Late the next morning, Garson woke alone in Jane’s big bed. Memories of their passionate union after the Oldhams’ ball rushed through him, exciting but not altogether reassuring.

Devil if he could put his finger on what troubled his wife. He’d hoped Jane would forget her strange mood when he took her in his arms. But while he’d thoroughly enjoyed what they’d done, he’d sensed an absence, even during the incandescent moments when she shuddered into climax and cried out his name with the husky abandon that always made him feel like a king.

He doubted he’d notice the distance with any other woman. But over the last days, he’d basked in a physical and, yes, emotional intimacy with his wife that was unique in his experience. Clearly marriage changed things in the bedroom.

So even with Jane stretched out beneath him and moaning with rapture, he’d known that she wasn’t the same as she’d been the previous morning.

His nebulous disquiet heightened when he entered the sitting room and found Jane sitting at the table, heavy-eyed and pale-faced. She stared down into a cup of tea that smelled of ginger. The downward curve of her lips struck him like a blow.

He crossed the room to kiss her. Her lips moved beneath his with no reluctance, but no eagerness either. Worried, he pulled back and took his chair, noting the half-finished roll on her plate.

“Jane, are you well?” he asked, with more urgency than the conventional question usually warranted.

“Hugh, I’ve got something to tell you,” she said in a flat voice.

Hell, perhaps she really was ill. Fear slammed through him like a speeding carriage and stole his breath. Last night, she’d dazzled the fashionable throng. It was impossible to find any trace of that brilliant creature in this subdued woman.

Shaking, he grabbed the hand that lay on the table near her plate. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Then staggering under another blow, he added up what he saw. The tired girl, the herbal tea, the lack of interest in breakfast. Elation made him sit up in his chair, and his grip on her hand tightened. “My darling, are you with child?”

It was all Garson hoped for. His wife by his side. A family. A future to look forward to, after years of wandering in a world where all happiness had died.

Just as quickly as his hopes rose, she dashed them to earth again. As she pulled her hand free, she was already shaking her head.

“No,” she said unsteadily. “The opposite, in fact. I…I’m definitely not pregnant. I found out this morning.”

That would explain her dejected air. Garson should have paid more attention when he came in, before he leaped to conclusions. “I’m sorry, Jane.”

“So am I. I know how much you want a child.”

He shrugged, even as he struggled to overcome his disappointment. “I’m not worried. We’re having such fun trying.”

Her smile was perfunctory. “You’re very kind.”

Kind again? He came to loathe that small word. “No, I’m not. But we’ve only been married a few weeks. I’d be surprised if you conceived so quickly.” Despite him doing his damnedest to plant a child inside her.

Jane began to pleat the tablecloth. “Will you mind very much if I sleep alone the next couple of nights?”

Denial slammed through him, and something that felt very like hurt. “Alone?”

She avoided his eyes and stared down at the crumpled linen. “We won’t be able to…”

Perhaps not. But exile to a cold, lonely bed awoke unwelcome memories of his early days in Salisbury. Even if his comfortable room here bore no resemblance to that airless cupboard at the Red Lion.

He realized with another shock that as long as Jane was beside him, he didn’t care where he slept. If she wasn’t there, the softest bed in Christendom felt like the cold, hard ground.

“I could still hold you in my arms.” He hoped he didn’t sound as needy as he felt.

She shook her head again. “That would be nice, but when this happens, I’m a restless sleeper. You really would be happier in your own bed.”

He damn well wouldn’t. But he could see she’d rather he left her to herself. “If you’re sure.”

She managed another shaky smile, and he had a sick feeling that she wasn’t far off crying. The lack of a baby had really rattled her. He’d had no idea she was this eager to be a mother. For himself, he was so wrapped up in forging the bond between them, he could wait. Hell, for a couple of years if he had to.

“Thank you. It’s only a few days.”

He had a bleak premonition that those few days would feel like an eternity.

“You look like you wagered the family fortune on a three-legged horse.” Silas stood in the doorway of Anthony Townsend’s library and surveyed Garson with disapproval. “What the devil are you doing, skulking in here?”

Garson paused in pouring a brandy to shoot his old friend a glare of cordial dislike. “Go to hell, Silas.”

Instead of getting the message that Garson wanted to be alone, Silas stepped in and closed the door, muffling the sound of music and laughter from the ballroom. Lord and Lady Kenwick were hosting their annual ball, and the extravagant house was infested with every blue-blooded blockhead and hussy in London. The same crowd of nitwits Garson had seen each night for the last six weeks. Since the Oldhams’ ball, his wife had thrown herself into the London season with an élan that beggared Garson’s enthusiasm for company. He looked back on those days when they’d stayed holed up in Rutherford House with a nostalgia so powerful, it verged on painful.

He wouldn’t mind as much, if he wasn’t convinced that Jane’s eagerness to dazzle society was firmly grounded in her wish to avoid time alone with her husband. Heaven forbid they should have a chance for a serious conversation where she might actually tell him why she’d changed toward him.

“You should be out there, fending off all the rakes and roués vying to capture Jane’s attention,” Silas said.

Garson stiffened all over like a hunting dog scenting a fox. “She doesn’t take any of that seriously.”

“Harslett is pursuing her with great purpose.”

Harslett was handsome, rich, and bloody charming. The bastard. “There’s nothing in it.”

“How do you know?” Silas tilted one tawny eyebrow in his direction. “By the way, can I have one of those?”

Reluctantly Garson poured Silas a brandy and passed it across. At least on this God-awful night, there was the small consolation that Anthony Townsend’s liquor was top notch. “Only if you drink it quickly and slouch back to where you came from.”

Ignoring the command, Silas walked round to flop into one of the leather chairs in front of the fire. “By God, you really are blue-deviled, old man. Tell Uncle Silas what troubles your noble heart.”

As he slumped into the chair opposite, Garson scowled at the tall man with the mass of untidy, light brown hair. “Shut up and go away, Silas.”

“It wouldn’t be British to leave you on your own, hunkered down like a bear in a cave.”

Garson hardly heard his friend’s good-natured jibe. “Is Harslett really pestering Jane?”

He didn’t ask the question that really worried him. Did Jane encourage the chase? The most obvious answer to why she’d withdrawn from him was that she was attracted to another man. He’d feared such an outcome since the night he’d taken her to dinner at Silas and Caro’s.

“You married a beautiful woman, Garson, old man. Other fellows trying to poach on your territory is an occupational hazard.” Silas frowned as Garson downed his brandy, and the facetiousness vanished. “Dash it, Hugh, you think I’m serious. Jane isn’t the sort to stray. If that’s what’s worrying you, you need to see for yourself. Sulking in here isn’t doing you any favors.”

“I’m not sulking,” Garson said, resenting the childish description, and resenting even more that his reply really did make him sound childish.

Silas studied him with the penetrating intelligence that made him one of the world’s greatest botanists. “What would you call it, then?”

With a bang, Garson set down his empty brandy glass. “Can’t a man seek a moment’s privacy, without every fool and his dog nagging at him?”

As usual, Silas proved remarkably difficult to offend. He leaned back in his chair and extended his long legs in their black trousers toward the fire. He looked completely at home, whereas Garson felt like a scientific specimen under Silas’s microscope.

“Not when he retires to his burrow in the middle of one of the season’s most anticipated balls.” He still spoke in that deuced reasonable tone. “Not when he’s been slinking around like a sick cat for the last month or so.”

“Do you think anyone else has noticed?” he asked, although he’d had no intention of admitting that Silas was right.

Silas shrugged. “You know what the ton is like, always ready to sniff out trouble, even when there is none.”

Damn, damn, damn. He’d hoped his turmoil and confusion went unremarked. “There is no trouble,” he said, knowing he fought a losing battle.

“Glad to hear it,” Silas said peacefully, emptying his brandy glass.

“Really there’s no trouble.”

“What trouble could there be?” Silas’s lips twitched. If the sod laughed openly, he’d earn himself a punch on that beak of a nose.

“Exactly.”

To Garson’s relief, silence descended. Silas rose and filled both brandy glasses before returning to his seat. Garson didn’t touch his second drink, although he’d come in here, desperate for something to help him through the rest of this hellish evening.

After what felt like a long time, Garson finally spoke. “Marriage is harder than I expected it to be.”

Silas, to his credit, didn’t look smug—although Garson knew very well that his friend had manipulated him into confessing his worries. “Worth it in the end, though, especially with a good woman.”

“Jane’s a good woman.”

“I know. Are you unhappy that she’s become such a success?”

“She was such a quiet little thing when I married her.”

“She’s just kicking up her heels. I remember when Caro came out of mourning—she’d have danced all day and all night, if she could. She was making up for the time she’d wasted.”

As always when Silas spoke of his wife, love warmed his voice. Hugh stifled a pang of envy for his friend’s domestic contentment. “Jane’s life has been so restricted until now. I can’t blame her for wanting to squeeze everything she can out of her first season.”

He wondered if he was alone in noting the desperation behind her endless flurry of activity. As if pausing for even a moment’s reflection threatened annihilation.

“But that’s not what you signed up for.”

A grunt of unamused laughter escaped Garson. “Looking back, what I signed up for strikes me as completely unrealistic.”

“The marriage of convenience isn’t convenient after all?”

“No.” Garson was well aware that the world’s opinion was divided about his marriage. Some people were convinced he’d married Jane, while still in love with Morwenna. The more sentimental—boneheaded—members of the beau monde believed he loved his wife and made a new start.

“You appeared delighted with your choice when you came to dinner back in March. I know this started as a practical solution for both of you, but when I saw you together, I hoped that you might have fallen in love with your wife. That night, you certainly acted like you had.”

He shot Silas a dark look. “You should know better than that. Love was never part of the arrangement.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. You seemed so comfortable together.”

“We were.” He noted the past tense and felt like smashing something.

“Tell me—just what were you expecting, when you married Jane?”

Garson shrugged, although he felt anything but casual about his wife. “I’d pictured something like a friendship, with a bit of bed sport thrown in to spice things up.”

“But that’s not what you got?”

He thought he had. At first. But what intimate details could he share without betraying his wife? That was another unexpected result of married life—the way he and Jane had become a unit. Now his first loyalty was to her.

Anyway, he wasn’t even sure he was capable of defining the problem. Most people would say he had damn all to complain about. In bed, Jane was endlessly cooperative. When she was indisposed, she slept alone, but she invited him into her chamber readily enough afterward. If she held something back from him, something she’d once shared with him, the difference was so subtle that he’d be hard placed to describe it.

Perhaps it was that these days, she never initiated their encounters. He craved the return of the woman whose sensual curiosity prompted her to take him into her mouth. She’d taken him into her mouth since, but always at his request.

And there were no more jokes about the Tower of London. There were no more jokes at all. Damn it, he missed the laughter they’d shared more than he missed anything else. 

He’d feel a fool trying to explain these hazy impressions to a friend, even if he was inclined to share such private matters.

“I don’t think she’s happy she married me,” he said in a low voice. Putting the oppressive truth into words twisted his gut into tangles of misery.

Silas looked thoughtful. “Are you talking to one another? I mean, really talking.”

“We talk,” Garson said. Although he knew what Silas was asking, and the answer was no, they weren’t. After his wedding, he’d spent a fortnight discovering an intriguing woman. But these days, the gates to true intimacy slammed shut in his face.

And left him outside on the empty road, starving and cold.

“Good,” Silas said. “Because if I’ve learned anything in all my years of marriage, it’s that a woman’s mind is a labyrinth where a man gets lost if he’s not careful. You need to find out what’s worrying Jane and fix it, if you want to have a prayer of making her happy.”

Garson gave a heavy sigh and set aside his brandy. Liquor wasn’t going to soothe his wretchedness. “I’ve asked her what’s wrong, and she says everything’s fine.”

“Bugger.”

When Silas looked really worried, cold terror settled in Garson’s belly. “What?”

“Fine is the worst thing she could say. If she says everything’s fine, it most definitely isn’t.”

“Perhaps I should take her up to Derbyshire. All this gallivanting might be the problem.”

“Don’t be a damned coward. Sit down with her and don’t get up until she’s told you what’s upsetting her.”

That was good advice if only she stopped flittering about long enough for him to catch her.

“I hate feeling so inadequate. I hate to think she regrets marrying me.” Garson spread his hands in bewilderment. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Silas’s glance was unimpressed. “What you wanted when you married her didn’t do her justice. Damn it, it didn’t do you justice either. It was a blasted cold bargain.”

“There’s nothing cold about how I feel about Jane,” Hugh snapped, bristling at the criticism, even if he deserved it. “That’s part of the problem.”

Silas’s smile held too much pity for Garson’s liking. “Having a yen for your wife is a good thing.”

The damnable truth was that, despite their estrangement, Garson still wanted her all the time. He resented being at the mercy of his animal impulses. “Maybe.”

“You’ll work it out.” Silas tried to sound encouraging. “All marriages require compromise. It’s early days yet.”

“Any other platitudes you want to share?” Garson asked grumpily.

“No.” The pity in Silas’s expression deepened. “Because I see my good advice is falling on barren ground. I wish you well, my friend. You’ll muddle through. We all do in the end.”

Hugh gave a noncommittal grunt and stared moodily into the fire. He’d muddle through, all right. But the devil knew where he and his beautiful wife would be once he did.