With a bow cold enough to make her shiver, he retreated out of reach. “I wish you a safe journey to Hampshire, madam, and I’ll hold myself at your disposal for when you require my services.”
She’d never thought kind, generous Hugh Rutherford could sound like that, as though he intended every word to pierce her skin. She swallowed an agonized whimper and backed toward the door.
It was time to go. She’d already done more than enough damage. For the first time, she let the aching depth of her love fill her voice. “Goodbye, Hugh. May heaven keep you.”
Jane didn’t wait for his reply. She couldn’t bear to witness his suffering. Nor could she any longer maintain her pretense of strength.
Blindly she turned and on trembling legs, stumbled from the library.
*
Chapter Thirty-Four
*
Garson rode up to the pretty Queen Anne dower house on the Townsends’ country estate outside Winchester. Around him, spring flourished. Tender green covered the trees. Birds sang their hearts out. A gentle breeze whispered promises of summer to come.
Unfortunately he was in no mood to hear. For him, life was all freezing winter.
A sour brew of self-hatred, trepidation, and, much as he resented it, uncontrollable longing stewed in his belly as he dismounted from Lysander’s back onto the gravel drive. No groom emerged to take his horse, but the door at the top of the short flight of limestone steps opened to reveal his wife.
His heart crashed against his ribs, winding him. Every other turbulent emotion died away to nothing, as overpowering sorrow closed his throat. He hadn’t seen Jane in a month, not since the day she’d told him she loved him, then packed her bags and left. He’d missed her like the very devil.
So many times, he’d nearly broken the rules she’d set and pursued her. Then he recalled her stark expression as she’d claimed she could only hope to find happiness away from him, and he’d resisted the impulse. He’d done her more than enough damage—and she didn’t deserve any of it.
What sin had she committed? She’d fallen in love. He better than anyone knew that love made its own rules.
As she came down the steps toward him, his pulse broke into a headlong gallop. He hadn’t expected her to seem like a stranger, but she did. A lovely, distant stranger in a pretty yellow dress he hadn’t seen before. A red-headed woman with a composed air that caught him off balance. He’d wondered—hoped—that their separation weighed as heavily on her as it did on him.
Not very worthy, perhaps, to want his wife to suffer. But he’d endured a hell of guilt and rage and remorse since she’d gone. Not to mention a gnawing sexual frustration that threatened to make him start clawing at the wallpaper.
If she was happy, then it was more than likely she’d never come back to him. He couldn’t face that possibility.
“Good afternoon, Hugh.”
Her serenity grated on nerves already stretched to breaking. It just felt so wrong that they should come together in these circumstances. The raging storm of loneliness and hurt inside him felt ready to explode like lit gunpowder, while she sounded the way she had when they were nothing more to one another than childhood friends.
“Don’t you have any bloody servants?” He’d arrived, determined to uphold his good intentions. Those good intentions outlasted that cool greeting by precisely five seconds. “It’s damn shabby of Fen and Anthony to leave you to fend for yourself.”
In fact, everything about the Townsends’ interference was damned shabby. What right did they have to meddle in a man’s private business? He had a nasty suspicion that Fenella had fostered Jane’s plans to leave him.
Much too soon after Jane’s departure, before any scar tissue had grown over his wounds, he’d fronted the Townsends and accused them of butting in. Harsh words had been exchanged, and as a result, a coldness had arisen between him and people he’d always considered good friends.
Not that he cared much. Compared to the loss of Jane, what did his quarrel with Anthony and Fenella matter?
Now he noted that his surliness didn’t rattle this woman who was much closer to prim Jane Norris than that passionate creature, Jane Rutherford. “I sent them away. I thought you’d prefer privacy for your visit.”
Admitting she was right didn’t improve his humor. “My summons, you mean,” he snarled.
Because he wasn’t angry about the absence of servants. Or about her measured reaction to his arrival. He wasn’t even angry because he had to ride all this way to bed his wife. Once. Then ride home again, even more frustrated—if that was possible. In any right universe, Jane would sleep beside him every night, and he’d exercise his husbandly privileges whenever the impulse took him.
He was angry because she’d gone away, and he had a horrid feeling that she was never going to come back.
His hand crept up to cover the inside pocket where he’d shoved the letter she’d sent to invite him here. When he’d first read it, he’d wanted to burn it. But somehow it had ended up nestled next to his heart instead. Damn it, he didn’t know why he even kept it. It was no billet-doux.
My Lord…
She didn’t even address him as Hugh, curse her.
As I have no happy news of a forthcoming event to share, I will expect you this week. Perhaps Tuesday afternoon? If this arrangement meets with your approval, I will await you then. If not, I am at your disposal any other day you wish to nominate.
Yours respectfully
Jane.
No expression of affection. Not even an inquiry after his bloody health. He’d received more effusive letters from his tailor.
He’d wondered if letting his wife spend these weeks away from him might convince her that she was better off returning to him. But so far, the yawning chasm between them seemed even wider than it had in London. She’d drawn herself up behind walls that he couldn’t assail, and that fact made him want to roar his fury and despair to the skies.
“Hugh, you seem out of sorts.” Jane’s regard was impressively steady. “Would you prefer to postpone our meeting?”
“I’ve been traveling for three days,” he retorted. “No, I don’t want to postpone our meeting.”
“So long? When I came down, I managed the trip in a day.”
“I stayed overnight in Winchester,” he said coldly, even as a humiliating schoolboy flush heated his cheeks.
That chilly little note had been his first contact from his wife since her departure. He’d been so desperate to see her, he’d set out far too early on Sunday, then remembered she’d said Tuesday. If he turned up on Monday, he risked alienating her altogether. He’d stopped at a flea-bitten inn about thirty miles from London, then last night, he’d had to cool his heels in Winchester until it was time to leave for his appointment.
“Oh,” she said, clearly puzzled.
“I didn’t want to arrive too exhausted to perform,” he responded nastily.
Part of him stood back, appalled at his churlish manners. He’d always been lauded as the perfect gentleman. Even when Morwenna left him, he’d behaved well. Right now, not even his best friend would accuse him of behaving well.
Hell, given how Silas had sided with the Townsends over this farrago, his best friend would call him an unmitigated boor. Jane had always had this ability to pierce through his civilized shell to the primitive man beneath.
“I see,” she said, blushing, too. “I’ll take you to the stables, and you can look after your horse.”
The poignant reminder of her sweet innocence as his bride only made him feel worse. He struggled against his urge to seize her up in his arms and kiss her until she admitted that she’d been wrong to leave him.
“Thank you.”
She cast him an uncertain glance, as if she didn’t trust his courtesy. Who could blame her? He noticed, too, how she kept her distance, as they went around the back of the house to the stable yard. She’d studiously avoided all physical contact when she greeted him. No handshake. Definitely no kiss.
“Are you all right, Hugh?”
In silent apology, he patted Lysander’s glossy ebony flank. “I just missed a step, that’s all.”
They entered the stables. A pretty chestnut mare poked her head over a stall gate and whickered a welcome.
“Nice horse,” he said to break the oppressive silence.
Jane paused to rub the chestnut’s nose and whisper some nonsense. Garson was in such a bad way, he felt jealous that a horse could make his wife smile. It was a talent far beyond his meager powers.
Guilt emerged dominant from the roiling stew of emotions in his gut. He’d promised to make her happy and instead, he’d broken her heart.
“Fenella and Anthony lent her to me.” She leveled a troubled gaze on him. “Fenella said you didn’t approve of their help.”
As he led Lysander into a stall, Garson bit back a torrent of heated invective. “I was annoyed that they encouraged you to leave me.” The understatement of the year.
“They didn’t. Don’t blame Fenella and Anthony for our problems. You and I both know things couldn’t continue as they had.”
His belly knotted with anguished denial, as he began to unsaddle Lysander. Jane sounded so certain that the decision to abandon him had been hers alone, and that she’d been right to make it. Perhaps she was. Even his jaded eyes saw that she looked in better form than she had in London. Still lovely, of course, but the brittle air had vanished. Whereas every time he glanced in a mirror lately, he felt like he’d aged another ten years.
Living with him had clearly come close to destroying her. How he wished he could change that. But he had a sick feeling that it was too late to make amends.
“When you’re finished, come back to the house,” she said. “The first door on the left off the landing leads to your room.”
Garson paused in unbuckling the girth and straightened to stare at her in shock. “My room?”
Had he mistaken what Jane offered him today? Was she inviting him to stay? His battered heart swelled with excruciating hope.
She retreated a pace. “I thought you might like to wash and have something to eat before…”
Bugger and blast. Hadn’t he learned by now that hope was always a mistake? “Before I do my duty?”
Damn it, there was no dignity in playing the deserted husband. This was worse than those days after Morwenna left him. But then, Morwenna had never worked herself into every facet of his life the way Jane had.
To do his wife credit, she responded calmly enough to his barbed question. “Yes. I’ll be waiting in the next room. When you’re ready, come to me.”
“You’ve got it all worked out, I see,” he bit out.
She didn’t wince. Her self-control started to worry him. In his more optimistic moments, he’d wondered whether seeing him after these weeks apart might weaken her resolution. After all, she claimed to love him. Surely she’d missed him, even just a little bit.
But he found no chink in this woman’s armor, no hint of indecision that offered him a chance to lure her back.
And despite repudiating her love, he ached for her return. He’d spent every day of the last month, feeling like someone had taken a saw and amputated a leg or an arm. Yet now, in Jane’s presence, however unsatisfactory their meeting, he felt whole again.
Odd but undeniable.
“Next time, we can organize things differently, if you like,” she said with more of that deuced detachment, as if she discussed an afternoon walk instead of how she’d give herself to him. “Perhaps you’d prefer it if I came to your inn.”
“I’d prefer it if you came home,” he growled, heaving the saddle off Lysander’s back and setting it on the wooden barrier dividing the stalls.
“You know that’s not possible,” she said, and be damned if he heard any trace of regret in her tone.
“I know nothing of the kind.” Before she could argue, he went on. “Shall we dine afterward?”
There were already oats and water in the stall, so he took up the saddle cloth and began to rub Lysander down. Not that the short ride from Winchester had tired the magnificent brute.
“Hugh, I thought you understood,” Jane said, eyeing him as if he might cut up rough. “After you’ve…finished, you have to leave.”
“What?” he asked, baffled. “When do we talk?”
She met his gaze, her eyes opaque. “We don’t.”
Garson dropped the saddle cloth and stared at her in consternation. “I want to know how you are.”
Her lips firmed. “I’m well.”
Good for her. “I’m not.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She didn’t bloody sound it. He wasn’t angry now. He was sad and lonely, and deathly afraid that he’d blundered about and ruined something that could have been marvelous. “Is this really what you want?”
Her delicate jaw set with the stubbornness that he’d learned, to his cost, could match his. “I’m not going through my reasons again.”
“Come home to me, Jane. Forget this nonsense.” He abandoned pride to admit the shameful truth. “I miss you.”
Her pale features were so set, they could be carved from alabaster. “Have you changed?”
He knew what she wanted to know, but nonetheless he tried to weasel out of answering her. “I’ll never take you for granted again.”
She wasn’t fooled. “You know what I’m asking.”
He did. She wanted to know if he was still in love with Morwenna. He considered lying, but in the end, that assessing gray stare undid him and his threadbare strategems. “I haven’t changed,” he said miserably.
“I thought not,” she said in a carefully neutral tone and turned to leave the stable. “I’ll see you upstairs when you’re ready.”
“You know,” he said in a harder voice, sick to his stomach of playing the villain in this scene, “a monumental attack of the sulks isn’t likely to persuade me to love you.”
Jane stopped without turning. Her shoulders were straight as a ruler, but the white nape of her neck under the weight of coiled red hair was strangely vulnerable. God above, how he wanted her. He damn near died of wanting her.
“I’m not trying to manipulate you into caring for me, Hugh,” she said in a quiet voice. “You can’t make someone love you, as you should know better than anyone.”
He hid a wince. The jibe was low, but justified.
She went on before he could dig himself any deeper into a hole. “If I’m to go on, I have to find a small corner of sanity.”
By driving me mad, he wanted to say, but didn’t. Feeling awkward and useless, he watched her walk out of the shadowy stables and into the bright sunlight.
*
Chapter Thirty-Five
*
Jane sat in a low-backed chair beside the bedroom’s unlit fire, waiting for her husband and praying she could do what she must.
Meeting Hugh again cast her into such confusion. She’d missed him so much. She’d missed his presence in her bed. More, she’d missed his company. His sly humor, and sweet teasing, and kind understanding.
When she first saw him today, she’d had a job concealing her dismay. He looked ill, pale and strained. The deep lines running from his nose to his mouth added a forbidding sternness to his features.
The urge rose to enfold him in her arms and tell him everything would be all right.
She was glad she’d resisted. After almost a month at the Beeches, she started to feel her life was her own. Years as her father’s nurse, six months as a grieving daughter, then the whirlwind of her marriage had left her fragmented and on edge. The estate’s quiet beauty knitted a few of the holes in her soul together.
Five minutes in her husband’s company, despite his uncharacterist
ic testiness, wrecked her artificial calm and hard-won contentment as if they had never existed. Proof of his power over her. Proof also that she couldn’t go back to playing his second-best bride. It would annihilate her. Condemning herself to a future where the man she loved was a few feet away while endlessly out of reach would be purgatory.
A soft knock on the door indicated Hugh was outside. She beat back a poignant memory of all those nights in Salisbury when he’d slept in her bed. “Come in,” she said in a shaky voice.
He opened the door. She’d feared he might be naked, but he kept his breeches on and his white shirt hung loose around his hips. His long, elegant feet were bare.
When he saw her in her corner, he frowned. “You’re dressed.”
Clearly he didn’t approve. She bolstered her courage and made herself stop pleating her skirts. If only she didn’t have to do this. But she owed him a child.
“I’m not wearing any drawers.” She hoped he didn’t hear how her voice squeaked.
“Very efficient.” This bitterness was new since she’d left him. He’d taken her desertion so badly, much worse than she’d ever expected.
He crossed the room and took her hands. She started at the contact, as she’d started on their wedding night.
She waited for this sardonic stranger to treat her roughly. When he’d arrived, he’d been in a foul mood. But when he drew her up to stand before him, he was gentle.
“You’re not even going to let your hair down?” he asked softly.
She stared into his unforgettable face. The eyelids lowered over his brown eyes in a way that was familiar from a hundred seductions. If he touched her as if he cared, when they both knew he didn’t, the travesty of what they did together would become unbearable.
“This is…this act is for you to get a child, Hugh.” Just as he no longer sounded like he had a grudge against the world, she sounded tremulous and unsure. Like a bride again.
Lord Garson’s Bride Page 25