Книга - The Runaway Countess

The Runaway Countess
Amanda McCabe


WED TO WICKEDNESSIn Society’s eyes, Hayden Fitzwalter, Earl of Ramsay, and Jane Bancroft have the perfect marriage. But what can’t be seen are the secrets hidden behind closed doors. Believing Hayden will never renounce his dissolute ways, Jane flees to her family’s dilapidated estate in the country. Years later, Hayden longs to win back the only woman who has ever touched his heart. But first he has to convince her that this rogue is ready to be tamed…Bancrofts of Barton Park Two sisters, two scandals, two sizzling love affairs!












Jane 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 appeared 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.


BANCROFTS OF BARTON PARK

Two sisters, two scandals, two sizzling love affairs

Country girls at heart, Jane and Emma Bancroft are a far cry from the perfectly coiffed, glossy debutantes that grace most of Society.

But soon they come to realise that, country girl and debutante alike, no lady is immune to the charms of a dashing rogue!

Don’t miss this enthralling new duet from Amanda McCabe

starting with Jane’s story

THE RUNAWAY COUNTESS

Look for Emma’s story

coming in December 2013

RUNNING FROM SCANDAL




About the Author


AMANDA MCCABE wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA


, RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award, and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs, and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook.

Visit her at http://ammandamccabe.tripod.com and www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com

Previous novels by the same author:



TO CATCH A ROGUE* (#ulink_b6f7d81a-2e1e-50ee-9054-7c1697360c51)

TO DECEIVE A DUKE* (#ulink_b6f7d81a-2e1e-50ee-9054-7c1697360c51)

TO KISS A COUNT* (#ulink_b6f7d81a-2e1e-50ee-9054-7c1697360c51)

CHARLOTTE AND THE WICKED LORD


(in Regency Summer Scandals)



A NOTORIOUS WOMAN† (#ulink_85204902-3714-55b8-8269-eca916f07369)

A SINFUL ALLIANCE† (#ulink_85204902-3714-55b8-8269-eca916f07369)

HIGH SEAS STOWAWAY† (#ulink_85204902-3714-55b8-8269-eca916f07369)

THE WINTER QUEEN


(in Christmas Betrothals)



THE SHY DUCHESS

SNOWBOUND AND SEDUCED


(in Regency Christmas Proposals)



THE TAMING OF THE ROGUE

A STRANGER AT CASTONBURY** (#ulink_15799202-692b-5b46-af7a-47f4b279ecd1)

TARNISHED ROSE OF THE COURT


And in Mills & Boon


Historical Undone! eBooks:



SHIPWRECKED AND SEDUCED† (#ulink_85204902-3714-55b8-8269-eca916f07369)

TO BED A LIBERTINE

THE MAID’S LOVER

TO COURT, CAPTURE AND CONQUER

GIRL IN THE BEADED MASK

UNLACING THE LADY IN WAITING

ONE WICKED CHRISTMAS

AN IMPROPER DUCHESS


* (#litres_trial_promo)The Chase Muses trilogy

† (#litres_trial_promo)linked by character

** (#litres_trial_promo)Castonbury Park Regency mini-series

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk




AUTHOR NOTE


I was so excited to find out this year is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice! It was discovering the world of Jane Austen that introduced me to the wonders of the Regency period. I found a battered paperback copy of Emma tucked away on a shelf in my grandmother’s house when I was about ten and, after reading it, immediately ran to the library to see what else this mysterious Jane Austen had written. The librarian gave me all the other novels, as well as two Austen biographies and a book called Life in Regency England. I was hooked.

I’ve always loved the settings and themes of Austen’s timeless stories—family, community, characters struggling to find ways to stay true to themselves and still meet the expectations of the society around them. And heroines determined to marry for love and find happiness in the face of overwhelming pressure to find stability at all costs. It’s been so much fun to explore the same ideas with the Bancroft sisters, Jane and Emma, and their handsome heroes! That’s the best part of writing historical romance—exploring a world so different from my own, but also so very similar in our emotions and dreams (just with better clothes!).

And I have Jane Austen—and the wonderful librarian who recognised a new Austen mania and helped me make it grow—to thank for all those hours of delight and joy. Happy anniversary, Lizzie and Darcy!




The Runaway Countess


Amanda McCabe








www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




DEDICATION


To librarians everywhere,

for working so hard to open the world to us…




Prologue


London—1810

The most spectacular marriage in London…

Jane Fitzwalter, the Countess of Ramsay, almost laughed aloud as she read those words. They looked so solid in their black, smudged newsprint, right there in the gossipy pages of the Gazette for everyone to see. If it was written there, so many people thought, it had to be true.

Once she had even believed in it herself, for a brief moment. But not now. Now the words were hollow and false, mocking her and all her silly dreams.

The beautiful Ramsays, so young, so wealthy, so fashionable. They had a grand London house where they held grand balls, great crushes with invitations fervently sought by every member of the ton. A grand country house where they held grand shooting parties, and the laughter and merriment went on until dawn. Lady Ramsay’s hats and gowns, stored in their own grand wardrobe room, were emulated by all the ladies who aspired to fashion in London.

And everyone knew the tale of their marriage. How the young Lord Ramsay glimpsed the even younger Miss Jane Bancroft across the crowded salon full of tall, waving plumes at her Court presentation and strode past the whole gawking gathering to demand an introduction. How they danced together at two private balls and once at Almack’s and went driving once in Hyde Park, and Lord Ramsay insisted she marry him. Her guardian wasn’t sure, having doubts about the couple’s youth and short acquaintance, but they threatened to elope and the next thing society knew they were attending a grand, glittering wedding at St George’s.

Grand, grand, grand. The life of the beautiful Ramsays was the envy of everyone.

But Lady Ramsay, now slightly less young and much less naïve, would gladly sell all that grandness for a farthing. She would give it all away to go back to that sunny day in Hyde Park, her shoulder pressed close to Hayden’s as they sat together in his curricle and laughed. As they held hands secretly under the cover of her parasol. On that day the world seemed to stretch before her in glorious, golden promise. That day seemed to promise everything she had dreamed of—love, security, a place to belong, someone who needed her.

If only they could start again there and move forwards in a whole different way. But sadly that was impossible. Life would simply go on again as it had done already, because they were the Ramsays and that was the way of their world.

But she was heartily sick of this world of theirs. She had expected that Hayden’s title would give them security in the world, a security she never had with her own family, but she had been foolish. She hadn’t realised how a title took over everything else, became everything. That a title gathered empty friends, empty marriages.

Jane let the paper fall to the floor beside her bed and slid back down amid the heaps of pillows. It was surely very late at night by now. Her maid had tried to close the satin curtains at the windows, but Jane wouldn’t let her. She liked seeing the darkness outside, it felt safe and comforting, like a thick blanket wrapped around her. The moon, a silvery sliver sliding towards the horizon, blinked at her.

Out there beyond her quiet chamber there were balls still twirling on with music and dancing and wine, laughter and conversation. Once she would have been in the very midst of one of those balls, laughing and dancing with the rest or gaily losing in the card room. Now the thought of it made her feel faintly ill.

She rolled on to her side to face the crackling blaze in the marble fireplace and her gaze fell on the bottle of laudanum the doctor had left for her. It would take away all the memories, draw her off to a dream-land, but she didn’t want that, either. She had to think now, to face the truth no matter how painful it was.

She pressed her hand to her stomach, perfectly flat again beneath her linen nightdress. The tiny bump that had been growing there, filling her with such joy, was gone. It had been gone for days now, vanished as if it had never been. Lost in a flurry of agonising spasms—and Hayden was not with her. Again. When she lost their child, the third child she had lost so early, he was off gambling somewhere. And drinking, of course. Always drinking. Now there was only that hollow ache to remind her. She had failed in her duty. Again.

She couldn’t go on like this any longer. She was cracking under the pressure of their grand lie. She had thought she was getting a new family with Hayden, yet she felt lonelier than she ever had before.

Suddenly she heard a sound from downstairs, a crash and a muffled voice. It was explosively loud in the silent house, for she had sent the servants to bed hours ago. Hayden wasn’t expected back until dawn.

But it seemed he had come home early. Jane carefully climbed out of her bed and reached for a shawl to wrap around her shoulders. She slowly made her way out to the staircase landing and peered down to the hall below.

Hayden sat sprawled on the lower steps, the light of the lamp the butler had left on the pier table flickering over him. He had knocked over the umbrella stand, and parasols and walking sticks lay scattered over the black-and-white tiles of the floor.

Hayden studied them with a strangely sad look on his handsome face. The pattern of shadows and light carved his starkly elegant features into something mysterious, and for a moment he almost looked like the man she had married with such hope. Could it be possible he was as weary of this frantic life as she was? That they could somehow start again? Despite her cold disillusionment, she still dared to hope. Still dared to be irrational.

Jane took a step down the stairs and at the creak of the wooden tread Hayden looked up at her. For an instant she saw the stark look on his face, but then he grinned and the brief moment of reflection and hope was gone.

He pushed back a lock of his tousled black hair and held out his hand to her. The signet ring on his finger gleamed and she saw the brandy stain on his sleeve. ‘Jane! My beautiful wife waits to greet me—how amazing.’

As Jane moved slowly down the stairs, she could smell the sweet-acrid scent of the brandy hovering around him like a cloud. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said. She hadn’t been able to sleep for days and days.

‘You should have come with me to the Westin rout, then,’ he said. ‘It was quite the crush.’

Jane gently smoothed back his hair and cupped her palm over his cheek. The faint roughness of his evening whiskers tickled her skin and the sky-blue of his eyes glowed in the shadows.

How very handsome he was, her husband. How her heart ached just to look at him. Once he had been everything she had ever wanted.

‘So I see,’ she said.

‘Everyone asked about you there,’ he answered. He turned his head to press a quick, careless kiss into her palm. ‘You’re missed by our friends.’

‘Friends?’ she murmured doubtfully. She barely knew the Westins, or anyone who had been there tonight. And they did not know her, not really. She always felt shy and uncomfortable at balls, another way she failed at being a countess. ‘I don’t feel like parties yet.’

‘Well, I hope you will very soon. The Season is still young and we have a brace of invitations to respond to.’ He kissed her hand again, but Jane had the distinct sense he didn’t even feel her, see her. ‘I hate it when you’re ill, darling.’

Feeling a tiny spark of hope, Jane caught his hands in hers and said, ‘Maybe we need a little holiday, a few weeks in the country with just us. I’m sure I would feel better in the fresh air. We could take my sister, Emma, from school to come see us. It’s been so long since I was with Emma.’

As she thought about it she grew more excited. Yes, she was sure a holiday would be a wonderful thing. A time in the country at Barton Park, just the three of them, no parties, no brandy. She and Hayden could talk again, as they used to, and be together—maybe make a new baby. Try one more time, despite her fears. They could leave the grand Ramsays behind and just be Hayden and Jane. That was what she had once hoped for so much.

But Hayden laughed at her words, as if she had just made some great joke. He let go of her hands and sprawled back on to the steps. ‘Go off to the country now? Jane darling, it’s the very midst of the Season. We can’t possibly leave now.’

‘But it could be—’

Hayden shook his head. ‘Staying in London would do you more good than burying yourself in the country. You should go to parties with me again, enjoy yourself. Everyone expects it of you, of us.’

‘Go to parties as you do?’ Jane said bitterly as her faint, desperate hope faded away. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change.

‘Yes, as I do. As my parents always did,’ he said. ‘It’s better than wallowing in misery alone at home.’

Jane wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly hollow and empty. Cold. ‘I am tired. Perhaps I will go away by myself to visit my sister. Poor Emma writes that she doesn’t like her school and I miss her. I just need some time away from London. I want to go home to Barton Park for a while.’

Hayden closed his eyes as if he was weary of her and this conversation. Weary of her emotions. ‘If you like, of course. You will have to return before our end-of-Season ball, though. Everyone expects that.’

Jane nodded, but she already knew she would not be back for any ball. She couldn’t return to this life at all. She needed to find her own soul again, even if she couldn’t make Hayden see that he needed to save his.

He gave a faint snore and Jane looked down to find that he had drifted to sleep right there on the stairs, in the middle of their conversation. His face looked so beautiful and peaceful, a faint smile on his lips as if he had already floated out of her life and into the one he had chosen for himself long before he met her. She leaned down and softly kissed his cheek and smoothed back his hair one last time.

‘I’m sorry, Hayden,’ she whispered. ‘Forgive me.’

She rose to her feet and stepped over him, going back to her chamber and closing the door quietly behind her. It didn’t even make a sound in the vast house that had never really been hers.

Hayden stared up at the ceiling far above his head, not seeing the elaborate, cake-icing whorls of white plaster. He barely felt the hard press of the stairs at his back, either, or the familiar feeling of a headache growing behind his eyes. All he could see, all he could think about, was Jane.

He closed his eyes and listened carefully, but she was long gone. There was only silence since she had tiptoed away and softly closed her chamber door behind her. Even his butler, Makepeace, had given up on him and left him lying there on the stairs. Cold air swept around him from the marble floor of the hall.

He had truly become what he never wanted to be—his parents.

Not that he was really like his father, oh, no. The elder earl had been all about responsibility and proper family appearances. It was Hayden’s mother who had liked the parties, liked the forgetfulness of being in a noisy crowd. But they had both liked brandy and port too much and it killed his father in the end.

His mother, rest her giddy soul, was done in by childbirth, trying one last time to give his father another son.

A spasm of raw, burning pain flashed through Hayden as he remembered Jane’s face, as white as the sheets she lay on after the first baby was gone, thin and drawn with pain.

‘We can try again, Hayden,’ she had said, reaching for his hand. ‘The doctor says I am truly healthy, there’s no reason it won’t work next time. Please, Hayden, please stay with me.’

And he’d taken her trembling hand, murmured all the right, reassuring things, but inside he was shouting—not again. Never again. He couldn’t hurt her again, couldn’t see her go through what his mother had.

When he first saw Jane, saw the young, hopeful light in her pretty hazel eyes and the sweet pink blush in her cheeks, he felt something he had thought long dead stir inside of him. A curiosity, maybe, an excitement about life And what might happen next. It was more intoxicating than any wine, that feeling Jane gave him. And when he touched her hand, when she smiled up at him…

He only wanted that feeling she gave him to last for ever. He had to have her and he never stopped to think of the consequences. Until he was forced to.

He’d done Jane a great wrong in marrying her so quickly after they met, before she could see the real him. No matter what he did now it seemed he could not make her happy. He couldn’t even see what she wanted, needed. She always looked at him so expectantly, so sadly, with those eyes of hers, as if she was waiting for something from him. Something he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

So he ran back to what he did know, his friends and their never-ending parties. And Jane grew sadder, especially when the babies were lost. Three of them now.

Hayden pushed himself slowly to his feet and made his careful way up the stairs. There was no sound beyond Jane’s door, just that perfect, echoing silence. He pushed the door open and peered inside.

Jane lay on her side in the middle of the satin-draped bed countesses had slept in for decades. Her palm was tucked under her cheek, her thick, dark braid snaking over her shoulder. The moonlight fell over her face and he saw she was frowning even in her sleep. She looked so small, so vulnerable and alone.

Hayden knew he had let her down very badly. But he vowed he would never do it again, no matter what he had to do. Even if it meant letting her go.

‘I promise you, Jane,’ he whispered as she stirred in her sleep. ‘I will never hurt you again.’




Chapter One


Three Years Later

Was it an earthquake in London?

That was surely the only explanation for the blasted pounding noise, because Hayden knew that no one in his household would dare to disturb him with such a sound in the middle of the night.

He rolled over on to his back in the tangled bedclothes and opened his eyes to stare up at the dark green canopy above his head. Pinpricks of light were trickling around the edges of the tightly closed window curtains, but surely it was still the middle of the night. He remembered coming home from the club with Harry and Edwards, stumbling through the streets singing, and somehow he had made it up the stairs and into bed. Alone.

Now he felt the familiar ache behind his eyes, made worse by that incessant banging noise.

The room itself wasn’t shaking. He could see that now that he forced himself to be still. So it wasn’t an earthquake. Someone was knocking at the bedroom door.

‘Damn it all!’ he shouted as he pushed himself off the bed. ‘It is the middle of the night.’

‘If you will beg pardon, my lord, you will find it is actually very near noon,’ Makepeace said, calmly but firmly, from the other side of the door.

‘The hell it is,’ Hayden muttered. He found his breeches tangled up amid the twisted bedclothes and impatiently jerked them on. His shirt was nowhere to be found.

He glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel, and saw that Makepeace was quite right. It was going on noon. He raked his hands through his tangled hair and jerked open the door.

‘Someone had better be dead,’ he said.

Makepeace merely blinked, his round, jowly face solemn as usual. He had been with Hayden’s family for many years, having been promoted to butler even before Hayden’s parents died when he was twelve. Makepeace had seen too much in the Fitzwalter household to ever be surprised.

‘To my knowledge, my lord, no one has shuffled off this mortal coil yet,’ Makepeace said. ‘This letter just arrived.’

He held out his silver tray, which held one small, neatly folded missive. Hayden stared at it in disbelief.

‘A letter?’ he said. ‘You woke me for that? Leave it with the rest of the post on the breakfast table and I’ll read it later.’

He started to slam the door to go back to bed, but Makepeace adroitly slid his foot in. He proffered the tray again. ‘You will want to read this right away, my lord. It’s from Barton Park.’

Hayden wasn’t sure he had heard Makepeace right. Perhaps he was still in bed, having a bizarre brandy-induced dream where letters arrived from Barton Park. ‘What did you say?’

‘If you will look at the return address, my lord, you will see it’s from Barton Park,’ Makepeace said. ‘I thought you might want to see it right away.’

Hayden couldn’t say anything. He merely nodded and took the letter carefully from the tray. He closed the door and stared down at the small, neatly folded missive. It glowed a snowy white in the dim, gloomy room, like some exotic and deadly snake about to strike.

It did indeed read ‘JF, Barton Park’ in a neat, looping handwriting he remembered all too well. The last time he received a letter from that address had been three years ago, when Jane wrote a brief note to tell him she had arrived at Barton Park and would be staying there until further notice. Since then he had sent her monthly bank drafts that were never cashed and he hadn’t heard from her at all. He would only know she was alive because his agents reported it to him on a periodic basis.

Why would his estranged wife be writing to him today? And why did he feel a blasted, terrible spark of hope as he looked at the paper? Hope wasn’t something he deserved. Not when it came to Jane.

The haze of last night’s drink cleared in an instant as he stared down at the letter in his hand. All his senses seemed to sharpen, three years vanished and all he could see was Jane. The way the light glowed on her dark hair as she laughed with him in their sunlit bed. The rose-pink blush that washed over her cheeks when he teased her. The way she stared up at him, her eyes shining with emotion, as he made love to her.

The way all that heat and light had completely vanished, turned to cold, clear, hard ice, when she turned away from him. When she threw away their marriage and left him.

Now she was writing to him again.

Hayden slowly walked to the fireplace and propped the unopened letter on the mantel, next to the clock. Leaving it there, like a white, reproachful beacon, he went to the window to pull back the curtains and let the light in. When Jane left, it had been a chilly, rainy spring, the busiest part of the Season. Now summers and winters had passed, and it was almost summer again. A time of warmth and light, and long, lazy days.

What had Jane been doing all that time? He had tried not to think about that over those long three years, about Jane and what her life was like now. Every time she came through his mind he shoved her away, buried her in cards and drink, in late nights where if he didn’t sleep he couldn’t dream. They were better off apart. They had been so young and foolish when they married and she was safer away from him. He had convinced himself she was just a pale phantom.

Almost.

Hayden unlatched the window and pushed it open. Fresh air rushed into the stale room for the first time in days, a warm breeze that was another reminder that summer was coming. That his life really couldn’t keep going on as it had, in a blurred succession of parties and drinking. That was the way it had always been, the way his parents’ life had been. It was all he knew, all he had been taught. But what could take their place? Once he had known, or thought he had known, something different. But it was an illusion in the end.

Hayden turned away from the bright day outside and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror across the room. For a second He didn’t recognise himself. His black hair needed cutting and was tangled over his brow. He had lost weight and his breeches hung from his lean hips. His eyes were shadowed.

‘Jane would never know you now, you disreputable bastard,’ he told himself with a bitter laugh. He pulled open his wardrobe and reached for the first shirt hanging there. He pulled it over his head and splashed some cold water over his face. He wanted a brandy to fortify himself for reading Jane’s letter, but there was none nearby.

He had to read it now.

Hayden took the letter from the mantel and broke the seal.

‘Hayden,’ it began. No ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’. Right to the point.

It has been some time since I wrote and I am sorry for being rather quiet. Matters have been so very busy here. As you may remember, Barton Park has been neglected for some time and it has taken up so much of my attention. I believe I have made it quite comfortable again and Emma has left school to come stay with me permanently. We go along very well together and I hope that you are well too.

The reason I am writing is this. It has been a long while since we lived together as husband and wife. It occurred to me that we cannot go on this way for much longer. You are an earl and must have an heir, I know that very well. I am also well aware of how difficult and expensive a divorce would be. But you are a man of influence in London with many friends. If you wish to begin proceedings, I will not stop you in any way. My life here is a quiet one and scandal cannot touch it.

I will not stand in the way of your future. I trust that, in honour of what we once had, you will not stand in the way of mine.

Sincerely,

Jane.

Hayden was stunned. A divorce? Jane wrote him after all this time to say he should seek a divorce? He crumpled the letter in his fist and tossed it into the empty grate. A raw, burning fury swept through him, an anger he didn’t understand. What had he expected would happen with Jane? Had he just thought they would go along in their strange twilight world for ever, married but not married?

The truth was he had avoided thinking about it at all. Now he saw he must. Jane was quite right. Even though he avoided considering his responsibilities as much as possible, he needed an heir. When Jane lost the babies, that hope was gone as well as their marriage. It was like his poor mother all over again, only Jane had luckily been spared the fate of dying trying to give her husband a spare to go with his heir. Jane was saved—because she wisely left. Yes, she was right about it all.

But something else was there, something she did not say in that polite, carefully worded little letter. He wasn’t sure what it was, what was really going on with her, but he was sure there was more to this sudden plea for a divorce.

My life here is a quiet one and scandal cannot affect it.

How quiet was her life at Barton Park? He had heard nothing of how she really lived in the years since they had parted. No one ever saw her and, after the initial ripple of gossip over their separation, no one spoke of her. They treated him as if he was a single man again, as if Jane had never been. Now he wondered what she did. Why she wanted to be away from him in such a permanent way.

Suddenly he knew he had to see her again. He had to know what was really going on. She had left him, left their life together without a backward glance. He wouldn’t let things be easy for her any longer.

No matter what Jane thought, she was still his wife. It was time she remembered that. Time they both remembered that.

Hayden strode to the door and pulled it open. ‘Makepeace!’ he shouted.

‘My lord?’ came the faint reply up the stairs. Makepeace always disapproved of Hayden’s strange habit of shouting out of doors.

‘Call for my horse to be saddled. I am leaving for the country today.’




Chapter Two


‘Whois that?’

Hayden’s best friend, Lord John Eastwood, looked around at Hayden’s sudden question. It had been a long, dull day, hanging about at the royal Drawing Room, watching all that Season’s crop of fresh young misses make their curtsies to the queen. John’s sister, Susan, was one those misses and he had been recruited to help her. Hayden in return was recruited to help John survive the deadly dullness of it all.

Only for John would Hayden brave such a place and only after a stiff gulp of port. They had been friends ever since they were awkward schoolboys, drawn together by a shared humour and love of parties. John’s family took Hayden in on holidays when his own family was too busy for him.

But even for the Eastwoods he was regretting venturing in there, to the over-gilded overheated room stuffed with girls in awkwardly hooped satin-and-lace gowns and towering plumes—and their sharp-eyed, avidly husband-hunting mamas.

A new young earl like Hayden was just a sitting duck, or a fox flushed out of hiding. He wanted to run.

Until he saw her.

She stood amid the gaggle of white-clad girls, overdressed just like them, with the tall headdress of white feathers in her dark hair threatening to overwhelm her slender figure. She was silent, carefully watching everything around her, but she drew his attention like the sudden flicker of a candle in the darkness.

She wasn’t beautiful, not like so many of the pretty blonde shepherdess types clustered around her. She was too slim, too pale, with brown hair and a pointed chin, like a forest fairy. Yet she wore her ridiculous gown with an air of quiet, stylish dignity and her pink lips were curved in a little smile as if she had a secret joke no one else in the crowd could know.

And Hayden really, really wanted her to tell him what it was. What made her smile like that. No one had caught his attention so suddenly, so completely, in—well, ever. He had to find out who she was.

‘Who is that?’ Hayden asked again, and it seemed something in the urgency of his tone caught John’s attention. John stopped grinning at his current flirtation, a certain Lady Eleanor Saunders, and turned to Hayden.

‘Who is who?’ John asked.

‘That girl over there, in the white with the silver lace,’ Hayden said impatiently.

‘There are approximately fifty girls in white over there.’

‘It’s that one, of course.’ Hayden turned to gesture to her, only to find that now she watched him. Her smile was gone and she looked a bit startled.

Her eyes were the strangest colour of golden-green, and they seemed to draw him in to her, closer and closer.

‘The little brunette who is looking this way,’ he said quietly, as if he feared to scare her away if he spoke too loudly. She had such a quiet, watchful delicacy to her.

‘Oh, her. She is Miss Jane Bancroft, the niece of Lady Kenton.’

‘You know her?’ How could John know her and he could not?

‘She had tea with Susan last week. It seems they met in the park and rather liked each other.’ John gave Hayden a sharp glance of sudden interest. ‘Why? Would you like to meet her?’

‘Yes,’ Hayden said simply. He couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t stop trying to decipher what was so immediately and deeply alluring about her.

‘She’s not your usual sort, is she?’ John said.

‘My usual sort?’

‘You know. Dashing, colourful. Like Lady Marlbury. You’ve never looked twice at a deb before.’

Hayden couldn’t even remember who Lady Marlbury was at the moment, even though she had been his sometimes-mistress for a few weeks. Not when Miss Bancroft smiled at him, then looked shyly away, her cheeks turning pink.

‘Just introduce me,’ he said.

‘If you like,’ John said. ‘Just be careful, my friend. Girls like her can be lethal to men like you and you know it.’

Hayden couldn’t answer that. When was he ever careful? He wasn’t about to start now, not when feelings were roiling through him he had never felt before. He set off across the crowded room, leaving John to scramble after him.

And Miss Bancroft watched him approach. She still looked so very still, but he saw her gloved fingers tighten on the sticks of her fan, saw her sudden intake of breath against the satin of her bodice. She wasn’t indifferent to him. Whatever this strange, sudden spell was, he wasn’t in it alone.

‘Miss Bancroft,’ John said, giving the girl a bow. ‘Very nice to see you again.’

‘And you, Lord John,’ she answered, her voice low and soft, musical, with a flash of gentle humour in its depths. ‘It is a most dutiful brother who would brave a Drawing Room for his sister.’

John laughed and half-turned. ‘May I present my very good friend, Hayden Fitzwalter, the Earl of Ramsay? He especially asked to make your acquaintance. Hayden, this is Miss Jane Bancroft.’

‘How do you do?’ she murmured. She made a little curtsy and slowly held out her hand to him.

Her fingers trembled a bit as he folded them in his own, and her cheeks turned a deeper pink. Jane, Jane.

And in that moment he was utterly lost…

Curiosus Semper.

Careful Always. Jane had to laugh as she tore a trailing veil of ivy away from the stone garden bench and saw the motto carved there. The letters were faded with time, encrusted with the moss and dirt of neglect, but they were still visible. She would wager her ancestors never could have foreseen how sadly ironic those words would be for their family.

She stood up and dusted some of the soil and leaves from her gloved hands. Her shoulders ached from kneeling there, clearing away some of the tenaciously clinging vines, but it was a good ache. Work meant she didn’t have to think. And there was plenty of work to be done at Barton Park.

As she stretched, she studied the house that loomed across the garden. Barton Park had belonged to the Bancrofts for centuries, a gift to one of their ancestors from Charles II. Legend had it that the house was part of the payment in exchange for that long-ago Bancroft marrying one of the king’s many cast-off mistresses. But the marriage, against all odds, was a happy one, and the couple went on to make Barton Park a centre of raucous parties and all sorts of debauchery.

Just the sort of place Hayden would have liked, Jane often thought. Perhaps if she had been more like that first mistress of Barton Park things between them could have worked out. But the Bancrofts that followed were quieter, more scholarly, and not as adept at accumulating royal gifts. Their fortune dwindled until by the time of Jane’s father there was little left but the house itself, which was already crumbling with neglect.

Little but the legend of the treasure. The old tale about how one of the first Barton Park Bancrofts’ many licentious guests had dabbled in highway robbery and had hidden his ill-gotten treasure somewhere in the garden. Jane’s father, as he grew sicker and sicker, had become obsessed with the idea of this treasure. He told Jane the story of it over and over, even sending her out to try digging in various spots around the grounds.

Then he died and her mother had told her different tales. Harder, more bitter stories about the truth of a woman’s insecure place in the world, of how finding the right husband—a rich husband—was all that mattered. Jane was frightened to think she might be right. Money and position could bring security, of course, and she craved that so much after the uncertainties of her childhood. But surely there must be more? Must be some chance of a happy family? Of being a good wife and mother, despite the poor example she had always seen before her.

Then her mother also died and Jane went to have a London Season with her aunt while Emma was sent to school.

Both those destinations had ended badly for the Bancroft sisters. Jane had found she had more of her fanciful father in her than she ever would have thought. She had imagined she had found a fairy tale, a happy-ever-after with Hayden, until she discovered she was in love with an illusion, a man who never really existed except in her dreams. She didn’t know how to fit into his world and he couldn’t help her. They had been so young, so foolish to think that they could even try, that their passion in the bedroom could be enough to make a life together.

So her father had been wrong in relying on fairy stories. But so had her mother. A rich husband was not all a woman needed.

Jane tossed her trowel and garden gloves into a bucket and examined the house. Barton Park was not a large dwelling, but once it had been very pretty, a red brick faded to a soft pink, centred around a white-stone portico and surrounded by gardens, a mysterious hedge maze and a pretty Chinoiserie summerhouse. Now the stone was chipped, some of the windows cracked and the lovely gardens sadly overgrown. She hadn’t gone in the hedge maze at all since she moved back.

Jane did her best. She and Emma lived on a small bequest from their mother’s family, which Hayden could probably claim if he wanted, but it was surely too insignificant to interest him. It paid for their food, a cook, a maid, fuel for the fires, but not a carriage or a team of gardeners. No grand parties, but she had had her fill of those in London. She had found she wasn’t at all good at them, either attending or hosting them. There could be money from Hayden, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

Jane sighed as she pushed the loose tendrils of her brown hair back into her scarf. Emma was sixteen now. In a couple of years she should have a London Season, though Jane had no idea how to pay for it or how to weather London gossip in order to launch her.

Not that Emma seemed in the least bit interested in a Season. She was a strange girl, always buried in books about botany or running off to the woods to collect ‘specimens’ or bring home new pets like rabbits or hedgehogs. She liked the quiet life in the country as much as Jane did. They both needed its peace. But Jane knew it couldn’t go on for ever.

That was why she had forced herself to write to Hayden after all these years. It had taken days of agonising before she could take up that pen to write the letter and even more before she could send it. Then there was…

Nothing. The days had gone by in silence with no answer at all from her husband.

Her husband. Jane pressed her hand to her stomach with the spasm of pain that always came when she thought those words. She remembered Hayden as she had last seen him, sprawled asleep on the stairs of their London house. Her husband, as beautiful as a fallen angel. How horribly they had disappointed each other. Failed each other.

She tried so hard not to think about him. Not to think about how things were when they first married, when she had been so naïve and full of hope. So dazzled by Hayden and what he gave to her. By who he was and the delights they found together in the bedchamber. She tried not to think about the babies, and about how losing those tiny, fragile lives showed her how hollow and empty everything was. She couldn’t even fulfil her main duty as a countess.

During the day it was easy not to think about it all. There was so much work to be done, the gardens to be cleared, the meagre accounts to go over, a few neighbourhood friends to call on or join for tea or cards. But at night—at night it was so different.

In the silence and the darkness there was nothing but the memories. She remembered everything about their days together, the good and the bad. How they had laughed together; how he had made her feel when he kissed her, touched her. How in those moments she had felt not so alone any longer, even though it was all an illusion in the end. She wondered how he was now, what he was doing. And then she wanted to sob for what was lost, for what had never really been except in her dreams.

Yes. Except for those nights, life would be very tolerable indeed. But it wasn’t just Emma’s future she needed to think about, it was her own. And Hayden’s, too, even though the future had never seemed to be something he considered. He was an earl and also an orphan with no siblings. He would need an heir. And for that he would have to be free, as complicated and costly as that would be. She had to offer him that.

And she needed to be free, too.

Jane pushed away thoughts of Hayden and the unanswered letter. She couldn’t worry about it now. She scooped up the bucket and made her way along the overgrown pathway to the house. They were expecting guests for tea.

As she stowed the bucket next to the kitchen, the door suddenly flew open and Emma dashed out. She held a wriggling puppy under one arm and the dirty burlap bag she used for collecting plants over the other. Her golden-blonde hair was gathered in an untidy braid and she wore an old apron over her faded blue-muslin dress.

Even so dishevelled, anyone could see that Emma was becoming a rare beauty, all ivory and gold with their mother’s jewel-green eyes, eyes that had become a muddy hazel on Jane. Emma’s beauty was yet another reason to worry about the future. Emma might be happy at Barton Park, but Jane knew she couldn’t be buried in the country for ever.

‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ Jane asked.

‘I saw a patch of what looked like the plant I’ve been seeking by the road yesterday, but I didn’t have time to examine it properly,’ Emma answered briskly. ‘I want to collect a few pieces before they get trampled.’

‘It looks like rain,’ Jane said. ‘And we have guests coming to tea soon.’

‘Do we? Who? The vicar again?’ Emma said without much interest. She put down Murray the puppy and clipped on his lead.

‘No, Sir David Marton and his sister Miss Louisa. Surely you remember them from the assembly last month?’ Their last real social outing, dancing and tepid punch at the village assembly rooms. Emma would surely remember it as she had protested being put into one of Jane’s made-over London gowns and had then been ogled and flirted with by every man between fifteen and fifty. Sir David had danced with her once, too, then he had spent the evening talking to Jane.

‘That old stick-in-the-mud?’ Emma said with a scoffing laugh. ‘What is he going to do, read us sermons?’

‘Emma!’ Jane protested. ‘Sir David is hardly old—I doubt he is even thirty. And he is not in the least bit sermon-like. He and his sister are very nice.’

‘Nice enough, I suppose, but still very stick-in-the-muddy. When he danced with me at the assembly he kept going on about some German philosopher with terribly gloomy ideas. He didn’t know anything about botany. And his sister only seemed to care about hats.’

‘Nevertheless, they are nice, and they are to be our nearest neighbours since they took over Easton Abbey,’ Jane said, trying not to laugh at her sister’s idea of proper social discourse. ‘You need to be here when they call. And properly dressed, not drenched from getting caught in the rain.’

‘I won’t be gone long at all, Jane, I promise,’ Emma said. ‘I will be all prim and proper in the sitting room when they get here, ready to talk about German philosophy over cakes and tea.’

Jane laughed as Emma kissed her cheek and hurried away, Murray barking madly at her feet. ‘Half an hour, Emma, no more.’

‘Half an hour! I promise!’

Once Emma was gone out the garden gate, Jane hurried through the kitchens, where their cook was making a rare fine tea of sandwiches and lemon cakes, and went up the back stairs to her chamber. Emma wasn’t the only one who needed to mend her appearance, she thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror. She could pass as the scullery maid herself.

And somehow it seemed so important that Sir David and his sister not think ill of her appearance.

As she tugged the scarf from her hair and untied her apron, she thought about Sir David and their recent meetings. He was a handsome young man, in a quiet way that matched his polite demeanour. With his sandy-brown hair and spectacles, he seemed to exude an unobtrusive intelligence that Jane found calming after all that had happened before in her life.

She enjoyed talking to him and he seemed to enjoy talking to her. When she had declined to dance at the assembly, saying only that her dancing days were behind her, he did not press her. But he was kind enough to dance with Emma and listen to her talk about plants, even though Emma seemed to find him ‘stick-in-the-muddy’.

So when Jane had encountered him and his sister in the village, it seemed natural to invite them to tea. Only to be a friendly neighbour, of course. There could be nothing more. She was a married woman, even though she had not seen her husband in years.

She was a married woman for now, anyway. And she could not quite deny that when David Marton smiled at her, sought her out for conversation, she felt something she hadn’t in a long time. She felt—admired.

Even before she left London she had begun to feel invisible. The one person whose admiration mattered—her husband—didn’t see her any more and all the chatter in the fashion papers about her gowns and her coiffures didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered beyond Hayden’s indifference. She started to feel invisible even to herself, especially after she had failed in her main duty to give her husband an heir.

Back home at Barton Park she had started to feel better, slowly, day by day. She had started to feel the sun on her skin again and hear the birds singing. The weed-choked gardens didn’t care what she looked like and Emma certainly didn’t. Things seemed quite content. So it had come as quite a surprise how much she enjoyed Sir David’s quiet attentions.

She leaned towards the mirror to peer more closely at her reflection.

‘No one in London would recognise you now,’ she said with laugh. And, indeed, no one would recognise the well-dressed Lady Ramsay in this woman, with her wind-tossed hair and the pale gold freckles the sun had dotted over her nose. She reached for her hairbrush and set to work.

She suddenly felt giddily schoolgirlish in how much she looked forward to this tea party.




Chapter Three


‘Ramsay? By Jove, it is you! Blast it, man, what are you doing in this godforsaken place?’

Hayden slowly turned from his place at the bar. He had just been asking himself that very thing, What was he doing in a country inn, sipping at tepid, weak ale, running after a woman who clearly didn’t want him, when he could be in London, getting ready for a night out at balls and gambling clubs?

He had just come to the startling realisation that a night out gaming and drinking wasn’t something he would miss very much when he heard those shouted words. They were a welcome distraction from his own brooding thoughts.

He turned away from the bar and saw Lord Ethan Carstairs making his way across the crowded room towards him. Lord Ethan was not what Hayden would call a friend, but they were often in the same circles and saw each other at their club and across the gambling tables. Lord Ethan was rather loud and didn’t hold his liquor very well, but he was tolerable enough most of the time. Especially at moments like this, when Hayden needed distraction.

‘Lord Ethan,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here. Can I buy you an ale?’

‘I won’t say no to that,’ Ethan said affably as he leaned against the bar next to Hayden. To judge by his reddened cheeks and rumpled hair, and the dishevelled state of his expensive clothes, he had been imbibing the ale for quite a while already. ‘My damnable uncle is making me rusticate for a while. Says he won’t increase my allowance until I learn some control and I am completely out of funds.’

‘Indeed?’ Hayden asked without much interest as he gestured to the innkeeper for more ale. Everyone knew that Ethan’s Puritanical uncle, who also held the Carstairs family purse-strings, disapproved of his nephew’s wild ways. Hayden sympathised. His own father had so often been disapproving.

And now here he was, drowning his doubts in drink. Just like his father. That was certainly something he did not want to think about.

‘Most unfair,’ Ethan grumbled. He took a long gulp from his glass, the reached into his pocket and took out a small, gold object he twirled through his fingers. Hayden recognised it as an old Spanish coin the man often used as a lucky charm at the card tables. ‘I’m on my way to some country pile to wait him out. But what are you doing so far from town?’

Hayden shrugged. He might as well tell the truth. All of society would know soon enough, when he either came back to London with Jane by his side or instigated scandalous divorce proceedings. ‘I am on my way to Barton Park to see Lady Ramsay.’

‘By Jove!’ Ethan sputtered. ‘I had forgotten you were married.’

‘My wife is delicate and prefers the country for her health,’ Hayden said, as he always did when someone asked about Jane. They seldom even bothered any longer.

‘I see. I remember they said she was a pretty little thing.’ Ethan’s gaze narrowed, and for an instant it was as if the ale-haze cleared in his bloodshot-blue eyes. ‘Barton Park, you say?’

‘It’s her family home.’

‘I think I have heard of it. Isn’t there some tale of treasure or some such there?’ Ethan laughed, and that instant of clarity vanished. ‘We can both rot here in the country for a while, then. Damnable families.’

Damnable families. Hayden almost laughed bitterly as he sipped at the terrible ale. He wasn’t even sure what it felt like to have a family, not now. He had been alone for so long it seemed like the only way he could be. The only way he could avoid hurting anyone else.

Once, for a moment, he had seen what it could be to have a real family. He had a flashing memory of a sunlit day, of Jane with her dark hair loose over her bare shoulders, smiling up at him. She took his hand and held it against the warm skin of her stomach, where he could feel the swell of their child. The first child that was lost.

He knew now that that was the most perfect moment of his life, but it had only been an illusion. Jane was done with him now. But he wasn’t done with her. Soon enough she would see that.

‘I have to be on my way,’ Hayden said. He pushed his half-full glass away. ‘Good luck with your rusticating, Carstairs.’

Lord Ethan blinked at him. ‘Same to you, Ramsay. Maybe we’ll meet again soon.’

Hayden nodded, though really he was quite sure they wouldn’t. He left the stale-smelling room behind for the innyard. As he waited for a fresh horse to be brought around, one of the servants said, ‘It looks like rain is coming, my lord. Might be best to wait to ride out.’

Hayden peered up at the sky. It had been a pale blue when he arrived at the inn, hazy with country sunlight, but now he saw the servant was right. Grey clouds were gathering swiftly and the wind was colder.

But the thought of going back inside to drink some more with Ethan Carstairs was most unappealing. He had already waited too long to go after Jane—he needed to get on with the business of confronting his wife.

‘I haven’t far to ride,’ he said as he swung up into the saddle. But he hadn’t been gone long from the inn when the lowering skies burst open on a clap of thunder and rain poured down.

Hayden was glad of the cold, it seemed to drive him onwards and cleared his head. He galloped faster down the narrow, rutted lane, revelling in the speed and the wildness of the nature around him. All too often in London he felt closed in, trapped by the buildings and the noise, by all the people watching him.

Here there was nothing but the trees and the wind, the dark clouds sweeping in faster and faster over his head on the rumble of thunder. Maybe that was why Jane had run here, he thought as his horse leaped over a fallen log in the road and galloped onwards even faster. Just to be able to breathe again.

He urged the horse on, trying to outrun the raw anger that had burned in him ever since he had read Jane’s letter. Even if she was tired of her London life, she had duties, damn it! Duties as his wife and countess. She had left them, left him, behind. And now she wanted to abandon them permanently.

She had to see how impossible her suggestion of divorce was. He had to make her see.

A bolt of sizzling blue-white lightning suddenly split the sky, cleaving a tree beside the road only a few feet away. With a deafening crack, a thick branch split away and crashed into the road. Hayden’s horse reared up and the wet reins slid from his hands at the sudden movement.

He felt himself falling, the sky and the rain and the mud all tumbling around him. He crashed to the ground and pain shot through his leg as it twisted under him.

Hayden cursed as loudly as he could, but he was drowned out by the shout of the thunder. The horse scrambled to regain his footing and ran away down the lane. Hayden tried to push himself up, to balance on his good leg, but he fell back to the mud.

He shoved back his sodden hair and stared up into the leaden sky. He laughed at the storm. It seemed even nature wanted to keep him away from Jane.

‘Are you all right?’ he heard a woman call. He twisted around to see her running towards him through the misty sheets of rain, like a ghost.

She looked vaguely familiar, not very tall and too slender in a faded, rain-spotted dress. A loose braid of wet golden hair lay over her shoulder and a barking puppy ran in circles around her. But despite that nagging sense that he should know her, he didn’t really recognise her as she ran down the lane towards him.

Until she knelt beside him, completely careless of the rain. She stared up at him with bright green eyes, pale and clear. He remembered those eyes. He had seen them at his wedding when Jane proudly introduced her sister. She had been younger then, scrawny and awkward. Now time had moved on and she had grown up.

And he remembered that Jane had written that her sister lived with her now. He had to be close to Barton Park.

‘Emma?’ he said.

She sat back on her heels, her eyes narrowing with suspicion. ‘Yes, I am Emma Bancroft. How do you…?’ Suddenly she gasped. ‘Ramsay? What in the hell are you doing here?’

‘Does your sister let you curse like that? Most unladylike,’ he said, suddenly aware of the utter absurdity of his situation. He was sitting in the rain, in the middle of a muddy country lane, arguing about propriety with the sister-in-law he hardly knew.

He laughed and she frowned at him as if he was an escaped bedlamite. He certainly felt like one.

‘Of course she doesn’t let me,’ Emma said. ‘But she is not here and this situation clearly warrants a curse or two. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in London?’

‘I was, but now I’m on my way to Barton Park. Or I was, until that infernal horse threw me.’

Emma glanced over her shoulder at where the horse had come to a halt further down the lane. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘I think I twisted my leg. I can’t stand up.’

Her frown of suspicion vanished, replaced by an expression of concern. Perhaps like her sister she was too soft-hearted. ‘Oh, no! Here, let me help you.’

‘I’m far too heavy for you.’

‘Nonsense. I’m much stronger than I look.’ She wrapped her arm around him and let him lean on her as he staggered to his feet. She was rather strong, and between them they managed to hobble over to the fallen branch.

‘Stay here, Ramsay, and I’ll get your horse back,’ she said. ‘You need to get out of the rain and have that leg looked at.’

She dashed away, leaving her now-silent dog to watch him suspiciously in her place. She returned very quickly with the recalcitrant horse.

‘We aren’t far from Barton Park,’ she said. ‘I can lead you there, if you can manage to ride that far.’

‘Of course I can ride that far, it’s just a sprain,’ he said, even though his leg felt like it was on fire and he could see blood spotting his rain-soaked breeches.

‘Good. You’ll need to save your strength for when Jane sees you. She doesn’t know you’re coming, does she?’ Emma asked matter of factly, as if she ran into estranged relatives every day.

Hayden gritted his teeth as he pulled himself up into the saddle. The pain washed over him in cold waves and he pushed it away. ‘Not yet.’

To his surprise, Emma laughed. ‘Oh, this day just gets more interesting all the time.’

Emma tried not to stare at her brother-in-law like a lackwit, tried to just calmly give him directions to Barton Park as he pulled her up on to the horse behind him and set them into motion, Murray running alongside them. But she just couldn’t help it. She couldn’t believe Lord Ramsay was actually there, that she had actually stumbled on him right in the middle of the road as she tried to hurry home for tea.

Whatever was he doing there? It couldn’t possibly be good. As far as Emma knew, Jane hadn’t even talked to him in all the time since they came to live at Barton. Jane never even talked about him, so Emma had no idea what had happened in London.

But she did have imagination and it had filled in all sorts of lurid scenarios that could drive her kind-hearted, responsible sister away from her husband. Ramsay had become something of an ogre in Emma’s mind, so her first instinct when she saw him there in the road had been to run from him as fast as she could. Especially after what had happened to her at school, with that odious Mr Milne, the music master. He had been enough to scare her off men for ever.

And yet—yet she remembered that one other time she had met Ramsay, on the day he married her sister in that elegant town ceremony. He had looked at Jane then as if all the stars and the moon revolved only around her and he had held her hand so tenderly. And Jane had been radiant that day, as if she was lit from within. Emma had never seen her sister, who tended to worry over everyone else so much, so very happy. Emma had even known she could endure her hated school because she knew Jane was happy in her new life with her husband.

What had gone so wrong? Why was Ramsay here now, after so long? Emma was bursting to know, but she just said calmly, ‘Turn right up there at the gate.’

‘Thank you, Miss Bancroft,’ he said through gritted teeth. When she glanced up at his profile, she saw he looked rather pale. He was probably in more pain than he wanted to show, just like a man.

‘I hardly think we need to be so formal,’ she said teasingly. ‘I’m your sister. My name is Emma.’

A flash of a smile touched his lips. ‘I do remember your name, Emma.’

‘That’s good. If you turn left here, you’ll see the house just ahead.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘So, Emma, what are you doing running about in the rain?’

‘It wasn’t raining when I left,’ she said. ‘And if you must know, I was collecting some specimens.’

‘Specimens?’

‘Plants. For my studies.’ And she really had taken a few cuttings of the plants. He didn’t need to know her other errands. No one had to know, not yet, that she was hunting for the lost Barton Park treasure.

Emma tucked her sack closer to her side and felt the reassuring weight of the small journal in its pocket. She had found it in a forgotten corner of the Barton library last month. She had been hoping to find old plans of the gardens, but this book was even better. It was a journal belonging to the young cousin of the first mistress of Barton Park.

It seemed this girl had been a poor relation, sent to stay at Barton to gain some Court polish. Emma didn’t know her name, but she had quickly been drawn into her sharply observed tales of the people and parties of the house back then. Barton was so quiet now, silently crumbling away with only her and Jane living there, but once upon a time it had been full of life and scandal.

Then the journal’s writer had fallen in love with one of the naughty guests—the very man who had stolen the treasure and hid it somewhere in the gardens. Emma had been combing its yellowed pages for clues ever since.

Surely if she could find it, their worries would be over. Jane could cease working so very hard, could lose that pinched, concerned look on her face. Jane had always been the best of sisters. Emma only wanted to help her, too.

But she didn’t want Jane to know what she was doing. Emma didn’t want to be compared to their father, so caught up in useless dreams he couldn’t help his family. So she did her detective work in secret, whenever she could. And she had found nothing yet.

She had also never told her sister about what had really happened at school with Mr Milne. That was only for her nightmares now, thankfully. she was done with men altogether.

‘There’s the house,’ she said. It loomed before them in the misty rain and she was glad he couldn’t yet see the dwelling clearly. Couldn’t see how shabby it was. If only she had had time to warn Jane! Then again, maybe the surprise was better.

But if she had vague hopes that Ramsay’s leg would slow him down enough to give her a head start into the house, they were quickly dashed. He held on to his saddle and carefully slid to the ground, his jaw set in his handsome, hard-edged face.

Emma leaped down and ran up the front steps to throw the door open. Murray dashed in, barking, his muddy paw prints trailing over the old, scarred parquet floor.

‘Jane, Jane!’ she shouted, completely abandoning propriety. She had only seconds to warn her sister. Then she could watch the drama unfold.

Jane emerged from the drawing-room door, her eyes wide with astonishment. She had changed from her garden clothes to her best day dress, a pale green muslin with a high-frilled collar. Her brown hair was carefully pinned up and bound with a green-ribbon bandeau. For a second, Emma couldn’t decipher why her sister was so dressed up on a rainy afternoon.

Then the Martons, Sir David and his silly sister, appeared in the doorway behind her and Emma remembered in a flash. They had guests. Respectable guests, who for some unfathomable reason Jane wanted to impress.

‘Emma, whatever is the matter?’ Jane demanded, while Sir David looked rather disapproving and his sister giggled behind her handkerchief.

‘He is here!’ Emma cried. She couldn’t worry about the Martons right now, not with Ramsay so close behind her.

‘Who is here?’ Jane said. ‘Emma, dear, are you ill?’

Across the empty hall, the door opened again, letting in a blast of rain and wind. Ramsay stood there, silhouetted in his greatcoat against the grey sky outside. For one instant there was a flash of something raw and burning, something real, in his eyes. Then it was as if a blank, pale mask dropped down and there was nothing at all.

‘Hello, Jane,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s been much too long. You are looking lovely as always.’

Emma swung back around to look at Jane. Her sister’s face had turned utterly white and Emma feared she might faint right in front of everyone. But when Emma moved to take her hand, Jane waved her back.

‘Oh, blast it all,’ Jane whispered. ‘Not now…’

‘You can’t feel it move yet,’ Jane said, her voice full of laughter. ‘It’s much too soon.’

Hayden laid down beside her on the sun-splashed bed anyway and rested his cheek on the gentle swell of her belly under her light dressing gown. It was early; the doctor had only just confirmed that Jane was truly pregnant. But his wife already seemed blooming. She wasn’t quite as thin and her cheeks were pink. Four months married and now a child on the way. Their first child.

She laughed again as he carefully touched the small bump. Her skin was so warm, so sweet, so alive. ‘You won’t break me, Hayden. The doctor says I am quite healthy.’

Hayden fervently prayed so. He didn’t know what he had ever done in his misbegotten life to deserve a wife like Jane, but he knew he couldn’t lose her now. His heart ached just to think of her laughter, her quite, calm presence, being gone in a flash.

Just like his mother.

Jane seemed to sense his sudden fear. She gently smoothed a soft caress over his hair. ‘All will be well, Hayden. I am sure of it. And in a few months, we will have a little lord or lady. The beginning of a new family for us. Just like we talked about on our honeymoon.’

Their honeymoon—those perfect, sweet days and nights, just the two of them all alone in the country. They had almost become buried under the noise and rush of London life since they returned. Jane had seemed A bit lost as a new countess, with so many eyes upon her, but now she looked perfectly content. A new family was on the way, their family. It could be very different from what he knew with his parents. He could make it different.

But still the tiny, buried spark of that old fear lingered…




Chapter Four


‘Won’t you introduce me to your guests?’

Hayden. Hayden was here, standing in her house. Jane was sure she must have fallen and hit her head, that she was lying on the drawing-room floor having dream visions. One minute she was serving tea, trying to make polite conversation as she worried about Emma wandering around out in the rain. And the next she was facing her husband.

Her husband. It truly was Hayden, after all these years. She stared at him, frozen, stricken. Her dreams of him had been nothing to the real thing. Hayden was even more handsome than she remembered, his elegantly sharp-planed face drawn even leaner, harsher with his black hair slicked back with the rain.

His eyes, that pure, pale blue she had once so loved, stared back at her unwavering. For an instant she went tumbling back to that moment when she first saw him. She was that romantic girl again, hopeful, heartstruck, so sure that she saw her own passionate need reflected in those eyes. So sure he was what she had been longing for all her life. Hayden, Hayden—he was here again!

She almost took a step towards him, almost reached for him, when he suddenly smiled at her. But it was not a smile of joyful welcome. It was sardonic, almost bitter, the smile of a sophisticated stranger. It made Jane remember what had become of her romantic dreams of marriage and the man she had thought was her husband. He had been living his fast life in London while she was healing here in the country. Hayden was truly only a stranger now.

Jane’s half-lifted hand fell back to her side and the haze of dreams cleared around her. For a moment she had seen only Hayden, but suddenly she was aware of everything else. The rain pounding at the windows. Emma beside her, her golden hair dripping on to the floor, watching her with a frown of concern. The Martons just behind, witnessing this whole bizarre tableau of unexpected reunion.

The way that Hayden leaned heavily on the wobbly old pier table. There was a tear in his finely tailored breeches and spots of blood on the pale fabric muted by the rainwater.

Jane’s throat tightened at the realisation that he was hurt. ‘What has happened?’ she asked hoarsely.

It was Emma who answered. ‘I found him on the road,’ she said. ‘His horse had thrown him and his leg was so hurt he couldn’t stand.’

‘Thrown him?’ Jane said. Surely that was impossible. Hayden was one of the finest riders she knew. Despite her fears and doubts, she couldn’t help but be concerned he was truly hurt.

‘A lightning strike startled the horse,’ he said, remarkably calm for a man who was standing drenched and wounded in his estranged wife’s house. ‘I fear I’m interrupting a social occasion.’

‘I—No, not at all,’ Jane managed to choke out. ‘Merely tea with our neighbours. This is Sir David Marton and his sister, Miss Louisa Marton. May I present Lord Ramsay, my—my husband.’

‘Your husband?’ Miss Louisa cried. ‘Why, how very exciting. We were not expecting to meet you here, my lord.’

‘No, I imagine not,’ Hayden murmured. ‘How do you do?’

Miss Louisa giggled while Sir David said nothing. Jane sensed him watching her, but she couldn’t deal with him now. She had to take care of Hayden. She forced herself to move, to go across the hall and reach for Hayden’s arm.

For an instant he was stiff under her tentative touch and she thought he would jerk away from her. But he let her thread her fingers around his elbow and swayed towards her.

Up close, she could see how carefully rigid he held his body, the bruised-looking shadows under his eyes. He felt thinner, harder than he had the last time she had touched him. But his smell was the same, that clean, crisp scent of sun and lemony cologne and man that had once made her long to curl up beside him and inhale him into her very heart. There was the faint undertone of ale, but the brandy was gone.

‘We need to get you upstairs and send for the doctor,’ Jane said quietly. He was obviously in more pain than he would ever reveal.

‘I can go,’ Emma said.

‘No, permit me to go for the doctor, Lady Ramsay,’ Sir David said. ‘Louisa and I have the carriage and Miss Bancroft should be by the fire.’

Jane glanced over at Sir David, surprised by the offer. He didn’t smile, just looked back at her solemnly and gave her a polite nod. The tea had been going rather well, she suddenly remembered, until this most unexpected interruption. Unlike Emma, Jane rather enjoyed hearing about philosophy, books and ideas, and Sir David was an intelligent, pleasant conversationalist. He had seemed to enjoy talking to her as well, and if nothing else his company gave her hope that life would not always be so lonely. That life could be—nice, rather than chaotic or painful.

Then Hayden appeared.

‘Thank you, Sir David,’ she said. ‘That is so kind of you.’ He nodded and took his sister’s arm to lead her away. She waved at them merrily over her shoulder.

Emma tactfully withdrew, leaving Jane alone with Hayden for the first time in three years. Jane took a deep, steadying breath. She had to help him just as she would anyone else who showed up on her doorstep in a storm. He was merely a stranger to her now.

But he didn’t feel like a stranger as she took his arm again. His eyes weren’t those of a stranger as he looked down at her. Once he had known her so well, better than anyone else ever had. He had known her body as well as the secrets of her heart. She had trusted him so much, allowed him to see so much.

She had bitterly regretted that ever since. She could never let herself be so vulnerable again.

She turned away from the blue light of his eyes. ‘Let me help you up the stairs,’ she said softly.

‘Do you have no butler or footmen?’ Hayden asked. ‘Those stairs look rather precarious.’

Jane almost laughed. ‘We have an elderly cook and a shy little maid who is no doubt cowering in the pantry right now. I’m the only help available, I fear.’

Hayden nodded grimly and let her hold on to his arm as she led him slowly up the stairs. She sensed he was trying to lean on her as little as possible, even as his jaw was set with the pain. She never really noticed the staircase any longer, it was always just there. But now she saw it through his eyes, the missing carved posts, the chips in the once-gilded balustrade, the loose boards in the risers.

‘I usually use the back stairs,’ she said. ‘But they are rather a long walk from here.’

Hayden nodded again and together they concentrated on getting to the landing. At the top, they faced the long corridor lined with closed doors and Jane realised there was no choice. She had to take him to her room. Besides Emma’s, none of the other chambers were habitable.

She pushed open the door and led him over to the old chaise next to the window. He lowered himself down to its faded cushions, still looking up at her with those eyes that seemed to see so much. Seemed to remember her, know her.

Jane remembered that when he was drinking, when he was caught up in his London life, he didn’t seem to see her at all. Why was he here, now, finally looking at her when she had at last gained a small measure of contentment?

‘What do you want, Jane? What in God’s name will make you happy? You have everything here.’

Those long-ago words of Hayden’s suddenly rang in her memory. The frustration in them, the anger. And she remembered her own tears.

‘All I want is for you to spend time with me,’ she answered, so confused that he couldn’t understand without her saying anything. That he didn’t know.

‘I was with you all last night, Jane.’

‘At a ball.’ A ball where they had danced once and then he had disappeared into the card room. He had not even made love to her when they got home near dawn. And the times when they had made love, when it was only the two of them alone in the darkness, were the only times she felt sure he was really with her.

‘Let’s go back to Ramsay House, like on our honeymoon,’ she had begged, trying not to cry again. She was so tired of crying. ‘We had such fun there.’

‘We have duties here, Jane. Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Duties!’ And that was when anger overtook the hurt confusion inside of her. ‘Duties to do what? Go to the races with your friends? Play cards? You are surely needed at your estate.’ Needed by her. But she dared not say that again.

‘You don’t understand,’ he had answered coldly. ‘You are new to being a countess. But you will learn.’

Only she never had learned how to be the sort of countess he wanted. A woman at ease in the racy environs of society. A woman who could give him an heir. A woman his friends would admire. She gave up even trying, especially after she lost the babies.

‘You should change out of your wet clothes,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can find something in my father’s old wardrobe.’

She turned away, but Hayden suddenly reached out and caught her hand in his. His fingers were cool and strong as they twined with hers, holding her with him. It felt strange, new and wonderfully familiar all at the same time. She stared down at him, startled.

A smile touched his sensual lips, an echo of that bright, rakish grin that once drew her in so completely.

‘Will you not help me out of my wet clothes, Jane?’ he said. ‘You used to be so good at that…’

Jane snatched her hand away. ‘I’m glad the fall didn’t damage everything, Hayden. You can take them off all by yourself, I’m sure.’

More flustered than she would ever admit, Jane whirled around and hurried towards the door.

‘Jane,’ he called.

She stopped with her hand on the latch. ‘Yes? What now?’

‘Who was your visitor?’

His tone had flashed from teasing and suggestive to hard, demanding. As if he had any right to demand anything of her any longer!

She glanced back at him over her shoulder. The stark grey light from the window surrounded him, blinding her. ‘I told you, the Martons are our neighbours. We were having tea.’

‘Is that all?’ he said. He sounded ridiculously suspicious.

‘Of course,’ Jane snapped, suddenly angry. He knew nothing of her life at Barton Park, just as she knew nothing now of his London life. She didn’t want to know; she could imagine it all too well. And she was sure he did nothing so innocent as take tea and talk about books with his neighbours.

‘What are you even doing here, Hayden?’ she said. ‘Why now?’

Hayden shook his head and, as Jane blinked away that unwelcome prickle of tears, she saw how weary he looked. He slumped back on to the chaise and she knew this was not the moment for any long-delayed quarrels and confrontations. Those could wait.

‘I will fetch some dry clothes and some water for you to wash,’ she said and slipped out the door.

Once alone in the dark corridor, she leaned against the wall and impatiently rubbed at her aching eyes. She had already cried enough tears over Hayden; she wouldn’t shed any more. She would find out what he wanted then send him on his way so she could resume her life without him.

That was her only choice now.

The door closed behind the doctor and Hayden let his head fall back on to the worn cushions of the chaise and closed his eyes. His whole body felt as if he had gone three rounds at Gentleman Jackson’s Saloon and then got foxed and fallen off his horse on top of that. He felt battered, bruised and exhausted, and his leg burned fiercely, especially after all the doctor’s poking and prodding.

But the pain of his leg was nothing to the pain of seeing Jane again. He wasn’t expecting the bolt of pure, hot longing that would hit him just from seeing her face. Touching her, feeling her nearness. He had thought he had forgotten about her in the busy noise of his life, that their separation was nothing. That he didn’t miss her. That she was just a distant acquaintance.

But then she stepped out of the doorway and the sight of her face hit him like another lightning strike, sudden and paralysing. Almost like the first time he saw her and couldn’t turn away from the light of her shy smile. Couldn’t turn away from the hope she kindled inside him.

In that moment before she saw him, she had looked concerned about her sister, her hazel-green eyes soft with worry. Until she glimpsed him and they froze over like a spring tree branch in a sudden frost. Her slender shoulders had stiffened and he had the feeling that she would have fled if all her weighty good manners and pride hadn’t held her there.

Jane always had exquisite manners, was always concerned about the people around her. Including those blasted visitors today? What was their name—Marton? Yes, that Marton was too good looking, too polished and perfect and serious. Damn him. Somehow Hayden had imagined Jane saw no one at all here in the country.

He shifted on the chaise and his leg sent out a stab of fresh pain in protest. There was the soft sound of voices outside the door, one of them the doctor’s, stern and gravelly.

The other was Jane’s, a gentle murmur, and its very softness hurt him even more. It made him think of the first time he came home drunk, after they returned to town from their long honeymoon at Ramsay House and he left Jane one night to go to the club with his friends. Those days alone with Jane had been so golden, so perfect and peaceful, unlike any he had ever known before in his life.

Then his friends had laughed about his new ‘settled and domestic’ ways, about how he would soon become one of those men who followed their wives about London like puppy dogs.

Hayden couldn’t be that way, couldn’t depend on anyone. Need anyone. He had seen how that had killed his parents. After his flighty, beautiful mother died in childbirth, his father couldn’t bear it and followed her soon after. He had always vowed never to be like them. Yet he could see then how much he was coming to rely on Jane. That very night, his first night back at the club as a married man, he only wanted to leave his friends and go home to her. He couldn’t have that. So he drank more than his fill of brandy to prove it.

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.





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