It was a couple of hours before dawn when Garson rode up to the dower house for the third and final time. Whatever happened today, whether Jane gave him his marching orders or decided to come back to him, there would be no more visits to Hampshire to claim his conjugal rights.

In the day and a half since he’d left Silas, his heart had rocketed from hope to despair. Now he was impatient to settle his fate for good or ill. He’d wasted too many years mired in old misery. It was long past time to set a new pattern.

Jane had once loved him. Did she still? He couldn’t wait any longer to find out. Every moment’s delay was torture.

He threw himself off the back of the hack he’d hired at Winchester, when he’d last changed horses. Garson stumbled to the ground. London to Winchester, then back again, with this latest trip following so quickly tested any man. If his wife threw him out on his arse, he’d have to find an inn somewhere close to rest and eat before he returned to Town.

And a future as bleak as an Arctic wilderness.

He settled the horse in a stall. After he blew out the lantern, he stared grimly into the darkness. Just what the devil would he do, if Jane rejected him?

He squared his shoulders. Silas had described falling in love as jumping off a cliff. Only now, as Garson teetered on the brink of elation or despair, did he comprehend quite what his friend meant. Generally he wasn’t a praying man, but he prayed that his wife saw fit to give him a second chance.

“Wish me luck, old fellow.” He patted the raw-boned, but surprisingly fleet bay that had carried him this far.

The horse whickered and lowered his head to the manger. No reassurance there.

Garson left the stable and walked around the house to climb the front steps. In the moonlit silence, the crash of the iron knocker resounded like the herald of doom. Soon he heard the bolt slide back, and his wife stood in the doorway, holding a candle. His heart stuttered to a stop, then began to race. His hands fisted at his side, as he resisted the urge to sweep her up in his arms. Physical desire couldn’t solve the problems between them. Only talking could. He hoped to God he found the right words.

“Hugh!” she said in shock. “What on earth are you doing here?”

It was a mild June night, and she wore one of the floaty silk peignoirs he’d bought her in Salisbury. The sweet memory of those days struck him like a blow and rendered him as tongue-tied as a nervous schoolboy in the headmaster’s office. Before he could muster an answer, an older woman in a muslin nightcap fluttered up behind his wife. “My lady, who is it?”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Darrell.” Jane turned to reassure her. “It’s my husband, Lord Garson.”

“Lawks a mercy,” the woman muttered. Garson assumed Mrs. Darrell was the housekeeper. “I was afeared cutthroats turned up to murder us in our beds.” She managed an awkward curtsy in her voluminous nightwear. “My lord.”

“Please go back to bed,” Jane said. “I’ll look after his lordship.”

“Very good, my lady.” The woman cast him a curious glance, before she trudged back the way she’d come, leaving Garson alone with his wife.

Jane raised the candle to illuminate his face. “What is it?”

“I needed to see you.”

Her silvery eyes were wide and dark. “Has something happened?”

Indeed it had. He’d discovered how much he loved her. Not before time, damn it.

But he couldn’t blurt that out on the doorstep. He suddenly realized he was acting like a blasted idiot. Again. He should have waited until daylight before he came to see her, taken time to line up his arguments. Not to mention wash and put on a clean shirt and comb his hair. After those long hours in the saddle, he must look like a complete gypsy. “There’s nothing to worry about, Jane.”

Impatience tightened her lips. “Of course I worry when you bowl up unannounced in the middle of the night, looking like the world has ended.”

“I’ll come back after breakfast. I apologize for disturbing you.”

To his surprise she stepped back and gestured him inside. “You may as well come in. You’re here now.”

“But I woke you up,” he said, longing to accept her invitation, but on edge because he’d arrived with such good intentions, and already everything went to hell.

“I wasn’t asleep,” she said flatly.

Guilt stabbed him anew. Her unhappiness was his fault.

“You’re acting like a blockhead. Stop haunting the front step and come inside and tell me what’s the matter. It must be important, if it’s brought you all the way back from London.” Her voice hardened. “Especially as three days ago, you gave me to understand you’d never darken my door again.”

“As you say, I’m a blockhead,” he said uncomfortably.

What an arrogant fool he’d been, last time he saw her. He had a sinking feeling he’d been an arrogant fool from the beginning. He’d acted like his feelings were all that counted. How the hell had Jane put up with him as long as she had?

She subjected him to a thoughtful survey, then to his surprise smiled. “Not always.”

Her smiles had been so rare lately that painful emotion closed his throat. He couldn’t have responded, even if he wanted to. At this rate, he’d have to write her a bloody letter to tell her he loved her.

She turned and walked away. Without making a conscious decision, he found himself closing the door and trailing after her. His eyes clung to the subtle sway of her hips under the flowing silk. Her magnificent hair was confined in a long plait that snaked down her back.

She showed him into a drawing room. From where he stood in the center of the floor, he watched with unwavering eyes as she wandered around lighting candles. If this was the last time they were alone together, he wanted to print every detail into his memory.

At least she wasn’t angry. Nor had she raised the mental barrier against him that first appeared in London and was as high as Mont Blanc by the time he visited her down here. He was too keyed up to trust his perceptions, but if he had to describe her mood, he’d say watchful.

“Please sit down,” she said coolly.

He removed his hat and gloves and set them on a delicate ormolu table. “No, thank you.”

“Very well.” She came to a stop beside the mantelpiece and studied him. “Tell me what this is all about.”

He hastened into speech. He had so much to say, so much that he needed her to know. “I saw Morwenna.”

The moment the words left his mouth, he condemned himself for a sodding moron.

Jane made a faint, wounded sound and pressed back against the wall. Even in the uncertain light, he saw that she went as pale as milk. Then she gathered her defenses around her. She drew herself up to her full height, and her eyes narrowed on him. “How delightful for you.”

He flinched at her sarcasm. “No, you don’t understand.”

“On the contrary, I understand very well. Did she proclaim her undying love?”

“She’s in love with her husband. She always was.”

Jane’s expression turned stony. “Well, that’s even better, isn’t it?”

“How so?”

“Because now you’ve seen her, your self-pity has something fresh to feed on. You can keep pining for her as the great lost chance of your life. You don’t need to engage with her as a real woman you live with day to day. She just stays on her pedestal, like a marble statue, pristine and perfect and unassailable.”

Bile rose to sour his mouth as he listened to Jane pour out her bitterness. “Jane, I’m hellishly sorry that I’ve hurt you.”

That also turned out to be the wrong thing to say. A sweep of her hand dismissed his apology as too little too late. “What’s the point of being sorry? You warned me what to expect when we married. I changed the rules of the game, not you.” He could hardly bear to hear the pain fraying the edges of her voice. “Although you could have saved yourself the trouble of rushing all the way to Hampshire to inform me that your lady love is as exquisite as ever.”

His brows drew together. She made him sound so cruel. Cruel and childish and selfish. Once she’d considered him a hero. He hated how he’d fallen in her esteem, which was mad when he’d also come to hate the way she thanked him for any kindness, like a beggar receiving scraps at the kitchen door.

But he supposed, his queasiness sharpening, that was exactly what she felt like. By heaven, he needed to prove himself worthy of her. And he needed to tread carefully, because he was as close to losing her now as he’d ever been.

Garson inhaled and stood as straight as a soldier on parade. Before anything else, he had to clear up this matter of Morwenna, whose ghost had lingered far too long. He struggled to steady his voice. “I should have waited until a civilized hour to call on you. But when a man’s been a fool for far too long, it behooves him to stop being a fool as soon he can.”

Jane stared at the floor, as if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. Her lush mouth turned down, and her expression was mutinous. Her arms folded over her lush bosom. “Are you saying you don’t want me back after all?”

He frowned, puzzled at the question. “Were you going to come back?”

“No,” she said, but after a hesitation that made him wonder if she’d considered accepting his ultimatum after all.

“I hope you will.”

She raised her eyes to glare at him as if she despised him. She probably did. But like him, she wasn’t a fickle person. If she’d loved him a couple of months ago, odds were she hadn’t changed. Despite his blunderings.

“I won’t live with you while you’re in love with Morwenna Nash.”

Strange how even a week ago, the mere mention of Morwenna’s name had felt like someone punching a bruise. Now it only summoned a feeling of regret for all the years of futile misery.

Months ago, he should have guessed that he was falling in love with Jane. From the moment he married her, she’d occupied most of his attention. With Morwenna, he’d always acted comme il faut. Yet it hadn’t taken Jane long to pierce his façade of the perfect gentleman, and prove he could behave as badly as any other man driven mad by love. How in Hades had he been too stupid to understand that his emotions were engaged?

“Then you can come home right now.” He spoke quickly for fear she might send him away before he had a chance to tell her how he felt. “I rushed down here in such a lather to tell you that I’m not in love with Morwenna. I haven’t been in love with her for a long time, although I was so used to playing the broken-hearted suitor that I couldn’t see that.”

He drew a deep breath. It was now or never. With a silent prayer that Silas was right, he flung himself off the edge of the cliff and into thin air. “I was once in love with Morwenna. But not anymore. Now, Jane, I’m in love with you.”