Hope was almost as bad as despair in the still silence of this sultry night. Yes, there was a slim chance he and Callie could try again, but it wouldn’t work if she carried on relying on her aunt to tell her what to think. He could force himself on his wife; take her away from here and show her how skewed her aunt’s view of him and the rest of the world was. Legally he could make her take him back into her life. It wouldn’t feel much better than enduring life without her if she didn’t want to be with him, though, and he sighed bitterly at the very idea of such a hostile and empty marriage.
Impatient with himself for wanting the whole loaf when half a one might be all he could have, he opened the window as softly as he could on to a listening sort of night. He’d learnt years ago there were far worse terrors lurking in the darkness than the suggestion of a breeze. Too on edge to undress fully, he heeled his evening shoes off and pulled back the covers on the pallet-like bed, so he could let his body rest while his mind went round in circles like a spit dog on a wheel.
* * *
‘Good morning,’ Callie greeted Gideon the next day.
She wasn’t fully awake yet, after swearing to herself she wouldn’t sleep a wink, then dropping straight into it as if she hadn’t done so for a week. Still she felt her heart flutter at the sight of him so vital and handsome as he strode into the breakfast room. Part of her had missed him every hour of every day since they parted. That Callie saw the world in richer colours now the love of her life was back in it; the rest was deeply sceptical about his return and eyed him warily.
‘Is it? I thought we might have slipped into afternoon while I was waiting for my lady to leave her chamber,’ he teased and she made a face, then took a closer look under her lashes.
‘Where on earth did you get that bruise?’ she asked, suddenly more wide-awake and able to stare right at him.
‘You might well ask.’
‘I am doing so,’ she said with a stern frown that told him she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with a rueful shrug this time.
‘I’m staying in a house I don’t know,’ he said as if that explained everything.
‘And...?’
‘And I walked into a door in the dark?’ he offered, as if he didn’t think it was a very likely story, either.
‘A door with a fist?’
‘It wasn’t a fist, it was a ewer. I suppose I should be grateful your upstairs maid didn’t have a chamber pot in her hand at the time.’
‘What on earth were you doing chasing the maids round the house in the dark?’
‘I’d as soon pursue the Gorgon with lustful intent as that sly minx, even if I was given to preying on servants,’ he said quietly and stepped over the close the door, clearly aware Kitty would listen if given the slightest excuse.
‘I heard someone creeping about the house in the small hours of the morning,’ he admitted as if he hadn’t wanted her to know.
‘Kitty might be sly and untrustworthy, but she has access to any room in the house by daylight, why would she steal about in the dark?’
‘Apparently she heard whoever was tiptoeing about and decided a housebreaker was searching the attics. I admire her courage, even if I abhor her curiosity.’
‘She left her room in the middle of the night to pursue a burglar with only a water jug? I’m not sure if that’s brave or reckless.’
‘Neither am I,’ he said with a preoccupied frown. ‘But she was a damned nuisance either way. Whoever was creeping about the house heard us and got away while Kitty was using her weapon on me.’
‘Yet it was a bright moonlit night and almost too hot to sleep, surely someone would notice a felon running from the house into the countryside?’
‘So you would think.’
‘And if they didn’t, the prowler you were both chasing must have come from inside the house,’ she said it for him, so he couldn’t pretend not to know.
‘Possibly.’
‘You have a suspect?’
‘Maybe,’ he answered even more cautiously.
She wondered if it was possible to box your husband’s ear at the same time you were making it clear he meant nothing to you. Probably not, she decided, and plumped down in her accustomed seat at the breakfast table after gathering up her breakfast more or less at random. It was an occupation and she had to eat if she wasn’t to risk another attack of the vapours.
‘How odd that nobody bothered with us before you came here,’ Callie said once she had chewed a corner off a piece of toast and sipped a little of her tea to force it down.
‘Hmm, or that my arrival caused it to happen,’ he countered.
‘Why are you really here, Gideon?’ Callie asked, weary of dancing round such an urgent topic and eager to get back to real life. This whole situation felt far too dangerous to her peace of mind and she simply wanted him to go, didn’t she? ‘If you have met another woman and wish to marry her, I must disappoint you, I fear. I won’t take a lover so you can sue him for criminal conversation, then divorce me.’
‘Well, I certainly didn’t come here for that,’ he said fastidiously, as if the very idea was unthinkable and a bit offensive.
‘Then why are you here? There’s nothing to interest a man like you here.’
‘Of course there is, there’s you.’
‘No, there isn’t. I won’t be used because you suddenly find yourself in need of a wife and I’m the one you have.’
‘That’s never how it was between us and you know it, Callie.’
‘Oh, really?’ she asked scornfully. ‘So our silly little love story wasn’t a plot to put the broken parts of our families back together, after all, then? I must have imagined those furious accusations you threw at me after we got back to Raigne from our hasty flight to the Border. Miss Calliope Sommers dreamt a fine young buck carried her off to Gretna so they could wed for love. His father forbade it and her grandfathers schemed to help them elope, oh, yes, it’s obvious now—you must have been right all along, Gideon. That naive seventeen-year-old girl obviously planned every step of the journey with your furious father pursuing us to spur you on. What better way to be my Lady Laughraine one day and rule the place my illegitimate birth cut me off from? Wasn’t that how your neat story to absolve you of guilt and pile it on me went? Such a shame I didn’t know who I really was until you told me, don’t you think? Or are you still convinced I’m lying about that and wed you because Lord Laughraine’s son died without legitimate issue and he wanted his great-grandchildren to inherit everything I couldn’t lay claim to without you?’
‘No, although I don’t doubt Lord Laughraine and your other grandfather schemed to marry us to each other and tidy up two mistakes at one go. I still can’t believe they thought it a good idea,’ he said with a bitter grimace. ‘No need to remind you I’m the son of Virgil Winterley’s bastard and have no right to Raigne, but I wonder your grandfathers didn’t see what a poor bargain they were offering you.’
‘And I was such a good one? The by-blow of a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and the artful young rake who refused to marry her? Don’t make me into someone I’m not, Gideon.’
‘You bear no responsibility for them, Callie. You’re a fine person in your own right and I was as deeply honoured you agreed to marry me back then as I am now,’ he said as if he didn’t regret their hasty marriage over the anvil, but how could he not?
‘Thank