Regency Surrender: Forbidden Pasts: Lord Laughraine's Summer Promise / Redemption of the Rake

That confession of how bleak his childhood really was almost broke her heart. How could they not have blamed themselves when he was the innocent party? That disgusting bet Esmond Laughraine had made to seduce a bishop’s daughter no other man would dream of even trying to get into bed without a very public ceremony and a wedding ring was appalling, but the bishop’s daughter had succumbed of her own free will and Gideon had no choice about the matter at all. He wouldn’t quite believe her if she championed him now, because she had turned away his love, as well. Despite all the good reasons she thought she had at the time for doing so, how much damage she had done by taking the easy option? Yes, it was simpler to cut out the despair and hurt from her life and go on without him, rather than patch up some sort of marriage between them. But none of that would put things right between them now and make him believe he was a deeply lovable and honourable man, despite his shocking betrayal of her when she was at her most vulnerable.

‘You make me sound so meek and mild, Gideon—as if I sat and softly wept all the time you were accusing me of luring you in with my witchy wiles,’ she chided lightly, because it was better than weeping and letting him see she pitied the boy who grew up with parents who didn’t deserve him.

‘You gave as good as you got, didn’t you, spitfire?’ he said with a wry smile, as if he remembered those furious rows and their making up afterwards with affection.

‘And will again if you’re not careful,’ she said, chin raised to warn him she was no doormat nowadays, despite her nun-like existence since they parted.

‘Good, because I wouldn’t have you any other way,’ he said with a boyish grin that did something unfair to her insides.

‘It’s just as well I have no intention of changing then,’ she said.

Was she secretly conceding that, for the right incentive, she might be tempted to try again? No, she didn’t want to be a convenient wife, primped and perfumed and ready to oblige her lord in the marriage bed as part of a cynical bargain. If they resumed their stormy marriage it must be as equal partners. Yet he was so self-sufficient he looked as if he didn’t need anyone nowadays, let alone a wife who would demand a place in every aspect of his life she could get a toehold into.

‘What will happen to Raigne if we remain apart?’ she asked abruptly, the thought of being with him for the sake of a huge inheritance sour in her mouth as she tried to swallow it down with cold tea. ‘I dare say you would be accepted as the heir without me.’

‘I might be the legal heir, but you’re the true one.’

‘Yet you love Raigne and nobody else will keep the place as you will.’

‘You could if you wanted to.’

‘I’d be laughed out of court. I’m your wife, so everything I own is yours.’

‘And what if Prinny decided to challenge me on the strength of some old gossip and the wrong family resemblance? You can see why they were so keen for us to wed, can’t you? Still, at least when we eloped we simply wanted to be wed and never mind anything else.’

‘We should have known better,’ she said sadly.

Her husband stared out of the window at another cloudless morning as if he was unable to feel the warmth and she tried not to care. ‘Indeed we should,’ he said at last in that clipped, carefully controlled voice she was learning to hate.

‘I’m sure Grandfather Sommers wanted us to be happy,’ she said as if that made the gulf between those young lovers and now a little less.

‘I wish you’d believe Lord Laughraine does, as well, Callie. It’s not his fault we looked for reasons to hate each other when our baby died. I wish you could find it in your heart to forgive me for that, even if everything else I did and didn’t do is beyond it.’

He looked as if memory of the quarrels and furious silences that marred their marriage had been a hair shirt to him ever since. Memories of long, hot nights of driven passion after they found out what her grandfathers were up to slipped into her mind and whispered they couldn’t have felt such endless need for each other if all they had was lust. Then she thought of their baby and shivered. Nothing had mattered to her but the terrible space their little girl left behind her in the dark days after that terrible journey from London to King’s Raigne to bury their child in Grandfather Sommers’s recently dug grave.

She simply hadn’t any emotion left over for Gideon or anyone else after that. Even the irony of hearing her real mother invite Gideon, Callie and Mrs Willoughby’s sister, Aunt Seraphina, to stay with her whilst they considered what to do next, since they had nowhere else to go at the time, was wasted on her. For the first time her true mother opened her life to her secret child and they might as well have been on the moon for all the difference it made to Callie. Her withdrawal from the world was a way out of heartbreak and she’d dived into that grey nothing as if not feeling anything was all that mattered. No doubt Gideon felt desperate for comfort, painfully young and bereft as he was, as well. It wasn’t an excuse for what he did, but she wasn’t as blameless as she liked to believe at the time.

‘First I’d have to forgive myself,’ she said with a sigh, and half-heartedly pushed a slice of cold bacon round her plate so she wouldn’t have to meet his intent gaze.

‘You must, Callie, there won’t be a pinch of happiness for either of us until you do.’

‘I’d have to look past a lot more than petty quarrels and grief for there to be an “us” again, wouldn’t I?’ she challenged him.

‘Ah, and there’s the rub. You don’t want to see past that farce, do you?’

‘No,’ she admitted bleakly. ‘There’s no excuse for what you did that day.’

‘Yet even in a court of law a person is innocent until proven guilty. You didn’t bother to wait for niceties like that before you condemned me, did you?’

‘I expect that’s why you like them. I prefer to believe my own eyes,’ she said bitterly.

‘You still want to think I was unfaithful, don’t you? Whatever I said fell on deaf ears because you had already given up on us. It was a good excuse to finally push me out of your life and you’ve certainly done your best to forget I exist ever since.’

‘How could I? We had a child,’ she said with the sadness of losing her daughter still raw in her throat after all these years, and her absence seemed all the more savage now they were in the same room and she wasn’t here.

‘Yes,’ he said bleakly, ‘we did.’

* * *

‘Ah, there you both are,’ Aunt Seraphina said as if she had been looking everywhere for them before she breezed into the room.

Anyone else would feel the tension and leave them in peace. Callie caught herself out being disloyal and managed to smile a half-hearted welcome.

‘I thought you two had broken your fast and gone out long ago,’ Aunt Seraphina remarked blandly, although the door would hardly have been shut in that case, so why lie?

‘I had a disturbed night,’ Gideon said, reverting to unreadable again.

Callie felt as if some golden opportunity to understand all they’d lost and gained had been brushed out of the room like house dust.

‘Poor Kitty is mortified she mistook you for a burglar in the dark last night, Sir Gideon,’ her aunt went blithely on. ‘We can’t sleep safe in our own beds of a night any more. I really don’t know what the world is coming to,’ she added, shaking her head as she poured herself coffee and refused anything more substantial as if it might choke her.

Her aunt did look careworn this morning, as if she hardly slept last night. So why didn’t she admit hearing noises in the night if she was sleepless for most of it?

‘Whoever it was knows there is a man in the house and a very alert housemaid now, so I doubt they will ever come back,’ Gideon said, as if he’d never discussed the likelihood of the disturber of the peace coming from inside the house with Callie.

‘Well, I admit now that I should have listened to you, Calliope, and found another handyman when we found out the last one was more often drunk than sober, instead of trying to manage without as best we could,’ Aunt Seraphina said, and why did Callie feel as if every word she said had a ring of falseness this morning?

‘We could get a dog,’ Callie suggested with a half-hearted smile to admit they had had this conversation many times and her aunt still couldn’t abide dogs.

‘I think another man of all work would be less trouble,’ Aunt Seraphina replied with the polite titter even her niece was beginning to find irritating.

‘There are plenty of dogs at Raigne. Lord Laughraine has a pack of assorted ones that follow him about the place,’ Gideon reminded his wife as if it might be a carrot to get Callie there, if his own desire to have her home wasn’t enough.

She felt little and petty for making him feel he had to tempt her, but couldn’t he see what a huge undertaking it was for her to go there with him? It would mean trusting all she was to him and, without the headlong, driven love between them ten years ago, how could she do that when even mutual obsession hadn’t kept them together before? Her heart raced at the very idea and she searched her morning for an excuse to avoid him and work out what she really wanted to do.

‘I dare say the servants hate the work such hairy animals cause,’ Aunt Seraphina said sourly and Callie felt guiltily irritated by her naysaying ways.

‘They are as happy to see them as he is every morning,’ Gideon said with a fond smile for the man he had no right to call uncle, but Callie never doubted the affection between two men who had every reason to dislike and distrust one another, yet did not. She wriggled in her seat against a pang of guilt because she had cut herself off from her grandfather as well as her husband and that too seemed petty and rather little this morning.

‘I’m glad to hear the creatures don’t sleep in his lordship’s room,’ her aunt went on with her subject like a bulldog worrying at a bone.

‘Only two or three at a time,’ Gideon said, as if enjoying Aunt Seraphina’s reluctance to call a peer of the realm’s habits distasteful. ‘But I doubt anyone could get into the house without them raising the roof.’

‘Oh, but I couldn’t endure all that mess to keep a chance felon away,’ she said with a shudder. ‘I shall trust employing an extra man will put the housebreakers off trying again.’

‘I should like to have a dog about the place,’ Callie said wistfully.

‘His lordship would be very happy to find you one,’ Gideon said.

‘There you are, you see, my dear? Your husband has found the perfect way to lure his wife back to Raigne and keep her happy, has he not?’ her aunt said with false brightness, as if he was offering Callie a childish bribe to resume their marriage and she might not be clever enough to spot it.

‘If you will excuse us, Aunt, Gideon and I have a great deal more to talk about than our pets or lack of them,’ Callie said and rose from her seat before the lady could argue.

‘You mistake my concern, Calliope. I know you are a woman now and not a silly girl taken in by bribes and promises,’ her aunt said with such dignity Callie knew she was offended.

‘Then why make such belittling comments in the first place, Aunt?’

‘Because he always set us against each other and now he’s doing it again,’ Aunt Seraphina said with an accusing gesture at Gideon, who looked impassive and made Seraphina seem shrill and begrudging by contrast. ‘It’s my duty to point out you always were a fool for this man and don’t show many signs of learning from past mistakes.’

‘I have run the academic side of this enterprise and proved myself a woman of ability and character. You cannot trust me with all that, then accuse me of being an empty-headed idiot the first time I show any sign of questioning your wisdom, Aunt.’

Aunt Seraphina looked unconvinced for a tense moment, then sighed heavily and nodded as if to affirm Callie was a different creature from the heartbroken girl of nine years ago. ‘Very well, my dear, I must trust you have learnt judgement, I suppose. You will remember what happened last time, though, won’t you?’ she said with what looked like such genuine anxiety for Callie’s well-being that Callie branded herself an ingrate and reassured her aunt she could hardly forget.

The insidious thought slipped into her mind that, if Aunt Seraphina was truly as devious as she must be to have hidden hers and Gideon’s letters for so long, she would know arguing against her niece and Gideon having time alone would make them more suspicious. No, that had to be unjust and unkind of her, she really didn’t think her aunt could have kept so much of her essential self hidden for so long when they lived in the same house.

* * *

‘I don’t know why I’m letting you drag me out here when I need to get ready for the new term,’ Callie protested half-heartedly ten minutes later. ‘But why did you refuse my aunt’s offer of the gig so we could take a drive before it gets too hot to move, Husband? Are you ashamed to be seen with me in such a drab getup?’ she added.

Gideon saw self-doubt was tripping her up again and how could she not know she was one of the most beautiful creatures he’d ever laid eyes on?

‘Don’t put words into my mouth, Wife,’ he teased and got a half-hearted smile out of her. He resolved to make sure she never had to worry about being less than perfectly turned out ever again and promised himself yesterday’s gown would go into the ragbag as soon as she had even one new gown to eke out her meagre supply.

‘Then why don’t you want to leave the house or gardens?’ she asked suspiciously.

Did she think he was lying to disguise his distaste for her plain round gown and old-maid-like cap? In fairness his first impulse was to rip that monstrosity from her head so her glossy dark curls framed her enchanting face again, but he had to tread on eggshells around his love if the hope he couldn’t quite keep bricked up in his mind wasn’t to crash and die, and he would never do that to her, anyway. She had endured enough slights and humiliations at the hands of her sly aunt over the years. So he would go on treading carefully round the snags that had been put in her self-confidence for as long as it took him to reassure her she was his lady and his love and beautiful to him whatever she wore. Best if he didn’t think about what she might not wear and look even more superb and delicious if they ever got close enough to be man and wife again right now.

Meanwhile they had set out on a sedate stroll towards the orchard. Callie must have noticed how closely he was watching the house and was looking suspicious about his motives for staying within sight of it until he was proved right or wrong about her aunt’s motives for keeping her so close all these years and him so far away.

‘You were ill yesterday and today you need to rest. Anyway, perhaps I’m curious about this house and the people you have lived with all these years?’

‘Why? We are a simple people living a quiet life.’

‘I doubt there’s any such thing as simple people with straightforward lives.’

Gideon had half an eye open for the signal the little downstairs maid agreed to make if the Missus or Kitty-Cat, as she called Mrs Bartle and Kitty, went up to the attics. The rest of his attention was caught by his wife flushing as if he’d smoked out her darkest mystery and he almost forgot to watch for a duster being shaken out of the window three times, after all.

‘What guilty secrets are you keeping, Callie? Besides me, of course, and I think we can say that cat is already well and truly out of the bag.’

‘I am a simple schoolmistress, I don’t have time for secrets,’ she said, but didn’t quite manage to meet his eyes. Gideon felt a terrible, heart-plunging fear she might have a furtive admirer or even a lover, after all.

‘Am I going to have to kill some besotted country swain, Wife?’ he managed coolly.

‘What’s sauce for the goose, Gideon dear...’ she said and let her voice tail off so sweetly he felt his old wild fury stir under the goad of hot jealousy.

‘Don’t play with fire,’ he warned her austerely.

‘I told you yesterday that I have no lover.’

‘So you did. What’s this mysterious secret you feel so guilty about then, Wife?’

‘I don’t feel guilty exactly,’ she prevaricated, clearly wondering if she trusted him enough to let him know what it was and that didn’t hurt him, of course it didn’t. It wasn’t as if he needed to know the inner secrets of her very soul. Such intimacy was for true lovers and she didn’t have one of those any more—not even him.

‘Then what do you feel?’

‘Disloyal, I suppose,’ she admitted at last.

‘To me?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Oh, no, of course not,’ he echoed rather hollowly and told himself not to be a fool. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed back into her life with open arms, so he couldn’t complain she didn’t think he deserved her loyalty.

‘You weren’t here to be disloyal to,’ she explained as if that covered everything.

‘So I wasn’t. What is this dark secret you don’t feel guilty about then?’ he asked grumpily, wondering if he was wrong about her aunt, after all. Maybe Mrs Bartle didn’t have a secret cache of his and Callie’s letters hidden somewhere. Perhaps she received his and found them so distasteful and embarrassing it was easier to pretend she did not.

‘I write books,’ she confessed as if it were a sin on a par with poisoning ambassadors or defending guilty criminals against the might of the law.

‘You do?’ he asked, startled to hear it, but instantly proud of her all the same. ‘Should I have heard of you?’

‘Not yet, I am trying to correspond with a gentleman who says my work is nearly ready for publication, but my aunt and my husband seem determined to get in the way.’

‘So that was what you were up to yesterday?’

‘Yes, I use another name to exchange letters with him, since Aunt Seraphina disapproves of lady novelists. I have a dream of living on my own and teaching only one or two days a week and Aunt Seraphina certainly won’t approve if I succeed. So I pick up his letters and send mine off to him without my aunt’s knowledge.’

‘What a dark horse you are, my Callie,’ he said, thinking that at least those letters stood a better chance of reaching their destination than any she entrusted to her aunt ever had.

He had always known where she was, of course—what sort of an investigator would he be if he hadn’t?—but she made no secret of her identity when she reverted to her maiden name. He should have sent his letters by courier and insisted he put them into her hands only, but he had been as taken in by Mrs Bartle’s air of refined integrity as everyone else. After that letter setting out Callie’s hatred of him and fervent wish never to set eyes on him again, he lost heart and his letters were desperate pleas for a hearing and protests of innocence she didn’t want to believe in.

Except Callie hadn’t written it, had she? It occurred to him Reverend Sommers had made a far better job of raising his granddaughter than either of his daughters. Was that why he taught Callie as if she were a boy rather than a girl? Maybe that good and clever man saw the mistakes in his daughters’ upbringing and devoted himself to teaching Callie his moral code and fine principles instead of leaving it to a governess to instil a set of ladylike accomplishments that had little practical value or interest to a girl with a fine mind like hers.

‘You really don’t mind?’ she asked as if she had been expecting doubt or fury.

‘No, why on earth would I? And after you informed me I have no right to be offended about anything you do, I’m surprised my feelings matter so much to you, anyway.’

‘Of course they do, but you know perfectly well that if I had admitted to a secret admirer you would have torn him limb from limb and locked me up in the highest turret of your castle,’ she teased back, and didn’t that feel wonderful?

Gideon stamped down hard on a fierce need to kiss his wife senseless. It was best not to run before they learnt to walk again as man and wife and he didn’t want to let his raging need of her stampede through the fragile relationship they seemed to be building brick by careful brick. He wondered how he could convince her he was perfectly happy for his wife to write, as long as she did it while she was living with him instead of alone or with her aunt.

‘Why is Biddy waving her duster so wildly from the landing window, Gideon? It really looks most peculiar.’

‘She is?’ he exclaimed and turned to see the tail-end of the signal he and Biddy had agreed on. ‘The devil, that’s even sooner than I expected. Excuse me, I must hurry or I’ll be too late,’ he said absently, then loped off, hoping she understood he’d far rather stay and talk to her, but time was a-wasting.

Chapter Six

For a startled moment Callie watched her husband dash back towards the house as if it were on fire. She could stay out here and wait for him to come back and tell her what he was up to, she supposed, but he had a poor record for sharing secrets, so she hurried after him. It wasn’t because she couldn’t stand being parted from him now they were within touching distance of each other once again—it was curiosity, plain and simple. Her heartbeat quickened, anyway, but she was running to catch up now and that was perfectly understandable.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered when they reached the hall and he realised she was on his tail, then stopped so abruptly she cannoned into him.

‘No,’ she murmured and gave him a push towards the stairs to let him know there was no point arguing.

‘Exasperating woman,’ he mumbled under his breath. She glared when he half turned to glower at her and bade him watch his step. ‘Keep quiet then and don’t give us away,’ he told her softly and they went up the stairs while she was trying to think up something pithy enough to demolish his arrogant certainty he was in command.

Tight lipped, she did her best to tread as stealthily as he did, but that was impossible. She managed to avoid the stair that creaked after he did the same without seeming to think about it. He must have explored the house with this sort of stealthy pursuit in mind. It looked as if the dangerous adventures Lady Virginia hinted at when she visited were very real and not a cunning scheme to soften her heart as she thought at the time. She was glad she hadn’t known what he was really up to at the time and terrified he knew too much about the darker side of life to be her idealistic and loving Gideon again. Now where had that come from? She didn’t want this man to be anything of the sort to her again, did she?

Never mind that now, they were on the half-landing and heading for the attic stairs. That seemed so absurd she stopped wondering how she felt and kept as close as she could to him. Her world felt right and safe when she was near him and that should worry her. The door opened without a sound and why were the hinges so well-oiled when these rooms were full of lumber? The maids slept on the other side of the house and the stableman lived over the stables, so what had once been the male farm-servants’ quarters were now empty.

Why was Gideon creeping towards a lot of dusty rubbish as if on the track of lost state secrets? Callie noted footprints in the dust on the twisting staircase and held her breath for a moment, then shook her head in disbelief. There was nothing much up here and it was already uncomfortably hot. His tension still made her listen for the slightest noise and she recalled a few Gothic touches in her own novel then wished she hadn’t. It was absurd to let her imagination run riot, but she felt a flutter of superstitious fear before she told herself sternly this was no time for spectral visitations. They were a few steps up the twisting stairway when Gideon waved his hand to stop and she forgot imagined horrors for real life.

Frozen in her tracks, she was cross with herself for obeying orders like a soldier on parade. From the soft murmurs ahead it sounded as if there were two people in the little storeroom furthest from the stairs. Impatient at him for being a step closer to danger than he was prepared to let her go, she pushed the small of his back to urge him on. He resisted, as if he had to stand between her and hurt like a wall. He must have felt her impatience with such overprotective nonsense, because he reluctantly went up a step so she could hear, as well. First there was her aunt’s voice saying something impatient and a lighter voice in reply. Why was Kitty arguing with her aunt here when they could do it downstairs in comfort? It didn’t sound as if they were discussing using the rolls of dimity and calico stored here to make new gowns and aprons for the maids. Her aunt economised on them until threadbare, but surely that wasn’t an important enough to linger over in a stuffy attic on a day like today.