world in every way possible,’ she said as she tested that question in her head and tried it out on what she had done her best to teach her young ladies. ‘She needs to know enough of the world to keep certain parts of it out of her house and encourage other ones in with the right degree of hospitality. To record and examine accounts, visit her neighbours and be a useful part of her local community, and value truth over show, as well. I don’t know if I can really describe an ideal wife since I doubt such a paragon exists. The closest I can get is to say she should be well informed and able to care for her family, ready to love her children and support her husband’s endeavours as best she can, yet still be a woman of character in her own right.’
‘And for all that they need algebra and natural philosophy and a smattering of Greek and Latin?’ he asked, looking at the pile of books she was thumbing through to find which ones she could leave behind and which must go with her.
‘I only teach those if a girl shows an aptitude for learning and a lively curiosity about the world. Their potential husbands are taught them as a matter of course, so I see no reason to rob a girl of a chance to explore them before she has to be busy with a family.’
‘It’s a wonder you restrict yourself to a few extra lessons with your brighter pupils. Your late grandfather seems to have treated you like a student at Balliol.’
‘All that learning didn’t do me much good, did it?’ she asked, avoiding his gaze as she tried not to look back on the idealistic, impulsive girl she was when she fell in love with him. ‘I was so full of wondrous myths and legends and tales of wild adventure I couldn’t see real things as they were.’
‘What were they then?’ he asked quietly.
‘Impossible,’ she said bleakly, the gaps and betrayals of her young life piling up to remind her what a fiction her dream of perfect contentment with her hero-lover was.
‘No, it was possible. We only needed time to grow up and cope with such hot passions in the everyday world. Left to ourselves we would have found a way, Callie. You have to believe that or we might as well set up a nice little school for you in Bath and hire a law office for me on the moon.’
‘Perhaps we should,’ she said with a half-smile at the thought of him negotiating with the ancient gods of Olympus for the rights of a celestial body.
‘Don’t. It’s unthinkable to turn our backs on a last chance at love,’ he said hoarsely and there he was again, the true Gideon under all that gentlemanly self-control.
‘If we can’t laugh together, we’ll never be anything but strangers at heart,’ she warned him. ‘Half of what went wrong between us was because the intensity of our love felt so fierce. If we’re going to try again, our marriage must be rooted in real life.’
‘I expect you’re right, but could we agree not to laugh about parting again, if you want me to stay sane while we work our way round the thorns?’
‘I’ll agree to that, Gideon, but I refuse to be rushed into anything else.’
‘What do I have to do then, Callie? I warn you I’ll go down on my knees and beg if I have to sooner or later and you’ll find it embarrassing and ridiculous. Just agreeing to come to Raigne with me is hope enough for now, though, so I’ll excuse you that ordeal for as long as I can endure the temptation of you so close and not abase myself,’ he said, and how much of what he said was serious and how much a joke? She eyed his careful smile and unreadable gaze and decided it would take longer than a day to read the true Gideon under all that armour nowadays.
‘The world will still believe we’re together again,’ she said flatly and wondered if she had been stupid to agree to go to Raigne with him, after all. ‘You only came back yesterday, Gideon, we haven’t had time to get used to each other as we are now, let alone as man and wife.’
‘At least at Raigne we can be the people we really were all along.’
‘Without my aunt trying to wreck us all the time.’
‘Yes, a new start, Callie, that’s all. At least this time I won’t have to spend hours at my law books and you won’t be living in a strange city with people you have little chance to know.’
‘I see the logic of it, but what if we fail publicly this time?’
‘Would that be so much worse than not trying at all?’ He strode over to the window and back again, looking as if this cramped little room was closing in on him. It felt too small to her now; a cell built with Aunt Seraphina’s lies, and she bit back a reckless urge to go tonight, dark and dangerous thought it might be to risk travelling at night. ‘Tell me truly you only want to find another school to teach in. That you can forget the chance of a family and I will smother my hopes and promise not to trouble you again,’ he finally said as if it hurt.
He stood still and met her eyes, let the guard he kept round himself drop. Did she really want this man she once loved to beg? No, it couldn’t have been love in the first place if she did. So here she was up against words she didn’t want to say.
‘Yes...’ she breathed at last, then saw pain and bleak loneliness in his gaze before he blanked it and realised he thought she meant yes to him going away. ‘I mean yes to Raigne and us, you idiot,’ she told him brusquely. ‘But that’s all for now,’ she reasserted even if she had seen the truth of his longing behind his wary eyes.
‘It’s enough,’ he said shortly and she could see from the way his shoulders relaxed that the hard control he’d kept his mouth and those dear, familiar green-shot grey eyes under was lifted.
Feeling a little ashamed of herself for making him reveal more than he wanted to in order to combat her attack of the dithers, she still felt as if she were walking the edge of a precipice.
‘Well, that’s finally settled then,’ she said briskly and began packing as few boxes as she could to take away tomorrow.
‘Good, I’d hate to have come after you if you change your mind, because I warn you, Callie, I won’t go away quietly this time. I’ll follow you and make a nuisance of myself even if you travel the length of the land to avoid me. You have given me hope, Lady Laughraine, and I can’t give up on it now.’
‘I won’t go back on my word now. I admit when I thought about it again the whole idea of being at Raigne together frightened me, but I’m steady now and only want to be quit of this place, so you’d best let me finish packing before I go to sleep on my feet.’
‘Very well, concentrate then and stop trying to distract me, Wife,’ he said with a cocky grin that reminded her again of her young love. Who would have thought she’d be so glad to see that young scapegrace under all the frost the years had put into Gideon’s gaze?
* * *
It was done, her life for the past nine years packed and ready to go. The small pile of luggage by her bedroom door seemed a poor showing for twenty-seven years of life. Callie concluded travelling light taught her people matter more than things, but had she been weak to agree to go to Raigne with Gideon? Instinct said no, here was a chance for a bigger life than the one she had here, yet her imagination reeled at the very idea of being a wife again. Torn between hope and fear, she knew any chance for their marriage must be grasped, but it felt so huge to let go of the past and seize it.
She tossed and turned on the narrow bed that had seemed perfectly adequate for so long, but now felt restrictive and hard. The real trouble was she couldn’t put all the wild hope
