“I won’t regret it,” Arthur insisted, placing his finger on the trigger. His hand didn’t even shake as he did so. “Because this has been the plan all along. I’m going to have to kill you, Colin.”
Colin swallowed hard. “No,” he said, knowing how dangerous it was to call the bluff of a man who was currently leveling a pistol at him. “You won’t.”
Arthur laughed, but didn’t depress the trigger. “And why won’t I?”
“Because you have clearly wanted my title for years,” Colin said. “And you haven’t done it yet. Something stops you.”
“Are you calling me a coward?” Arthur hissed, but his eyes filled with tears.
“No,” Colin responded, gentling his tone as much as he could considering the circumstances. “Just not a killer.”
Arthur bent his head. “I’ve tried, you know. I’ve tried. That riding accident when you were seventeen? The duel you refused? That illness two years ago?”
At that Jane slowly got to her feet. Colin stared at her, for her eyes snapped with anger. Anger on his behalf. Protectiveness he did not deserve.
“You?” she growled. Arthur pivoted, pointing the gun toward her again, and Colin’s heart nearly stopped.
“Sit down, Jane,” he ordered sharply. “Arthur, Arthur, please. Aim the gun at me. I’m the one who you have the quarrel with. Aim the gun at me.”
“Colin,” she whispered, but she took a shaky place at the edge of her seat.
As Arthur did as he’d been asked, swinging the gun back at him, Colin nodded toward her. “It’s all right, Jane. I promise you.”
“All right?” Arthur burst out. “All right? None of it is bloody all right! I was never able to finish.”
Colin moved toward his cousin a step, praying Arthur’s hand, which now did shake, wouldn’t cause the gun to fire and kill him where he stood.
“Ending a life is not to be taken lightly,” he said softly. “Perhaps you struggle because you don’t really want to do this.”
He took another step closer.
“Yes, I do. Stop walking toward me!” Arthur all but screamed. He began to depress the trigger as Colin lunged for him.
In that moment, Colin knew he was going to die.
Except that when the gun fired, it missed him. Because Jane let out a screeching cry and swept out a leg, kicking Arthur hard in the back of the knee and causing him to topple and misfire.
Colin jumped on him at once, wrestling the gun away and tossing it aside before he punched his cousin as hard as he could in the face and knocked Arthur unconscious.
Jane rushed toward him as he flipped his cousin over and placed a knee in his back to hold him steady. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into her chest, whispering his name as she smoothed her hands across his arms and back to make sure he wasn’t injured.
“I’m fine,” he reassured her. “Are you?”
She drew back at last. “Yes. Thanks to you.”
“Thanks to you,” he corrected as he looked up into her face and saw her, really saw her, for perhaps the first time. No longer was he looking through the glass of Arthur’s manipulations and his own doubt.
He saw Jane and knew how badly he had failed her, even if he’d managed to save her life.
It was like she read his mind in that moment. She took a long step away and her gaze flicked away from his. “I-I should get a servant to call for the guard.”
“Yes,” he agreed, knowing this wasn’t the time or the place to address what he now knew. “Though Arthur may have sent them away, so you might have to go to the next house. Hand me the gun, will you? Just in case.”
She nodded, handing him the pistol before she gave him one last look and hurried from the room. He watched her go as he stood up and trained the gun on the still-unconscious form of his troubled cousin.
And he prayed that once this had been resolved, he could find some way to make everything up to her.
Chapter Eight
Jane sat in the hallway, staring at the door to the parlor where Arthur had tried to kill her, tried to kill Colin. He had been taken out nearly an hour before by the guard, struggling and screaming as they did so. He would be taken to the prison…or perhaps to Bedlam, judging from how incoherent he was.
Either way, she had been reassured that he would not ever have the opportunity to hurt her again.
But those reassurances had not been delivered by Colin. Her husband had been in the parlor ever since they were attacked, explaining everything to the guard. Maybe even paying them off so this scandal wouldn’t get out.
But then, Colin had always known how to handle a scandal. Even one that hadn’t really happened.
Her stomach turned at what she now knew. That Colin had, for a half a year, believed her capable of betraying him. Without asking her, without confronting her, he had just…turned away.
It broke her heart. And it made her so angry she could hardly breathe.
Emotions she pushed aside when the door opened and Colin stepped out with the two members of the guard behind him. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your assistance,” he said as he shook their hands.
“We’ve a few more things to manage here, my lord, but you and your wife are welcome to go,” one of the men said, inclining his head toward her.
“Please feel free to call on me at any time of night or day if there is anything else you need,” Colin said.
Then he at last turned and looked at her, his face drawn and pained. She felt for him in that moment. She had been hurt by what had happened, but she could recognize just how much he had been as well. And she loved him, despite this turn of events. She wanted to comfort him.
She rose, holding out a hand to him in silence. He took it, his expression filled with surprise, and allowed her to draw him toward the carriage she had ridden over in what felt like a lifetime ago. At the door, she turned back and acknowledged the guard before she and Colin walked out and climbed into the vehicle.
It was a silent ride back to his home. Colin stared out the window at the dark that had fallen during the hours they’d been at Arthur’s. He said nothing. Neither did she, for she feared once they started, it would be a difficult conversation that could last a very long time. She didn’t want to start it where the servants could spy.
They arrived at his home at last, and it was evident that news of what happened at Arthur’s home had already spread. Simmons was sober as he welcomed them and took their things. “Would you like supper, my lord?”
Colin barked out a sound of humorless laughter. “No. I’ll drink my supper in the parlor. Jane?”
She shook her head and smiled at Simmons. “Thank you, you may leave us.” He bowed his head, and Jane looked at Colin. “To the parlor then.”
He sighed and led the way, shutting the door behind them before he crossed to the liquor lined up along the sideboard and opened a bottle. “I’ll begin with scotch. What is the lady’s pleasure?”
“Nothing for me,” she said, watching him as he splashed a hefty dose of alcohol into a glass and slugged half of it in one gulp.
He caught her eye and frowned. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being rude.”
“No,” she said. “I cannot imagine how you feel at present.”
He moved to a chair by the fire and sank into it like he could no longer support his own weight.
“What can I do?” she asked, longing to move to him and rub his shoulders. To kiss him and help him forget. To make love to him and reassure each other they were unharmed after the near-tragedy that had taken place that afternoon.
But she found she couldn’t. There were walls between them, just as there had always been. Only now she was the one who erected them for her protection.
“Nothing,” he said in answer to her question at last. “I am in…shock.”
She sank down in the chair near him and shook her head. “Of course you are. You and Arthur were so close.”
“Were we?�
�� he asked, staring off into space, his expression telling her he was reliving those moments in the parlor with his cousin. “It seems we were not. Not truly.”
His agony was palpable, and even Jane’s own pain couldn’t keep her from reaching out. She touched his cheek with a trembling hand and he leaned into it, his eyes fluttering shut.
“He broke us,” he murmured, his voice cracking.
She pursed her lips, but pushed aside all she wanted to say. “We don’t have to speak of that tonight, Colin.”
He looked at her. “But we do, Jane. I know now that you didn’t betray me.”
Anger began to burn in her chest and Jane lowered her hand from his face. She smoothed her skirts, trying to maintain calm. “You know it because you heard Arthur say it.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“But why didn’t you ask me a year ago, Colin?” The anger made her voice higher, and she stood up and paced away. “Why did you judge me guilty without so much as a trial?”
“I saw—” he began, standing and holding out a hand like he wanted to touch her. She didn’t allow it, staying out of his reach.
“You saw nothing,” she snapped. “You know that now. And if you’d had any faith in me whatsoever, you would have asked me right then and there. I would have explained myself and we could have resolved this and moved on.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed the back of the closest chair, like he needed support to stand. “Perhaps I wasn’t capable of faith. Arthur told you about Cassandra.”
“A bit,” she said. “Who was she, exactly?”
“A woman I…well, I once thought I loved her. But she betrayed me with other men.”
She folded her arms and speared him with a glare. “Are you sure?”
He winced. “In her case, yes. I caught her with someone else. In my bed, of all places. I know now that Arthur orchestrated it, of course, but it doesn’t change that it…broke me, Jane. Just as he wanted it to. So when I saw you on the terrace—”
“When you saw what you thought you saw, this Cassandra’s punishment became mine,” she whispered. “Without hesitation, you locked me away in a very pretty prison, Colin. You refused to respond to my pleas for amnesty, for a chance.”
He shook his head, his brow wrinkling. “Pleas?”
She huffed out a breath. Had he not even bothered to read her letters? It only made this worse. “That other woman betrayed you,” she said, fighting tears. “But you betrayed me.”
His face twisted. “Because of Arthur!” he cried.
“In part, perhaps that is true. But in the end, you made your own decisions.”
He moved toward her a step and her heart stuttered. He had never looked at her with such openness before. Such emotion. And the reason why he’d kept himself so guarded until now was exactly why she couldn’t trust him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking her hand.
She stared at their clasped fingers, his darker, larger ones intertwined with her pale, slender ones. Once she would have given anything to be bound to him in physical and emotional ways.
Now she was too hurt to let him in. To trust him.
“I’m certain you are,” she whispered, and then tugged her hand away. “But sorry isn’t enough.”
His face grew panicked. “Jane—”
“Oh, Colin,” she murmured. “We were an arranged marriage that quite possibly could have been so much more. But now, I just don’t know. Perhaps there comes a point when two people can hurt each other too much to overcome it. Either way, I’m going home.”
The color left his cheeks. “No, Jane. No. This is your home.”
“But it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not because you never allowed me to make a home here or in your heart.”
He caught his breath and his voice shook as he said, “You can’t leave.”
“I will leave. Please let me go.” She met his gaze and held steady there, even though it hurt so much. Even though it made her waver in her resolve to walk away. There was so much of her that wanted to accept his apology and just pretend the rest had never happened.
But she couldn’t. She needed to step back. To truly evaluate all that had occurred. To decide her future without being swayed by his past.
He stared at her for what felt like a lifetime. Then he bent his head and nodded. “As you wish, Jane. I have done enough to you—I know I don’t deserve your consideration or your affection. In some ways, I never did. If going is what you need to do, I shall not stand in your way.”
She was shocked by his acquiescence. Even more shocking was how much she wished he would fight for her instead of bend to her will, just as he had bent to Arthur’s a year before.
But she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything. She just slipped past him into the hall to call for her maid and go back to her sister’s.
And away from the man she loved. Away from the promise of a life that had never been and could never be again.
Chapter Nine
Colin sat in his dressing gown and nothing else, staring at his empty bed and listening to the throbbing pulse that echoed in his aching head. A night of drinking had done nothing to make him forget Jane. In fact, it had only made the emotional pain become mirrored by the physical version.
“Nothing less than you deserve after what you did to her,” he muttered to himself. There was a knock on the door and he sighed. “Yes?”
“My lord,” Simmons said, cracking his door partly. “You have a visitor.”
Colin jumped to his feet. “Jane?”
The butler refused to meet his gaze. “I’m afraid it is not Lady Wharton, my lord, but an inspector from the guard. He says that you told him to call if he had anything further to report on the…situation yesterday.”
Colin tensed. He had said that to the inspector the day before. Only a day? It felt like a year. A decade. A lifetime. But Arthur’s mess would have to be dealt with, no matter how bereft Colin was over Jane.
“Show him to the parlor and see if he would like some breakfast,” he said with a sigh. “And send in Drake to help me ready. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
“Yes, my lord.”
His butler left, and in short order his valet came in. He picked Colin’s clothing, asking his usual questions about waistcoats. Normally Colin participated in his morning routine, but today he waved the questions off, allowing Drake to choose everything. What did appearances matter? Appearances were what had gotten him in this mess in the first place.
Eventually he was dressed. He thanked his valet with an apologetic nod and then collected himself as he strode downstairs to the parlor where the inspector waited.
He drew a deep breath, trying to put on the visage of Viscount Wharton rather than a grieving husband at a loss. He wasn’t certain how well he did when he opened the door and the inspector turned, pastry in hand, and frowned at him with concern.
“Good morning, Inspector…” Colin said, entering the room and holding out a hand.
The other man shook it without putting down his croissant. “Hyde, my lord.”
“Of course,” Colin said. “My apologies for not recalling that.”
“I understand, my lord,” Hyde said, finally putting aside his breakfast with a blush on his round cheeks. “Yesterday was a trying one, I’m sure.”
“And I think your appearance here must signal that today will be little better. Is there an update on my cousin?”
He braced himself for the news, but Hyde shook his head. “Nothing much, my lord. He was taken to Bedlam in the end.”
Colin frowned. “I thought as much. Perhaps better for him than prison. I’ll ensure he is taken care of comfortably. God, his mother will be devastated.” Hyde nodded somewhat uncomfortably, and Colin shook off his musings. “But if there was no update beyond that one, what is it you came for, Inspector?”
“Ah, yes,” Hyde said, digging into his inside pocket. From it, he withdrew
a packet of letters, bound with worn ribbon. “When we searched your cousin’s offices yesterday evening, one of my men found these.”
Colin held up a hand. “I assure you, sir, I have no need to read my cousin’s private correspondence. I’m certain if you think—”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, my lord, but these aren’t letters to your cousin. They are…they’re addressed to you.”
Colin took the packet, untying the ribbon even as he stared at the inspector. “Me?”
“Yes, my lord. It appears your cousin was intercepting certain correspondence before it reached you, keeping you from receiving it.”
Colin looked at the hand on the top folded sheet. It was in Jane’s handwriting. He flipped to the next letter, the next. They were all from Jane.
“Mr. Hyde,” he said, hearing the hollow sound to his voice. “How many letters were there from my wife?”
“We counted thirteen, my lord.”
Colin’s stomach turned. Thirteen. And judging from the dates written on the back of each envelope, this time in his cousin’s hand, they had been sent every week for the three months before Jane made her unexpected return to London.
Now her comment the night before about her pleas for forgiveness, for starting over, made sense. She had written to him every week for half the time they had been apart.
And his silence had been a rejection to her. A verification that he didn’t care for her. That her words meant nothing to him. When, in reality, they meant everything.
Hyde shifted under the weight of Colin’s silence. “That’s all I came for, my lord. I should leave you to your day.”
“Thank you,” Colin said, barely registering as the man stuffed what was left of his croissant into his mouth, bowed awkwardly and left.
Colin sank into a chair when he was alone. Carefully, he arranged the letters along the tabletop, in order of the dates scrawled across them. The inspector was correct that there were thirteen.
He broke the seal on the first and began to read. And sat there for an hour, turning page after page, his eyes stinging as he read Jane’s pleas for an explanation, her apologies for unknown crimes, and also her description of her life in Applegate. Although she always asked him to respond and sometimes there was a desperate tone to her letters, there was also a conversational way to them. Like she hoped that if she shared the minutia of her day, it would open his heart to her.
The Return of Lady Jane Page 7