‘Only at first, I do very well now.’
‘Stop trying to divert me with your tale of rags to riches, Husband, and kindly answer my questions, you’re not in a courtroom now.’
‘I feel as if I might be,’ he teased her, then sobered. ‘Last night she confessed Bartle ran through any money they had and left her a mountain of debts. Whatever the details of his death might be, she didn’t deserve that.’
‘Now who’s making excuses for her?’
‘I’m trying to understand. She always knew right from wrong, your grandfather would see to that, so why lie and cheat and take such pleasure in making her family unhappy?’
‘Because she married Mr Bartle, perhaps? Maybe a cow looked at my grandmother the wrong way when she was carrying her and that did it? Who knows? She lied and stole and did her best to ruin our marriage and nearly wrecked my mother’s life beforehand.’
‘She didn’t need to do much to part us, did she? I did most of it for her before you even got back to King’s Raigne and fell into her clutches again,’ he argued bleakly.
‘Don’t, Gideon,’ she protested, fighting tears at the desolation in his voice.
‘Very well then, let’s talk of the weather, shall we?’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m heartily sick of your aunt as a subject of conversation and we might as well find something neutral to while away the tedium of our journey.’
‘Of course, it seems set fair to last out the week, don’t you think?’ she said stiffly; she could hardly complain that he’d lapsed into brittle social chit-chat when she was the one who didn’t want to talk about her aunt.
‘The harvest will be ready long before its time if it continues thus, don’t you think?’ he went on relentlessly. ‘Lord Laughraine must be fretting about the chances of sudden downpours and thunderous tempests ruining the crops as we speak.’
‘If he happens to be awake so early in the morning, of course.’
‘There is that,’ he agreed as they reached the next village and he was so preoccupied holding back his pair to let a herd of sheep cross the road there was no need to talk at all.
Callie fixed her gaze on the horizon, but saw little of it. He was right to shut himself off from her in a way. Towards the end of their marriage he did all he could to keep them together, although they were so young they scarcely knew how to go about the daily business of life as man and wife, until that last day when she must have decided it wasn’t worth it. She couldn’t think about that right now, but wasn’t she the one who never quite believed she deserved to find true love? Miles slipped by and they pretended interest in the passing scene and she tried to let the subject slip out of her mind, because they were too shocked and weary to talk of the past without making things worse right now.
She managed her usual escape from too much reality by considering how this scene or that chance encounter with a group of travellers, a market day, or a drove of cattle might change or bend the plot of her next book. Nothing more noteworthy happened until she was holding the horses while Gideon went to buy the next set of tickets from the toll keeper.
‘You don’t look like any coachman I ever encountered,’ a deep and amused male voice drawled from behind her.
A gentleman she’d never seen before in her life halted his dancing mount beside the carriage very much against that fine animal’s wishes. He bowed from his saddle with such elegance she felt dowdy and windswept and fervently wished he’d go away. ‘Good day, sir,’ she said with distant politeness.
‘It is now,’ he said with a rogue’s grin. ‘And a good day to you, as well, Miss Whoever-You-Are,’ he said, with a wary glance at her gloveless left hand that made her blush and wish she hadn’t thrown Gideon’s rings back at him when they parted all those years ago.
‘Sommers,’ she said impatiently, more out of habit than a wish to deny her husband and then it seemed foolish to correct herself to a stranger she would never see again.
‘I can see that,’ he murmured with a grin that made her realise what was meant by wolfish and she wished Gideon would hurry back.
‘I am called Sommers,’ she explained shortly, doing her best to ignore Biddy’s cough of disagreement and her fine imitation of a disapproving chaperon.
‘And every bit as lovely as a summer’s day you are, too, Miss Sommers. What a fortuitous coincidence that I happened on you today whilst we’re in the midst of that fine season, as well,’ the wolf told her with such admiration in his oddly familiar green-and-grey eyes she might have been all of a flutter, if Gideon hadn’t already dazzled her for good.
‘Nonsense, I’m not lovely and neither is being too hot for comfort day after day,’ she snapped with a glare at the heat haze on the horizon. ‘I do wish people would stop comparing me to a summer’s day, it really is most unoriginal.’
‘Shakespeare? I feel I ought to know, but I never did mind my books at school.’
‘It is from one of the sonnets and I was flattered to have it quoted at me once,’ she said, recalling the heart-racing sound of it on Gideon’s lips, but then, if he’d recited a list of linens when they were young and in love it would have taken her breath away. ‘It grates sadly upon repetition.’
‘I shall obtain a book of sonnets and learn them off by heart for future use,’ the stranger said with what looked like real admiration in his eyes and Callie wished she hadn’t forgotten her married status in a moment of absent-minded annoyance.
‘I’m not interested in an idle flirtation, or any other sort of idleness for that matter. I wish you good day, sir,’ she said firmly.
‘It might not be so idle as you think,’ the man said and made her wonder if all the gentlemen in so-called polite society required eye-glasses and were too vain to admit it.
‘It had better be,’ Gideon’s darker voice said from behind them.
‘Peters, what the devil are you doing here?’ The stranger greeted him as if they knew each other. Plainly they didn’t, or the rake would know her husband’s real name.
‘Winterley,’ Gideon replied coldly and it made her think again about his other life and how many secrets it held. Apparently he had another name altogether and what else had he failed to tell her about his existence since they parted?
‘You know each other then, gentlemen?’ she asked as brightly as she could when they looked about to challenge each other to a bout of fisticuffs, if she was lucky.
‘Not as well as we think,’ Gideon said tightly and wasn’t that the truth, Callie thought cynically, wondering if anyone knew Sir Gideon Laughraine but Gideon himself.
‘But perhaps better than you would like us to?’ the man challenged him. If they were friends at all, it was clearly a prickly sort of friendship.
‘Perhaps,’ Gideon said, and addled Callie’s brain by climbing back into his seat and holding her hand as they faced his dashing acquaintance together. ‘We certainly don’t know each other well enough for you to have met my wife, Winterley, and that makes me wonder why you felt free to accost her on a public highway.’
‘Now here’s a dilemma,’ Mr Winterley drawled with a hard glance in Callie’s direction to tell her what he thought of her lapse of memory. ‘To give the lie to a lady, or admit you and I know each other not at all?’
‘Well, my dear?’ Gideon said with a frown as he dared her to deny him again.
‘I am indeed Lady Laughraine, but tend to forget it now