It seemed best to tell herself this was temporary. The very idea of being mistress of such a huge and venerable house one day might terrify her half to death if she dwelt on it. She glanced at her husband over the top of Biddy’s head and knew she would be more open to his persuasion if he wasn’t Lord Laughraine’s heir. Then they could simply return to London when the heat of midsummer died down and live a humdrum life. A sense of justice her grandfather instilled in her argued she must put her dread of the Laughraine inheritance aside and see Gideon as he was, rather than one day lord and master of Raigne.
There, now they were almost through Great Raigne and a particularly strait-laced widow she recognised as an incurable gossip was waiting to cross the road. The lady took a second look at the modest carriage and exactly who was driving it and her mouth fell open like a cod fish.
‘Oh, dear,’ she muttered to Gideon, then summoned up a cheery smile as they swept past as if a Laughraine always drove his own carriage with his wife at his side and a maidservant for company. ‘Our eccentric method of travel will be all round the Raigne villages by the time she’s walked the length of the high street.’
‘I have no intention of keeping our arrival quiet so they might as well get used to us,’ he said, a challenge in his voice she hoped Biddy wouldn’t notice.
‘If your uncle really wants you to stay here and begin to learn the management of the estate we must live here for at least part of the year, though, and Mrs Prosser never did like me,’ Callie said with a sigh.
‘She doesn’t like anybody much, but she does love a title. We should do well on that front.’
Callie stayed silent in deference to Biddy’s eager interest and watched for Raigne’s elaborately carved and twisted Tudor chimney stacks. There they were, as familiar and strange as ever. The sight of the mellow nobleman’s mansion in the distance made her think of her childhood. She had thought it a palace full of exotic things and fairy-tale people. Later she was allowed inside the side door of the giant’s castle at Christmas, when the Sunday School children had tea in the housekeeper’s room and were given a present to take home. Aprons for the girls and shirts for the boys, she recalled with a grimace. If she had any say here she’d make sure children received something more interesting in future.
She wasn’t even through the gates and she was rearranging cherished traditions. It wouldn’t go down well in the servants’ halls if she seemed ready to take over before she had her feet through the door, and she must step carefully if she was to be accepted as a proper wife for an heir to Raigne. The real question being did she want such a role in the first place? Gideon was Lord Laughraine’s acknowledged heir, so she supposed she had no choice as she was Gideon’s wife. She sighed gloomily and wondered how many girls in the Mayfair ballrooms she suspected Gideon was familiar with would give their eye teeth for the position she had no desire for.
Yet King’s Raigne was home in a way Manydown never had been and this was Gideon at her side, as familiar and strange as the world she had left behind when she married him. It felt right to be back in some ways and so wrong in others she could hardly endure to think about it. Under the reproaches he hadn’t made and the sore places in her heart, could they come to love each other in a less overheated and dangerous way than when they were so ridiculously young? They would be fools not to try, so she really had to stop being a fool and step into the future with a little resolution and more hope they would somehow find each other again.
Trying not to dwell on the challenges ahead, lest she jump down from the carriage and run away before they even got to Raigne, she eyed the shady groups of ancient oaks and elms in the parkland they were passing through instead. The sun was high in the sky and cattle were sheltering from it under the wide-spreading trees, lowing to their calves and lazily swishing flies away with their tails. They looked timeless and indifferent to the comings and goings of men and that made her feel better somehow.
‘Welcome to Raigne House, Biddy,’ Gideon said as he drew the horses to a halt on the neatly raked carriage sweep and jumped down to help them down to solid ground.
‘Coo, it’s big, ain’t it, Mr Gideon?’ she said as she stood looking at the place as if it might develop a voice of its own and tell her to go away immediately.
‘True, but it’s also a home.’
‘Not for the likes of me, though, is it?’ she replied, and Callie wondered if it had been fair to bring the girl with her, after all.
‘Come now, Biddy,’ she said bracingly, ‘would you rather have stayed at Cataret House and waited for the next tenant to take over?’
‘Oh, no, miss. I want to stay with you, but people who live in a place like this will know I’m no lady’s maid. You’d better send me round to the kitchens.’
‘No, you took the job I offered and I need you,’ Callie said. ‘You will soon grow into your new tasks, as I must into mine.’
‘If you say so, miss, I mean, my lady,’ Biddy said with a harassed look at the boxes strapped to the back of the coach and another at the great front door as it opened and a very solemn butler came out. ‘Shall I have to unpack for you, my lady?’ she asked before he was close enough to hear.
‘If you please, I don’t want some smart housemaid looking down her nose at my humble wardrobe.’
‘No, of course you don’t, my lady. I suppose there’s books and things about looking after a proper lady’s clothes and whatnots, ain’t there? Someone in this great place will be able to help me with the long words, won’t they? You’ll be far too busy to help me now, but I’m that glad you taught me to read, Miss Sommers because there’s a book about most things, ain’t there?’
‘Of course and that’s a very good notion of yours. I shall send for an appropriate one as soon as I can,’ Callie said soothingly and turned to meet the butler’s stern gaze with nearly as much trepidation as Biddy.
‘I’d love to know what a lady’s whatnots are,’ Gideon whispered, and Callie laughed, then relaxed a little. ‘You were quite right to insist on bringing your protégée with us,’ he added, then turned to meet the ancient retainer as a long-lost friend.
They were conducted upstairs to a vast suite of rooms Callie concluded was the finest guest accommodation in the house. His lordship must have known they were coming because there wasn’t a holland cover to be seen, or a speck of dust on the highly polished furniture and gleaming treasures in this glorious old state room. Gideon seemed to have taken a lot for granted in sending word they were coming before she agreed and she must point that out to him when they were alone again if she wasn’t to develop into a mouse-like woman. Now she had to hide an impulse to follow Gideon into his splendid bedchamber instead of meekly heading for her own, because at least he was familiar in all this stateliness. The loss of him at her side brought back all her fears of losing herself in this vast old barn of a place in more ways than one.
‘There’s a bath being got ready for you in the dressing room yonder, Lady Laughraine,’ Biddy informed her. ‘You ain’t half going to be clean, ain’t you, miss?’ she added, then realised she’d forgotten herself again. ‘Blessed if I’ll ever remember, my lady,’
‘Blessed if I will either, Biddy, now please shake out my best muslin and find a clean chemise and petticoat for me.’
‘Yes, miss. I mean, my lady.’
* * *
‘Don’t leave me alone, will you, Gideon?’ Callie asked an hour later as they met up in their vast sitting room ready to go downstairs and meet her grandfather in his own lair.
‘What, never?’
‘Idiot, I mean until I learn the way of the house, but on the other hand please don’t leave me alone with his lordship, ever.’
‘Difficult,