As Callie ran, she paused only long enough to remove Kipp from his hiding place under her skirt and pull him to her waist, where the little monkey hung on for dear life. Callie’s fear transmitted itself to him and he did not protest the bumpy ride.
When at last she reached the shed, she sat down in the midst of the clean straw she and Dorothy had had taken to the shed, the straw she had meant to use for her seduction of Talis, put her head on her knees and began to call Talis to her. Only once, as children, had they used it in earnest, and that was when Talis had been lost when he was a boy. Many times they had thought the same thing at the same time, arrived at the same place at the same time, but they had only laughed about the coincidence. And if either was hurt, the other always came right away.
But now Callie knew that her very life depended on seeing Talis and seeing him now. He must choose freely. She must know that he loved her more than he loved anything else, and that included his honor and his pride. She knew she could not tell him of the marriage she was being forced into, for if Talis knew, his honor would force him to marry her.
And all her life, Callie would feel that she’d tricked him into marriage. But if he chose her freely, with no strings, no threats, then she would be justified in jeopardizing a future that could possibly be glorious. But he must choose her over everything else—including his honor.
Even as Callie sat there, using her mind to call Talis to her, she knew that his honor and his pride were everything. If Talis’s hesitation were caused by another woman, she could fight her; she could wear revealing clothes, do things with her hair. But Callie had nothing so ordinary as a woman to fight; she had to fight what was inside Talis himself.
It was not long before Talis arrived, out of breath from a neck-breaking ride on a horse, his sword drawn. He looked dazed, as though he did not know what he was doing there, as he did not.
“What is it?” he demanded of her. When he saw that there was no blood dripping from Callie and that all her limbs were intact, his face changed from the fear he’d felt as the urgent, not-to-be-denied call inside his head, to one of annoyance. “Callie, I ran from my father at your call. Do you know how this makes me look? One minute my father is personally instructing me on the use of a sword and the next I rudely leap on Hugh’s horse and ride away. I am sure they all think I am insane.”
“Talis,” Callie said, moving to stand in front of him. “I want us to get married today. Now. The priest in the village will do it. Everyone already thinks we are great sinners. He will be glad to save our souls by marriage.”
“Is that what this is about?” Talis sheathed his sword. “Another of your attempts to seduce me? Callie, please, I love all of this but there is a time and place for everything.” Turning, he started toward the door.
“No!” she cried, grabbing the front of his jerkin. “This is different.”
He gave her a knowing little smile. “Different from all the other of your attempts to seduce me? Callie, my love, did you not think I knew what was going on? I have known always. Every time.”
Giving her a brotherly kiss on the forehead, he started to push past her. “Now I must return to my father and apologize.”
She would not release him. “Talis! Listen to me. I know you knew and I know how you enjoyed the game. How could I not know something like that about you? But I swear to you that this is serious; this is different.”
“How is it different? What has happened?”
To Talis’s disbelief, he could see that Callie had no intention of telling him what had happened—if anything. He could hardly fathom it, but Callie was keeping a secret from him. Never had she done this before. Oh, she might pretend she was not trying to seduce him when she was, but now there was something that she was not telling him.
His back stiffened, and instantly, Callie knew what was wrong.
She would tell him, she thought. In spite of her better judgment, she would tell him all. She could not allow his honor to separate them. “Lady Alida—” she began, but Talis cut her off.
“Do you start on that poor woman again?” he asked. “She is dying. Can you not see that?”
“She means to marry me to another.”
“Nay,” Talis said calmly. “That is not true. There are things that you do not know of.”
“Talis, do not be blind to what is around you. There are things that you do not know. Do not let your pride come between us. Let us be married today, now. If I am no longer a virgin no one on earth can part us.”
With a knowing smile, Talis chucked her under the chin. “Then that is what this is all about. What did my lady mother say that has made you believe she means to marry you to another? Or did she say anything? I think this is just another of your ruses. Will the door slam shut again? Will I need to hack through the roof again?”
Callie’s face was serious. “This is no jest. She has shown me the man.”
“If she has said something to upset you, she was teasing you. She plans for us to…No, I cannot tell you. I have made vows to God.”
“You have made vows to her,” Callie said spitefully and even to her own ears she sounded jealous.
“No,” Talis said seriously. “You do not know what has transpired. I have put my hand on the Bible. My honor is at stake. I have—”
“You have been used,” Callie spat at him, all her anger at him coming to the surface. Why would he not listen to her? “We have been used. They care nothing for us, only what they want. They have used you against yourself.”
“You talk in riddles and you could not know what you say. The people you speak of are my mother and father.”
“You do not believe that. John Hadley is my father and that woman is my mother. Can you not see the truth?”
Talis stood looking at her, puzzled, knowing something was wrong but he could not figure out what it was. That Lady Alida was not his mother was no surprise to him. Whoever she was, she was a lonely woman and she had promised him that if he acted as a son to her, she would give him so much. And all of it would be for Callie—if Callie would just be patient. How very much he wished he could tell Callie what he was doing, what he had planned, but he could not. All he could do now was try to soothe her. Everything would be well in the end if she would only trust him. How could she doubt him?
“Callie, what is wrong with you? You used to be so soft, so loving, so…so sweet natured. Now you are—”
Callie glared at him, angry at his lack of understanding. She was fighting for her life. “Yes, once I gave love because I received love. But in this time in this house I have given but received nothing. You have stood by idle while I have been exiled, ridiculed, humiliated. You have cared nothing for me.”
“You are wrong! You do not know what you are saying. If only you knew what I have done to help us to be together.” With each word he could feel himself pulling away from her. How could she believe he cared nothing? How could she think he had not lived every minute of his life just for her? Did she not realize that what he did with Lady Alida was for her, for Callie?
“What have you done? Please tell me. I am waiting. You must tell me what you were doing when you were following after Lady Frances as though you were on a leash. You must tell me why you have…” Her voice lowered. “Why you have not asked me to marry you.”
Talis knew that what he was going to say would hurt her, but pain now was better than breaking his vows to Lady Alida and losing their future. He had seen this Peniman Manor and he wanted more than anything in the world to give it to Callie, to see her there with their children.
“I cannot tell you,” he said, hoping she would trust him.
“It is as I thought,” Callie said. “Your pride, that damned honor of yours is everything and I am nothing.” She turned away from him.
“Callie!” He grabbed her arm. “I love you. You are my life. You are everything to me. Surely you must know how much I want you as a man wants a woman. You must know how difficult you have made my life these weeks when
you have…when you have appeared naked before me. You must know that I die with the wanting of you.”
She whirled around to face him, her hair flying about her, almost as though she meant to strike him. “May you always love me and want me but never have me,” she said, and her words sounded like a curse.
“Callie,” he pleaded, reaching for her, but she drew back.
“Then this is your final word? You will not go now and marry me, even though I tell you that this means my life to me?”
“One of us must be sensible. I am bound by vows that make it impossible for me to be free. I cannot tell you of these vows or I would. You must trust me.”
“Yes, I am to trust you but you are not to trust me. I tell you the truth and yet you do not believe me.”
“Callie, my love, you are overwrought now. We should return and—”
“Yes,” she said coldly. “You must get back to that father who is not your father, to that woman who is not your mother. You must get back to that glorious future of yours. When they put the crown on your head will you think of me?” With that she swept past him, Kipp running to catch up to her.
For a moment Talis stood scratching his head, not able to figure out what Callie was up to. This was, of course, merely another of her attempts to seduce him, but today she seemed more upset than usual. But he did not like what she had said. May you always love me and want me but never have me, was what she had said, and just remembering the words sent a chill up his spine.
Tonight, he thought, tonight he would see Lady Alida and demand that she release him from his vows. He could not stand what this separation was doing to him and Callie. Perhaps tomorrow he might take Callie and return to Meg and Will. But whatever Lady Alida said, tomorrow, he would go to Callie and tell her all.
40
Have you heard?” Lady Frances asked Talis, her nose in the air, her head cocked in a way that Talis found very annoying. What nasty little thing was she going to tell him about Callie now?
“I have been too busy minding my own business to hear much,” Talis said as he ran his sword edge across the big grinding wheel. With his training on the farm he was one of the few men who could achieve a proper edge on a sword.
“Your Callasandra was married to Peter Erondell not an hour ago.”
“Is that so?” Talis said, without the least concern. What would those jealous biddies think of next? Of course it pleased him that they were fighting over him but, all the same, it could be most annoying. “And who is Peter Erondell?”
“Your mother brought him here. I heard that she had to pay him a great deal of money to marry that plain-faced girl. But little Callie went along well enough and said all her wedding vows without a word of protest. Even now she eagerly awaits the wedding night.”
Talis had stopped sharpening his sword to look at Lady Frances. “You are a liar.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but it is true. She met and married him in one day. He is a very good match for such as her. She has done well.”
There was, of course, no truth to this, and Talis could imagine how all Hadley Hall would laugh at him if he believed such lies as this. He had best play along with them and keep what pride he could manage. However, at even the thought of Callie marrying another, he could feel the blood pounding through his head so hard he could hardly think.
Carefully, slowly, he put his sword back to the whetstone. “And where did this fine wedding take place? Were there no guests? No feast?” Talis’s head was so full of blood that he could hardly recall this afternoon, but he did remember that Callie had tried to make him think she was to wed another. But how in the world had she been able to get Lady Frances in on the trick? Now Talis was, no doubt, to go running to Callie in a rage and beg her to marry him. It would not work. He was not going to fall for her—
“Where is she?” he heard himself asking, then was horrified to realize that he was holding his sword to Lady Frances’s beautiful white throat.
“You may kill me if you must, but that will not change what is,” Lady Frances said with the utter confidence of a beautiful woman. No man on earth was going to harm her.
Frances smiled sweetly when Talis lowered his sword. “She is now in the chamber next to Lady Alida’s, awaiting her bridegroom.”
Talis left the woman there, her laughter ringing out behind him as he ran full speed into the house. All he could think of was that he was going to wring Callie’s neck when he saw her. But at the same time he was flattered at this further proof that she loved him. Perhaps Callie was right and perhaps he should be more firm with Lady Alida; perhaps James and Philip and Hugh were also right when they warned him about Lady Alida, this woman who had said she was his mother—but was she?
There were too many thoughts in his head for him to sort them out as he tore up the stairs to the chamber.
Callie was alone in the darkened room, only one candle burning on the far side. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, and when he entered, she did not turn to look at him, but he could feel her misery. This time she was not joking; this was no trick.
Going to her, he knelt before her on his knees and took her hands in his—and his heart almost stopped. There was nothing in her eyes. Absolutely nothing. It was almost as though her soul were missing from inside her body.
Talis refused to think of what he had just heard. That is not what could be wrong with Callie. “What has happened?” he asked. “Is it Meg? Or Will? Have you had news from home?” As he said the word he realized that with Meg and Will he had been home, and now, more than anything in the world he wanted to go back there.
“Come,” he said, “we will leave this place. We will go home.”
Callie did not move. Instead, she put out her hand and caressed his cheek.
Taking her hand, he kissed the palm. He might be unable to think, but he was still able to feel and what was in her poured into him. “What have you done?” he whispered, some part of him knowing, but almost too frightened to hear the words.
When he looked at her, he knew. He knew. He knew that she had done what she had threatened.
What ran through him was more than rage. It was white hot hatred. Hatred, the other side of the coin of love. Rising, he went to the window to stare out sightlessly. “You have married another?” he said, his jaw tight with his anger, his sense of betrayal, the full extent of which had not yet hit him.
Mutely, Callie gave a nod, her eyes on her hands.
A thousand words ran through Talis; a thousand visions of the two of them together as children, as adolescents. He saw her as she was the day she fell face down in the pig pen; he saw her sitting in an apple tree, her bare legs hanging down. He saw her last week standing naked in the straw. He saw her with their children. He saw all that he had done to make a future for them, to win them a place to live.
“Why?” was all that he could say. Thousands of words and thousands of dreams condensed into one.
“With this deed of mine I have given you the world,” she said. “Your father can make you king.”
At first this made no sense to him, but then he remembered things that Lady Alida had said to him, about Gilbert Rasher being related to the queen. She had talked to him about this more than once. But Talis had not thought much of it. She had even once asked if he would like to be king and Talis had laughed at her. “I want only Callie and what is mine,” he’d said and had never meant anything so much as he meant those words.
Now, looking at Callie, his lip curled into a snarl. “You know me so little that you think I would want such as this? Do you think I would want to give my life to a country when all I want is…” He could not say the words. As he looked at her he knew that he was looking at another man’s wife. Wife!
“You did not want me,” she whispered. “I asked you and you did not want me.”
Talis was so angry he could feel his entire body trembling. And so he told her the truth. His vows to God no longer meant anything to him. What did he care about his immor
tal soul if he lost Callie? He told her of his vows, how he had worked so hard to win Peniman Manor for her so they could live together there with Will and Meg.
“But you could not wait for me,” he said. “You could not trust me, or believe in me. You…” He could not speak; could not bear to be in the same room with her. He had lived all his life for her and she had betrayed him.
“So now you have your husband,” he said, his voice beginning to break. He could not think of anyone else touching Callie, could not bear the thought.
“May you never love anyone but me,” he said and strode from the room.
It was an hour later that it was discovered that Callie was missing. Lady Alida set the household to trying to find her. When it was discovered that Talis was also missing, it was at first assumed that they had run away together.
But it was Dorothy who was sure that Callie and Talis were not together. When she heard what her mother had done, she was furious. Breaking Callie and Talis apart was like splitting a house down the center; neither half would be able to stand alone.
When Dorothy saw Penella in a state of agitation, she crossed herself, for she had an idea of what the maid was going to say.
“Where is she?” Dorothy asked.
“It is my fault,” Penella said and she was nearly insensible. “I should not have interfered. God has punished me. It is my fault. I should not have stopped the fire.”
Dorothy gave the woman a shake. “Where is Callie?”
“The fire. The fire,” Penella kept repeating. “I could not wake her. She had died there twice.”
When Dorothy saw that the maid’s hands were black with soot, Dorothy knew that Callie must be in the old burned tower. She did not like to think about the second half of what Penella was saying.
It seemed to Dorothy that all of Hadley Hall was in chaos. Her father had found out that his wife had done something to anger his precious Talis and was shouting at everyone.