All expression fled Hugh’s face, which was sign enough that she’d touched a nerve. Then Jane met his austere gaze and glimpsed the ocean of hurt seething beneath his polished exterior.

Yes, he was in love with Morwenna Nash. He didn’t need to answer her.

With a weariness that struck her as more spiritual than physical, he stood and crossed to look through the next window along from her. “That’s not your concern.”

Impatience tightened her lips. Apparently he could ask her candid questions, but she wasn’t granted the same freedom. Too bad. “It is, if I’m thinking of marrying you.”

He cast her a brief, curious glance. “Are you?”

Was she? Devil if she knew. “The story is she broke your heart, and you’ve been carrying the willow for her ever since.”

He sighed and stared out at the overcast day. “You know,” he said softly, as if he spoke to himself and not to Jane, “I’m damned sick of the world only thinking of me as the man Morwenna threw over.”

Pity pierced Jane, sharp as a knife. She could understand that he was deathly tired of playing the role of discarded lover, after the dramatic events of three years ago. Up until then, he’d been at the top of the tree, generally admired and envied. He must have suffered an agony of humiliation over the last few years, aside from any pain he felt because the woman he loved was reunited with her long-lost husband.

“I’m sorry that this is a painful subject.” She rose and went to stand beside him. This close, she couldn’t mistake his tension. “But if we’re contemplating a life together, we need to talk about this.”

Still he didn’t look at her. “I was a fool to hope you were the only person in England who didn’t know.”

She couldn’t mistake his fierce unhappiness. Could she deal with that if she married him? If she took on the man, she’d have to take on the broken heart, too. A daunting prospect for any bride. “When you were a boy, you were always steadfast in your affections.”

“You know the family motto,” he said tonelessly. “‘Loyalty unto death.’”

A wry smile twisted her lips. “You speak as if that’s a bad thing.”

He turned in time to catch her expression, and temper sparked in his eyes. “Don’t you bloody dare laugh at me.”

She raised a hand to touch his arm, then thought better of it. “I’m not.”

“I’ve had enough of that as well.”

“Everything was so public.”

Her sister’s letters had been full of the gossip. When Morwenna’s husband returned miraculously from the dead, the reunion had taken place in a ballroom, under the full glare of the world’s attention. There had been no way of saving Garson’s pride, or allowing him to make a discreet withdrawal from a romantic triangle that became unbearably crowded.

“The irony is that she never loved me.” He leaned one hand on the windowsill. It had started to rain, as if the weather reflected the heavy atmosphere inside the room. The gray light starkly revealed the sorrow in his face. “I always knew that.”

“But naturally you hoped.”

His mouth turned down in self-derision. “Yes, I hoped.”

“After all, her husband had been dead—or at least we all believed he was—for years.”

“Five.” His voice was bleak. “She has a steadfast heart, too.”

A tacit admission that he still loved Morwenna. Not that anyone who saw him now could doubt it. In an odd way, Jane found it admirable that he couldn’t turn off his love, despite the lack of any happy ending. Admirable—but not necessarily a positive feature in a future husband.

“I’m so very sorry, Hugh.”

“So am I.” He straightened and shot her a direct look. “The shambles of my past doesn’t change my need to make a life for myself. I’ve moped long enough. I owe it to the title to marry and have children. There’s no use pining for the moon.”

Which well and truly put Jane in her mundane place, didn’t it? It rankled a little that he saw her only as a broodmare. Her pique surprised her. Over the last dreary years, she’d thought she’d forsaken all claims to feminine conceit. Clearly not. “So you settled for me.”

“As I told you…”

“You always liked me,” she said flatly, returning to her window seat. All of this was too much to take in. Confused thoughts tumbled over each other, performing chaotic acrobatics in her mind.

“That’s something.”

“But hardly love’s young dream,” she said with a hint of bitterness, even as she told her vanity to step back because it had no part to play in this purely pragmatic decision.

“I’d hoped…”

With a touch of irony, she raised her eyebrows. “That I was past the age of wanting hearts and flowers?”

Hugh had the grace to look ashamed. His repentance was charming—she’d forgotten over the years quite what an attractive man he was. Or perhaps she’d never let herself notice before, to protect herself from inevitable disappointment. The women Hugh Rutherford pursued, even before he fell in love with Morwenna, were counted as diamonds of the first water. Jane couldn’t compete with that.

He made an apologetic gesture. “Please send me on my way, if you can’t hold with more of my blundering.”

To her surprise, she raised a hand to stop him. “Don’t go rushing off.” She struggled to inject a lighter note. “I had no idea you were such an impulsive fellow, Hugh. Please sit down, and let’s talk about this.”

He eyed her warily, then resumed his seat. He ran his hand through his hair, ruffling it so he looked even more charming, plague take him. Jane hardened herself against his attractions. If this union was going ahead, she needed to keep a cool head. Going gooey-eyed over his handsome face wouldn’t help her at all.

“This is turning out to be a blasted unconventional proposal.” Self-deprecating humor deepened the creases around his eyes.

“I don’t know if I can live without love,” she said baldly.

He frowned. “Are you saying if we married, you wouldn’t be faithful?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. When I make a promise, I keep it, too. I’m trying to work out whether the absence of love is a strong enough argument against saying yes. After all, I’m twenty-eight, and nobody has yet taken my fancy. Perhaps nobody ever will.”

She’d like to share some spark of passion with the man she married. Perhaps for a staid, provincial frump past first youth, that was too much to ask.

“I hate to play devil’s advocate, Jane, but your world isn’t exactly overflowing with hordes of eligible gentlemen.”

“I’ve had my chances.” Even if they were all over fifty, and not in the best of health.

He looked curious, but this time he remembered his manners before he pursued any details. “I’m sure you have. Your devotion to your father’s care alone recommends you as a suitable wife.”

She hid a wince. Still not a word about her personal appeal. One of today’s surprises was the discovery that her romantic younger self claimed a place inside her respectable bosom.

“What do you want of me, Hugh?”

That impressive jaw set with determination, and his voice emerged strong and steady. “I want a companion, a mother for my children, a friend. I want a sensible woman who’s willing to build a life with me. A woman who respects and likes me, and won’t ask for more than I can give her.”

His love, he meant.

She crossed the room to stare sightlessly into the fire. One hand began pleating her gray merino skirt as she tried to decide what to do.

This was a cold bargain, but it had its benefits. She might harbor hidden longings for what she’d never known—love and adventure and excitement. But if she was brutally honest with herself, her chance to experience those things had passed.

At twenty-eight, she was on the shelf, especially now her dowry was so meager. While she might like to think that her alternative to marrying Hugh was some resplendent future, the reality was different. As he’d bluntly pointed out, right now her choices lay in becoming her sister’s drudge, or moving to some backwater and sharing her restricted means with a middle-aged chaperone.

Neither prospect filled her with unbridled joy.

She’d waited ten years to seek the life she wanted. But she’d left it too late.

Too late. Surely the saddest words in the language.

A sensible woman—how she grew to hate that adjective!—would say yes. As Hugh remarked, Lady Garson would have every worldly advantage. She’d have respect and influence. She’d also be part of a family.

What about love? Doesn’t that matter?

Her foolish heart cried out in anguish as it viewed the emotional barrenness extending ahead. But the bleak truth remained that love wasn’t on the cards, wherever she went. Surely if she must yearn, it was better to yearn from the comforts of beautiful Beardsley Hall, than from shabby rented rooms in an unfashionable seaside resort.

She glanced up to find Hugh watching her steadily. He showed no sign of anxiety. Why should he? He’d chosen his bride as a practical matter, much as she’d say yes as a practical matter.

If she said yes.

“You claim you want your independence,” he said in that reasonable voice. “I can understand that. Especially after running the show here for so long. I can promise I won’t be a tyrannical or a demanding husband, and the settlements will ensure a generous allowance.”

She fiddled with her skirt and mulled over her answer. She knew he wouldn’t be demanding. He was an unusually considerate man. Even more to the point, he didn’t want her. Not in that way.

A shiver that combined fear with interest rippled through her. She’d tried, not entirely successfully, to reconcile herself to dying a virgin. If she said yes to Hugh, she’d know what it was to have a man in her bed. And a young, virile, good-looking man at that. “When you say demanding…”

Heat flared in the gaze that swept over her in a thorough inspection. She shivered again. Not with revulsion.

“I won’t be a cold husband, Jane.”

She’d never met Morwenna Nash, but she’d heard the woman was a great beauty. Nobody had ever said that about Jane. Pleasant-looking was about the best compliment she ever garnered.

When she looked at this handsome man who offered her marriage without love, she was woman enough to regret her lack of allure. She shifted under his gaze and wished with a fervor she hadn’t felt since she was an adolescent that she was a girl who turned men’s heads. Then at least she’d enter into this bargain with some power of her own.

“You want children,” she said, heat rising in her cheeks.

“I do. I’ll do my best not to make your duties too onerous, but—”

“But that’s why you want a wife.”

“That’s why I want you.” He paused and subjected her to another of those scorching stares that seemed to pierce right through to her indecisive heart and stirring carnal impulses. “If the thought of sharing my bed is distasteful, I will understand that you can’t accept my proposal.”

It was her turn to inspect him. He was an attractive man, inside and out. She tried to imagine that big body rising above hers as he pushed inside her, but inexperience defeated her. No countrywoman remained ignorant of the mechanics of mating. But it was impossible to equate her knowledge with how she’d feel giving herself to Hugh.

Her attention dropped to those large, capable hands, hands that would touch her skin, hold her hips as he thrust into her. That odd, nervous feeling spiked and set her stomach churning.

But she felt no distaste.

Just a good dose of curiosity.

Jane was woefully unworldly. She’d never been to London. Heavens, in the past ten years, she hadn’t been past Exeter. But some hitherto unrecognized instinct told her that Hugh Rutherford would prove a skilled lover.

Perhaps this marriage offered more satisfactions than she’d originally counted.

She licked dry lips and made herself meet his eyes. “I’m not…unwilling.”

He smiled. “I’m glad to hear that.”

Hardly the height of enthusiasm. But he offered her his name to solve a practical problem. His emotions weren’t involved.

“If I say yes, how do you see this working?” she asked.

“We’d live at Beardsley Hall and visit London for the season. If you wish, we could travel. Also…”

“No, I mean immediately,” she said, although her heart leaped at the idea of seeing new places, new people after her long exile at Cavell Court. While she was sad to leave her home, she couldn’t deny that it had become something of a prison. She’d welcome a glimpse of the wider world. “Would we have a big wedding in London? I’m only just out of mourning for Papa.”

She caught his quickly hidden dismay at the idea. “If that’s what you’d like.”

Lucky for him, she couldn’t imagine anything worse. Especially as all those curious eyes would compare her to the lovely Morwenna. Not to her advantage. If she accepted this proposal, she’d have to face the fact that not just Hugh, but the entire world would always consider her second best. “What would you like?”

He shrugged as if it hardly mattered. She supposed for him, it didn’t. “If you say yes, as I dearly hope you will, I’ll call on the vicar here and arrange for the banns to be called. I’ll go back to Beardsley and do the same thing up there. On the way, I’ll stop in London and ask Lord Stone to be my best man. I’ll see the lawyers about the settlements at the same time. In a few weeks, I’ll come back here, and we’ll marry in the village church. I assume you’d like to have your neighbors at the ceremony to wish you well. After that, we can go to Beardsley for a few weeks, then to London for the season. Or if you like, we could make a wedding trip to France or Italy. Really, it’s up to you.”

“Italy might be a step too far at first,” she said drily, even as she struggled to come to terms with how her constrained life would expand if she said yes. Hugh would never love her, and she certainly wasn’t in love with him. But if they married, she’d take up a great lady’s place in the world. It was the role she’d been brought up to fill, and this might be her only chance, now Felix moved into Cavell Court. That alone made Hugh’s proposal tempting.

Hugh continued to study her. “Jane, I can guess how lonely you’ve been these last years.”

She’d never appreciated people’s pity, but perhaps because Hugh had suffered himself, she didn’t prickle up. Her hands spread in an eloquent gesture. “There were times when I felt so alone, I didn’t know how I’d make it through the next day.”

He stretched out his hand toward her. “Then marry me and be my friend, and you won’t be lonely again.”

She stared at his hand without moving to take it. Common sense said that accepting his proposal answered most of her problems. But some deeper instinct warned her that marrying a man who was in love with another woman would inevitably lead to a lifetime of unhappiness.

When she didn’t immediately agree, he looked disappointed. “Do you want to think about it?”

If she thought about it, her fears, fears that might just be cowardice, would make her choose the safe option. “I’m not convinced that will help,” she admitted shakily. “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

A self-derisive smile twisted his lips. “I’ve been planning my proposal for six months, ever since I saw you being so brave at your father’s funeral. Although given my graceless start, you have reason to doubt that.”

It hadn’t been the sort of proposal she’d dreamed of when she was a girl looking forward to a season and suitors and all the pleasures open to a rich young lady entering society. This wouldn’t be the marriage she’d dreamed of then either, with an adoring if unidentified spouse.

But for all that, it seemed to be the marriage she was going to have.

As he’d unceremoniously pointed out, her options were limited and unappealing. Marrying Hugh meant she could have children. He’d give her a home to make up for the loss of Cavell Court.

There was no love. But love wasn’t likely to result from her descent into genteel poverty either.

Her heart begged her to reconsider any decision that shut off all possibility of love, but her head knew better. Surely when she had children, there would be love, even if not the love between man and woman. Becoming Lady Garson offered advantages that outweighed her unformed misgivings about how she’d feel.

With surprising steadiness, she stood and stepped across to take his hand. As his fingers closed around hers, heat surged up her arm and stirred an unfamiliar and not unpleasant reaction. Perhaps sharing his bed would turn out to be more than a duty, after all.

She summoned a tremulous smile. “I’ll be very pleased to marry you, Hugh.”