sanctimonious prig one moment and whore the next because she let him seduce her. Heaven knows he could be charming when he wanted to and she had a reputation for being far too proper for her own good, but she was a naive and sheltered young woman who believed him when he said he loved her. She said a lot less than him about how much she hated being trapped in a marriage neither of them wanted because I was on the way, but I doubt she could put her hand on her heart and swear she loves me even today. We meet once or twice a year now my grandfather has taken her back into the fold, but so far we haven’t managed to like each other very much.’
That confession of how bleak his childhood really was almost broke her heart. How could they not have blamed themselves when he was the innocent party? That disgusting bet Esmond Laughraine had made to seduce a bishop’s daughter no other man would dream of even trying to get into bed without a very public ceremony and a wedding ring was appalling, but the bishop’s daughter had succumbed of her own free will and Gideon had no choice about the matter at all. He wouldn’t quite believe her if she championed him now, because she had turned away his love, as well. Despite all the good reasons she thought she had at the time for doing so, how much damage she had done by taking the easy option? Yes, it was simpler to cut out the despair and hurt from her life and go on without him, rather than patch up some sort of marriage between them. But none of that would put things right between them now and make him believe he was a deeply lovable and honourable man, despite his shocking betrayal of her when she was at her most vulnerable.
‘You make me sound so meek and mild, Gideon—as if I sat and softly wept all the time you were accusing me of luring you in with my witchy wiles,’ she chided lightly, because it was better than weeping and letting him see she pitied the boy who grew up with parents who didn’t deserve him.
‘You gave as good as you got, didn’t you, spitfire?’ he said with a wry smile, as if he remembered those furious rows and their making up afterwards with affection.
‘And will again if you’re not careful,’ she said, chin raised to warn him she was no doormat nowadays, despite her nun-like existence since they parted.
‘Good, because I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ he said with a boyish grin that did something unfair to her insides.
‘It’s just as well I have no intention of changing then,’ she said.
Was she secretly conceding that, for the right incentive, she might be tempted to try again? No, she didn’t want to be a convenient wife, primped and perfumed and ready to oblige her lord in the marriage bed as part of a cynical bargain. If they resumed their stormy marriage it must be as equal partners. Yet he was so self-sufficient he looked as if he didn’t need anyone nowadays, let alone a wife who would demand a place in every aspect of his life she could get a toehold into.
‘What will happen to Raigne if we remain apart?’ she asked abruptly, the thought of being with him for the sake of a huge inheritance sour in her mouth as she tried to swallow it down with cold tea. ‘I dare say you would be accepted as the heir without me.’
‘I might be the legal heir, but you’re the true one.’
‘Yet you love Raigne and nobody else will keep the place as you will.’
‘You could if you wanted to.’
‘I’d be laughed out of court. I’m your wife, so everything I own is yours.’
‘And what if Prinny decided to challenge me on the strength of some old gossip and the wrong family resemblance? You can see why they were so keen for us to wed, can’t you? Still, at least when we eloped we simply wanted to be wed and never mind anything else.’
‘We should have known better,’ she said sadly.
Her husband stared out of the window at another cloudless morning as if he was unable to feel the warmth and she tried not to care. ‘Indeed we should,’ he said at last in that clipped, carefully controlled voice she was learning to hate.
‘I’m sure Grandfather Sommers wanted us to be happy,’ she said as if that made the gulf between those young lovers and now a little less.
‘I wish you’d believe Lord Laughraine does, as well, Callie. It’s not his fault we looked for reasons to hate each other when our baby died. I wish you could find it in your heart to forgive me for that, even if everything else I did and didn’t do is beyond it.’
He looked as if memory of the quarrels and furious silences that marred their marriage had been a hair shirt to him ever since. Memories of long, hot nights of driven passion after they found out what her grandfathers were up to slipped into her mind and whispered they couldn’t have felt such endless need for each other if all they had was lust. Then she thought of their baby and shivered. Nothing had mattered to her but the terrible space their little girl left behind her in the dark days after that terrible journey from London to King’s Raigne to bury their child in Grandfather Sommers’s recently dug grave.
She simply hadn’t any emotion left over for Gideon or anyone else after that. Even the irony of hearing her real mother invite Gideon, Callie and Mrs Willoughby’s sister, Aunt Seraphina, to stay with her whilst they considered what to do next, since they had nowhere else to go at the time, was wasted on her. For the first time her true mother opened her life to her secret child and they might as well have been on the moon for all the difference it made to Callie. Her withdrawal from the world was a way out of heartbreak and she’d dived into that grey nothing as if not feeling anything was all that mattered. No doubt Gideon felt desperate for comfort, painfully young and bereft as he was, as well. It wasn’t an excuse for what he did, but she wasn’t as blameless as she liked to believe at the time.
‘First I’d have to forgive myself,’ she said with a sigh, and half-heartedly pushed a slice of cold bacon round her plate so she wouldn’t have to meet his intent gaze.
‘You must, Callie, there won’t be a pinch of happiness for either of us until you do.’
‘I’d have to look past a lot more than petty quarrels and grief for there to be an “us” again, wouldn’t I?’ she challenged him.
‘Ah, and there’s the rub. You don’t want to see past that farce, do you?’
‘No,’ she admitted bleakly. ‘There’s no excuse for what you did that day.’
‘Yet even in a court of law a person is innocent until proven guilty. You didn’t bother to wait for niceties like that before you condemned me, did you?’
‘I expect that’s why you like them. I prefer to believe my own eyes,’ she said bitterly.
‘You still want to think I was unfaithful, don’t you? Whatever I said fell on deaf ears because you had already given up on us. It was a good excuse to finally push me out of your life and you’ve certainly done your best to forget I exist ever since.’
‘How could I? We had a child,’ she said with the sadness of losing her daughter still raw in her throat after all these years, and her absence seemed all the more savage now they were in the same room and she wasn’t here.
‘Yes,’ he said bleakly, ‘we did.’
* * *
‘Ah, there you both are,’ Aunt Seraphina said as if she had been looking everywhere for them before she breezed into the room.
Anyone else would feel the tension and leave them in peace. Callie
