‘You don’t look like any coachman I ever encountered,’ a deep and amused male voice drawled from behind her.
A gentleman she’d never seen before in her life halted his dancing mount beside the carriage very much against that fine animal’s wishes. He bowed from his saddle with such elegance she felt dowdy and windswept and fervently wished he’d go away. ‘Good day, sir,’ she said with distant politeness.
‘It is now,’ he said with a rogue’s grin. ‘And a good day to you, as well, Miss Whoever-You-Are,’ he said, with a wary glance at her gloveless left hand that made her blush and wish she hadn’t thrown Gideon’s rings back at him when they parted all those years ago.
‘Sommers,’ she said impatiently, more out of habit than a wish to deny her husband and then it seemed foolish to correct herself to a stranger she would never see again.
‘I can see that,’ he murmured with a grin that made her realise what was meant by wolfish and she wished Gideon would hurry back.
‘I am called Sommers,’ she explained shortly, doing her best to ignore Biddy’s cough of disagreement and her fine imitation of a disapproving chaperon.
‘And every bit as lovely as a summer’s day you are, too, Miss Sommers. What a fortuitous coincidence that I happened on you today whilst we’re in the midst of that fine season, as well,’ the wolf told her with such admiration in his oddly familiar green-and-grey eyes she might have been all of a flutter, if Gideon hadn’t already dazzled her for good.
‘Nonsense, I’m not lovely and neither is being too hot for comfort day after day,’ she snapped with a glare at the heat haze on the horizon. ‘I do wish people would stop comparing me to a summer’s day, it really is most unoriginal.’
‘Shakespeare? I feel I ought to know, but I never did mind my books at school.’
‘It is from one of the sonnets and I was flattered to have it quoted at me once,’ she said, recalling the heart-racing sound of it on Gideon’s lips, but then, if he’d recited a list of linens when they were young and in love it would have taken her breath away. ‘It grates sadly upon repetition.’
‘I shall obtain a book of sonnets and learn them off by heart for future use,’ the stranger said with what looked like real admiration in his eyes and Callie wished she hadn’t forgotten her married status in a moment of absent-minded annoyance.
‘I’m not interested in an idle flirtation, or any other sort of idleness for that matter. I wish you good day, sir,’ she said firmly.
‘It might not be so idle as you think,’ the man said and made her wonder if all the gentlemen in so-called polite society required eye-glasses and were too vain to admit it.
‘It had better be,’ Gideon’s darker voice said from behind them.
‘Peters, what the devil are you doing here?’ The stranger greeted him as if they knew each other. Plainly they didn’t, or the rake would know her husband’s real name.
‘Winterley,’ Gideon replied coldly and it made her think again about his other life and how many secrets it held. Apparently he had another name altogether and what else had he failed to tell her about his existence since they parted?
‘You know each other then, gentlemen?’ she asked as brightly as she could when they looked about to challenge each other to a bout of fisticuffs, if she was lucky.
‘Not as well as we think,’ Gideon said tightly and wasn’t that the truth, Callie thought cynically, wondering if anyone knew Sir Gideon Laughraine but Gideon himself.
‘But perhaps better than you would like us to?’ the man challenged him. If they were friends at all, it was clearly a prickly sort of friendship.
‘Perhaps,’ Gideon said, and addled Callie’s brain by climbing back into his seat and holding her hand as they faced his dashing acquaintance together. ‘We certainly don’t know each other well enough for you to have met my wife, Winterley, and that makes me wonder why you felt free to accost her on a public highway.’
‘Now here’s a dilemma,’ Mr Winterley drawled with a hard glance in Callie’s direction to tell her what he thought of her lapse of memory. ‘To give the lie to a lady, or admit you and I know each other not at all?’
‘Well, my dear?’ Gideon said with a frown as he dared her to deny him again.
‘I am indeed Lady Laughraine, but tend to forget it now and again. I beg your pardon, Husband, Mr Winterley,’ she said with a nod of curt apology towards each of them.
‘Lady Laughraine?’ Mr Winterley asked blankly. He shot another shocked glare at Gideon that said there was indeed more to her husband’s other life than she knew. ‘What a truly dark horse you are, Mr Frederick Peters.’
‘My husband’s full name is Gideon Frederick Peter Dante Laughraine, sir, but I shouldn’t take it as a slight you didn’t know him as such until today because he only lets the world see as much, or as little, of his true self as he thinks it needs to know,’ Callie told him with that alias of Gideon’s going round and round in her thoughts as she wondered what he had been up to in order to need it.
The tall stranger seemed to pause on the edge of giving at least one of them a blistering set down before he took in Gideon’s ponderous string of names, then a look of unholy glee lit his face instead and he sent Gideon a mocking grin, as if he now knew far more about him than such a private man could want him to.
‘You appear to be an even darker horse than I thought you, Laughraine,’ he said slowly. ‘Oh, well met, Sir Gideon, and how d’you do?’ he added mockingly.
‘Well enough, but I’ll never understand you if I live to be a hundred, Winterley,’ Gideon said with a manly shrug. ‘Ours has never been a conventional marriage,’ he added casually, as if he and Callie kept it to themselves out of a perverse delight in secrets. Since she was the one to demand it came to an end nine years ago, she could hardly complain if he was making weak excuses for that deception now.
‘Then perhaps you should consult with your wife and match up your stories better in future. I wish you both a good morning and hope to see you at dinner. If you dine together as man and wife and not under your chosen aliases in different counties, of course?’
‘Then you are staying at Raigne?’ Gideon asked as if it confirmed his worst fears.
‘Lord Laughraine will invite me, d’you see? This time I rashly agreed to stay for a week or two to escape the husband hunters, since the little darlings will go to Brighton on Prinny’s coattails to carry on their craft out of season. Like a gullible innocent up from the country I agreed to his latest invitation to enjoy some bucolic tranquillity at his expense and quite forgot he was a great friend of Virgil and Virginia’s. Although given what has happened so far this year, I should feel less of a fool now I’m looking at the very good reason he wants me there, shouldn’t I?’ Mr Winterley said mysteriously.
Callie supposed Gideon knew what the man meant, since she felt him flinch and heard a bitten-back curse. The only Virgil and Virginia she knew of were the last Lord and Lady Farenze; Gideon’s late grandfather and his
