His laugh boomed through the room. “I’ve no doubt of that, love. You’ve got yourself a bet. Fifty dollars says your man walks through that door by week’s end.”
She didn’t like the certainty in her friend’s voice. As though he’d already won the bet. And she liked his next point even less. “Either way, Duchess, it’s time we get to work, don’t you think? You need that man to agree, and you need this place to be the best Covent Garden has ever seen, so the moment it is yours, it is legend. So, how do you get his agreement?”
She’d have to see him again, even if she didn’t want to. Even if she didn’t want to face him, handsome as ever and somehow entirely changed.
Caleb added, “We’ve been here for seven weeks and I’m already itching to get back on American soil.”
She looked up, squinting into the darkness. “You could go, you know. You don’t have to . . .”
She trailed off, not knowing how to finish. Caleb had done so much. He’d protected her when he found her, broken and alone in a city—a country—a continent—she’d never known. And he’d helped her find her feet again. Her strength. He’d given her reason to smile again. And then he’d given her purpose. And when she’d decided it was time for her to return to England and begin anew, he’d packed his bags without hesitation.
Sera shook her head and repeated herself. “You don’t have to.”
He lit the cheroot, and the orange tip glowed in the dimly lit space. “And yet, here I am. A remarkable man, don’t you think?”
She raised a brow. “A model of modesty, most certainly.”
“So. When do we serve your idiot husband his ass?”
She laughed at the words, spoken with unadulterated glee. “I feel that you might not get that opportunity.”
“You don’t think he’ll give you the divorce?” She could see his wide, furrowed brow even from a distance. “Then you return with me, and start fresh in Boston.”
If only it were so easy. If only she’d been connected to the city across the sea—bustling with new victory and the promise of a young country. She’d come to love Boston for its hope and its people and Caleb. But it had never been London.
It had never felt like home.
She picked at the round, heavy candle stub in her hand, extracting the wick and rolling it between thumb and forefinger, watching the black char mark her skin. “He’ll give me the divorce,” she said, knowing that Malcolm likely wanted nothing more than to be rid of her. “But I imagine he’ll do so with a fair amount of punishment.”
Caleb came off the bar then, moving toward her, broad shoulders and wide jaw that marked his rough, colonial upbringing long before he opened his mouth and revealed his uncultured accent. He was an animal in a cage here, in this world governed by rules he found at best inane and at worst unconscionable.
“You don’t deserve his punishment.”
She raised a brow. “I left him, Caleb.”
“He left you first.”
She smiled at that. “Not in any way that mattered.”
“In every way that mattered,” he scoffed.
She sighed. “Duchesses don’t leave,” she explained for the dozenth time. The hundredth. “Certainly not without providing an heir.”
Not even when an heir was impossible.
“They should do when their husband has exiled them,” he replied. “Remaining is bollocks.”
“No, it’s British.”
He cursed round and vicious. “Yet another reason you lot deserved the ass-kicking we gave you.”
“You should find passage on the next ship out. You’ve a life to return to.” She tried for humor. “You’re not getting any younger, friend. It’s time to find a woman who will put up with you.”
“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.