Chapter Eight
Jane sat in the hallway, staring at the door to the parlor where Arthur had tried to kill her, tried to kill Colin. He had been taken out nearly an hour before by the guard, struggling and screaming as they did so. He would be taken to the prison…or perhaps to Bedlam, judging from how incoherent he was.
Either way, she had been reassured that he would not ever have the opportunity to hurt her again.
But those reassurances had not been delivered by Colin. Her husband had been in the parlor ever since they were attacked, explaining everything to the guard. Maybe even paying them off so this scandal wouldn’t get out.
But then, Colin had always known how to handle a scandal. Even one that hadn’t really happened.
Her stomach turned at what she now knew. That Colin had, for a half a year, believed her capable of betraying him. Without asking her, without confronting her, he had just…turned away.
It broke her heart. And it made her so angry she could hardly breathe.
Emotions she pushed aside when the door opened and Colin stepped out with the two members of the guard behind him. “Thank you, gentlemen, for your assistance,” he said as he shook their hands.
“We’ve a few more things to manage here, my lord, but you and your wife are welcome to go,” one of the men said, inclining his head toward her.
“Please feel free to call on me at any time of night or day if there is anything else you need,” Colin said.
Then he at last turned and looked at her, his face drawn and pained. She felt for him in that moment. She had been hurt by what had happened, but she could recognize just how much he had been as well. And she loved him, despite this turn of events. She wanted to comfort him.
She rose, holding out a hand to him in silence. He took it, his expression filled with surprise, and allowed her to draw him toward the carriage she had ridden over in what felt like a lifetime ago. At the door, she turned back and acknowledged the guard before she and Colin walked out and climbed into the vehicle.
It was a silent ride back to his home. Colin stared out the window at the dark that had fallen during the hours they’d been at Arthur’s. He said nothing. Neither did she, for she feared once they started, it would be a difficult conversation that could last a very long time. She didn’t want to start it where the servants could spy.
They arrived at his home at last, and it was evident that news of what happened at Arthur’s home had already spread. Simmons was sober as he welcomed them and took their things. “Would you like supper, my lord?”
Colin barked out a sound of humorless laughter. “No. I’ll drink my supper in the parlor. Jane?”
She shook her head and smiled at Simmons. “Thank you, you may leave us.” He bowed his head, and Jane looked at Colin. “To the parlor then.”
He sighed and led the way, shutting the door behind them before he crossed to the liquor lined up along the sideboard and opened a bottle. “I’ll begin with scotch. What is the lady’s pleasure?”
“Nothing for me,” she said, watching him as he splashed a hefty dose of alcohol into a glass and slugged half of it in one gulp.
He caught her eye and frowned. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being rude.”
“No,” she said. “I cannot imagine how you feel at present.”
He moved to a chair by the fire and sank into it like he could no longer support his own weight.
“What can I do?” she asked, longing to move to him and rub his shoulders. To kiss him and help him forget. To make love to him and reassure each other they were unharmed after the near-tragedy that had taken place that afternoon.
But she found she couldn’t. There were walls between them, just as there had always been. Only now she was the one who erected them for her protection.
“Nothing,” he said in answer to her question at last. “I am in…shock.”
She sank down in the chair near him and shook her head. “Of course you are. You and Arthur were so close.”
“Were we?” he asked, staring off into space, his expression telling her he was reliving those moments in the parlor with his cousin. “It seems we were not. Not truly.”
His agony was palpable, and even Jane’s own pain couldn’t keep her from reaching out. She touched his cheek with a trembling hand and he leaned into it, his eyes fluttering shut.
“He broke us,” he murmured, his voice cracking.
She pursed her lips, but pushed aside all she wanted to say. “We don’t have to speak of that tonight, Colin.”
He looked at her. “But we do, Jane. I know now that you didn’t betray me.”
Anger began to burn in her chest and Jane lowered her hand from his face. She smoothed her skirts, trying to maintain calm. “You know it because you heard Arthur say it.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“But why didn’t you ask me a year ago, Colin?” The anger made her voice higher, and she stood up and paced away. “Why did you judge me guilty without so much as a trial?”
“I saw—” he began, standing and holding out a hand like he wanted to touch her. She didn’t allow it, staying out of his reach.
“You saw nothing,” she snapped. “You know that now. And if you’d had any faith in me whatsoever, you would have asked me right then and there. I would have explained myself and we could have resolved this and moved on.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed the back of the closest chair, like he needed support to stand. “Perhaps I wasn’t capable of faith. Arthur told you about Cassandra.”
“A bit,” she said. “Who was she, exactly?”
“A woman I…well, I once thought I loved her. But she betrayed me with other men.”
She folded her arms and speared him with a glare. “Are you sure?”
He winced. “In her case, yes. I caught her with someone else. In my bed, of all places. I know now that Arthur orchestrated it, of course, but it doesn’t change that it…broke me, Jane. Just as he wanted it to. So when I saw you on the terrace—”
“When you saw what you thought you saw, this Cassandra’s punishment became mine,” she whispered. “Without hesitation, you locked me away in a very pretty prison, Colin. You refused to respond to my pleas for amnesty, for a chance.”
He shook his head, his brow wrinkling. “Pleas?”
She huffed out a breath. Had he not even bothered to read her letters? It only made this worse. “That other woman betrayed you,” she said, fighting tears. “But you betrayed me.”
His face twisted. “Because of Arthur!” he cried.
“In part, perhaps that is true. But in the end, you made your own decisions.”
He moved toward her a step and her heart stuttered. He had never looked at her with such openness before. Such emotion. And the reason why he’d kept himself so guarded until now was exactly why she couldn’t trust him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, taking her hand.
She stared at their clasped fingers, his darker, larger ones intertwined with her pale, slender ones. Once she would have given anything to be bound to him in physical and emotional ways.
Now she was too hurt to let him in. To trust him.
“I’m certain you are,” she whispered, and then tugged her hand away. “But sorry isn’t enough.”
His face grew panicked. “Jane—”
“Oh, Colin,” she murmured. “We were an arranged marriage that quite possibly could have been so much more. But now, I just don’t know. Perhaps there comes a point when two people can hurt each other too much to overcome it. Either way, I’m going home.”
The color left his cheeks. “No, Jane. No. This is your home.”
“But it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not because you never allowed me to make a home here or in your heart.”
He caught his breath and his voice shook as he said, “You can’t leave.”
“I will leave. Please let me go.” She met his gaze and held steady there, even though it hurt so much. Even though it made her waver in her resolve to walk away. There was so much of her that wanted to accept his apology and just pretend the rest had never happened.
But she couldn’t. She needed to step back. To truly evaluate all that had occurred. To decide her future without being swayed by his past.
He stared at her for what felt like a lifetime. Then he bent his head and nodded. “As you wish, Jane. I have done enough to you—I know I don’t deserve your consideration or your affection. In some ways, I never did. If going is what you need to do, I shall not stand in your way.”
She was shocked by his acquiescence. Even more shocking was how much she wished he would fight for her instead of bend to her will, just as he had bent to Arthur’s a year before.
But she didn’t tell him that. She didn’t tell him anything. She just slipped past him into the hall to call for her maid and go back to her sister’s.
And away from the man she loved. Away from the promise of a life that had never been and could never be again.