“That’s what we called ourselves when we came out of mourning for our first husbands.” With delicate precision, Fenella placed her cup on the tray. It still seemed unlikely that she was married to huge, bluff Anthony Townsend. “We decided we were sick of moping about, and it was time to take society by storm. None of us had the least notion of marrying again.”
“No, we were positively set against the idea,” Helena said, with a sardonic twist of her lips. “My first husband was a rake and a wastrel. I swore I’d never put myself at a man’s mercy again.”
“And while my first husband was a good, steady, reliable man, he only thought about farming. I was so bored, cooped up in muddy Lincolnshire with him, I went into a decline,” Caro said. “When I finished my year of mourning, my plan was to dance and flirt, and take lovers, and live for giddy pleasure. Marriage meant going back to prison.”
“Yet you both married—and you seem very happy,” Jane said.
“We’re happy, all right.” The formidable Helena looked almost sentimental. “And we were much luckier with our choices, the second time around.”
“Luck?” Caro said. “Luck had nothing to do with it. We were clever enough to know Silas and West were the ones for us.”
“Even if it took you far too long to see that,” Helena said. “I thought unrequited love would finish my poor brother off, before you finally agreed to take him on. His hangdog looks were becoming unbearable. If self-pity didn’t kill him, I vow I would have.”
“I didn’t marry Silas just to save you a bit of annoyance,” Caro retorted.
A smile of surprising sweetness curved Helena’s lips. “No, you married him because you love him too much to live without him. I married West for the same reason.”
“Love is a sneaky devil,” Caro said. “Fen, you’d better speak up, or Jane will imagine you don’t love Anthony.”
Jane was well aware of Fenella’s reticence while Caro and Helena shared their surprising stories. On first meeting, she’d assumed these women had always had the world at their feet. Now reading between the lines, she saw that they’d all had their battles to fight before they attained their present contentment.
“Of course I love Anthony,” Fenella said impatiently. “He gave me a new lease of life.”
Jane knew what it was like to shrink from exposing fragile feelings to the light. “You don’t have to tell me, Fenella, if it’s difficult for you.”
Fenella’s smile contained an ocean of sadness. “My story is quite different from Caro and Hel’s. As girls, they wed men unworthy of them. I didn’t. My first husband Henry died a hero at Waterloo. Losing him broke my heart, so I was determined to retire from the world and live only for my son Brandon. I was sure I’d never love again.”
“But we dragged you back into the world,” Caro said.
“Yes, you did.”
“And Anthony dragged you back to life. I can still remember how astounded we were, when you announced that you intended to marry him, despite only knowing him for a couple of weeks.”
Fenella’s smile turned brilliant, and with a shock, Jane saw that she was as besotted with her big brute of a husband as Caro and Helena were with theirs. “I fell in love at first sight, but because the feeling was so different from what I had with Henry, it took me a little while to recognize what had happened. In many ways, Henry and Anthony are poles apart. For all his bravery as a soldier, Henry was gentle and self-effacing. Whereas Anthony is…”
“A force of nature,” Helena said promptly.
“He is at that.” When Fenella looked like a cat at a cream pot, Jane laughed.
She couldn’t help contrasting Fenella’s situation with her own. Fenella was proof that it was possible to love again. Did this mean that one day Hugh’s devotion to Morwenna might waver? Was Jane being a jealous cow, to wish that it would?
“So you see, Jane, we’re all victims to love’s vagaries,” Caro said. “All our plans went awry, and we ended up leading lives we’d never imagined.”
That was true about Jane’s plans, too. She’d never pictured becoming Lady Garson. And while she’d foresworn love when she married Hugh, she couldn’t quash a pang of envy at the happiness her new friends had found in their marriages.
*
Chapter Twenty-Five
*
Jane was very quiet in the carriage on the way home. Garson sat beside her and held her gloved hand, but he felt like she was a thousand miles away.
“They liked you,” he said. “Every fellow there fell over himself to congratulate me on my good fortune.”
No exaggeration, until he reached a point where if one more person mentioned his love for his new wife, he’d start smashing furniture. He was disappointed in his friends. Not with the way they’d recognized Jane’s obvious qualities—he’d never worried about that. But that they’d fallen so quickly for the easy lie that he’d forgotten Morwenna.
Especially Silas. If anyone in the world knew what it had cost Garson to step back when Robert Nash returned to claim his wife, Silas had. Yet this evening, Silas had led the chorus praising the glories of married love, as if he preached to a man converted.