Lord Garson’s Bride

by Anna Campbell

  She felt like someone he’d once known well and now met as almost a casual acquaintance.

  While his reeling mind grappled with the prodigious change, habit shrieked that he couldn’t give up his impossible love. Since she’d returned to her husband, Morwenna’s absence had thwarted his every hope of happiness.

  Look how his loyalty to his first love had poisoned his marriage to Jane and stopped him making a full commitment to the woman he married. At this moment, he wondered whether Jane was better off without him, after he’d caused her so much unhappiness.

  A great howl of denial writhed in his belly. Not if he had anything to say about it.

  So where did that leave his feelings for Morwenna? He’d pledged his love, and he’d stayed true to his word for nearly four agonizing years. But in all that time, he’d only seen her twice.

  Was it possible that while the Morwenna of his dreams remained alive in his heart, the real Morwenna turned into a stranger?

  “I loved her so much,” he said slowly, as the babbling muddle in his head faded to allow the voice of reason to speak.

  “I know you did, old chum.” Silas leaned forward and linked his hands between his spread knees. “It was deuced hard watching you break your heart over her.”

  Garson’s brows lowered, noting that they both spoke of his great love in the past tense. When the devil had that happened? “I’m not a fickle man.”

  Silas’s snort expressed derisive amusement. “Anything but.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yes.”

  Garson blinked to clear the haze obscuring his vision. Then he blinked again, as excruciating self-knowledge struggled up toward the light. Good God, how utterly he’d botched his life. And he didn’t know if he could ever fix it. “You know, I’ll always remember her fondly, but I don’t think I’m in love with her anymore.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t sound surprised,” he said, with a hint of resentment.

  Silas’s gaze remained unwavering. “I think you’re in love with your wife.”

  Garson scowled at his friend. “You just want everyone to have a happy marriage like yours. You’re indulging in wishful thinking.”

  “Am I?”

  Was he? Garson slumped back against his chair as the full magnitude of his idiocy struck him like boulders falling off a mountainside. “Oh, hell.”

  Silas sat back, as if he’d finally got the answer he sought. “I know Jane’s in love with you.”

  She had been. And he was in love with her. Madly. Desperately. Forever.

  It all seemed so simple, now he finally understood. For too long, he’d been blind to the truth in his heart.

  Garson had loved Jane for weeks, probably since he’d married her, at least since their unconventional honeymoon. Before she left, she’d tried to get it into his thick skull that they were the perfect match. And they were. She was just the woman for him. Smart. Good. Passionate. Open-hearted. And brave. Much braver than he’d been.

  How cruel he’d been to her, how thoughtless, how utterly self-centered. He cringed to recall his categorical rejection of her love, when she must have needed every ounce of courage to confess how she felt.

  Devil curse him, he’d hurt her so badly. “I’ve made such a bloody hash of everything.”

  Silas sighed. “So I gather.”

  Guilt and despair battered him. “How can she ever forgive me?”

  “No question you’ve been a fool. Love turns every man into a nincompoop.”

  At a loss about his next move, Garson stared at his friend. “What in Hades will I do if it’s too late?”

  Silas stood and crossed to set an encouraging hand on his shoulder. “First find out if she’ll give you the time of day.”

  “But I’ve been such an utter bastard,” he said bleakly.

  Silas’s smile was wry. “Then say you’re sorry, tell her you love her, and ask her to give you another chance.”

  “What if she won’t have me? I wouldn’t blame her.”

  “I wouldn’t either. You’ve been a complete dunderhead. But I’m always astounded at the generosity that lurks in the hearts of women.”

  His shoulders hunched in despair. “She probably won’t even see me.”

  Silas sighed again and crossed to pick up the decanter. This time Garson didn’t wave him away. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  “Losing Morwenna nearly killed me.” Garson took a gulp of brandy, but it didn’t help. “It will be worse if I lose Jane.” Going on without his wife by his side would curse him to an eternal darkness that would make his moping about Morwenna look like a stroll in Green Park.

  “Take heart, my friend. And have courage.” Silas returned to his chair and raised his glass in Garson’s direction. “Sometimes love means throwing yourself off a cliff, without knowing whether a safe landing waits at the bottom.”

  *

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  *

  It was a couple of hours before dawn when Garson rode up to the dower house for the third and final time. Whatever happened today, whether Jane gave him his marching orders or decided to come back to him, there would be no more visits to Hampshire to claim his conjugal rights.

  In the day and a half since he’d left Silas, his heart had rocketed from hope to despair. Now he was impatient to settle his fate for good or ill. He’d wasted too many years mired in old misery. It was long past time to set a new pattern.

  Jane had once loved him. Did she still? He couldn’t wait any longer to find out. Every moment’s delay was torture.

  He threw himself off the back of the hack he’d hired at Winchester, when he’d last changed horses. Garson stumbled to the ground. London to Winchester, then back again, with this latest trip following so quickly tested any man. If his wife threw him out on his arse, he’d have to find an inn somewhere close to rest and eat before he returned to Town.

  And a future as bleak as an Arctic wilderness.

  He settled the horse in a stall. After he blew out the lantern, he stared grimly into the darkness. Just what the devil would he do, if Jane rejected him?

  He squared his shoulders. Silas had described falling in love as jumping off a cliff. Only now, as Garson teetered on the brink of elation or despair, did he comprehend quite what his friend meant. Generally he wasn’t a praying man, but he prayed that his wife saw fit to give him a second chance.

  “Wish me luck, old fellow.” He patted the raw-boned, but surprisingly fleet bay that had carried him this far.

  The horse whickered and lowered his head to the manger. No reassurance there.

  Garson left the stable and walked around the house to climb the front steps. In the moonlit silence, the crash of the iron knocker resounded like the herald of doom. Soon he heard the bolt slide back, and his wife stood in the doorway, holding a candle. His heart stuttered to a stop, then began to race. His hands fisted at his side, as he resisted the urge to sweep her up in his arms. Physical desire couldn’t solve the problems between them. Only talking could. He hoped to God he found the right words.

  “Hugh!” she said in shock. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  It was a mild June night, and she wore one of the floaty silk peignoirs he’d bought her in Salisbury. The sweet memory of those days struck him like a blow and rendered him as tongue-tied as a nervous schoolboy in the headmaster’s office. Before he could muster an answer, an older woman in a muslin nightcap fluttered up behind his wife. “My lady, who is it?”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Darrell.” Jane turned to reassure her. “It’s my husband, Lord Garson.”

  “Lawks a mercy,” the woman muttered. Garson assumed Mrs. Darrell was the housekeeper. “I was afeared cutthroats turned up to murder us in our beds.” She managed an awkward curtsy in her voluminous nightwear. “My lord.”

  “Please go back to bed,” Jane said. “I’ll look after his lordship.”

  “Very good, my lady.” The woman cast him a curious gl
ance, before she trudged back the way she’d come, leaving Garson alone with his wife.

  Jane raised the candle to illuminate his face. “What is it?”

  “I needed to see you.”

  Her silvery eyes were wide and dark. “Has something happened?”

  Indeed it had. He’d discovered how much he loved her. Not before time, damn it.

  But he couldn’t blurt that out on the doorstep. He suddenly realized he was acting like a blasted idiot. Again. He should have waited until daylight before he came to see her, taken time to line up his arguments. Not to mention wash and put on a clean shirt and comb his hair. After those long hours in the saddle, he must look like a complete gypsy. “There’s nothing to worry about, Jane.”

  Impatience tightened her lips. “Of course I worry when you bowl up unannounced in the middle of the night, looking like the world has ended.”

  “I’ll come back after breakfast. I apologize for disturbing you.”

  To his surprise she stepped back and gestured him inside. “You may as well come in. You’re here now.”

  “But I woke you up,” he said, longing to accept her invitation, but on edge because he’d arrived with such good intentions, and already everything went to hell.

  “I wasn’t asleep,” she said flatly.

  Guilt stabbed him anew. Her unhappiness was his fault.

  “You’re acting like a blockhead. Stop haunting the front step and come inside and tell me what’s the matter. It must be important, if it’s brought you all the way back from London.” Her voice hardened. “Especially as three days ago, you gave me to understand you’d never darken my door again.”

  “As you say, I’m a blockhead,” he said uncomfortably.

  What an arrogant fool he’d been, last time he saw her. He had a sinking feeling he’d been an arrogant fool from the beginning. He’d acted like his feelings were all that counted. How the hell had Jane put up with him as long as she had?

  She subjected him to a thoughtful survey, then to his surprise smiled. “Not always.”

  Her smiles had been so rare lately that painful emotion closed his throat. He couldn’t have responded, even if he wanted to. At this rate, he’d have to write her a bloody letter to tell her he loved her.

  She turned and walked away. Without making a conscious decision, he found himself closing the door and trailing after her. His eyes clung to the subtle sway of her hips under the flowing silk. Her magnificent hair was confined in a long plait that snaked down her back.

  She showed him into a drawing room. From where he stood in the center of the floor, he watched with unwavering eyes as she wandered around lighting candles. If this was the last time they were alone together, he wanted to print every detail into his memory.

  At least she wasn’t angry. Nor had she raised the mental barrier against him that first appeared in London and was as high as Mont Blanc by the time he visited her down here. He was too keyed up to trust his perceptions, but if he had to describe her mood, he’d say watchful.

  “Please sit down,” she said coolly.

  He removed his hat and gloves and set them on a delicate ormolu table. “No, thank you.”

  “Very well.” She came to a stop beside the mantelpiece and studied him. “Tell me what this is all about.”

  He hastened into speech. He had so much to say, so much that he needed her to know. “I saw Morwenna.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, he condemned himself for a sodding moron.

  Jane made a faint, wounded sound and pressed back against the wall. Even in the uncertain light, he saw that she went as pale as milk. Then she gathered her defenses around her. She drew herself up to her full height, and her eyes narrowed on him. “How delightful for you.”

  He flinched at her sarcasm. “No, you don’t understand.”

  “On the contrary, I understand very well. Did she proclaim her undying love?”

  “She’s in love with her husband. She always was.”

  Jane’s expression turned stony. “Well, that’s even better, isn’t it?”

  “How so?”

  “Because now you’ve seen her, your self-pity has something fresh to feed on. You can keep pining for her as the great lost chance of your life. You don’t need to engage with her as a real woman you live with day to day. She just stays on her pedestal, like a marble statue, pristine and perfect and unassailable.”

  Bile rose to sour his mouth as he listened to Jane pour out her bitterness. “Jane, I’m hellishly sorry that I’ve hurt you.”

  That also turned out to be the wrong thing to say. A sweep of her hand dismissed his apology as too little too late. “What’s the point of being sorry? You warned me what to expect when we married. I changed the rules of the game, not you.” He could hardly bear to hear the pain fraying the edges of her voice. “Although you could have saved yourself the trouble of rushing all the way to Hampshire to inform me that your lady love is as exquisite as ever.”

  His brows drew together. She made him sound so cruel. Cruel and childish and selfish. Once she’d considered him a hero. He hated how he’d fallen in her esteem, which was mad when he’d also come to hate the way she thanked him for any kindness, like a beggar receiving scraps at the kitchen door.

  But he supposed, his queasiness sharpening, that was exactly what she felt like. By heaven, he needed to prove himself worthy of her. And he needed to tread carefully, because he was as close to losing her now as he’d ever been.

  Garson inhaled and stood as straight as a soldier on parade. Before anything else, he had to clear up this matter of Morwenna, whose ghost had lingered far too long. He struggled to steady his voice. “I should have waited until a civilized hour to call on you. But when a man’s been a fool for far too long, it behooves him to stop being a fool as soon he can.”

  Jane stared at the floor, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Her lush mouth turned down, and her expression was mutinous. Her arms folded over her lush bosom. “Are you saying you don’t want me back after all?”

  He frowned, puzzled at the question. “Were you going to come back?”

  “No,” she said, but after a hesitation that made him wonder if she’d considered accepting his ultimatum after all.

  “I hope you will.”

  She raised her eyes to glare at him as if she despised him. She probably did. But like him, she wasn’t a fickle person. If she’d loved him a couple of months ago, odds were she hadn’t changed. Despite his blunderings.

  “I won’t live with you while you’re in love with Morwenna Nash.”

  Strange how even a week ago, the mere mention of Morwenna’s name had felt like someone punching a bruise. Now it only summoned a feeling of regret for all the years of futile misery.

  Months ago, he should have guessed that he was falling in love with Jane. From the moment he married her, she’d occupied most of his attention. With Morwenna, he’d always acted comme il faut. Yet it hadn’t taken Jane long to pierce his façade of the perfect gentleman, and prove he could behave as badly as any other man driven mad by love. How in Hades had he been too stupid to understand that his emotions were engaged?

  “Then you can come home right now.” He spoke quickly for fear she might send him away before he had a chance to tell her how he felt. “I rushed down here in such a lather to tell you that I’m not in love with Morwenna. I haven’t been in love with her for a long time, although I was so used to playing the broken-hearted suitor that I couldn’t see that.”

  He drew a deep breath. It was now or never. With a silent prayer that Silas was right, he flung himself off the edge of the cliff and into thin air. “I was once in love with Morwenna. But not anymore. Now, Jane, I’m in love with you.”

  *

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  *

  Jane swayed as the room receded in a rush. She curled shaking fingers over the mantelpiece. Surely Hugh couldn’t have just said what she thought he did. “What did you say?”

  He s
tared into her face, his eyes blazing. “You heard me.” He paused. “But I’m more than happy to say it again. I love you, Jane.”

  Her heart performed a dizzying cartwheel, but she’d been hurt too often to lower her guard just yet. “That seems too good to be true.”

  He flinched. If it was true that he loved her, her doubts would smart. The memory of how he’d dismissed her declaration of love two months ago still stung. “I’ve loved you since I married you.”

  She linked shaking hands together at her waist. Her pulse was galloping, but she couldn’t trust this abrupt change. Only the fact that he’d never lied to her before prevented her from assuming this was some scheme to get her back into his bed. “Now that I really can’t believe.”

  “Nevertheless it’s true.” He looked heartbreakingly sincere. The brown eyes glittered with urgency, and that telltale muscle in his cheek performed its erratic dance. “I was too buffle-headed to see it. I liked you, and wanted you, and acted like a bear with a toothache every time a man smiled at you, and I thought about nothing except you. If I had a brain in my head, I’d have understood that all adds up to love. But when I loved Morwenna, I was like Don Quixote sighing after unattainable Dulcinea. What I felt for her is nothing like the real, earthy, complicated, overwhelming passion we share. It took me too long to comprehend just what happened to me when I came looking for you in Dorset.”

  Jane supposed it made sense. Fenella had said something similar, that her second love was so different from her first, she’d needed time to recognize it for what it was. “Are you saying you weren’t Morwenna’s lover?”

  “I didn’t even kiss her.” A touch of sheepishness leavened his desperate air. “When I courted her, she was fragile and broken, and I treated her like Venetian glass.”

  Hugh’s penchant for lame dogs raising its head again, she thought, even as relief flooded her. She’d loathed the idea of him sharing that big powerful body with his first love. Fenella had said she didn’t think he’d bedded Morwenna, but now Jane knew for sure. “I’m not Venetian glass,” she said neutrally. “You don’t need to rescue me, Hugh.”