Regency Surrender: Forbidden Pasts: Lord Laughraine's Summer Promise / Redemption of the Rake. Elizabeth Beacon
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 Gideon’s arrival had rekindled in her heart back in its box and lock it away again. 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