She saw him flinch at the mention of their lost baby and wished she’d minded her tongue. It was too soon to revisit that sore place again, so Callie remembered Esmond Laughraine raging how he’d kill Gideon before he let them wed instead and wondered how a good man was fathered by an angry bully. Had Esmond suspected who she really was and hated the idea a future grandson of his might truly inherit Raigne? Such a bitter man might do everything he could to prevent the marriage for that very reason.
She was as puzzled by his furious opposition as Gideon at the time, but she supposed selfish jealousy could explain it. At the time she knew she wasn’t a brilliant match for the grandson of a baronet and a peer of the realm’s great-grandson, but even she knew Gideon wasn’t quite that. She recalled the love in Lady Virginia’s eyes when she talked of her late husband and knew a lady of such character and spirit could never love a man who was anything like Esmond Laughraine at heart. Her Gideon must be like his grandfather in more than looks then and shouldn’t that possessive worry a wife who expected him to leave as soon as he’d told her what he’d come for?
‘I would cut my own arm off rather than hurt you, but I managed it, didn’t I?’ Gideon said at last. He watched her lower her eyes, then stare out of the window to avoid his gaze and sighed as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. ‘Sooner or later we must talk about it, Callie. If either of us are ever to be father or mother we can only be so together with any honour, unless you’d rather stick the carving knife in me and risk the next assizes?’
‘Don’t joke about murder,’ she snapped, shaken to her core by the very idea.
‘I think I must, Wife, or sit and howl for what you don’t want us to have.’
‘Now you’re being ridiculous and where were we with this sorry tale of loss and betrayal, and why you’re bothering me with it now?’
He sighed and poured himself a cup of coffee to wash down the breakfast he seemed to enjoy about as much as she did. ‘I admit when your maternal grandfather told me the true tale of your birth, I only saw concern for your future and the Raigne inheritance behind his plot with Lord Laughraine to set the succession straight again. I never stopped to see you had no idea who your father really was until I told you. Little wonder you didn’t defend yourself against my wild accusations when you must have been shocked to your core by the news and never mind the interpretation I put on it. Hasty boy that I was then, I felt more like a stallion put out to stud than your proud husband and lover all of a sudden and I came home and accused you of ridiculous things in the heat of temper, then made things worse by refusing to back down after I’d cooled off, even though I knew I was wrong to suspect you of being in on their plans. I never really considered how you must have felt when you found out who your father really was from a furious young idiot. It was that crack in our marriage that finally opened up and ruined everything we had wasn’t it? I ruined it all simply because I was too proud and arrogant to admit to being wrong,’ he said bleakly.
‘You were very young,’ she heard herself excuse him.
At the time it seemed inexcusable, yet it must have been agonising for the boy he had been to wonder if his wife married him to get the heir Raigne needed so badly. Sir Wendover Laughraine’s three legitimate sons were dead from fever, accident and battle by then and the current Lord Laughraine’s only child, her father, had died before she could even remember him. So why on earth had Sir Wendover still refused to admit his wife had imposed another man’s bastard on him as his youngest son? Because that bitter old man was too proud to publically admit the truth, Gideon was heir to a huge fortune and vast old house he didn’t want or believe he deserved and she was the last true Laughraine. Except she wasn’t a true one at all, was she?
‘You were even younger,’ he replied, ‘and already carrying my child so it was unforgivable to storm and rage at you like that, even if there was any truth in that tale I made up to make myself feel better. I was so afraid you didn’t love me at all, you see?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ she said with a reminiscent smile for the handsome, brooding boy he was at eighteen she hoped didn’t look as tender as if felt.
‘Because I’m not a lovable man. All my life my father cursed me as the reason he had to marry my mother. He’d call her a sanctimonious prig one moment and whore the next because she let him seduce her. Heaven knows he could be charming when he wanted to and she had a reputation for being far too proper for her own good, but she was a naive and sheltered young woman who believed him when he said he loved her. She said a lot less than him about how much she hated being trapped in a marriage neither of them wanted because I was on the way, but I doubt she could put her hand on her heart and swear she loves me even today. We meet once or twice a year now my grandfather has taken her back into the fold, but so far we haven’t managed to like each other very much.’
That confession of how bleak his childhood really was almost broke her heart. How could they not have blamed themselves when he was the innocent party? That disgusting bet Esmond Laughraine had made to seduce a bishop’s daughter no other man would dream of even trying to get into bed without a very public ceremony and a wedding ring was appalling, but the bishop’s daughter had succumbed of her own free will and Gideon had no choice about the matter at all. He wouldn’t quite believe her if she championed him now, because she had turned away his love, as well. Despite all the good reasons she thought she had at the time for doing so, how much damage she had done by taking the easy option? Yes, it was simpler to cut out the despair and hurt from her life and go on without him, rather than patch up some sort of marriage between them. But none of that would put things right between them now and make him believe he was a deeply lovable and honourable man, despite his shocking betrayal of her when she was at her most vulnerable.
‘You make me sound so meek and mild, Gideon—as if I sat and softly wept all the time you were accusing me of luring you in with my witchy wiles,’ she chided lightly, because it was better than weeping and letting him see she pitied the boy who grew up with parents who didn’t deserve him.
‘You gave as good as you got, didn’t you, spitfire?’ he said with a wry smile, as if he remembered those furious rows and their making up afterwards with affection.
‘And will again if you’re not careful,’ she said, chin raised to warn him she was no doormat nowadays, despite her nun-like existence since they parted.
‘Good, because I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ he said with a boyish grin that did something unfair to her insides.
‘It’s just as well I have no intention of changing then,’ she said.
Was she secretly conceding that, for the right incentive, she might be tempted to try again? No, she didn’t want to be a convenient wife, primped and perfumed and ready to oblige her lord in the marriage bed as part of a cynical bargain. If they resumed their stormy marriage it must be as equal partners. Yet he was so self-sufficient he looked as if he didn’t need anyone nowadays, let alone a wife who would demand a place in every aspect of his life she could get a toehold into.
‘What will happen to Raigne if we remain apart?’ she asked abruptly, the thought of being with him for the sake of a huge inheritance sour in her mouth as she tried to swallow it down with cold tea. ‘I dare say you would be accepted as the heir without me.’
‘I might be the legal heir, but you’re the true one.’
‘Yet you love Raigne and nobody else will keep the place as you will.’
‘You could if you wanted to.’
‘I’d be laughed out of court. I’m your wife, so everything I own is yours.’
‘And what if Prinny decided to challenge me on the strength of some old gossip and the wrong family resemblance? You can see why they were so keen for us to wed, can’t you?