“If I concerned myself with convention, I would never attain anything worthwhile. That, my dear Humphrey, I shall leave to lesser women.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her new companion, Humphrey, whose response was a single dismissive snort.
The sunlight was near blinding the morning after the summer ball. Birds sang loudly in the oak trees near the drive, while the horses attached to Lord Dunston’s fine traveling coach whinnied and shook their heads restlessly.
“I will not leave without him,” declared Lady Mary, wiping a tear from her cheek. “He is mine, not hers.”
Lord Dunston sighed. “Very well, I shall try to find him. Wait here.” He climbed down from the carriage and loped past Jane, giving her an eye-rolling grin before he disappeared into the house.
Lady Berne leaned over to murmur in Jane’s ear, “He is rather dashing, that one. I do hope Maureen is not becoming too attached.”
Jane gave her mother a questioning look.
“He is dangerous,” she whispered. “I won’t have my daughter fancying one of Sidmouth’s men.”
Wondering if her mother had overindulged a bit too much the previous evening, Jane patted her arm. “Mama, Lord Dunston does not work for the Home Office. He is a charming gentleman, not a spy. And the war is long over.”
Mama’s chin lifted. “Believe whatever you like. My information is sound.”
The man in question emerged from the entrance hall minutes later carrying a wriggling, whimpering Cornelius. He handed the pup to his sister, who held her arms out through the carriage door. “Where did you find him?” she asked plaintively, sniffing away her tears.
“He was perched beneath Lady Wallingham’s skirts, lying atop her slippers.”
“I knew she had stolen him from me!” Mary turned to her mother, who sat in the shadows next to her. “Did I not tell you, Mama?”
“Cease your hysterics, girl.” The command came from Lady Wallingham, who strode like a purple-clad empress onto the front terrace. “I would not steal that contemptible creature. He is fortunate to be alive after all I have endured.”
Mary’s red-rimmed eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Then, how did he come to be sleeping upon your slippers without your notice?”
The dragon’s nose elevated and wrinkled dismissively. “He is sly. In addition, he possesses an unnatural fondness for my footwear. Since you have failed in your obligation to restrain him, I have become accustomed to his odious weight. For the preservation of my sanity, I no longer take any note of him whatever.”
“You are lying. She is lying, Mama!”
Dunston cleared his throat pointedly, quickly sketching a bow to Jane and the others before pushing Mary back onto the coach’s seat and climbing in. The door closed with a sharp clack. Moments later, Lord Dunston and his sister and mother departed from Blackmore Hall. Jane sighed her relief.
“Imagine! Accusing me of stealing that loathsome pest. Next, she will posit I have spirited away with her chamber pot. Preposterous.”
Feeling almost dizzy from lack of sleep, Jane squeezed her mother’s arm and smiled before returning inside. Through the open door, she could hear Lady Wallingham’s ongoing outraged grumblings and Mama’s noncommittal replies.
The further she walked, the more the voices faded, replaced with the quiet clamor of the footmen carrying her family’s trunks down the staircase to stack them in the entrance hall. Genie came tripping down the steps, tying the ribbon of her red-rose bonnet beneath her chin. “Jane, have you seen Mama? Papa says if we do not depart soon, we shall have to stay at one of those dreadful coaching inns.” She gave a shudder as she reached the last step.
“I do not know why you find them so objectionable. And yes, Mama is on the north terrace.”
“The beds are small and filthy. And I am always forced to sleep between Maureen and Kate. Maureen snores, and Kate kicks in her sleep. I think she dreams of running, but she says she doesn’t recall. Perhaps she is really awake and only pretending so that she may damage me with impunity.”
Jane shook her head. “Kate has done the same since she was a babe.”
Genie sniffed. “Still, purposeful or not, I am not fond of bruises. So, I must hurry and fetch Mama.” She headed for the entrance hall, her white dress a lovely contrast with her red bonnet.
Covering a yawn, Jane continued along the corridor, where Mrs. Draper stopped her. “Your grace, the third trunk has been packed, along with the basket of books you requested. Estelle has prepared everything just as you asked, and she should be ready shortly.”
Jane swallowed and gave the housekeeper a weak smile. “Thank you, Mrs. Draper. Please inform Lady Atherbourne I will join her outside within the hour.”
The woman curtsied and left. Jane wandered through the halls until she came into the old library. There in the stillness, she closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself, leaning one shoulder against the dark frame of the window. Absently, she glanced around at her favorite room. It was filled with memories of him. It was where he had first loved her. Him. Not the duke.
And now, after last night, when he had at last revealed himself fully, she knew those memories were not enough. They would never be enough for her. She wanted all of him. Anything less would only hurt more.
“You don’t have to leave.” His voice came from behind her. He was standing at the door, the length of the room between them.
Without turning, she lowered her head, her mouth curving into a sad smile. “That might be true if I did not love you so.”
His long silence was weighted by everything that had been said last night. When he had pulled out of her body after confessing his love. When he had looked at her with heartbreaking fear and told her it could never happen again. When he had disappeared inside the duke’s proper skin and declared he would leave, for her sake, and go to live in London.
She had known then that the wounds his father had left inside him would not be mended by her will. If she wished for all of him, she must let him decide whether their love was worth the risk he clearly attached to it.
“I never wished to hurt you, Jane.”
It took her a moment to face him. He looked like the duke, his charcoal coat impeccable, his cravat starched and looped to perfection, his hands clasped behind him. But his eyes—ah, his eyes were agony. Perhaps there was hope, after all.
She took a couple of steps toward him, but he stiffened like a hunted animal, so she stopped. “I know,” she said gently. “And I have no wish to hurt you.”
“This is your home.”
“Yes. It is.”
“You belong here.”
“Yes. I do.”
He went quiet, his jaw tightening. “When will you return?” Though spoken softly, the question seemed wrenched from him.
Her smile trembled. She closed the distance between them, moving slowly and pausing at the door as he stepped aside, out of touching range. Gazing up at him with her heart in her eyes, she let him see how much she loved him. Enough to leave, even while it tore her in two. “When you come for me.”
A small crease of confusion appeared between his brows.
Tears filled her eyes, and her smile grew. “You are, above all, a sensible man. I will wait for you to realize it.” Then, unable to stop herself, she laid her hand over his heart. “Be brave, my love,” she whispered before turning and leaving the old library.
An hour later, after seeing her family off, she climbed into Lucien and Victoria’s carriage and gazed out the window as it jerked into motion. The verdant fields surrounding Blackmore Hall had become so dear to her. They rumbled past as the carriage rolled by the fish pond, then beyond the towering oaks and the low stone wall with its ivy and moss. Soon, she closed her eyes, not wanting to see her home disappear from view. Instead, she began a letter in her mind, one she was uncertain she would ever send. My dearest love, she would write. Today, I left you. And it was the hardest thing I have ever done.
*~*~*
Letting her leave was the hardest thing he had ever done. Harder than firing upon a man who had not deserved to die. Harder than allowing Colin to reap the consequences of his actions. Harder than telling her he loved her.
He sat in his study, staring down at the desk where he had taken every piece of his magnificent Jane and given her every piece of himself in return. For the first time in his life, he had felt whole.
Now, he only felt his soul being scraped out of his body, leaving a bleeding pit. He was nothingness, surrounded by the worst sort of anguish.
“Ah, here you are. Brooding, I see.” Lady Wallingham’s trumpeting voice intruded into the room. “Perhaps you were unaware, but you still have a guest remaining.”
He could not focus on her words, barely able to breathe for the pain. Rather than continue to face her, he stood and turned toward the window, his hands automatically settling at the small of his back.
“Hmmph. Fine manners, indeed. What would your mother say?”
“My mother is dead.”
“Her standards of conduct are not.”
Needing her to leave, he inquired, “Was there something you wanted, Lady Wallingham?”
She sniffed. “I have hired a carriage to take me north to Grimsgate Castle. I would like the use of one of your horses and a coachman for the journey. Your village livery stable has only three white horses. I must have four. How would it be perceived, three white and one brown? Appallingly gauche.”
“Take whatever you require.”
A long silence settled between them. He was not certain why she lingered. Behind him, he heard the rustle of the dowager’s gown, the creak of wood floors as she took several steps into the room.
“You have done the right thing, you know,” she said.
He did not wish to hear more, so he did not ask what she meant. But when had a lack of response ever stopped Lady Wallingham from offering her opinion?
“For years, I have told Jane those tales of true love are, at best, lies that will lead to naïve delusions. The girl is plain and painfully awkward. She is fortunate you have an overdeveloped sense of honor, or she would no doubt be a spinster.”
He turned, his anger rising. The old woman wore her usual haughty expression. He wanted to shout, but instead said softly, “She is not plain.”
She scoffed. “Of course she is. Are you blind? She may trim her hair. She may wear the finest gowns your funds can purchase, but she will always be plain.”
“She. Is not. Plain.”
The warning note in his voice must have penetrated Lady Wallingham’s fog of hauteur, because she did not press further. “Regardless, my point is valid. By sending her away, you have done her a favor. No woman wishes to remain where she is unwanted and ill-suited.”
His stomach churning, he could feel his patience with the dowager wearing thin. “I did not send her away,” he snapped. “Further, she is neither unwanted nor ill-suited. Quite the opposite. She belongs here. It is I who should have left.”
“If you find her acceptable, why should either of you leave? Proximity is required for the production of heirs, if memory serves.”
At the mention of heirs, his mind flashed to last night. She could be carrying his child. A babe. Part him and part her. His heart, which had died when she left, began beating again, painfully hard inside his chest.
“Your father and mother were not particularly joyful in their marriage, but they did what was necessary for the furtherance of their family line, as all those of noble blood must do.”
His mouth twisted. “If you know anything of their marriage, then you should also know theirs is a poor pattern to follow.”
One of the old woman’s brows went up. “Did I say otherwise? Your mother was entirely lacking a spine, and your father was a horse’s ass.”
He blinked at the blunt assessment. “Weren’t you the one who suggested my father’s demeanor was a necessary bulwark against his violent nature?”
She snorted. “I said no such thing. Honestly, after so many years of having been proven right—over and over, mind you—one would think my words would be received with greater care. It is my fault, I suppose. I expect too much of those less capable.” She sighed with dramatic flair. “What I said was that he denied his true nature, becoming a horse’s ass rather than admitting the lovely-yet-spineless Judith could pull his strings with the twist of her dainty wrist.” Her direct green gaze grew piercing. “Cowardice, not nobility, impelled your father toward coldness, dear boy. His pride could not bear being controlled in such a way.”
Be brave, my love. It was the last thing Jane had said to him, sensing his fear of what lived inside him, of what reached for her each time she came near.
“Your mother was little better. Do not tell Lady Berne I said so, as she is hopelessly sentimental about the duchess, but had Judith Clyde Lacey reacted with more strength of character, the duke would have been forced to recover his manhood. Believe me when I say the loss of one’s manhood is a most unattractive quality.”
He winced at the double meaning.
“Fortunately, Jane is not your mother. My influence has surely seen to that. And you are not your father.”
Leaning forward against the desk, Harrison dropped his head forward briefly before lifting it again. “You believe … that my father and I are not the same?”
Her bark of laughter was answer enough, but she elaborated. “Perhaps in superficial ways you resemble one another. Your eyes, for example. Something of his outward manner has transferred to you, but then sons tend to mimic their fathers’ postures and habits. My Charles has certainly done so, to my dismay. Beneath the surface, however, you and Richard Lacey are as different as snow and cabbage. The sort of careless cruelty he exhibited would be abhorrent to someone of your character.”
He frowned and nodded, acknowledging the truth of her statement.
“Can you imagine your father rescuing a plump, plain, awkward wallflower from her own foolishness?”
No, he could not. But, more to the point, “She is not plain. She is extraordinary.”
The dowager dismissed his statement with the wave of her wrinkled hand. “You are clearly suffering a visual disorder of some kind. Perhaps you and Jane should wear matching spectacles.”
He did not respond, his head spinning with what she had told him. Lady Wallingham was many things, but obtuse was not one of them. If she believed he and his father were different beneath the skin, then Harrison could rely on her assessment. She had known his parents well, and she appeared to know him better than he would like.
That being the case, he must now revert to the conclusion he had drawn before learning the story of his father’s courtship of his mother—namely, that he did not possess the discipline necessary to manage the intense emotions he felt for Jane, despite his father’s efforts to instill it. Consequently, he could neither control nor predict his own future behavior with regards to her.
Or, perhaps he could predict it too well: If she were harmed, he would stop at nothing to destroy the source. If she fell prey to the attentions of another man, he would take that man apart. If she—God forbid—died of some disease or the ravages of childbirth or any of the thousand other dangers he had imagined, he would lose himself, never recover his sanity.
That was the risk of loving Jane. And it terrified him.
“You are thinking too much, boy,” grumbled Lady Wallingham. “What is going through that foolish head that has you looking like a Frenchman staring down a guillotine?”
“Perhaps I am a coward, too,” he muttered, more to himself than the dowager.
“Rubbish,” she said. “Do you wish your children to know their father?”
Focusing on her once again, he replied, “Yes, I do.”
“Then you shall retrieve your wife and return her to her rightful place.”
“It is not that simple.”
“Of course it is. Jane is a good girl. Strong. She will ensure you do not fail her.”
His pulse quickened as her point struck home. He swallowed, trying to absorb it. In all of his worry over whether he could contain his own wild heart, he had neglected to consider the one element that might make the biggest difference: Jane herself. Over the past weeks, his wife’s true substance had been revealed before his eyes. She was a shy woman, and yet had worked to organize a ball for over two hundred strangers. Before he had told her the depth of his love, she had declared her own, knowing he might reject her. She was brave. She was strong. She was determined. And Lady Wallingham was right—she was more than capable of holding his hands steady, of bringing him back to himself. With Jane by his side, he could not possibly fail. It was only when she was gone that he fell to pieces.
“Well, I shall inform your butler to arrange for my horse and coachman,” said the dowager, her expression now curiously serene, even a bit smug. “Would you like your horse saddled as well?” She smiled and lifted a brow. “One must act promptly to recover what one’s own stupidity has lost. Wouldn’t you agree?”
*~*~*