your fast and gone out long ago,’ Aunt Seraphina remarked blandly, although the door would hardly have been shut in that case, so why lie?
‘I had a disturbed night,’ Gideon said, reverting to unreadable again.
Callie felt as if some golden opportunity to understand all they’d lost and gained had been brushed out of the room like house dust.
‘Poor Kitty is mortified she mistook you for a burglar in the dark last night, Sir Gideon,’ her aunt went blithely on. ‘We can’t sleep safe in our own beds of a night any more. I really don’t know what the world is coming to,’ she added, shaking her head as she poured herself coffee and refused anything more substantial as if it might choke her.
Her aunt did look careworn this morning, as if she hardly slept last night. So why didn’t she admit hearing noises in the night if she was sleepless for most of it?
‘Whoever it was knows there is a man in the house and a very alert housemaid now, so I doubt they will ever come back,’ Gideon said, as if he’d never discussed the likelihood of the disturber of the peace coming from inside the house with Callie.
‘Well, I admit now that I should have listened to you, Calliope, and found another handyman when we found out the last one was more often drunk than sober, instead of trying to manage without as best we could,’ Aunt Seraphina said, and why did Callie feel as if every word she said had a ring of falseness this morning?
‘We could get a dog,’ Callie suggested with a half-hearted smile to admit they had had this conversation many times and her aunt still couldn’t abide dogs.
‘I think another man of all work would be less trouble,’ Aunt Seraphina replied with the polite titter even her niece was beginning to find irritating.
‘There are plenty of dogs at Raigne. Lord Laughraine has a pack of assorted ones that follow him about the place,’ Gideon reminded his wife as if it might be a carrot to get Callie there, if his own desire to have her home wasn’t enough.
She felt little and petty for making him feel he had to tempt her, but couldn’t he see what a huge undertaking it was for her to go there with him? It would mean trusting all she was to him and, without the headlong, driven love between them ten years ago, how could she do that when even mutual obsession hadn’t kept them together before? Her heart raced at the very idea and she searched her morning for an excuse to avoid him and work out what she really wanted to do.
‘I dare say the servants hate the work such hairy animals cause,’ Aunt Seraphina said sourly and Callie felt guiltily irritated by her naysaying ways.
‘They are as happy to see them as he is every morning,’ Gideon said with a fond smile for the man he had no right to call uncle, but Callie never doubted the affection between two men who had every reason to dislike and distrust one another, yet did not. She wriggled in her seat against a pang of guilt because she had cut herself off from her grandfather as well as her husband and that too seemed petty and rather little this morning.
‘I’m glad to hear the creatures don’t sleep in his lordship’s room,’ her aunt went on with her subject like a bulldog worrying at a bone.
‘Only two or three at a time,’ Gideon said, as if enjoying Aunt Seraphina’s reluctance to call a peer of the realm’s habits distasteful. ‘But I doubt anyone could get into the house without them raising the roof.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t endure all that mess to keep a chance felon away,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I shall trust employing an extra man will put the housebreakers off trying again.’
‘I should like to have a dog about the place,’ Callie said wistfully.
‘His lordship would be very happy to find you one,’ Gideon said.
‘There you are, you see, my dear? Your husband has found the perfect way to lure his wife back to Raigne and keep her happy, has he not?’ her aunt said with false brightness, as if he was offering Callie a childish bribe to resume their marriage and she might not be clever enough to spot it.
‘If you will excuse us, Aunt, Gideon and I have a great deal more to talk about than our pets or lack of them,’ Callie said and rose from her seat before the lady could argue.
‘You mistake my concern, Calliope. I know you are a woman now and not a silly girl taken in by bribes and promises,’ her aunt said with such dignity Callie knew she was offended.
‘Then why make such belittling comments in the first place, Aunt?’
‘Because he always set us against each other and now he’s doing it again,’ Aunt Seraphina said with an accusing gesture at Gideon, who looked impassive and made Seraphina seem shrill and begrudging by contrast. ‘It’s my duty to point out you always were a fool for this man and don’t show many signs of learning from past mistakes.’
‘I have run the academic side of this enterprise and proved myself a woman of ability and character. You cannot trust me with all that, then accuse me of being an empty-headed idiot the first time I show any sign of questioning your wisdom, Aunt.’
Aunt Seraphina looked unconvinced for a tense moment, then sighed heavily and nodded as if to affirm Callie was a different creature from the heartbroken girl of nine years ago. ‘Very well, my dear, I must trust you have learnt judgement, I suppose. You will remember what happened last time, though, won’t you?’ she said with what looked like such genuine anxiety for Callie’s well-being that Callie branded herself an ingrate and reassured her aunt she could hardly forget.
The insidious thought slipped into her mind that, if Aunt Seraphina was truly as devious as she must be to have hidden hers and Gideon’s letters for so long, she would know arguing against her niece and Gideon having time alone would make them more suspicious. No, that had to be unjust and unkind of her, she really didn’t think her aunt could have kept so much of her essential self hidden for so long when they lived in the same house.
* * *
‘I don’t know why I’m letting you drag me out here when I need to get ready for the new term,’ Callie protested half-heartedly ten minutes later. ‘But why did you refuse my aunt’s offer of the gig so we could take a drive before it gets too hot to move, Husband? Are you ashamed to be seen with me in such a drab getup?’ she added.
Gideon saw self-doubt was tripping her up again and how could she not know she was one of the most beautiful creatures he’d ever laid eyes on?
‘Don’t put words into my mouth, Wife,’ he teased and got a half-hearted smile out of her. He resolved to make sure she never had to worry about being less than perfectly turned out ever again and promised himself yesterday’s gown would go into the ragbag as soon as she had even one new gown to eke out her meagre supply.
‘Then why don’t you want to leave the house or gardens?’ she asked suspiciously.
Did she think he was lying to disguise his distaste for her plain round gown and old-maid-like cap? In fairness his first impulse was to rip that monstrosity from her head so her glossy dark curls framed her enchanting face again, but he had to tread on eggshells around his love if the hope he couldn’t quite keep bricked up in his mind wasn’t to crash and die, and he would never do that to her, anyway. She had endured enough slights and humiliations at the hands of her sly aunt over the years. So he would go on treading carefully round the snags that had been put in her self-confidence for as long as it took him to reassure her she was
