At least her ancient straw bonnet kept the full force of the sun off and Aunt Seraphina couldn’t accuse her of ruining her complexion, but she dreamt wistfully of airy silks, made to whisper against her limbs as she strolled about her fantasy palace. It would feel sensual and pleasantly wicked to go barefoot on a satin-smooth marble floor and for a moment she felt as if silky stone was under her feet and wriggled her toes in sensual appreciation, which made her jolt back to reality again to hot, sweaty and gritty English feet tramping through a baking landscape.
It was nearly nine years now since Grandfather Sommers had caught the fever that killed him from Aunt Seraphina’s late and unlamented husband. When Reverend Sommers followed his unworthy son-in-law to the grave there was nothing to keep either of them in King’s Raigne, and leaving the village where she grew up meant Callie could be herself again. It was a common enough name and nobody was going to look for her, so she went back to being Miss Sommers, spinster, and Aunt Seraphina became Mrs Grisham with an imaginary husband to mourn when their new neighbours came to gossip. They were less than twenty miles away from Raigne and it felt a world away from that famously grand house and the tightly knit Raigne villages.
Better not to think about her old life, she decided, dreading the hurt and sorrow those memories threatened even after nine years away. Where was she? Ah, yes—going without stockings, partly for economy and partly because it was too hot to endure them. Perhaps the old, impulsive Callie was alive under the schoolmistress, after all, so she concentrated on walking and her quest, but it was too hot and familiar a walk to distract her for long.
Anyway, it was impossible to feel bold and sensuous and longing to be shameless with a handsome lover when you were weighed down by chemises and corsets, petticoats and a sternly respectable cambric gown. Somehow she couldn’t force the fantasy of that longed-for lover back into the dark corner where she kept her deepest secrets today, but nine years on he wasn’t the man she had fallen in love with, anyway. If her husband stood in front of her now she probably wouldn’t recognise him, and the thought of the painful arguments and angry silences before they parted made her happy to dive back into the life of a fantasy Callie, who longed for a very different lover from her one-time one, so where had she got to with that?
Ah, yes, she was languorous with longing to see him again after spending mere hours apart. There would be cooling fans waved by unseen hands to stir the heavy air and cleverly devised cross-draughts in that marble palace under a merciless sun. She drifted away from the court ladies idling away the scorching afternoon with gossip as they waited for the world to stir again. When it did the scent of exotic flowers and rare spices, the flare of bright colours and wild beat of music and dancing would light up the night with an urgent promise of excitement and passion and longing fully sated at long last. It was too exciting to allow her to worry about who was in and who was out at court. Of course, they would all be weary again the next day and doze through the hot afternoon, so they could dance when night fell, but it would be worth sore feet and all day waiting for the thrill of being totally alive again in her lover’s arms when darkness fell.
Something told the real Callie if she had to live such a life she’d rage against rules that forbade a lady contact with the world beyond the palace walls, but flights of fancy weren’t meant to be realistic. She sighed and knew she was hot and sticky and unpleasantly dirty once again, so what would the eager Callie Sommers of seventeen make of her older and wiser self? Not much, she decided, wishing she could go back and warn the headlong idiot not to dream so hard or passionately so that her today could be different.
Shrugging off memories that wouldn’t change for all the wishing in the world, she resisted the urge to throw her bonnet into the nearest hedge and be less suffocated by the life of a confirmed spinster. She untied the shabby ribbons instead and felt the faintest trace of a breeze on her damp skin. It was the gritty unpleasantness of grey dust changing to mud between her sweaty toes that made her escape into a dream of walking naked into a wide pool full of rose-petal-scented water this time. Imaginary Callie felt coolness and luxury surround her and knew she was loved and valued above riches by the prince of this splendour.
Now that was the most dangerous fantasy of all. She shook her head to refuse it and felt a brief thunder of blood in her ears. Aunt Seraphina’s dire warnings about females who recklessly strode about the countryside with no regard for the conventions might come true if she was overtaken by dragging heat on a public highway. Wondering if her aunt ever looked at her, Callie tried to be amused by the idea plain Miss Sommers could excite ungovernable passion in any male who found her sprawled on the road.
She needed to keep her wits about her if she was going to walk to the receiving office and be home before she was missed, so no more daydreams until she was back in her bedchamber, where she could work on her next book in peace. Today even her aunt had succumbed to the heat and left Callie free to do as she pleased for once. So she couldn’t let another day go by without finding out if the novel she had laboured over so hard in secret might be published. So, yes, it was worth being hot and sticky to get word Mr Redell might agree to publish it at last.
Despite the heat she managed an excited hop and skip at his opinion her work showed promise. He had suggested changes and refinements, of course, but it wasn’t a flat refusal. Perhaps she could earn enough to rent a little cottage one day and mix with friends she chose, get ink on her fingers whenever the fancy took her, then dig her garden and cook whatever she wanted to eat out of it. It was such a heady daydream she didn’t hear a hot and weary horse coming up behind her until the animal was close enough to shy at her modest bonnet.
His rider cursed him for a jingle-brained donkey and consigned him to the devil even as Callie’s thoughts span back with a sickening jolt. Shocked to her toes by the sound of that particular male voice, she froze as if an enchanter had put a spell on her. No, she wouldn’t look round, but he was taking in her unfashionable bonnet and faded gown as he fought to control the skittish beast, because he realised he was blaspheming in front of a lady. Callie was far too busy coping with absolute shock to take note of his apology. She was wrong; she must be. Gideon was miles away, probably in London, and this was a stranger. Turning to reassure herself she was imagining a nightmare, Callie found out exactly how wrong she could be.
‘Oh, the devil,’ she said flatly.
All the blood in her body seemed to have drained from her head into her hot, dusty feet and taken her panic-stricken heart with it. Black spots danced in front of her eyes and now her fickle heart was thundering a tattoo so loudly her head was full of the relentless beat. Panic raced over her skin in shudders of cold on the hottest day of summer so far.
‘How missish of me,’ she managed in a fading murmur, but neither willpower nor vanity could stop her reeling—the truth of him beating against her hastily shut eyelids, as if he was stamped on them like a brand. This was Gideon.
After all the years of wanting him night after night—so much useless longing—then wishing they had never met, he was back and there was only so much abuse a woman’s body could take. Callie let the darkness suck her in so he didn’t matter any more.
Gideon fought to hold his much-tried horse back from bolting. The woman Lady Virginia ordered him to seek out and come to terms with had wilted like a faded lily at the sight of him and made the wretched beast panic even more as she fell to the ground. As he tried to soothe the beast his heart thudded to the beat of iron-shod hooves too close to her contrary head.