The Runaway Countess

by Amanda McCabe

  ‘Is your sister up to some mischief?’

  Jane laughed at Hayden’s wry question. ‘Probably. She usually is.’ She plunged her trowel into the rich, loamy soil of the flowerbeds and pulled up old, dead roots. Hayden tossed them into a bucket and reached out to pull up some more of the stubborn roots Jane couldn’t reach.

  It felt like a glorious morning. The sun was shining, the garden looked tidier and prettier under the light, and Hayden was with her. Best of all, he even seemed to be enjoying their quiet morning together.

  ‘How old is Emma now?’ he asked.

  Jane sat back on her heels and swept her hair back from her damp brow. ‘Sixteen. I know she can’t run wild here for ever, but she seems to be so happy. After that school…’

  ‘The school she hated?’

  Hayden sounded so quiet, Jane wondered if he remembered their old quarrels about Emma when she wanted to retrieve her sister from the school and bring her to stay with them. ‘Emma likes to be free,’ Jane said simply. ‘The school was suffocating her. I could see the light in her eyes dying, though she never talks about what happened there. I want to make it up to her. But I do sometimes wonder if I am doing her no favours by letting her run around here doing whatever she likes.’

  ‘You want her to have a Season?’

  ‘Eventually I suppose she will have to. But not with us being such a scandal. She would be cut before she even made her first curtsy.’

  Hayden laughed wryly. ‘You didn’t consider that when you asked for a divorce.’

  ‘I considered many things,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t see how we could go along as we have been. Married, but apart.’

  ‘And what do you think now? How should we go on?’

  Jane turned to face him. He looked so serious, so focused solely on her. If only it could have been like that years ago. If only she could have conquered her fears. If only he had listened to her then.

  But he seemed to be listening to her now and that made the world of difference.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said simply. ‘All these years I’ve thought of little else but us, the mistakes we made and how best to fix them. I could come up with no answers. After last night…’

  ‘Things are different after last night.’

  Different in a good way? Against her will, Jane felt a small touch of hope. She had certainly felt different after last night. She’d floated through the morning as if on a cloud, remembering every touch, every kiss. The way she woke up to find him gone, but a flower left on her pillow and a note asking if he could work with her in the garden today.

  Yes, things were different. She could feel it, she knew it. But could she make it all last?

  A tiny droplet of water hit her skin, then another as the skies turned a pale grey above them. she took his hand and led him in silence into the house. Once they were in her bedchamber, she turned to him and stared up at him. Her heart was bursting with hope and fear. ‘Oh, Hayden, I—’

  But his mouth covered hers, catching her tentative words, her senses, her balance, sending them all whirling away until there was only him.

  Her passion, which had been reawakened last night, rose up inside of her again. With a moan, she wrapped her arms around him as he lowered her back to the bed. His body against hers, the weight of it, felt wondrous, perfect.

  Whatever else happened between them, this had always been so right. In their years apart, she’d tried so hard to forget him, to push away all her feelings for him. But those feelings were stubborn things and wouldn’t go away so easily. And now, as he kissed her, they burst free like the rain from the sky.

  Jane pushed his coat back from his shoulders and fumbled with the knot of his cravat, desperate to touch him. He drew back from her only to tug his shirt free from his breeches and loosen the placket in the front. He lifted her skirts up around her legs and she wrapped them tight around his hips. Then his body was tight against hers, his lips seeking hers. He smelled of sunshine and clean soap, and of himself, that intoxicating scent that always drew her so close.

  She ran her hands over the smooth, warm skin of his shoulders above the edge of his loosened shirt. He groaned and kissed the curve of her neck as she arched her head back and revelled in the feel of his mouth on her skin.

  He pulled her up against him. She opened her eyes and stared up into his eyes as he slowly thrust forwards.

  Everything vanished but their skin touching, sliding against each other. She heard his harsh, uneven breath, his moan, and she answered it with her own cry. Then the pleasure burst over her and she clung to him, sobbing out his name.

  ‘Jane!’ he shouted. ‘Jane,’ he whispered, thrusting harder, faster, until she felt him find his own release. ‘Jane, Jane.’

  Just her name, but it was enough. In that moment, it was everything.

  For a long time they just lay together amid the tangled bedclothes. Jane listened to the rain patter on the windows, the soft sound of Hayden’s breath, and she closed her eyes to let the moment stay for as long as it could. Soon, very soon, they would have some serious matters to consider. Would they, could they, live together again? Where, and how? Could they possibly try again to have a family? She was afraid of the answers to all those questions, but she knew they would have to be faced. The past couldn’t just be erased.

  But not yet. Not nearly yet.

  Chapter Eleven

  Whack! Whack!

  The sudden thundering, pounding noise jolted Jane from sleep. the whole house seemed to be shaking, as if caught in an earthquake. she shot up in bed, the sheets tumbling around her, and for an instant she had no idea where she was or what was happening.

  The noise echoed away, leaving only the patter of the rain on the window and her own harsh, uneven breath. She realised she was in her own bedchamber. The lamp she usually left burning on the bedside table had gone out, but she could make out the shapes of the dressing table and the old chaise.

  But what was that noise? Just a dream? Or was something wrong with Emma?

  ‘If she let Murray run free again…’ Jane muttered, remembering the last time Murray escaped Emma’s room and wreaked havoc. She pushed back the blankets and swung her legs out of bed, only to freeze at the sound of a deep, rough male groan.

  Hayden. Hayden was in bed with her.

  Jane twisted around to see his black hair tousled on her pillow. The bedclothes were twisted around his waist, the faint light from the window playing over his bare skin. The whole evening came flooding back to her—his lips on hers, his body sliding over hers, the hot pleasure as she cried out at his touch.

  He reached out and looped his arm around her waist. He tugged her closer, and she was wrapped up in the smell and heat of him. The familiar, arousing scents of bare skin and warm sheets, of the night that closed around them and made the rest of the world invisible.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he said hoarsely. His eyes didn’t open, but he drew her closer against his body. She tried to resist the urge to melt into him, to nestle close to him and let everything else be damned. It felt so natural when they were together like this, so—right.

  But she couldn’t quite forget what woke her from her dreams in the first place.

  She pushed against his shoulders as he laughed and dragged her closer. ‘Didn’t you hear that noise?’ she said.

  ‘What noise? I was asleep until you woke me with all your fidgeting about, woman.’

  ‘How could you have missed it?’ Jane said, then she remembered. ‘Oh, yes. You could sleep through a shipwreck.’

  ‘Well, we’re not at sea now. It was just the thunder. Come back to bed.’ He bent his head to the soft curve of her shoulder and pressed a light, butterfly-dancing kiss to her skin. His lips drifted over her, soft, gentle, as his fingers lightly skimmed over her arm to grasp the edge of her shift’s short sleeve.

  ‘It’s hours ’til morning,’ he whispered, his breath drifting warmly over her skin.

  Jane shivered and twined her hand in h
is tousled hair. She nearly gave in, nearly tumbled into him, until another pounding volley shattered the quiet all over again.

  It was like a sudden dash of freezing water. Jane pushed Hayden away and leaped down from the bed.

  ‘You see?’ she cried. ‘It’s not thunder. Something is happening.’

  Hayden fell back on to the bed with a groan. ‘I don’t suppose you could just ignore whatever it is and take that gown off.’

  ‘Of course I can’t.’ Jane tugged her sleeve back into place and snatched up her dressing gown from the chaise. ‘Barton Park is my home. I can’t let it just be invaded by—whatever it is. Hayden, do get up!’

  As she hastily tied back her loose fall of hair, Hayden reluctantly pushed himself up and put on his breeches. For an instant she was struck by the intimacy of the moment, of dressing together in the darkness. He moved so gracefully, so naturally, as if they did this every day.

  There was another flurry of loud knocks, shaking her out of that stunned moment, and she spun away from the sight of Hayden pulling on his shirt. She stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers and yanked open the door.

  Emma stood on the landing, peering down at the hall. Murray cowered at her feet, not much of a watchdog. Jane could hear now that the noise was someone pounding on the door.

  ‘Who could it be?’ Emma whispered, as if the invaders could possibly hear her.

  ‘Probably just someone caught in the storm,’ Jane said firmly. She couldn’t let Emma see her uncertainty. No one ever accidentally wandered to Barton Park, they were too far off the better-travelled roads. ‘I’ll go down and see.’

  ‘No, I’ll go,’ Hayden said as he stepped out of her chamber, the re-lit lamp in his hands. Emma’s eyes widened, but she didn’t really look terribly surprised to see him there.

  ‘Stay here,’ Jane told Emma, and she hurried down the stairs behind Hayden. He strode towards the door, looking calm and perfectly in charge despite the fact that he was in his shirtsleeves with rumpled hair. He always did manage to look as if he owned any room he was in and for once Jane was glad of that. Glad not to be alone.

  He threw back the old bolt on the door and pulled it open. The sound of the falling rain grew louder, pouring into the creaky silence of the house. Jane stood on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.

  ‘Hayden, my friend! We’ve never been happier to see anyone in our lives,’ a man shouted over the thunder. ‘Devil of a night, eh?’

  Even though the voice was slightly slurred with drink, Jane recognised it as Hayden’s friend Lord John Eastwood, who had been the best man at their wedding. She had never minded him as much as some of Hayden’s wilder friends, he was a funny, quiet sort of man who carried an air of sadness since he had lost his young wife. But what the devil was he doing here, in the middle of the night, at her home?

  ‘Glad you decided to rusticate, Ramsay,’ another man said. ‘Otherwise we’d be trapped out on that godforsaken road.’

  ‘Carstairs, John, what happened to you both?’ Hayden said with a rough laugh. ‘You look like you’ve been dragged to hell and back.’

  ‘So we have,’ John said. ‘But don’t say that too loud—there are ladies present.’

  ‘If you can call us that!’ a woman cried. ‘Let us in, Ramsay, it’s freezing out here.’

  As Jane watched in stunned disbelief, Hayden drew the door open and five people tumbled in. At first they were an indistinct, dark blur, a tangle of cloaks and great coats and water dripping in sheets on to her floor. But then she saw it was three men and two women. They laughed and cursed, dropping their wet things carelessly. She could smell the rain, wet wool, expensive perfumes and the sticky sweetness of brandy.

  ‘I do know that,’ Hayden said, his voice a strange blend of strained affability and slight irritation. ‘You all remember Lady Ramsay, I’m sure.’

  The cacophony suddenly ceased, like birds scattered from a tree. The gathering turned to stare at her and Jane felt her throat tighten as the lamplight fell over their faces. She knew John, of course, and the other two men were also cronies of Hayden’s, fellows he often went carousing with—Sir Ethan Carstairs and Lord Browning. One of the ladies she did not know, a little apple-cheeked blonde giggling behind her hand.

  The other woman was Lady Marlbury. Hayden’s former mistress, or so all the gossip said. She was as tall and gloriously, vividly beautiful as ever, despite her rain-soaked red hair. She looked as if she was about to burst into delighted laughter.

  Jane resisted the sudden strong, burning urge to slap her.

  ‘Of course. Lady Ramsay. It’s been far too long,’ John said, the first to recover his manners. He hurried over to bow over her cold hand. ‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this. We were all on our way back to London when our carriage became mired in the mud. Luckily Carstairs remembered that Ramsay was staying here.’

  Jane swallowed past her dry throat. ‘It’s good to see you again, Lord John. How is your sister, Susan? She was such a good friend to me when I first arrived in London as a green country girl.’

  ‘She is very well—just had her second child, you know. And you know Sir Ethan Carstairs and Lord Browning, of course,’ John said quickly. ‘And Lady Marlbury. This is Browning’s friend, Mrs Smythe.’

  ‘How lovely to see you again, Lady Ramsay,’ Lady Marlbury said, still smiling. ‘So kind of you to offer to provide a port in the storm.’

  Jane could remember offering no such thing. In fact, every instinct told her to toss them all back out immediately. Barton Park was her home, her refuge, and they were everything she had run away from when she left London. But she knew she couldn’t. Every rule of civility held her back.

  She glanced at Hayden, who was studying his friends with a half-smile on his face. Was he happy to see them? Glad to have his dull country days interrupted? The warmth and contentment of the night spent in her bed, wrapped in his arms, vanished and she was so very cold. She tightened her robe around her.

  ‘Come in, I’ll fetch some brandy and get the fire started,’ Hayden said, ushering them towards the sitting room.

  ‘You’ll start the fire?’ Lady Marlbury said with a merry laugh. ‘My goodness, Ramsay, but you have become domesticated out here in the wilds. What sort of upside-down place is this?’

  They all followed Hayden, a laughing, jostling band who acted as if they were suddenly dropped into a seaside holiday, not stranded in a strange house—Jane’s house.

  Jane turned to see Emma standing halfway down the stairs, looking after them with an expression of intrigued astonishment on her pretty face.

  ‘Emma, can you fetch Hannah?’ Jane said, trying not to reveal her own stunned, uncertain feelings. ‘And make cook see if she can make some sandwiches. It seems we suddenly have company.’

  ‘Who are those people?’ Emma asked, her eyes wide.

  ‘They are friends of Hayden who were stranded in the storm,’ Jane said as briefly as she could.

  ‘Only Hayden’s? You didn’t know them in London?’

  ‘Yes. I knew them.’

  Emma looked as if she was aching to ask more, but she just nodded and hurried away to rouse Hannah and the cook. Murray scurried off behind her, his tail tucked down.

  Jane wished with all her might that she could run off after her sister. She could already hear the loud laughter and jokes from the impromptu house party and it filled her with a sick feeling from the pit of her stomach. Her home was being invaded, just as the London house had been after they married. Already she could feel the cold tentacles of that old life, that life of fashion and lies, reaching out to grab at her again.

  How could things change in only a moment like that? Jane leaned on the newel post and stared up the dimness of the staircase. When she fell asleep, she was wrapped in Hayden’s arms, warmed by the most tentative and fragile of hopes. Now…

  Now she just wanted to flee again. Yet if even Barton Park could be invaded, no place was safe.

  Jane took a deep breath and squar
ed her shoulders. She had her duty, as Hayden had often reminded her in the past. The duty of a countess and a hostess. She would see them through.

  That resolve wavered a bit when she stepped through the sitting room door and saw the scene spread before her.

  The cosy room where Hayden and Emma had played cards after dinner only a few hours before was transformed. The shabby sofas and chairs were pushed into a group around the fireplace. Hayden and John knelt in front of the hearth, piling up the kindling while the others shouted suggestions and jokes, and fell into fits of laughter.

  Lady Marlbury rested her hand on Hayden’s shoulder and leaned closer as if to examine his work. ‘Really, Ramsay darling, I don’t think being a chimney boy is your calling. That will never burn. You have far finer talents you should be using.’

  Hayden glanced up at her with a lazy smile. ‘First the fire, I think. Then…’

  His hooded gaze slid past Lady Marlbury to land on Jane where she stood in the doorway. She felt utterly frozen in place, unable to turn away and unable to move forwards. She stared at Lady Marlbury’s hand, resting so casually on Hayden’s shoulder, and she wanted to yank out the woman’s no doubt falsely red hair by the roots. She wanted…she wanted…

  She wanted things to be completely different with Hayden. For Hayden and her. For a few hours, she’d even imagined they were different. Now they just felt horribly the same.

  She closed her eyes and for an instant she was back at another house party, one where she felt like she knew no one and wasn’t sure what to say or do. But Lady Marlbury knew—she was standing with Hayden, her hand on his arm, laughing up at him, making him smile at her. Making jokes with him Jane couldn’t understand. That was when she had realised her life with Hayden was not going to be as she had dreamed. That he had an existence she hadn’t been, couldn’t be, a part of.

  And when she opened her eyes she was there all over again, but it was in her own house now. the past rushing in to infect the present.

  ‘Look, I think the fire’s starting,’ Lord Browning called. Everyone else turned to the hearth amid exclamations of hilarity and Hayden pushed himself to his feet.