Remembrance

When Talis had cut a space barely large enough for his body, he grabbed a beam and hauled himself out into the cold, driving rain. Within seconds, he flung open the door. But Talis did not look at Callie, still standing in the midst of a pile of straw that hid her naked body from the knee down. He kept his back to her.

Very sternly, as though she had no other choice, he said, “Callie, put your clothes on. We are going home.”

“But Talis,” she began. “I think we should stay here. I think—”

He kept his back to her. “Then I will go and get a horse and come back for you.”

“You cannot. It is too far. It will take too long.” There were tears in her voice.

“I will run.”

“Talis, you cannot run all that way. It is miles.”

He lifted his hands skyward. “Callie,” he said in exasperation, “I could run for miles and days. Perhaps for years. I could run to the ends of the earth. I could—” But he didn’t say another word before he began to run, run as fast as he could move to put distance between himself and Callie’s beautiful nude body.

But he didn’t have to run far for he found Callie’s horse with its reins caught in some bushes, so he was able to return to Callie very quickly.

Later, after he was able to rescue her, Talis was quite proud of himself for what he had done. But for some reason Callie was so angry that she wouldn’t speak to him and her unjustified rage made Talis angry. When did girls, people you could have fun with, turn into women, who were incomprehensible?

Their ride back to Hadley Hall had been in silence and Callie didn’t thank him even once for rescuing her.

38

And what are you smiling about?” James asked Talis as he stretched out beside him, Philip taking the other side. “In truth, you have been most pleased about something these last weeks.”

When Talis didn’t answer, Philip also began urging him. “Come now, you can tell us. We are your brothers.”

Talis was lying on the bank of the river that ran not far from Hadley Hall, his hands clasped behind his head and looking up at the azure of the sky. Nearby Hugh stood with his horse as it drank from the river. All morning Talis had been training with his brothers, but there were times when he could hardly keep his mind on what he was doing.

“Tell us!” James demanded.

Knowing the value of making his listeners wait to hear the story—something he’d learned from Callie—Talis took a moment before he answered.

&n

bsp; “Callie is trying to seduce me.”

That was not what James and Philip had expected to hear. But the words made their minds whirl with the possibilities. They were always trying to seduce the girls who worked about the hall, and here Talis was saying that a woman was trying to get him to…to…

“What has she done?” James whispered, awe making his voice almost inaudible.

Talis’s face had a dreamy expression as he looked up at the sky. “Locked us alone together in an old cellar. She’d had a new door put on.”

James looked at Philip across Talis’s inert form and wiggled his eyebrows. “Oh yes, I am sure this is true. If I see a shed with a new door then I know it is because a beautiful woman is trying to seduce me. Do you not also find this true, brother?”

“Most certainly. It is one of the certainties of life. A new door equals a lustful woman.”

Talis was grinning broader. “Laugh all you want but she never stops. It is night and day.” Images began to float through his head: Callie naked in the shed; days later holding her dress up to show her bare legs when she was crossing a pond that was hardly deep enough to cover her toes; the frequency with which she tore the tops of her gowns.

“Yes,” he said happily, “Callie is trying to seduce me.”

“How do you know?” “I doubt if she is.” “You probably just think she is,” his brothers replied in unison.

“Every time I look up, she is naked or at least partially so,” he said softly, and in his mind he began to list the things she’d done in these last weeks since the time in the shed. He would have died before he admitted that he had not figured out what she was doing that first time in the storm. But since then he had understood and driven Callie nearly mad with feigned stupidity. He was praying that the more naive he was, the harder she would try.

“Perhaps you ‘boys,’ ” Talis said, to sound as though he were the oldest and wisest of the three, “would suggest to her that she rise from the sea wearing nothing but her hair. Or, since there is no sea near here, the cow pond would do as well. Yes, I would like that. Callie wet and wearing just her hair.”

It was a moment before the other two could get their mouths closed. James recovered first. “I see. Callie is trying to seduce you but you, being the very strongest of men, have resisted all of her attempts.”