‘Don’t try and change the subject, Row,’ Callie argued as if she was tired of the concerned looks and veiled anxiety of her husband and close friends, and fully intended to worry about someone else today. ‘You’ve been home for nearly a month now and I’ve barely set eyes on you, let alone persuaded you to join me at Raigne for a comfortable coze. Every time we invite you there’s some reason you can’t possibly come and Mary says you avoid any dinner invitations or, heaven forbid, party invitations other neighbours send, as well. This simply won’t do, my dear.’
‘Why not? I’m a widow; why can’t I live quietly?’
‘Because you’re four and twenty, and not four and seventy, and you seem sad and a little bit defeated. Living with your mother-in-law has clearly done you no good at all. That woman was an invalid and watering pot before her son died in battle, so I hate to think what she’s like now. The very idea of you shaping to her ways as long as you have fills me with horror. Such a life does nobody any good, Rowena; take it from one who knows.’
The note of regret for all the years Callie wasted listening to her selfish and downright fraudulent aunt instead of her then-estranged husband was too sharp in her friend’s voice to be brushed aside as one more attempt to ‘bring Rowena out of herself’.
‘Gideon always loved you though, Callie. It shone out of you both from the moment you were grown up enough to know what love and passion are.’
‘We might have known what they were, but we weren’t old enough to understand how to live with them. You’re not going to divert me with my own past mistakes today though, because we’re talking about you and not me. It’s high time you made some sort of future for yourself that doesn’t involve writing letters for a bitter and twisted woman, and running errands she’s too idle to do herself. And don’t tell me you’ll be perfectly content teaching other people’s children as a governess either, because I know you won’t be.’
‘Why not, you did just that for nine years and don’t seem much the worse for it.’
‘Don’t I?’ Callie said looking as if every day she had spent away from her husband still cut at her now they were blissfully reunited and already expecting another child. ‘I don’t want you to turn aside from life for such a ridiculous span of time as I did, Rowena. I can’t tell you how much it pains me to think my dearest almost-sister has settled for an existence instead of a life because of one youthful mistake.’
About to defend her own impulsive marriage against that accusation, Rowena met her old friend’s challenging gaze and let out her breath in a long sigh instead. ‘Maybe I’m not as brave as you, Callie,’ she said and that felt a bit too true.
‘You could hardly be less so.’
‘Yes, I could. You were so brave when you lost Grace, then quarrelled so bitterly with Gideon you decided you didn’t want to live with him any more. It almost hurt to look at you at the time and he was nearly as good at concealing his feelings as you were. I wish now I hadn’t given you that promise not to tell anyone where you were or what you were doing as long as we could go on exchanging letters after you left Raigne. If I was a better liar I might have let it slip to Mama and she would have got the truth in the open long ago. Nine years was far too long for you to be so alone and shamefully deceived by your aunt, Callie.’
‘Yet you want the same sort of life I endured for yourself? No, Rowena, you can’t let yourself off trying to do better because your dashing lieutenant made you unhappy, and I can’t stand by and watch.’
Again Rowena drew breath to lie that she and Nate were blissfully content from first to last, but the act failed under Callie’s steady gaze. ‘Yes, I can,’ she said instead and defied her friend to argue black was white. ‘For me love was vastly overrated and I shall not marry again. Apart from that, I agree, it’s high time I stopped feeling guilty because Nate is dead and I’m alive and got on with living the best life I can. I intend to advertise for a position as a governess or teacher and look forward to using the fine education Papa and your grandfather gave me at last.’
‘At least that fantasy is the ideal opening to play my trump card. Gideon and I have been trying to make you an offer of employment ever since you came home so tired and out of spirits with your life as unpaid companion. Will you work for me instead, Row? Please? I need you and I doubt your fictitious young ladies with rich and doting parents even want a sound education. Very few of mine did. It’s true the odd one or two who did made my years away from Gideon bearable, but you don’t have to endure the frustration of trying to teach young ladies to be learned and wise when society wants them naïve and empty-headed.’
‘You certainly don’t need a governess yet, even if this babe turns out to be a girl. I doubt you need a companion either, not now you have Gideon to occupy every spare moment,’ Rowena told her friend.
Being offered a sinecure because she and Callie once ran wild about the countryside together felt as wrong as Mr Winterley clearly thought their earnest discussion, if the frown of concern on his face was anything to go by. There was a hint of steel in his not-quite-indifferent green eyes that said he cared about his hostess’s welfare, endanger it at your peril. She forced a pang of something uncomfortably like jealousy to the back of her mind and told herself the man ought to care about Callie and Gideon by now, since he’d been at Raigne an unconscionably long time for a house guest and clearly owed something for the privilege.
‘I don’t have nearly enough spare moments for Gideon to occupy, and I so want to be with him whenever I can. We wasted so many years apart every second seems precious now and I can’t find enough of them for us at the moment, or for this little one when it’s safely born, God willing.’
‘What would you want me to do for you, Callie? Mama Westhope tells me I’m a hopeless housewife, so I’d be very little use to you as one of those.’
‘Mrs Craddock would be highly insulted if I even suggested Raigne needed more housekeeping than she and her deputy already provide. No, what I need is a scribe and a clerk I trust and you’re perfect for both roles. You always did have a far neater hand than me and by clerk I suppose I mean a secretary. I know most of them are men, but just imagine what Gideon would say if I asked to share his.’
‘I wouldn’t sully my thoughts, let alone my ears, with your husband’s feelings about you being in such close contact with another member of his species on a day-to-day basis. But are you sure you need a female to deal with your correspondence and help with some of your duties? I shall hate it if my return home without much more than a penny to bless myself with put the idea of finding me pretend employment at Raigne into your head,’ Rowena made herself say. In truth the very idea of working with her dearest friend and living at Raigne was almost a dream come true. Almost, she reminded herself, as she tried not to meet the eyes of the man who could turn it into a nightmare.
‘Yes, I’m sure. I seem so taken up with this little devil the need for help has become a lot more urgent,’ her friend confessed with a protective hand on her still-flat belly that gave away volumes about her changed priorities.
‘Will you give me a few days to discuss the idea with Mama and Papa and Joanna? If I can persuade my darling sister to take her head out of the clouds long enough to think of aught but her beloved Mr Greenwood, of course.’
‘What a fine clergyman’s wife Joanna will be and she was always better behaved than either of us. I do hope Hester never falls in love with a serious man though, she’d drive him to drink,’ Callie observed with an indulgent glance at ten-year-old Hester Finch rolling over and over in the mown grass in the churchyard and doing her best to shove as much of it as possible down the necks of her mixed assortment of playmates.
‘She still has time to grow up and be a lady, more unlikely things have happened. We weren’t a lot better at the same age and look at you now,’ Rowena said. ‘Hes is in severe need of a lecture on the subject of not picking on much smaller opponents right now, though,’ she said and went off to supervise her little brothers