Amanda McCabe – The Runaway Countess (страница 8)

Jane emerged from the drawing-room door, her eyes wide with astonishment. She had changed from her garden clothes to her best day dress, a pale green muslin with a high-frilled collar. Her brown hair was carefully pinned up and bound with a green-ribbon bandeau. For a second, Emma couldn’t decipher why her sister was so dressed up on a rainy afternoon.

Then the Martons, Sir David and his silly sister, appeared in the doorway behind her and Emma remembered in a flash. They had guests. Respectable guests, who for some unfathomable reason Jane wanted to impress.

‘Emma, whatever is the matter?’ Jane demanded, while Sir David looked rather disapproving and his sister giggled behind her handkerchief.

‘He is here!’ Emma cried. She couldn’t worry about the Martons right now, not with Ramsay so close behind her.

‘Who is here?’ Jane said. ‘Emma, dear, are you ill?’

Across the empty hall, the door opened again, letting in a blast of rain and wind. Ramsay stood there, silhouetted in his greatcoat against the grey sky outside. For one instant there was a flash of something raw and burning, something real, in his eyes. Then it was as if a blank, pale mask dropped down and there was nothing at all.

‘Hello, Jane,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s been much too long. You are looking lovely as always.’

Emma swung back around to look at Jane. Her sister’s face had turned utterly white and Emma feared she might faint right in front of everyone. But when Emma moved to take her hand, Jane waved her back.

‘Oh, blast it all,’ Jane whispered. ‘Not now…’

‘You can’t feel it move yet,’ Jane said, her voice full of laughter. ‘It’s much too soon.’

Hayden laid down beside her on the sun-splashed bed anyway and rested his cheek on the gentle swell of her belly under her light dressing gown. It was early; the doctor had only just confirmed that Jane was truly pregnant. But his wife already seemed blooming. She wasn’t quite as thin and her cheeks were pink. Four months married and now a child on the way. Their first child.

She laughed again as he carefully touched the small bump. Her skin was so warm, so sweet, so alive. ‘You won’t break me, Hayden. The doctor says I am quite healthy.’

Hayden fervently prayed so. He didn’t know what he had ever done in his misbegotten life to deserve a wife like Jane, but he knew he couldn’t lose her now. His heart ached just to think of her laughter, her quite, calm presence, being gone in a flash.

Just like his mother.

Jane seemed to sense his sudden fear. She gently smoothed a soft caress over his hair. ‘All will be well, Hayden. I am sure of it. And in a few months, we will have a little lord or lady. The beginning of a new family for us. Just like we talked about on our honeymoon.’

Their honeymoon—those perfect, sweet days and nights, just the two of them all alone in the country. They had almost become buried under the noise and rush of London life since they returned. Jane had seemed A bit lost as a new countess, with so many eyes upon her, but now she looked perfectly content. A new family was on the way, their family. It could be very different from what he knew with his parents. He could make it different.

But still the tiny, buried spark of that old fear lingered…

Chapter Four

‘Won’t you introduce me to your guests?’

Hayden. Hayden was here, standing in her house. Jane was sure she must have fallen and hit her head, that she was lying on the drawing-room floor having dream visions. One minute she was serving tea, trying to make polite conversation as she worried about Emma wandering around out in the rain. And the next she was facing her husband.

Her husband. It truly was Hayden, after all these years. She stared at him, frozen, stricken. Her dreams of him had been nothing to the real thing. Hayden was even more handsome than she remembered, his elegantly sharp-planed face drawn even leaner, harsher with his black hair slicked back with the rain.

His eyes, that pure, pale blue she had once so loved, stared back at her unwavering. For an instant she went tumbling back to that moment when she first saw him. She was that romantic girl again, hopeful, heartstruck, so sure that she saw her own passionate need reflected in those eyes. So sure he was what she had been longing for all her life. Hayden, Hayden—he was here again!

She almost took a step towards him, almost reached for him, when he suddenly smiled at her. But it was not a smile of joyful welcome. It was sardonic, almost bitter, the smile of a sophisticated stranger. It made Jane remember what had become of her romantic dreams of marriage and the man she had thought was her husband. He had been living his fast life in London while she was healing here in the country. Hayden was truly only a stranger now.

Jane’s half-lifted hand fell back to her side and the haze of dreams cleared around her. For a moment she had seen only Hayden, but suddenly she was aware of everything else. The rain pounding at the windows. Emma beside her, her golden hair dripping on to the floor, watching her with a frown of concern. The Martons just behind, witnessing this whole bizarre tableau of unexpected reunion.

The way that Hayden leaned heavily on the wobbly old pier table. There was a tear in his finely tailored breeches and spots of blood on the pale fabric muted by the rainwater.

Jane’s throat tightened at the realisation that he was hurt. ‘What has happened?’ she asked hoarsely.

It was Emma who answered. ‘I found him on the road,’ she said. ‘His horse had thrown him and his leg was so hurt he couldn’t stand.’

‘Thrown him?’ Jane said. Surely that was impossible. Hayden was one of the finest riders she knew. Despite her fears and doubts, she couldn’t help but be concerned he was truly hurt.

‘A lightning strike startled the horse,’ he said, remarkably calm for a man who was standing drenched and wounded in his estranged wife’s house. ‘I fear I’m interrupting a social occasion.’

‘I—No, not at all,’ Jane managed to choke out. ‘Merely tea with our neighbours. This is Sir David Marton and his sister, Miss Louisa Marton. May I present Lord Ramsay, my—my husband.’

‘Your husband?’ Miss Louisa cried. ‘Why, how very exciting. We were not expecting to meet you here, my lord.’

‘No, I imagine not,’ Hayden murmured. ‘How do you do?’

Miss Louisa giggled while Sir David said nothing. Jane sensed him watching her, but she couldn’t deal with him now. She had to take care of Hayden. She forced herself to move, to go across the hall and reach for Hayden’s arm.

For an instant he was stiff under her tentative touch and she thought he would jerk away from her. But he let her thread her fingers around his elbow and swayed towards her.

Up close, she could see how carefully rigid he held his body, the bruised-looking shadows under his eyes. He felt thinner, harder than he had the last time she had touched him. But his smell was the same, that clean, crisp scent of sun and lemony cologne and man that had once made her long to curl up beside him and inhale him into her very heart. There was the faint undertone of ale, but the brandy was gone.

‘We need to get you upstairs and send for the doctor,’ Jane said quietly. He was obviously in more pain than he would ever reveal.

‘I can go,’ Emma said.

‘No, permit me to go for the doctor, Lady Ramsay,’ Sir David said. ‘Louisa and I have the carriage and Miss Bancroft should be by the fire.’

Jane glanced over at Sir David, surprised by the offer. He didn’t smile, just looked back at her solemnly and gave her a polite nod. The tea had been going rather well, she suddenly remembered, until this most unexpected interruption. Unlike Emma, Jane rather enjoyed hearing about philosophy, books and ideas, and Sir David was an intelligent, pleasant conversationalist. He had seemed to enjoy talking to her as well, and if nothing else his company gave her hope that life would not always be so lonely. That life could be—nice, rather than chaotic or painful.

Then Hayden appeared.

‘Thank you, Sir David,’ she said. ‘That is so kind of you.’ He nodded and took his sister’s arm to lead her away. She waved at them merrily over her shoulder.

Emma tactfully withdrew, leaving Jane alone with Hayden for the first time in three years. Jane took a deep, steadying breath. She had to help him just as she would anyone else who showed up on her doorstep in a storm. He was merely a stranger to her now.

But he didn’t feel like a stranger as she took his arm again. His eyes weren’t those of a stranger as he looked down at her. Once he had known her so well, better than anyone else ever had. He had known her body as well as the secrets of her heart. She had trusted him so much, allowed him to see so much.

She had bitterly regretted that ever since. She could never let herself be so vulnerable again.

She turned away from the blue light of his eyes. ‘Let me help you up the stairs,’ she said softly.

‘Do you have no butler or footmen?’ Hayden asked. ‘Those stairs look rather precarious.’

Jane almost laughed. ‘We have an elderly cook and a shy little maid who is no doubt cowering in the pantry right now. I’m the only help available, I fear.’