The Runaway Countess

by Amanda McCabe

He shook his head. There was such confusion in his eyes, even though she’d told him this before. Tried so hard to make him see. ‘You just laid there in your room, Jane. You wouldn’t go anywhere, wouldn’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘There was no one to talk to,’ She whispered. Oh, she was so tired of this, of the pain that wouldn’t end. It had to end. She had to end it.

  She went and knelt down next to him with the bandages and quietly set about changing the dressings on his leg. It was hard to be so near him, to feel his heat, smell the familiar scent of him and know what couldn’t be again. What had never really been, except in her imagination.

  ‘Are you happy here, Jane?’ Hayden asked softly.

  She nodded, not looking up from her task. ‘Barton is my home. I’ve found a—a sort of peace here.’

  ‘And friends?’

  ‘Yes. And friends. Emma and I belong here.’

  He was silent for a long moment and sat very still under her nursing attentions. ‘We cannot divorce. Surely you must know that.’

  She nodded. She had always known that, even with that wild hope that made her write to him in the first place. Men like Hayden, with titles and ancient family names, couldn’t divorce. Even when their wives proved unsatisfactory.

  ‘But perhaps we can reach some arrangement that would work for both of us,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to go on making you unhappy, Jane. I never wanted that.’

  Surprised by the heaviness in his words that matched her own emotions, Jane glanced up at him. For just an instant there was a sad shadow in his eyes. Then he smiled and it was gone.

  ‘My money should be good for something when it comes to you, Jane,’ he said, lightly.

  Jane grimly went back to her task. ‘I never wanted your money.’

  ‘I know,’ he answered. ‘But right now that’s all I have to give you, it seems.’

  Hayden frowned as he studied the array of silver items laid out before him on the cloth-covered dining-room table. Patches of each piece sparkled, but other patches were still dull and pock-marked, streaked in strange patterns.

  ‘Blast it all,’ he cursed as he threw down the polishing rag. He had to be very careful what he asked for here, it seemed.

  When he hobbled downstairs at what he thought was a reasonably early hour for the country, Hannah the maid sniffily informed him that Lady Ramsay and Miss Emma were already working in the garden and, if he wanted breakfast, tea and toast would have to suffice. And when he had asked—nay, near begged for a task, she gave him this. Polishing the Bancroft silver that, from the looks of it, had been packed away for approximately a hundred years with no polish coming near it.

  How hard could it be to polish a bit of silver while his leg healed up? Wipe things up a bit, maybe get Jane to smile at him again as she once did.

  Not so easy as all that, it turned out. He polished and polished, only to partially clean up a smallish tray, a chocolate pot and a few spoons. The newly shining bits only seemed to make the rest of it look shoddier and there were still several pieces he hadn’t touched at all.

  Hayden had to laugh at himself as he tossed down the rag. It seemed ‘butler’ wouldn’t be his new job. He would have to find some other way to surprise Jane.

  Jane. Hayden ran his hands through his hair, remembering how she looked at him as she nursed his leg. For just the merest second there, he had dared to imagine that she even looked happy to see him again. For just a moment, it felt like it had when they were first together, and the laughter and smiles were easy.

  And for just that second the hopes he had pressed down and locked away so tightly now struggled to be free again. He had to shove them away and forget them all over again. He had to just remember what came after those hopes died and he realised he could never make Jane happy. That they were only an illusion to each other after all.

  But there, in the quiet intimacy of the candlelight and the rain, with Jane’s scent and warmth wrapped around him again, it didn’t feel like an illusion. It felt more real, more vital than anything else in his life.

  Then those shadows drifted across her eyes again and she turned away from him. He still didn’t know how to make her happy.

  He pushed away the silver in front of him and used his borrowed walking stick to push himself to his feet. Labouring away here all alone in this gloomy room wouldn’t make Jane smile at him again. And gloomy it certainly was. It was a long, narrow, high-ceilinged room, probably once very grand. Now the furniture was shrouded in canvas, and paler patches on the faded blue wallpaper showed where paintings had once hung. The rug was rolled up and shoved against the wall. Several crystals were missing from the chandelier.

  And yet Jane seemed happier here than amid the fashionable grandeur of their London house.

  Hayden heard a burst of laughter from beyond the closed dining-room doors. He limped over and eased it open to peer into the hall just beyond.

  Jane and Emma had just come dashing in, apparently after getting caught in a sudden morning rain. Their hair tumbled down in damp ropes and Emma was shaking out a wet shawl.

  Jane dropped the bucket she was carrying and shook out her wet skirts. The thin muslin clung to her body, which was as slender and delicate as ever, and just as alluring to him. But what caught his avid attention was the look on her face. She looked so alive, so happy and free as she laughed. Her eyes sparkled.

  He remembered how it had felt that first time he took her hand, as if her warmth and innocence could be his. As if the life he had always led, the only life he knew, wasn’t the only way he had to be. That he could find another path—with her.

  Maybe it was this place, this strange, ramshackle, warm-hearted place, that had given his wife that air of laughing, welcoming life. Because here she bloomed. With him she had faded And he had faded with her. Yet here she was, his Jane again.

  His hope. And he had never, ever wanted to hope again.

  ‘Well, Lady Ramsay. What do you think of your new home?’

  Jane laughed as Hayden lifted her high in his arms and carried her over the threshold of Ramsay House. He twirled her around so fast she could see only blurry glimpses of an ancient carved ceiling and dark-panelled walls hung with bright flags and standards. It didn’t look like an especially auspicious honeymoon spot, but Jane was so happy with Hayden she didn’t care where she was.

  From the outside, as they drove up in their carriage pulled by cheering estate workers, Ramsay House was a forbidding grey-stone castle, austere and sharp-lined. She half-expected knights to appear on the crenellated ramparts to throw boiling oil at her, but instead the steps were lined with smiling servants who tossed petals as she emerged from the carriage and called out, ‘Best wishes to Lord and Lady Ramsay!’

  Lady Ramsay. The name still sounded so strange. It couldn’t possibly belong to her, be her. The same hazy strangeness that had enveloped her ever since she had walked up the aisle to take Hayden’s hand only vanished when she was in his arms. There she felt as if she belonged. There she never wanted to be anyplace else.

  ‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ she said, laughing as he spun her around faster and faster. ‘But I can hardly see it, Hayden!’

  He finally twirled to a stop and slowly lowered her to her feet. They held on tightly to each other as the room lurched to a stop around them.

  ‘You can make any changes you want to it, of course,’ Hayden said. ‘You are the mistress of Ramsay House now.’

  Jane tilted back her head to examine the room closer. Just like the turrets and arrow slits outside, the inside looked like nothing so much as a medieval great hall. There were even a few suits of slightly tarnished armour, and ancient battleaxes and swords hung between the battle flags. There were no softening rugs or chintz cushions, no flower arrangements or haphazard piles of books, as she was used to at Barton Park.

  ‘I don’t think this place has had any changes made since about 1350,’ she said uncertainly. And surely she wasn’t going to be the one bold enough to tear it down and
start again.

  Hayden laughed. ‘I don’t think it has. About time for it to be brought into the nineteenth century, don’t you think?’

  Jane caught a glimpse of a painting hung at the far end of the room and hurried over to look at it more closely. Unlike the rest of the furnishings, it had a modern look about it. It was a family group, three people seated in a semi-circle in this very medieval space. An older man with his grey hair tied back in an old-fashioned queue, scowling above his tightly tied cravat, and a younger woman next to him, dressed in an elegant blue-silk gown and lace shawl. Her glossy black hair, piled high atop her head, matched that of the little boy playing with a toy sword at her feet.

  It should have been a cosy family scene, but the artist had captured some rather disquieting details. None of the three looked at each other. The woman had a distant, dreamy look in her eyes, where the man seemed unhappy at everything around him. The boy was also engrossed only in his toys. It almost seemed to be three separate paintings.

  Jane felt Hayden come to stand behind her, his body warm against hers. ‘This is you and your parents?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I remember sitting for this—it was terribly dull and I was far too fidgety for my father’s liking,’ Hayden said, his tone deliberately light. ‘This is the first thing you should get rid of. Banish it to the attics.’

  Jane suddenly realised how very little she knew about Hayden’s family. Only that he was an only child whose parents were long dead, much like her own. But nothing about what they were like when they were alive. ‘What should we put in its place?’

  ‘A portrait of you, of course. Or maybe not.’

  ‘No?’ Because she wasn’t the real Lady Ramsay?

  ‘Maybe I would want to keep your image all to myself in my own chamber,’ he said teasingly.

  Jane spun around and threw her arms around Hayden, unable to bear looking at the strangely melancholy painting any longer. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply of his delicious, comforting scent.

  ‘Perhaps you should show me your chamber now,’ she said. ‘So I can see what sort of painting might be needed.’

  Hayden laughed and scooped her up in his arms again. ‘That is one command I can happily obey.’

  He carried her up the stone staircase and along what seemed to be endless twisting corridors, until he opened a door at the very end of the last hallway. Jane barely had a glimpse of a very large carved bed, a massive fireplace and green-velvet curtains at the windows before Hayden spun her around in his arms.

  ‘Blast it all, Jane, but I’ve been wanting to kiss you for hours and hours,’ he said hoarsely. ‘All the way from London.’

  ‘What are you waiting for, then?’ Jane whispered. ‘I’ve been wanting the very same thing…’

  Their mouths touched softly at first, tasting, learning. Remembering last night after their wedding.

  He kissed her so gently, once, twice, before the tip of his tongue traced her lower lip and made her gasp with the sudden rush of longing. She grabbed on to his shoulders tightly to keep from falling and whispered his name.

  ‘My beautiful wife,’ Hayden moaned, and pulled her even closer as their kiss caught fire. Their lips met in a burning clash of need and want, and the rest of the world completely vanished. There was only the two of them, bound together by a passion that refused to be denied.

  And Jane knew that truly this was where she was meant to be. With Hayden. In his arms, there was no doubt, no fear. No worry that they were too young, that they had married too quickly. She had been right to say yes to Hayden.

  They belonged together and that was all that mattered.

  Chapter Six

  Jane tossed the handful of weeds into a bucket and stood up to stretch her aching back. It was much like every other day here at Barton, taking advantage of the lull in the rain to work in the garden. Emma was darting around with a book in one hand and a trowel in the other, no doubt collecting more botanical specimens, while Murray chased sticks and barked, and their maid, Hannah, hung out the laundry.

  And yet it wasn’t like any other day, not really. Because Hayden sat on the terrace, watching them all.

  Jane tried to ignore him. The clouds were gathering again and she had work to do in the garden before they were forced to go inside. In fact, she had been trying to ignore him completely for the two days he had been at Barton.

  It hadn’t been too hard to avoid him. He stayed in the guest chamber they had hastily cleared out. Hannah carried his meals to him, scurrying in and out as fast as she could. Emma took him books to read and Jane checked on the bandages after dinner. After their quarrel that first night, they were scrupulously polite, exchanging few words.

  It made Jane want to scream. Careful, quiet, distant politeness had never been Hayden. That was what had drawn her to him in the first place, that vivid, bright life that burned in him like a torch. He shook up her careful life, turned it all topsy-turvy until she wanted to run and dance and shout along with him. Be alive with him.

  She hadn’t realised at the beginning the other side of that beckoning flame. She hadn’t realised how very hard married life would be. She had been so young, so romantic, with so little experience of men like Hayden and their world. When she had left London, she had wanted only the quiet she found at Barton, and that was her healing refuge. Her chance to get to know herself.

  But quiet sat uneasily on Hayden. The silent tension between them, under the same roof, but not in the same world, only reminded her how long they had been apart.

  She held up her hand to shade her eyes from the grey light and studied him as he sat on the terrace. His black hair shimmered, brushed back from the lean angles of his face, and his finely tailored green coat and elegantly tied cravat made him stand out from the shabbiness around him. His polished boot rested against the old chipped planter and he leaned on the walking stick Emma had unearthed from somewhere as he solemnly studied the garden.

  He looked like a god suddenly dropped down from the sky. He didn’t belong there any more than she belonged in London. They didn’t belong together.

  Yet he had dismissed any talk of divorce.

  Jane sighed as she tugged off her dirty garden gloves. Soon enough he would be on his way, as soon as the doctor said he could travel. Then they could go back to their silent, distant truce, their limbo.

  But she was afraid she would have to work at forgetting him all over again.

  She made her way to the terrace and sat down on the old stone bench next to him. They were silent together for a moment, watching as Emma and her dog disappeared into the tangled entrance of the old maze.

  ‘How are you feeling today?’ Jane asked.

  ‘Much better,’ he answered. He gestured towards the maze with his stick. ‘Should she be going in there?’

  Jane laughed. ‘Probably not. The maze hasn’t been maintained in years, it’s surely completely overgrown with who knows what. But it’s hard to tell Emma what not to do. She is sure to do it, anyway.’

  Hayden smiled down at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling in the light. ‘Unlike her sister, I dare say,’ he said teasingly.

  ‘Very true. I always tried to do what I should.’ Jane sighed to think of how hard she had worked to be what everyone wanted, to take care of everyone. And look how that ended up. ‘I think Emma has the right idea.’

  ‘I should have taken better care of you, Jane,’ he said quietly.

  Jane was shocked by those words. She turned to look at him, only to find that he still watched the garden. ‘In what way? You said it yourself—you gave me everything I could want.’

  ‘I gave you what I thought you must want. A fine house, a title, jewels, gowns.’ He softly tapped the end of the stick on the old stones of the terrace, the only sign of movement about him. ‘Yet it occurs to me that I never asked if you wanted them.’

  ‘I—Yes, of course I did,’ Jane said, confused. ‘Emma and I never had a home after our parents died. It was all I wanted.’ A
nd, yes, she had wanted the title, too. It seemed to stand for continuity, security. Yet it turned into something very different indeed.

  ‘But you didn’t want my house. Not in the end.’ Hayden suddenly turned to look at her, his bright blue eyes piercing. ‘Are you happy here, Jane?’

  ‘Very happy,’ she said. ‘Barton isn’t a large place, as you’ve seen, and it needs a great deal of work. But it’s my home. It reminds me of my parents, and when we were a family. It gives me a place to—to…’

  ‘A place to belong,’ Hayden said quietly.

  Jane looked at him in surprise. She wasn’t quite used to this Hayden, the man who listened to her, thought about what she really wanted and not what he thought she should want. ‘Yes. I belong here. And I want Emma to feel that way, too.’

  Once she’d wanted to give Hayden that as well. Wanted their home to be with each other. But that couldn’t be in the end and there was no use crying any longer.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A place to belong. Barton gives us that now. Leaky roof and everything.’

  ‘Jane!’ she heard Emma call, and she looked up to find her sister waving at her from the rickety old gate that guarded the entrance to the garden maze. Emma’s hair was tangled, with leaves caught in the blonde curls, and her dress was streaked with dirt. ‘Jane, I reached the maze’s centre at last. Come see what I found.’

  Jane laughed and hurried down the terrace steps towards her sister. She hadn’t known what to say to Hayden. It was so long since he talked to her like that, since he looked at her as if he was trying to read her thoughts. It reminded her too much of the old Hayden, the one she knew all too briefly before he vanished.

  She couldn’t bear it if that Hayden reappeared now, when she had finally begun to get over him.

  ‘Emma, whatever are you doing in there?’ Jane said, laughing as Emma grabbed her hand. ‘You look like a scarecrow.’

  ‘Oh, never mind that,’ Emma cried. ‘You have to come see, Jane! It’s the loveliest thing.’ She glanced over Jane’s shoulder and her delighted smile widened. ‘You come, too, Ramsay. I must say, you are looking much more hale and hearty this morning.’