It was time to go. She’d already done more than enough damage. For the first time, she let the aching depth of her love fill her voice. “Goodbye, Hugh. May heaven keep you.”
Jane didn’t wait for his reply. She couldn’t bear to witness his suffering. Nor could she any longer maintain her pretense of strength.
Blindly she turned and on trembling legs, stumbled from the library.
*
Chapter Thirty-Four
*
Garson rode up to the pretty Queen Anne dower house on the Townsends’ country estate outside Winchester. Around him, spring flourished. Tender green covered the trees. Birds sang their hearts out. A gentle breeze whispered promises of summer to come.
Unfortunately he was in no mood to hear. For him, life was all freezing winter.
A sour brew of self-hatred, trepidation, and, much as he resented it, uncontrollable longing stewed in his belly as he dismounted from Lysander’s back onto the gravel drive. No groom emerged to take his horse, but the door at the top of the short flight of limestone steps opened to reveal his wife.
His heart crashed against his ribs, winding him. Every other turbulent emotion died away to nothing, as overpowering sorrow closed his throat. He hadn’t seen Jane in a month, not since the day she’d told him she loved him, then packed her bags and left. He’d missed her like the very devil.
So many times, he’d nearly broken the rules she’d set and pursued her. Then he recalled her stark expression as she’d claimed she could only hope to find happiness away from him, and he’d resisted the impulse. He’d done her more than enough damage—and she didn’t deserve any of it.
What sin had she committed? She’d fallen in love. He better than anyone knew that love made its own rules.
As she came down the steps toward him, his pulse broke into a headlong gallop. He hadn’t expected her to seem like a stranger, but she did. A lovely, distant stranger in a pretty yellow dress he hadn’t seen before. A red-headed woman with a composed air that caught him off balance. He’d wondered—hoped—that their separation weighed as heavily on her as it did on him.
Not very worthy, perhaps, to want his wife to suffer. But he’d endured a hell of guilt and rage and remorse since she’d gone. Not to mention a gnawing sexual frustration that threatened to make him start clawing at the wallpaper.
If she was happy, then it was more than likely she’d never come back to him. He couldn’t face that possibility.
“Good afternoon, Hugh.”
Her serenity grated on nerves already stretched to breaking. It just felt so wrong that they should come together in these circumstances. The raging storm of loneliness and hurt inside him felt ready to explode like lit gunpowder, while she sounded the way she had when they were nothing more to one another than childhood friends.
“Don’t you have any bloody servants?” He’d arrived, determined to uphold his good intentions. Those good intentions outlasted that cool greeting by precisely five seconds. “It’s damn shabby of Fen and Anthony to leave you to fend for yourself.”
In fact, everything about the Townsends’ interference was damned shabby. What right did they have to meddle in a man’s private business? He had a nasty suspicion that Fenella had fostered Jane’s plans to leave him.
Much too soon after Jane’s departure, before any scar tissue had grown over his wounds, he’d fronted the Townsends and accused them of butting in. Harsh words had been exchanged, and as a result, a coldness had arisen between him and people he’d always considered good friends.
Not that he cared much. Compared to the loss of Jane, what did his quarrel with Anthony and Fenella matter?
Now he noted that his surliness didn’t rattle this woman who was much closer to prim Jane Norris than that passionate creature, Jane Rutherford. “I sent them away. I thought you’d prefer privacy for your visit.”
Admitting she was right didn’t improve his humor. “My summons, you mean,” he snarled.
Because he wasn’t angry about the absence of servants. Or about her measured reaction to his arrival. He wasn’t even angry because he had to ride all this way to bed his wife. Once. Then ride home again, even more frustrated—if that was possible. In any right universe, Jane would sleep beside him every night, and he’d exercise his husbandly privileges whenever the impulse took him.
He was angry because she’d gone away, and he had a horrid feeling that she was never going to come back.
His hand crept up to cover the inside pocket where he’d shoved the letter she’d sent to invite him here. When he’d first read it, he’d wanted to burn it. But somehow it had ended up nestled next to his heart instead. Damn it, he didn’t know why he even kept it. It was no billet-doux.
My Lord…
She didn’t even address him as Hugh, curse her.
As I have no happy news of a forthcoming event to share, I will expect you this week. Perhaps Tuesday afternoon? If this arrangement meets with your approval, I will await you then. If not, I am at your disposal any other day you wish to nominate.
Yours respectfully