Regency Surrender: Forbidden Pasts. Elizabeth Beacon

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