Callie realized she had worn her muddy boots into her bedchamber and kicked them off. Being right about dreams did not buy Trev any gratitude from her. She tore off the wet oilskin and threw it on the f loor. She hated gentlemen. She hated every single one of them, the ones who had jilted her and the ones who had not. They were useless, hopeless, impossible, and mean. He said he was a cad like all the rest, and she heartily agreed. Doubtless he had a wife already, or perhaps a dozen, and mistresses by the score back in France, all of them beautiful and charming and never at a loss for words. Women adored Trev, all sorts of women threw themselves at him, she had no doubt, and the least of them would be more appealing than Callie on a good day.

She lay facedown on her bed, not quite sobbing into her pillow, but huffing rather brokenly while she envisioned herself running them all through with a hay fork. She would have nothing more to do with gentlemen, or any other people for that matter. She would go and live with her animals, so that she wouldn't have to speak to anyone ever again. Residing under a hayrick in the fields, with only the cattle for company, would be a perfectly blissful existence in Callie's view. She could not imagine how she had ever considered any other arrangement.

She plumped up her pillow and beat at it. Indeed, she really didn't like people at all. She didn't like to make conversation or be looked at or have friends. It was all painful and hopeless, and it would be worse when she lived with Hermey and everyone pitied her the more because she was a useless spinster sister who had been jilted three times.

No—she loved Hermey—but she couldn't bear it. She refused to do it. She would become a hermit instead, or possibly a witch, and frighten little children by haunting some dark wood with her moans. She would adopt a large-brimmed black hat, the more out of fashion the better, and encourage a great number of cats to hang about her.

No one would wonder at this in Shelford. Everyone here would perfectly comprehend that she preferred animals to people. Particularly to gentlemen. Most particularly to French gentlemen. They could all join Bonaparte on that island of his at the ends of the earth, and very happily she hoped they would be there, drinking good claret and singing "La Marseillaise," while she lived out her life under a stump.

She fell asleep contemplating these joyful plans, her pillow soaked in tears.