I come with you, it can only be a maybe to resuming our marriage, not a fait accompli, Gideon,’ she warned, but both of them knew it was a huge concession. Callie wondered if he felt as if he hardly dared even breathe deeply lest this hope for the future shattered in their faces all over again, as well.
‘It’s far more than I dared hope when I came here, so that will do me for now. In the meantime, how much of this do you really want to take now, and what can be sent on later, my not-quite wife?’ he said with a smile that invited her to find their not-quite anything status almost comfortable.
‘I don’t have many possessions that really matter,’ she said, gazing round the shabby room as if through a stranger’s eyes. ‘One or two books are from Grandfather Sommers’s library and then there’s my grandmother’s pearl necklet and a miniature of them when they were young. Apart from my writing box, I can leave the rest without a qualm.’
‘Then pack those and any essentials and we’ll leave as soon as you’re awake in the morning. I’d like to get to Raigne before my honorary uncle is out on the estate and it will be cooler and less trying to travel early in the day.’
‘How can I stay at Raigne, Gideon? I hardly ever set foot in the place when I lived at King’s Raigne Vicarage,’ she protested, the thought of bowling up to the Tudor mansion as if she had a right suddenly felt impossible again.
‘It’s your home and heaven knows you’ve more right to call it so than I have.’
‘No, you love the place and belong there as I never will.’
‘That’s nonsense and I know Lord Laughraine wants you home nearly as much as I do. You’re his only grandchild, Callie, and he’s a good man who truly only wants the best for you. He might have seemed remote and uncaring when you were a child, but apparently your other grandfather begged him to let you grow up without the stigma of your birth shadowing your childhood. No, don’t grimace like that, love, Reverend Sommers was quite right. I might have been born within wedlock by the skin of my teeth, but it’s bad enough for a boy to be mocked and derided for what the gossips say his parents did. I would never wish it on a girl who might end up being tarred with her mother’s supposed sins before she was old enough to know what they even meant.’
‘We can’t know now, can we?’ she managed to say past the torn feelings that were threatening to clog up her throat and make her weep, not for herself but for him and all the slights and sly whispers he’d been left to cope with as best he could since he was old enough to take notice.
‘I can, but it’s quite safe to love him, Callie. Don’t turn him into a conniving monster because your aunt was one and you don’t trust your family now. It was wrong of me to drag you to London when we got back from Scotland. I should have left you at Raigne to learn to know Lord Laughraine. You were carrying our child. He and his household could have fussed over you while I was in town learning my trade. I was selfish to insist on having you near all the time. I can’t tell you how much I wish you’d known him as the fine man he is before you went through hell, Callie. You might have turned to him for love and support when I failed you then, instead of your stony-hearted aunt.’
‘If wishes were horse, beggars would ride,’ she replied tightly as she began opening drawers and pulling out books so she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. ‘And I wouldn’t have stayed behind, anyway. I loved you far too much to be parted from you while we waited for our child to be born,’ she finally admitted gruffly.
‘You would have put up with it for her sake,’ he said and bent to pull a little trunk out of the cupboard she was staring into without seeing the old clothes and winter boots that just wouldn’t do for Sir Gideon Laughraine’s lady.
‘We don’t know that it would have made any difference if I was anywhere else. Don’t second-guess fate, Gideon. It does no good and will drive you insane if you let it,’ she said, her own struggles with that particular demon haunting her.
‘No dear,’ he said with mock humility she knew was meant to lighten her thoughts. He went out to retrieve some of the boxes the stableman had emptied ready for her departure, those that really were full of worn-out clothes and ancient account books. ‘Do you need anything else?’ he asked, seeming to accept it was best to deal with details right now.
‘I think not. Where do you intend to sleep tonight, Gideon?’
‘I could insist on sharing this room, but I’m not a fool,’ he said with a sceptical glance at the narrow bed and ancient furniture, as if he wasn’t sure it was up to the weight of a fully adult male if he stayed.
‘No, and it’s best if I do this alone,’ she said mildly, refusing to hint at her feelings about sharing a bed with him again, mainly because she wasn’t sure what they were herself.
‘Don’t forget I’m here now,’ he told her mildly, even if there was an intensity in his complex grey eyes that made her long for things she wasn’t even ready to admit to herself she wanted yet.
‘I learnt to walk my own paths while you were away,’ she warned.
‘Part of being married is learning to walk together without stamping too hard on one another’s toes, isn’t it? I’ve been without you for a very long time, Wife,’ he reminded her so softly it felt more significant than if he were to shout his frustration from the rooftops.
‘I still lived a very different life from you and it will take a while to accustom myself to yours if we find a way past the pitfalls. My aunt isn’t the sole reason we were apart these last nine years,’ she reminded him with a severe look to remind him that war wasn’t won.
And I need to work out if I can endure living with a husband who only wants to share my bed because he has no alternative without making our marriage vows a lie, she added an unspoken aside. He sighed and seemed to resign himself to her mistrust for a little longer. Then he smiled wryly to say he was tame again and there was no need to worry he was going to beg.
‘What has it been like, Callie, this life you made without me? Not being a girl, I don’t know what they’re taught or how they are before they appear in society as if sprung fully formed from the egg.’
How could she refuse to try to breach the gaps between them? It was a start if they understood each other better, she supposed, but some of the old rebellious Callie whispered, when was he going to tell her the adventures he’d had without her?
‘Much depends on the family she comes from and the one she might make one day. Grandfather Sommers’s classical education didn’t prepare me to instruct young women about the niceties of life and I left that to my aunt. I do know aristocratic young ladies have very different ambitions to genteel ones, though, and our teaching was always aimed at the latter.’
‘So what does a genteel young lady need to know?’
He surprised her by meekly handing her any items she nodded at and putting ones she rejected in neat piles as they worked in an easy harmony she would have found incredible only yesterday. It felt oddly intimate having him share the room that was her sanctuary for so long, yet he made it seem normal to silently debate over her most intimate garments and possessions in front of the man who should have shared her life, so how could she tell him to leave her alone and go back to being the outsider in this otherwise all-female household?
‘How
