There had been such passion, such love, under their youthful infatuation with each other, that her most hopeful self whispered those huge forces couldn’t simply be dead between them now. Yet their dreams of mutual love and need and a future together were smashed all those years ago. What if Gideon didn’t share her fantasy? She squirmed against the sheets and told herself it was so humid tonight it was no wonder she couldn’t drop off to sleep as if nothing much had happened.
Her whole world had changed, so what was the point of lying here fooling herself she was about to drop off as contentedly as if it was just another day? Unable to endure even the added heat of a thin and patched sheet over her as the heat seemed relentless and sticky all around her, she knew she must face the biggest fear of all about her new life some time. What if she still loved Gideon under all the bitterness and pain and loneliness? And what if he didn’t love her? Impossible, she would never have been able to go on with her restricted and very single life for the past few years if she was secretly panting with passion for a lover who it turned out had not really existed.
Except maybe she had been secretly, deep down where she didn’t let herself think too much but just feel, maybe there she had been waiting for him to ride up and carry her off. Despite all the pain and bitterness and tears and wild arguments of that brief year of marriage when they were both so young, looking back that was the part that felt like her real life and this one some sort of wicked enchantment that kept them apart and only almost alive. An image of her aunt as the wicked sorceress with legendary power to keep two lovers lost in a dream world and obedient to her commands almost made her laugh for a moment, until she reminded herself how serious Aunt Seraphina’s sins were.
Unable to stay still and contain the fury that wanted to howl and weep at all the chances she and Gideon lost to live and love together because of Seraphina Bartle, she got out of bed to pull the curtains wide and very gently inch up the sash to let more air into this stuffy room. Never mind the dangerous night air Aunt Seraphina insisted on keeping out of the house like demons from hell, or the bright moonlight that shone in and might even keep a less wakeful person from their slumbers. It felt good to connect with the greater world, to feel the air and see the moonlight she shared with the rest of this vast racing world of theirs and Gideon in particular. Maybe he was doing just as she was, sitting in the uncushioned seat of his window and breathing in air still heavy with heat as he stared at the miracle of a night almost bright as day? Close on the heels of that thought came the idea of one day sitting with him dreamy, well loved and content as they shared everything she now had to sense alone.
No, that was going too far. If she was to stay sane she must learn to be practical and a lot less idealistic. For now she would learn to be as happy as she could be with what seemed graspable instead of aiming for the moon. If it all went wrong for them at Raigne, at least she and Gideon knew they could live by their own efforts now and perhaps be happier doing it. There, now she was thinking their reconciliation was inevitable and it couldn’t be. How could she trust her inner self to a man who had betrayed her at least once already?
It was a dour thought to try and go to sleep on, so she pushed it aside as best she could for another day. It was time to stop looking back and go into the future as best they could, but she wished she was a wild girl again just for tonight, so she could be free to do as she pleased and walk into the hills one last time by the light of the July moon. She had come to love both the remoteness of this sturdy old house and the half-tamed emptiness of the wide hills all around it and she would miss that and the girls she had done her best to equip for lives that would not always be as easy as they might seem to anyone less fortunate.
So was Gideon struggling to sleep alone as well tonight, or already lost in weary slumber after his demanding wife-hunting trip and last night’s excitements? No, thinking of him asleep without her was never going to lull her into dreamland; it felt too wrong for them to lie apart like enemies in different camps dreading the next battle. She sighed heavily, then went back to bed to try counting sheep. No, they looked too much like Aunt Seraphina, and wasn’t that an uncomfortable thought? Sheep wearing unlikely flaxen wigs and a superior expression would put her off the silly creatures for life and there were far too many of them in this part of the world to risk that calamity.
In the distance she thought she heard a soft thud and a murmur, but it was over almost as soon as it began and she turned over when she heard a vixen bark a warning at cubs big enough to know better by now and blocked her ears to the normal noises of the night. It wasn’t term time, so she didn’t need to worry about nightmares or wakeful girls away from home for the first time and longing for their parents. She felt herself retreating from this little world that seemed so safe for so long, Miss Sommers’s days were numbered, but could she really be Calliope Laughraine again? She had married Gideon ten years ago, but it would feel like living with a man she didn’t know if they took up where they left off. Whatever happened between them, she was about to live in a house beyond most women’s wildest dreams.
The very thought of trying to make some sort of life in the mansion she visited on sufferance as a child felt so alien she might lose an essential part of herself if she tried to see herself as wife of the next Lord Laughraine. Deciding she preferred a world she had some control over, she set about plotting the knottiest bits of her next book in her head. The intricacies of it soothed her and she was halfway to dreamland when she realised her latest hero looked exactly like Gideon. Already drifting, her mind was too wrapped up in a sleepy fantasy of finding a happy ending in her husband hero’s arms to reject the notion he might still be her hero, after all, and she fell asleep with a welcoming smile on her face.
* * *
‘So where did you end up sleeping last night, Gideon?’ Callie asked the next morning when they were on their way from Cataret House so early this might be a dream, as well.
‘On a chair in your office, lest your aunt can pick locks as well as escape from upstairs windows,’ he replied gruffly.
‘I knew I should have woken up properly and investigated the noise I heard in the night,’ she said with a grimace for the empty room and improvised rope of bedsheets they had discovered this morning. ‘At least Kitty wasn’t here to give you a matching pair of black eyes, but I’m surprised you didn’t hear my aunt escape as you seem to have the senses of a cat.’
‘I knew she would go, why else do you think I was dozing in that uncomfortable chair? I had to make sure she took nothing of ours with her this time,’ he said and shifted his shoulders as if they were still stiff from holding such an unnatural position for so long.
‘You have had a difficult time since you arrived, haven’t you?’ she said with a wry smile for his poor bruised face and the shadows even under his good eye from lack of proper sleep. ‘Poor Gideon,’ she added and surely it wasn’t quite right to feel such a rush of joy at the mere sight of the boyish smile she remembered from the old days in response?
‘Lucky Gideon,’ he corrected softly and the look he slanted her made it clear she was the reason he thought it was worth it.
She smiled back and let herself enjoy this odd journey through a luminous dawn. They were sitting on the box of what she still thought of as her aunt’s carriage. As he was driving the sturdy pair she refused to be shut inside a stuffy, swaying box on wheels on such a perfect morning. So the little kitchen maid was inside the coach in her stead, dressed in her Sunday best and feeling like a Queen of England, she assured Callie, and shook her head at an offer to sit in the fresh air, as well.
‘I’ve never rode in a real coach before, miss, I mean, my lady, and the missus would scold me something wicked if she caught me getting that wrong again, wouldn’t she?’ the girl said with a happy grin.
Callie smiled back in silent glee neither of them need tiptoe round her aunt’s notions of propriety ever again. Now she let herself feel the thrill of a new start life in the
