He dozed as well, coming awake when he realized the rain was falling more gently and there were no more rumbles of thunder. He hadn’t slept long, less than an hour, but he felt recovered from his most recent escape from death. The darkness in the barn had lessened as the storm passed, and when he opened his eyes he saw that Callie was also awake and watching him with thoughtful hazel eyes.
He smiled at her. “Hello, Catkin.”
“I should call you Lion,” she murmured. “Larger than a cat, but of the same nature. And the courage of a lion.”
“Richard the Lionheart?” he asked with a chuckle.
“You have the tawny coloring for it.”
“More or less. Didn’t the Lionheart spend years kicking around the Holy Land getting into trouble rather than staying home in England and taking care of his responsibilities?”
She grinned. “The resemblance grows stronger.”
He laughed. “The difference being that I’m not king of England and I have no responsibilities to the nation.”
“But now you do have a home there,” she said softly.
Yes, he had a home in London and he was bemused by how much he wanted to return to it. “It’s a rather modest house, not a Plantagenet castle. There’s not much damage I can do to England.”
“Maybe not the nation, but just as the Lionheart was irresponsible to leave England at the mercy of his brother, now known as Bad King John, you have a bad brother, too. When the appalling Viscount Welham inherits and becomes Marquess of Kingston, he’ll be the equivalent of Bad King John.” Callie’s nose wrinkled. “He was a nasty piece of work. He regularly tried to get me alone so he could paw me.”
“What!” Gordon jerked to full wakefulness, shocked by her casual words. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought you might kill him,” she said flatly. “I didn’t want to see you hanged.”
“You’re probably right,” he said, trying to clamp down on his fury. He’d never liked Welham, the oldest and most bullying of the Audley brothers, but now he felt murderous. Howdarethat obnoxious brute try to molest Callie! “If I had killed him, I’d have been very careful to make it look like an accident.”
“I should have thought of that,” she said with a wry smile. “He might deserve killing for any number of reasons, but I prefer to think of people who wronged me the same way my nanny did.” She grinned. “She always said, ‘Get on with your business secure in the knowledge that God will get ’em eventually.’ ”
He chuckled and began to relax. “It’s a wise philosophy. These days I usually do just that, but if Welham was here, I’d beat him bloody for what he did to you. I chased him away from housemaids, but I never thought he’d go after a well-born neighbor.”
“I was good at avoiding him, so he was merely a nuisance, not a threat.” Callie’s expression changed. “You said earlier that you haven’t been really close to anyone in years. What about bedmates? I don’t imagine that you took any vows of chastity.”
The unexpected question made Gordon roll onto his back and gaze up at the rough-hewn beams. Callie said with amusement, “I assume that means you don’t want to discuss your romantic life.”
“It’s not a topic a gentleman, even a tarnished secondhand version like me, discusses with a lady.” He slanted his gaze over to her. “But you’re not a lady, you’re Callie, and we’ve always been open with each other.”
“I’ll try to look on that as a compliment,” she said. “How about if you tell me the truth, but not the whole truth? We all have our secrets.”
“That’s a good approach.” He preferred not to think about the whole truth even in the privacy of his own mind. “Unlike Welham, I never touch unwilling women.”
“That I’ve always known. You’re much nicer than you look, Richard.”
“No, I’m not,” he said wryly. “But since I grew up with a female as my best friend, how could I go on to mistreat other women?”
“So I get the credit for your treating the fair sex well? Good.”
“There’s a vast distance between not actually abusing women and always treating them well,” he said soberly. “Because I moved around a great deal, for years I chose unhappy wives as bedmates. They knew the relationship would be limited and that I would never betray them. In return, I did my best to give them pleasure so there would be some happiness in their lives for at least a brief time.” He drew a slow breath. “Then I realized that I might not mean to inflict pain, but I did.”
“Because some of those foolish women fell in love with you?”
He turned his full gaze to her. “How did you guess?”
“How could they not?” She twirled a pinch of hay absently between her fingers. “For a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage, a handsome man who treats her kindly and wishes to give her pleasure is a dream come true. Such a woman would want you always in her life, not merely as a brief, passing affair. I hope no married woman quietly murdered her husband in hopes that you’d marry her.”
He frowned. “I certainly hope not! But it took me years to realize that I was causing pain because I always moved on to some other place.”
“You implied that you changed your behavior at some point. How did that happen?” Her brows arched. “Slowly dawning maturity?”
