frowned as if he might read answers on her pallid face.
She looked heartbreakingly vulnerable lying in the dust as he strode back to her. The rise and fall of her bosom told him she was breathing steadily, but she had been unconscious far too long. He wanted to pluck her up off the dusty road and guard her from any threat life could throw at her, even if he was the worst one she could think of. For a breath-stealing moment he wondered if she had a terrible illness. No, he could see no sign of prolonged ill health in her smooth skin and unwrinkled brow, so she hated him so much she lost her senses rather than meet him face to face.
He checked her breathing, then stood over her so his shadow would shield her from the sun. He watched her achingly familiar heart-shaped face for a long moment, then averted his gaze. He was too much of a coward to watch her wake up and see revulsion tighten her features when she realised he wasn’t a bad dream. His wife lay unconscious at his feet and now he was lusting after her like a green boy as well and it shamed him. He also felt fully alive for the first time since he left her, despair biting harder with every step he took. She was smiling faintly in her sleep next time he looked, as if drifting happily in a world that didn’t have him in it. He suppressed the urge to howl like a dog at her latest rejection and went back to brooding over a past that couldn’t be altered.
* * *
Callie was drifting on a thick cloud of feathers while angels whispered benedictions in her ear. For a moment she really believed Gideon had come back for her, so it was perfectly rational to hear angels, but why did this one sound so angry? And did they really carry tall ebony canes and have masses of snow-white hair and piercing dark-brown eyes? Her grumpy angel frowned and remarked it was little wonder she was bad-tempered with two idiots like her and Gideon to worry about when she had better things to do.
Acting like a die-away miss never solved anything, young lady. A fortnight of Gideon’s three months has already been used up with his shilly-shallying. Best to let sleeping dogs lie indeed—whatever is the boy thinking of? It doesn’t make sense to do anything of the sort when they’re only sleeping their lives away as if that’s all there is for them to worry about. Just you wake up this minute, my girl, and stop being such a ninnyhammer. You haven’t been happy without him since you sent him away, so get up and face him and a few facts at the same time, the spectre ordered her with a stern look and Callie frowned as waking up suddenly seemed a good idea.
Her airy cloud deflated and she felt far less comfortable avoiding Gideon than she had when she welcomed unconsciousness with a sigh of relief. She wrinkled her nose as a bit more reality crept in; this was a hard resting place with too many stones for a lady to lie about on as if she had nothing better to do.
‘Go away,’ she croaked, hoping to reclaim her quiet cushion of feathery peace instinct warned her not to relinquish as the dragon-angel ordered. She might be lying on a dusty road dreaming impossible things, but she didn’t want to face real ones right now.
‘Would that I could,’ Gideon’s voice replied and a heavy thump of her heart reminded her why she’d welcomed an attack of the vapours in the first place.
At last she gave in and blinked her eyes open, because she didn’t want to dwell on the regret in Gideon’s voice. He sounded absolutely here and far away all at the same time and wasn’t that trick typical of him?
‘What are you doing here?’ she murmured with an unwary shake of her head. Dark spots wavered in front of her eyes and warned her some shocks weren’t to be got over lightly and she lay down again until they went away.
‘Straight to the nub of the issue, as usual,’ her husband said wearily.
She glanced up at him looming over her and saw worry and frustration in his grey-green eyes, but still couldn’t stand up and face him. Maybe in a moment or two she’d find the right blend of courage and calmness, and maybe never, a sceptical voice whispered and she wasn’t sure if it was hers or belonged to the forceful spectre she dreamt up just now.
‘If you can endure me carrying you, you’ll recover far better in the shade.’
‘Be quick then,’ she ordered, waving her dusty hand imperiously as a defeated queen.
‘Your wish is my command, Highness,’ he joked as he lifted her up as if she were made of fairy dust.
Callie knew perfectly well that wasn’t so and felt the power of him when he plucked her from the ground without a hitch in his breathing. Was it right to be insulted by his rock-like composure? The Gideon she remembered was slender as a lath and she could read him as easily as a child’s primer, yet this man was a closed book to her. Her body responded to his as if it recognised him and that would never do. Callie the lover—the wife, came alive again in a hot flash of fiery need. Horrified to feel so aware of him, she squirmed and he told her testily to keep still lest he drop her.
Once upon a time he was the sun to her moon; the reason she got up in the morning and slept at night, if they could spare time for sleeping. Surely she had more sense than to fall under his spell twice? Of course she had. The moment she could set one foot in front of the other without falling over, she’d march away and prove he meant nothing to her.
‘Put me down, Gideon,’ she demanded in a breathy voice she hardly recognised.
‘You’ll fall over if I do.’
‘Nonsense, I’m perfectly well.’
‘Of course you aren’t.’
‘I wish you’d let me walk, I’m not a child,’ she complained, even though she sounded like a pettish one to her own ears right now.
‘Stop behaving like one then,’ he said in a preoccupied tone, as if he had more important things to do than tidy his inconvenient wife off the King’s Highway.
‘I’m not. I feel sick,’ she said querulously, wondering what had come over her. Gideon had, of course, and he was as calm as a rock while she felt as if her whole world had been turned upside down.
‘Then I’m definitely not putting you down.’
‘It’s a lie,’ she confessed with a blush she hoped he couldn’t see under the liberal coating of dust miring her cheeks. ‘I thought such a neat gentleman as you wouldn’t want that fine silk waistcoat spoilt and you’d put me down.’
‘You really can’t wait to get out of my arms, can you, Wife?’ he said with a quirk of his mouth that might pass for a smile in a dark room.
‘No more than you can to ride off and forget me for another nine years,’ she retaliated childishly, unable to stop her tongue saying things she’d rather it kept quiet about.
‘You do me an injustice, Calliope. How could I ever forget you?’
She distrusted his words, took them as mockery. Tears stung her eyes for a perilous second, but the thought of tear tracks in the dirt made her wince. She blinked hard and stared into the little wood he was carrying her towards until they dispersed. She should dismiss him from her life as lightly as an old gown, but perhaps she could lie about a lover to disgrace him with and persuade him to go away. Except she’d never met a man who made her feel the way he did. If she wasn’t careful she’d become the sort of female who lay about on sofas half the day and wafted about like a low-lying cloud for the rest of it. Or hoped for impossible things, and wouldn’t that be a waste of time?
‘I can still walk, you know,’ she said crossly.
