Remembrance Read online

  “We will work out terms,” she said, then began making him the lowest offer she could think of. And when he in return asked for the sun and moon and stars, she knew that she would not see a bed that night.

  32

  Two weeks, Callie thought. Perhaps to others they were merely days, but to her they were a lifetime. Where was he? What was he doing?

  But she knew the answer to that. In the last weeks she had repeatedly sneaked down to the house and watched. Always, he was surrounded by a fluttering group of pretty women, jewels winking on their gowns and in their hair. The wind carried the sounds of their giggling, of their little squeals of delight when they tried to teach Talis something.

  The first time she had seen him with them, she’d snorted in derision. Talis would hate people hovering over him; he couldn’t stand Nigel fluttering about, wanting to see what Talis was doing. And too, she and Talis had taken great pride in their studies, always competing to see who could do the best job.

  But the Talis she knew and the handsome young man sitting in the sunlight on the stone bench were not the same man. This Talis couldn’t do anything correctly.

  “Show me again how to do that,” he’d say, then look up wide-eyed at some fat-chested girl, as though he’d never seen anyone as smart and pretty as she.

  In the few minutes Callie stood to one side looking at him, he failed in his attempts to strike the correct strings on a lute, couldn’t sing (yet she knew he had a beautiful voice), and expressed amazement at some advice a girl with wide hips gave him on how to dress.

  Callie didn’t know where all the young women came from. Some were his sisters, some were ladies-in-waiting, but most were strangers to her. It was as though every pretty female in the county had been ordered to surround Talis and tell him he was wonderful.

  Callie didn’t know that Talis had seen her the moment she turned the corner and that his ineptitude with the hovering women had been solely for her benefit. Truthfully, he had found all—well, almost all—of the women annoying more than anything else. For the first week he had been flattered, but now they were in his way every time he took a step, asking him to help them onto horses, showing him their sewing, wanting to practice French with him, asking him to pick fruit from the highest tree branches because he was so very tall.

  Philip and James had nudged him with their elbows, and at first Talis had smiled at them, but in the last few days, he’d turned a furious face to them, making them back away from him in fear.

  And Callie, he thought. Callie.

  Since he’d talked to Lady Alida he had tried to keep away from Callie. It was better for both of them, was his reasoning, and, besides, he needed to learn to get along without her. He was a grown man, wasn’t he? And it would be better for her, too, if she learned to get along with other women.

  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