Garson inhaled and stood as straight as a soldier on parade. Before anything else, he had to clear up this matter of Morwenna, whose ghost had lingered far too long. He struggled to steady his voice. “I should have waited until a civilized hour to call on you. But when a man’s been a fool for far too long, it behooves him to stop being a fool as soon he can.”
Jane stared at the floor, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Her lush mouth turned down, and her expression was mutinous. Her arms folded over her lush bosom. “Are you saying you don’t want me back after all?”
He frowned, puzzled at the question. “Were you going to come back?”
“No,” she said, but after a hesitation that made him wonder if she’d considered accepting his ultimatum after all.
“I hope you will.”
She raised her eyes to glare at him as if she despised him. She probably did. But like him, she wasn’t a fickle person. If she’d loved him a couple of months ago, odds were she hadn’t changed. Despite his blunderings.
“I won’t live with you while you’re in love with Morwenna Nash.”
Strange how even a week ago, the mere mention of Morwenna’s name had felt like someone punching a bruise. Now it only summoned a feeling of regret for all the years of futile misery.
Months ago, he should have guessed that he was falling in love with Jane. From the moment he married her, she’d occupied most of his attention. With Morwenna, he’d always acted comme il faut. Yet it hadn’t taken Jane long to pierce his façade of the perfect gentleman, and prove he could behave as badly as any other man driven mad by love. How in Hades had he been too stupid to understand that his emotions were engaged?
“Then you can come home right now.” He spoke quickly for fear she might send him away before he had a chance to tell her how he felt. “I rushed down here in such a lather to tell you that I’m not in love with Morwenna. I haven’t been in love with her for a long time, although I was so used to playing the broken-hearted suitor that I couldn’t see that.”
He drew a deep breath. It was now or never. With a silent prayer that Silas was right, he flung himself off the edge of the cliff and into thin air. “I was once in love with Morwenna. But not anymore. Now, Jane, I’m in love with you.”
*
Chapter Thirty-Nine
*
Jane swayed as the room receded in a rush. She curled shaking fingers over the mantelpiece. Surely Hugh couldn’t have just said what she thought he did. “What did you say?”
He s
tared into her face, his eyes blazing. “You heard me.” He paused. “But I’m more than happy to say it again. I love you, Jane.”
Her heart performed a dizzying cartwheel, but she’d been hurt too often to lower her guard just yet. “That seems too good to be true.”
He flinched. If it was true that he loved her, her doubts would smart. The memory of how he’d dismissed her declaration of love two months ago still stung. “I’ve loved you since I married you.”
She linked shaking hands together at her waist. Her pulse was galloping, but she couldn’t trust this abrupt change. Only the fact that he’d never lied to her before prevented her from assuming this was some scheme to get her back into his bed. “Now that I really can’t believe.”
“Nevertheless it’s true.” He looked heartbreakingly sincere. The brown eyes glittered with urgency, and that telltale muscle in his cheek performed its erratic dance. “I was too buffle-headed to see it. I liked you, and wanted you, and acted like a bear with a toothache every time a man smiled at you, and I thought about nothing except you. If I had a brain in my head, I’d have understood that all adds up to love. But when I loved Morwenna, I was like Don Quixote sighing after unattainable Dulcinea. What I felt for her is nothing like the real, earthy, complicated, overwhelming passion we share. It took me too long to comprehend just what happened to me when I came looking for you in Dorset.”
Jane supposed it made sense. Fenella had said something similar, that her second love was so different from her first, she’d needed time to recognize it for what it was. “Are you saying you weren’t Morwenna’s lover?”
“I didn’t even kiss her.” A touch of sheepishness leavened his desperate air. “When I courted her, she was fragile and broken, and I treated her like Venetian glass.”
Hugh’s penchant for lame dogs raising its head again, she thought, even as relief flooded her. She’d loathed the idea of him sharing that big powerful body with his first love. Fenella had said she didn’t think he’d bedded Morwenna, but now Jane knew for sure. “I’m not Venetian glass,” she said neutrally. “You don’t need to rescue me, Hugh.”
He shook his head. “No, and I thank God for that. You’re strong enough to pull me into line and be my true partner.”
She regarded him suspiciously. She so wanted to believe him, but the price of making a mistake now was utter desolation. “This change of mind still seems very convenient.”
He shrugged and stepped closer. “You don’t believe I’m over Morwenna?”
For a charged moment, she studied him. Did she? It was clear something momentous had happened to him since he’d ridden away in such a temper only a few days ago. A shadow had been lifted from him. She couldn’t doubt that her hesitation tormented him, but despite that, he looked younger, less haunted.
Her hands stilled at her waist, and she spoke steadily. “Yes, I do.”
He smiled in visible relief. “Then?”