time in years.

Not that she was interested in feeling.

And besides, “Want isn’t worth the trouble.”

“God knows that’s true,” Caleb said, dry as sand. “But no one has ever said men cared for the truth.” Though he hid it well, Caleb nursed his own broken heart. A lost love, never to be regained. “I don’t know much, darlin’, but I know that you deserve better than whatever that dandy aristocrat could have given you.”

What a good man Caleb was. Decent and proud and with a heart bigger than any she’d ever known. She sighed. “Why couldn’t it have been you?”

He shrugged a shoulder and took another long puff at his cheroot. “Timing.”

She smiled. “If only you’d been here three years ago.”

He gave a little laugh. “I could’ve used you there five years ago.”

Sera reached for her friend’s face, placing her hand on his strong, stubbled cheek, tilting his chin up until his gaze met hers. “If you could erase it—all of it—all of her—would you?”

He did not hesitate. “Hell yes. You?”

His hand came to cover hers at his cheek as she let herself consider the question. She’d lost so much. Her love, her life, the promise of her future. So much loss that her heart ached even at the hint of the thought of it.

If she could take it back, she would. Without doubt.

Caleb saw the answer in her eyes, and squeezed her hand in camaraderie. He lifted his chin in the direction of the center of the raised platform. “Show me how it feels up there, Sparrow.”

She turned in a slow circle on the stage, trying to put the events of the last day from her mind, wanting to lose herself here. “I am not painted.” She never sang without her disguise—even in Covent Garden, someone might recognize a Dangerous Daughter.

“There’s no audience.”

“Another reason not to sing.”