Regency Surrender: Forbidden Pasts. Elizabeth Beacon

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Because I asked him about what happened back then and he told me. We have stayed in contact, since I saw no reason to cut myself off from him and he wanted to stay close to you by proxy. Not that I was close to you in any way or could tell him anything about you, since you told me I sickened you and you loathed me with every fibre of your being and never to contact you again.’

      ‘I didn’t, you know that now, but we must forget what my aunt did before it drives us mad.’

      ‘I can’t, Callie, any more than I can forgive what she’s done, so please don’t ask that of me next. Suffice it to say, Lord Laughraine and I thought you must be throwing his letters on the fire as well as mine and he’s been too afraid of stirring up a past you found intolerable to ride over and demand you speak to him. He says he and his did enough damage to you and yours, but your aunt must bear a great deal of the blame for all of it, though, don’t you think?’

      ‘Yes, but does he truly think that?’

      ‘Which bit are you wondering about being untrue this time?’

      ‘I deeply regret not suspecting my aunt was destroying my letters and challenging her version of the truth, Gideon, but does his lordship really want to know me?’

      ‘Of course he does, he’s not the sort of man who judges a child for something they are completely innocent of. I’m a far greater obstacle to Christian forgiveness than you will ever be—he would have every excuse to hate me, given how the succession stands, but he can’t even manage that, so just give him a chance, Callie. I promise you he’s nothing like the ogre you seem to have made of him in your imagination.’

      ‘I’m beginning to see that. For years I thought he was happy to leave me in ignorance of who I truly was so he didn’t have to admit his son was a rake. I know we weren’t going to talk about Aunt Seraphina, but she does intrude into our lives even now, doesn’t she? Until we understand exactly what she did we can’t forget her. She said my paternal grandfather is as proud as the devil and would never openly acknowledge me, but everything she told me was a lie. Yet the poor man’s heart must sink at the prospect of me as the only source of Laughraine blood left, unless he’s prepared to make an April-and-December marriage and that doesn’t seem likely as he’s been a widower for over twenty years, does it?’

      ‘No, he was devoted to his wife and seems genuinely happy for us to inherit Raigne one day between us.’

      ‘Who says there can be an us? I’m not sure I can do it again, Gideon,’ she asked, panicked by the certainty if she was left alone with him too long she would make a fool of herself and beg to be his true wife again.

      ‘Not yet, maybe, but one day I hope to change your mind. Meanwhile I’m not made of stone, despite your obvious belief to the contrary.’

      ‘You must be, if you really haven’t had a mistress all the years we’ve been apart.’

      ‘We’re back to that again, are we? Very well, if it makes you feel better I’ll swear on anything you ask me to that I’m telling the truth. I’ve been on the rack for you, Callie. In the early days I often couldn’t sleep for the lack of you in my bed and at my side. I daydreamed about making love to you when I should have been slaving at my books and stayed working at my first and mostly hopeless cases late into the night because I hated going back to a place I couldn’t call a home without you in it. I can’t count the number of times I set out to find you because I couldn’t stand being alone any longer. Then I’d remember the last weeks when you wouldn’t even share a room with me and that infernal letter you say now that you never sent and it would strip me of any hopes or dreams and I’d go back to my law books and do my best to pretend living without you wasn’t hell on earth. All I had left of you was those vows to be faithful only unto you and I kept them,’ he ended defiantly and no doubt he had, after they parted, since he looked as if the emptiness of those years had been punishment enough for any man’s sins.

      ‘I’m sorry for all those wicked, wicked lies she told using my name,’ Callie said lamely, reeling at a sight of her wild and passionate young lover fully alive under the cool facade he used to keep the world at bay. ‘We were good friends, once upon a time, though, weren’t we, Gideon? Perhaps we could be so again,’ she added clumsily.