The Runaway Countess (5 page)

Just as his father had always done.

And Jane had spoken to him softly that night as well. Had watched him with those concerned eyes as Makepeace helped him up the stairs.

‘Not to worry, my lady,’ Makepeace told her. ‘This is merely what young men do in society.’

‘But surely Ramsay does not…’ she had said. Then she learned that Ramsay did and he saw that bright hope die in her eyes. He had killed it.

Hayden opened his eyes and found himself not a callow newlywed at his town house, but alone in a strange room with Jane’s familiar
voice outside. He studied the chamber for the first time since she brought him in there.

It wasn’t a large room, but it was cosy and warm with thick blue curtains at the windows muffling the patter of the rain. There was the old
chaise
, a small inlaid desk piled with papers and ledgers, and a dressing table cluttered with pots and bottles and ribbons. The bed was an old one, dark, heavy carved wood spread with an embroidered coverlet. A dressing gown was tossed across its foot and a pair of slippers had been hastily kicked off on the faded rug beside it. A screen across the corner was also hung with clothes.

This had to be Jane’s own room, Hayden realised with surprise. He recognised the silver hairbrush on the dressing table; he had run it through The silken strands of her hair several times, winding the long, soft length of it around his wrist. The smell of her lilac perfume still hung in the air.

He had forgotten what it was like to live with a lady, to be surrounded by cosy, feminine clutter. Why would she put him in here of all places?

The door opened and Jane herself appeared
there. Emma peeked in behind her, her eyes wide with curiosity until Jane gently but firmly closed the door between them.

‘The doctor said your leg is not broken, but the wound is a rather deep one. You’ll have to stay still for a few days and let it heal,’ she said. Her face was as still and smooth as a marble statue’s, giving away nothing of her real thoughts.

Nothing about how she felt to have him in her home.

‘Is this your own room, Jane?’ he asked. His voice came out too rough, almost angry, and he felt immediately guilty when she flinched. He had never known quite how to behave around her—except in the bedchamber, when they knew how to be together only too well.

‘Yes,’ she said. She plucked up the silky dressing gown from the bed and stashed it behind the screen. ‘I’m afraid we have few guests here at Barton, so only my room and Emma’s are ready to be occupied. I can stay with her tonight and we’ll tidy another chamber in the morning.’

‘I can sleep in your drawing room,’ he
said, forcing himself to be gentler, quieter. Jane’s face was turned from him so he could see only her profile, that pure, serene, classical line of her nose and mouth he had always loved.

He suddenly longed to push back from the
chaise
, to grab her into his arms and pull her against him. To kiss her soft lips until she melted against him again and that ice that seemed to surround her melted. Until she was
his
Jane again.

But he knew He couldn’t do that. The walls between them had been built too strong, too thick, brick by brick. He had done that himself. He had wanted it that way.

But he still wanted to kiss her.

‘You’re ill,’ she said. ‘I’m not helping you all the way downstairs again just so you can injure yourself once more.’ She took a small bottle out of The pocket of the white apron she wore over her pretty green dress and put it down on the desk. ‘The doctor left that to help you sleep. I’ll bring you some water and something to eat. You must be hungry after your journey.’

‘Jane,’ Hayden called as she turned towards the door.

She glanced back at him over her shoulder, her hand poised on the latch. There was a flash of something, some emotion, deep in her hazel eyes, but it was gone before he could decipher it.

And he had forgotten what he wanted to say to her. No words could bridge this gap. ‘Who is that man Marton?’ he blurted.

Jane’s lips twitched, but she didn’t quite smile. ‘Oh, Hayden. We can talk in the morning. The inn sent on your valise, I’ll bring it up so you don’t have to wear my father’s shirt any longer.’

‘Jane…’ he shouted again, but she was gone as quickly and quietly as she had arrived. And he was alone with his thoughts, which was the very last place he ever wanted to be.

H
ayden was asleep.

Jane tiptoed carefully into the room and set her tray down as gently as possible on the dressing table. She didn’t want to wake him. She had no idea what she would say to him. There were so many things she wanted to know. Why was he here? What did he want? Was he going to agree to a divorce?

And yet there was a part of her, a deep, fearful, secret part, that didn’t want to know at all.

She eased back the edge of the window curtain to let in some morning light. Not that there was much of it. It still rained outside, a steady grey
drip-drip
against the windows
and the roof that she prayed wouldn’t spring a leak. Not now, with Hayden here. It was bad enough he had seen Barton Park in all its shabbiness.

She turned to study him as he slept on the
chaise
. He hadn’t moved to the bed, but was stretched out under an old quilt on the
chaise
where she had left him. The bottle of laudanum was untouched, yet he seemed to sleep peacefully enough.

She tiptoed closer and studied him in the watery grey light. It had been so long since she saw him like this, so quiet and unaware, so lost in dreams. She remembered when they were first married, those bright honeymoon days at Ramsay House, when she would lie there beside him every morning and watch him as he slept. She would marvel that he was
hers
, that they were together.

And then he would wake and smile at her. He would reach for her, both of them laughing as they rolled through the rumpled sheets. It seemed like everything was just beginning for them then. What would she have done if she knew that was all there would be?

Yesterday she had thought Hayden looked
different, like a hard, lean stranger dropped into her house. Yet right now he looked like
that
Hayden again, like the husband she had loved waking up with every morning. In sleep, the harsh lines of his face were smoothed and a small smile touched the corners of his lips as if he was having a good dream.

There were no arguments, no tears, no misunderstandings. Just Hayden.

Jane couldn’t help herself. She knelt down by the
chaise
and reached out to carefully smooth a rumpled wave of black hair back from his brow. His skin was warm under her touch, but not feverish. She cupped her palm over his cheek and a wave of terrible tenderness washed over her. She hadn’t realised until that moment just how much she had really missed Hayden.

Not the Hayden of London, the Hayden who had no time for his wife, but the man she had wanted so much to marry. How had that all fallen so very apart?

Suddenly his eyes opened, those glowing summer-blue eyes, and he stared up at her. His smile widened and she couldn’t draw
away from him—it was so very beautiful. His hand reached up to cover hers and hold her against him.

‘Jane,’ he said, his voice rough with sleep. ‘I had the strangest dream…’

Then his gaze flickered past her to the room beyond and that smile vanished. That one magical instant, where the past was the present, was gone like a wisp of fog.

Jane pulled her hand away and pushed herself to her feet. She brushed her fingers over her apron, but she could still feel him on her skin. He rolled on to his back and groaned.

‘How are you feeling this morning?’ she said. She turned away and poured out a cup of tea on the tray.

‘Like I was dragged backward by the heels through miles of hedgerow,’ Hayden answered. He scowled at the cup she held out. ‘Do you have anything stronger, perchance?’

She was definitely not giving him brandy. Not now, while she had the control. ‘No, just tea. You didn’t take the laudanum the doctor left?’

He shook his head and sipped cautiously at the tea when she held it out to him again.
‘I had the feeling I would need a clear head today.’

‘You should eat something, too, then I can change your bandage.’ Jane gave him the plate of toast and sat down on the dressing-table bench. ‘What are you doing here, Hayden?’

He chewed thoughtfully at a bite of the buttered bread before he set the plate aside. ‘Because You wrote to me, of course.’

‘But I never intended for you to come here!’ Jane cried. ‘You could have just written back to me.’

Hayden gave a humourless laugh. ‘My wife demands a divorce and she thinks I should just write back a polite little letter? Saying what? “Oh, yes, Jane dear, whatever you want.” It’s not that simple.’

Jane closed her eyes tightly against the sight of Hayden sitting there in her bedchamber, so close, but so, so far. ‘I know it’s not simple at all. But surely we can’t just go on as we have been for ever. You need a real wife, an heir. And this sham of a marriage—’

Hayden suddenly slammed his plate down on the floor. ‘Our marriage is not a sham! We
stood up in that church and made our vows before all of society. You are the Countess of Ramsay. My
wife.’

Jane couldn’t bear it any longer. He was right; when she walked down that aisle there had been nothing of the sham about it. She had wanted only to be his wife, to live her life with him. But nothing had turned out as she expected, nothing at all. And when the babies, their last hope, were gone…

‘I have never really been your wife, have I?’ she said, her voice thick with the tears she had held back for such a long time. ‘We never wanted the same things, I was just too foolish to see that back then. We were so young and I didn’t know what would happen.’

‘What is it that you want, Jane? What have I not given you?’ He sounded confused, hurt.

Yourself
, she wanted to shout. But she could never say that. She had built her pride up again, inch by painful inch, here at Barton. She couldn’t let it crumble away again.

‘I couldn’t give you an heir,’ she said quietly. ‘I couldn’t be the kind of grand countess you needed. So I gave you the chance to move forwards in your own way.’

‘Or perhaps you want the chance to marry that man Marton.’

Jane gave a choked laugh. Maybe she
had
harboured vague hopes of moving forwards with David Marton, or someone like him. Someone kind and peaceful, who wouldn’t break her heart all over again. But that had only been a dream, so far from reality. She had to be done with dreams. They had never brought anything good.

‘Sir David has been kind to me, yes,’ she said as she turned away from Hayden and fussed with the clean bandages and the basin. ‘So has his sister.’

‘You’ve made many friends here, have you? To replace the ones you left in London?’

Jane didn’t like his tone, dark and suspicious, almost disgruntled even. He had no right to be suspicious of
her
, not after all that had happened in London. Not after Lady Marlbury. She twisted the bandage in her fist.

‘What friends did I ever have in London?’ she said. ‘Everyone we ever saw was
your
friend. I had to fit into your life, even if I was a very square peg in a very round
hole. So, yes, I have made some friends here. The neighbours and the villagers are kind to Emma and me, they don’t gossip about us. They don’t laugh at us behind our backs. I’m not lonely here.’

‘You were lonely in London?’ he said and sounded incredulous. ‘What did you not have there? What did I not give you? I tried to make you happy, Jane. I gave you what any woman could want.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jane cried. She could feel her emotions, so tightly tied down for so long, springing free and spiralling beyond her control. The pain and anger she’d thought gone were still there. But so was the tenderness. ‘You gave me houses, carriages, gowns and jewels. What else could a woman possibly want?’

Except love. A family. What she had wanted most when they married. There they had failed each other.

‘What did you want from me, Jane?’ he said, a near-shout.

‘You left me alone.’ She spun around to face him. Her handsome husband. The man she’d loved so much.
He
was all she had
wanted. And he couldn’t give her that. ‘When the babies were—gone. When I tried to tell you what I needed. I was so alone, Hayden.’

He shook his head. There was such confusion in his eyes, even though she’d told him this before. Tried so hard to make him see. ‘You just laid there in your room, Jane. You wouldn’t go anywhere, wouldn’t talk to anyone.’

‘There was no one to talk to,’ She whispered. Oh, she was so tired of this, of the pain that wouldn’t end. It
had
to end. She had to end it.

She went and knelt down next to him with the bandages and quietly set about changing the dressings on his leg. It was hard to be so near him, to feel his heat, smell the familiar scent of him and know what couldn’t be again. What had never really been, except in her imagination.

‘Are you happy here, Jane?’ Hayden asked softly.

She nodded, not looking up from her task. ‘Barton is my home. I’ve found a—a sort of peace here.’

‘And friends?’

‘Yes. And friends. Emma and I belong here.’

He was silent for a long moment and sat very still under her nursing attentions. ‘We cannot divorce. Surely you must know that.’

She nodded. She
had
always known that, even with that wild hope that made her write to him in the first place. Men like Hayden, with titles and ancient family names, couldn’t divorce. Even when their wives proved unsatisfactory.

‘But perhaps we can reach some arrangement that would work for both of us,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go on making you unhappy, Jane. I never wanted that.’

Surprised by the heaviness in his words that matched her own emotions, Jane glanced up at him. For just an instant there was a sad shadow in his eyes. Then he smiled and it was gone.

‘My money should be good for something when it comes to you, Jane,’ he said, lightly.

Jane grimly went back to her task. ‘I never wanted your money.’

‘I know,’ he answered. ‘But right now that’s all I have to give you, it seems.’

Hayden frowned as he studied the array of silver items laid out before him on the cloth-covered dining-room table. Patches of each piece sparkled, but other patches were still dull and pock-marked, streaked in strange patterns.

‘Blast it all,’ he cursed as he threw down the polishing rag. He had to be very careful what he asked for here, it seemed.

When he hobbled downstairs at what he thought was a reasonably early hour for the country, Hannah the maid sniffily informed him that Lady Ramsay and Miss Emma were already working in the garden and, if he wanted breakfast, tea and toast would have to suffice. And when he had asked—nay, near begged for a task, she gave him this. Polishing the Bancroft silver that, from the looks of it, had been packed away for approximately a hundred years with no polish coming near it.

How hard could it be to polish a bit of silver while his leg healed up? Wipe things up a bit, maybe get Jane to smile at him again as she once did.

Not so easy as all that, it turned out. He polished and polished, only to partially clean up a smallish tray, a chocolate pot and a few spoons. The newly shining bits only seemed to make the rest of it look shoddier and there were still several pieces he hadn’t touched at all.

Hayden had to laugh at himself as he tossed down the rag. It seemed ‘butler’ wouldn’t be his new job. He would have to find some other way to surprise Jane.

Jane
. Hayden ran his hands through his hair, remembering how she looked at him as she nursed his leg. For just the merest second there, he had dared to imagine that she even looked happy to see him again. For just a moment, it felt like it had when they were first together, and the laughter and smiles were easy.

And for just that second the hopes he had pressed down and locked away so tightly now struggled to be free again. He had to shove them away and forget them all over again. He had to just remember what came after those hopes died and he realised he could never
make Jane happy. That they were only an illusion to each other after all.

But there, in the quiet intimacy of the candlelight and the rain, with Jane’s scent and warmth wrapped around him again, it didn’t
feel
like an illusion. It felt more real, more vital than anything else in his life.

Then those shadows drifted across her eyes again and she turned away from him. He still didn’t know how to make her happy.

He pushed away the silver in front of him and used his borrowed walking stick to push himself to his feet. Labouring away here all alone in this gloomy room wouldn’t make Jane smile at him again. And gloomy it certainly was. It was a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room, probably once very grand. Now the furniture was shrouded in canvas, and paler patches on the faded blue wallpaper showed where paintings had once hung. The rug was rolled up and shoved against the wall. Several crystals were missing from the chandelier.

And yet Jane seemed happier here than amid the fashionable grandeur of their London house.

Hayden heard a burst of laughter from beyond the closed dining-room doors. He limped over and eased it open to peer into the hall just beyond.

Jane and Emma had just come dashing in, apparently after getting caught in a sudden morning rain. Their hair tumbled down in damp ropes and Emma was shaking out a wet shawl.

Jane dropped the bucket she was carrying and shook out her wet skirts. The thin muslin clung to her body, which was as slender and delicate as ever, and just as alluring to him. But what caught his avid attention was the look on her face. She looked so alive, so happy and free as she laughed. Her eyes sparkled.

He remembered how it had felt that first time he took her hand, as if her warmth and innocence could be his. As if the life he had always led, the only life he knew, wasn’t the only way he had to be. That he could find another path—with her.

Maybe it was this place, this strange, ramshackle, warm-hearted place, that had given his wife that air of laughing, welcoming life.
Because here she bloomed. With him she had faded And he had faded with her. Yet here she was, his Jane again.

His hope. And he had never, ever wanted to hope again.

‘Well, Lady Ramsay. What do you think of your new home?’