Remembrance

Yes, he thought, it would be better for both of them if they learned to live without each other’s company every minute of every day.

But instead of getting easier with each day, being away from her was becoming more difficult.

And then he had seen her watching him while he was surrounded by all those tittering idiots, and, like a fool, he had tried to make her jealous. Maybe he’d hoped that she would step into the middle of them and use a sword to scatter the girls.

But she hadn’t. Instead, she had turned away from him as though she had no desire ever to see him again.

Later he’d wanted to go to her, but his father seemed to keep him busy every minute of the day. For the thousandth time that day he looked up toward the hill behind the house. Edith had told him that Callie had asked to be given a garden to tend, and now she spent her days alone up there.

That had seemed odd to Talis at the time because he knew that Callie, like him, liked animals better than plants. Why had she not asked to care for the birds, the peahens and peacocks?

Just the thought that Callie was doing something he knew nothing about made him ache with longing for her. But this was better, he thought. If he didn’t see her, he would be able to keep his vows to Lady Alida and not touch Callie, not hold her in his arms. He wouldn’t have to see her eyes when he could not tell her that he was working every day toward the goal of marrying her and giving them and their children a wonderful place to live. She would forgive him for his neglect of her when she saw this Peniman Manor and knew that he had worked to give it to her.

“Why do you not sleep?” Philip asked Talis, annoyed with his brother’s tossing and turning. During the day one could see black circles under Talis’s eyes and he was becoming weaker by the day in his training. James had said that it was as though the life were draining out of Talis.

“She is crying and her tears hurt my heart,” Talis said softly.

Philip had never heard anyone say anything like that. And as any virginal young man, he was curious about the opposite sex. “Do you…do you go to bed with her?”

“No!” Talis said then calmed. “It’s not like that.”

“You just miss her then. I know, I miss James when he is gone.”

“No,” Talis said and searched for the words to explain how he felt about Callie. “I have loved many people in my life: Meg and Will, and now you and James, our father. Many people. And I miss the people I love when I am away from them. I miss Meg and Will very much, every day even. But with Callie…”

He paused. “With Callie it is different. I cannot say that I love her, or that I miss her. There is a deeper feeling than that. When she is not with me, it is as though part of me is missing. It’s as though I have been split in half and when she is gone half of me is open and raw. All my blood and muscle, even my brains drain out that open wound. Can you understand that?”

Philip could not, did not, want to understand such a feeling. If this was love, he wanted no part of it. He looked in the dark at Talis’s profile, at his staring, sightless eyes and wondered again if this young man really was his brother. Turning away, he went back to sleep. Tomorrow would be full of more of his father’s eternal training, and now that Talis was so distracted during the day, Philip got no respite from his father’s wrath. If he had his way he’d give this girl Callie to Talis and be done with it. Talis was much, much more pleasant when she was standing in the shadows watching him.

Just before he fell asleep, Philip once again prayed that he’d never fall in love.

“Perhaps I could make you a nice, hot broth,” Callie said sweetly to the young man lounging under the tree and watching her.

“Mmmm?” he said. “And what shall you put in it?”

“Anything my garden has to offer,” she said, batting her lashes at him.

Allen Frobisher laughed in a way that said he knew she didn’t mean a word of what she was saying. Why, if she made him something to drink from her garden it would have to be poisonous. And of course she didn’t mean to do that. Of course she adored him; all women did. How could they not, with his golden hair and his blue eyes and his tall, elegant form? Yet sometimes he almost thought that this girl, this plain-faced girl, did not, well, like him. Which was indeed impossible. Ridiculous even.

“Haven’t you someplace you should be?” she asked, a hoe in her hand, chopping at weeds around some purple flowers. “Isn’t there some heiress you need to try to wed?”

For an instant, Allen frowned. Sometimes the girl made him sound as though he were a nuisance. All in all, if Lady Alida weren’t paying him so much, he would leave this girl and never see her again. “Callie, dear, simple girl that you are, I do not think you fully realize who I am.”

Callie opened her mouth to make a retort to that, something along the lines of his being a wastrel, a worth-nothing, when, suddenly, she stood upright and, shielding her eyes from the sun, looked toward the horizon to watch a man making his way toward them.

Following her look, Allen glanced up; his only interest being whether or not the approaching man was that tall boy, that Talis. Two days ago he had ridden by, and Callie, who until then hadn’t given Allen the time of

day, suddenly became the most wanton creature he had ever seen. From under a tight, plain cap, she had unleashed a torrent of the most ravishing blonde hair, spreading it around the two of them as though it were a golden cloak. Then, in a honeyed voice, she’d begun telling him an outrageous story of dragons and mermaids. Allen had never been so fascinated by a woman in his life. Within seconds Callie had changed from a plain-faced girl into a seductive woman.

Allen had been so enraptured with this glorious change that he’d hardly noticed the tall young man sitting rigidly atop the horse, scowling down at the two of them. Allen had been told of the long-lost son John Hadley had found, but, to Allen, Talis didn’t look much like the rest of the Hadley family. He was a tall young man, sitting on an unruly horse that looked as though it would have delighted in kicking Allen’s head in. In fact, when Talis had looked at Allen, Allen had swallowed hard. If Callie’s hair had not caressed his face at that moment, he might have taken off running down the hill. As it was, Talis said not a word but merely looked at Callie, then turned his horse away.

As soon as he was once again alone with Callie, Allen started to pursue her licentious behavior, but when he reached his hands out to touch her, she soundly slapped his face. While he was rubbing his cheek (she was extraordinarily strong for a girl) she twisted all that hair back under her cap and her face changed from radiant back to the dullness he usually saw.

Never in his life had Allen been so intrigued by any female. It was as though there were two Callies: the one he was looking at now, chaste, demure, boring, and the one he’d seen very briefly two days ago, a Callie who was radiant, ardent, and oozed sensuality.

Now, Allen had been waiting for two days for that girl to reappear, but she hadn’t and he was beginning to get bored. He had no idea what he had done before to bring out the lust in her but he was a little tired of trying to regain it. He was much too vain to think that her sensuality had been for that dark Talis and not for him.

When the approaching man was close enough that Allen could see that he was nothing more than a peasant farmer, he had no more interest in him. Nor was his interest aroused when Callie threw down her hoe and went running toward the man, her arms outstretched. Lady Alida had hinted that the girl was not a lady, in spite of the belief that she was Gilbert Rasher’s daughter. Surely her embracing of this peasant was proof of her common birth.