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.

This evening also exposed how Garson’s dogged and hopeless adoration for Silas’s sister-in-law had made things awkward for his chums. He’d always guessed it had, but the extent of his friends’ relief now he’d married Jane demonstrated quite how bad the problem had been.

Well, a pox on all of them. A man of honor didn’t change his heart, the way he changed his coat. He loved Morwenna and always would.

None of which helped him make a future with the wife he increasingly liked and endlessly wanted. When he plunged deep into Jane’s body and she gripped him tight inside her, the rest of the world vanished into smoke. He felt whole in a way he felt with nobody else. If it didn’t feel so good, he might almost be worried.

“Jane, did you hear me?”

“Yes.” She shot him an unreadable glance, before staring out the window at the rows of tall, white houses. “You said they liked me.”

“I thought you’d be pleased. You were in enough of a tizz beforehand.”

“Yes, I was, wasn’t I?” The carriage’s outside lamps illuminated a faint smile. “I’m sorry everything is such an effort. I’ll find my feet eventually.”

Her measured response worried him, although she was only repeating back to him what he’d said to her a hundred times. “You’ve had a lot to come to terms with. Anyone would be flummoxed.” He paused. “In fact, you fitted in beautifully. They liked you.”

“Yes, so you said.” She turned away from the window and faced him. “Stop worrying, Hugh. I’ll be all right. Helena’s taking me shopping tomorrow.”

He had a nasty feeling that his clumsy masculine brain had missed something. Something important. “That’s excellent.”

“She’s very stylish.”

Helena was. She’d never have chosen that unbecoming yellow and black gown. But his wife had managed so well, even her dreadful frock hadn’t mattered in the end. Jane had acted as if it shouldn’t matter, and it hadn’t.

“I didn’t have to come to your rescue.” He was rather ashamed of his pique that she’d managed without his help. He didn’t want a clinging vine for a helpmeet, but he’d have liked to play her hero.

A frown wrinkled her brow. “Your friends were very kind to me.”

“It wasn’t kindness. They liked you.” Even Garson started to think he sounded like a parrot.

“And I liked them. Caro suggested we all go to Lady Oldham’s ball on Thursday.”

“Thursday?” Devil take it, Thursday was only two days away.

“You sound put out. Surely we’re in London for me to make my debut.”

“That’s right,” he said, wondering why the idea of introducing her to the ton suddenly made him so uncomfortable.

Was he afraid she’d make a fool of herself? Given how well she’d gone over tonight, that would be silly. Was he afraid she’d make a fool of him? Not in the slightest. Any man who appeared with Jane as his companion could only benefit from the association.

So there was no reason to delay her entry into the fashionable world. She’d been isolated and alone for too long. It was more than time for her to spread her wings, meet new people, experience new things.

And he didn’t resent that. Not really.

But as he considered this evening and Thursday’s ball, and undoubtedly the balls and dinners and musicales and ridottos and Venetian breakfasts and God knew what else to come, his heart sank into his boots. Because his wife would no longer be purely his. During the last few weeks, he and Jane had existed in a luminous bubble, where they were everything to one another. Now society would claim her, and that precious intimacy would of necessity change.

“We don’t have to go, if you don’t want to.”

In her subdued voice, he heard the echo of a thousand previous occasions when she’d wanted something and hadn’t ended up getting it. Like the season her sister had been given and she hadn’t. “Do you want to go?”

“Yes, I think I would. The evening will be easier if your friends are there.”

It was true. “Your friends now, I hope.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “I’m too new to the group to make that claim, but they’re very fond of you. I daresay they’d like to lend their countenance to your wife’s first steps into society.” She paused. “And as you said, if people see that I’ve found favor with the Nashes and their circle, it might scotch any gossip. If I’m on good terms with Morwenna’s family, people won’t find it so titillating.”

Garson hid a wince. He always felt uncomfortable when Jane talked about his lost love, although he never detected a trace of jealousy in her tone. Most brides would resent his loyalty to another woman. Not Jane.

But that’s why you married her, isn’t it?

He tried to ignore the snide little voice. But it stubbornly persisted.

You married Jane because she wouldn’t make emotional demands and insist you mend your broken heart. You married Jane because you knew she’d make the best of a bad lot.

Was he a bad lot? He hated to think he might be.

“Hugh?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said impatiently, even as he couldn’t help recognizing how selfish he’d been when he proposed to Jane. He’d known he caught her at a disadvantage when she was about to become homeless. Now she was committed to a life without love.

After Morwenna left him, he’d resigned himself to a loveless future. But Jane was a warm, vibrant creature who deserved better than a husband who could never give her his heart.

A just man would give her leave to take a lover. Later. After she’d produced a couple of children. She deserved the freedom to fall in love, as surely she must. And men would fall in love with her. She’d whirl through London’s ballrooms, convincing every damn rake in town—as she’d convinced him—that the new Lady Garson was a prize indeed.

She should seek some happiness for herself, once she’d done her duty by her husband. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to picture her in the arms of some faceless cad. He made himself imagine her kissing the blockhead, taking off her clothes, lying naked in the sod’s bed, spreading her legs for the bastard.

He shifted abruptly on the leather seat and bit back a savage curse.

His wife might have a right to stray, but devil take it, he’d do everything in his power to keep her to himself.

Therein lay his dilemma. Until now he’d always believed he was a reasonable man, and that reasonable man pointed out that he wasn’t being fair. Just because he’d been unlucky in love, that was no reason to condemn his wife to an emotional desert.

Bugger it.

“Hugh, are you sure you’re all right?”

“I said I was.” His frustration with the conundrum made him snap.

“If you don’t want to go to the Oldhams’, we don’t have to.” She pulled her hand free of his, and in his blue-deviled state that seemed the first step toward forsaking him altogether. “It’s not as if we’re short of invitations.”

Invitations meant meeting men. And who knew which of those men might turn out to be the swine Jane fell in love with? Garson wanted to bundle her up in his arms, so she could never wander.

The worst of this was he’d brought it on himself. He could have stuck to his original plan to take her straight to Beardsley Hall.

Although there were men in Derbyshire, too. Neighbors and visitors, and guests of his neighbors. Not to mention the men she’d meet on trips into Derby or Matlock or York. The anonymous blackguard who stole her away mightn’t be in London at all. It wasn’t as if the provinces had put a ban on attractive coves with an eye for another man’s wife.

Danger lurked everywhere for a lady with an unattached heart.

Garson had entered this marriage, planning for a trouble-free future. A meek wife. Obedient children. Freedom to nurse his romantic disappointment, without anyone demanding what he was unable to give.

Instead he found himself confused and bad tempered. Obsessed with his wife. Jealous as a starving dog eyeing the only bone in the village. And hating himself for being such a blockhead.

Garson had a depressing suspicion that his mixed reaction to tonight’s success was only going to worsen as this visit to London progressed. He sucked in a breath that tasted rancid with self-pity and tried to sound like the affable man the world believed him to be. “Let’s go to the Oldhams’. You’ll enjoy it. It’s always a highlight of the season.”

A highlight of the season, and a one-way voyage to Hell.