The Runaway Countess

by Amanda McCabe

  Jane turned to see that Hayden had left his seat on the terrace and was walking towards them on the overgrown pathway. The pale light gleamed on his hair and his smile seemed strangely unsure. Not his usual confident, carefree grin. It made her heart start to thaw just the tiniest bit more, made her want to run to him and take his hand.

  He already seemed different here than she remembered when they parted. Quieter, more watchful, more careful. It utterly confused her.

  But she knew one thing for certain. She could not be drawn back to Hayden Fitzwalter. She couldn’t be caught up in the bright, chaotic whirlwind of him again. Her heart couldn’t stand it.

  ‘I’m sure Hayden should be resting, Emma,’ Jane said. ‘We can’t drag him all over the garden.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Hayden said. ‘I don’t think I could stand to rest for another second without going crazy.’

  Emma happily clapped her hands before grabbing Jane’s arm and leading her through the entrance to the maze. Hayden followed them. Jane couldn’t see him, but she could hear the tap of his stick on the gravel and feel the warmth of him just behind her.

  The tangled hedge walls loomed around them, blocking out the day, and it seemed as if the three of them were closed into their own little world. Emma’s dog barked somewhere ahead of them and the sound was muffled and echoing.

  ‘How long has this maze been here?’ Hayden asked.

  ‘Oh, ages and ages,’ Emma said. ‘Since the Restoration at least. They were very fond of places where they could hide and be naughty, weren’t they? But it hasn’t been used in a long time.’

  ‘When we were children, we were forbidden to come in here,’ Jane said. ‘My mother was sure we would be lost for ever and our nanny told us wild fairies lived in the hedges, just waiting to snatch up wayward children.’

  ‘I never saw any fairies, though,’ Emma said, sounding rather disappointed.

  ‘But you come in here now?’ said Hayden.

  ‘Emma has begun exploring a bit,’ Jane answered. ‘I have enough work to do just tending the main flowerbeds.’

  ‘It’s too bad, because this could be so lovely,’ Emma said. She tossed a quick grin back at them. ‘Rather romantic, don’t you think? Just imagine it—moonlight overhead, a warm breeze, an orchestra playing a waltz…’

  ‘No more novel reading for you, Emma,’ Jane said with a laugh. ‘You are becoming too fanciful.’

  Emma turned another corner, leading them further and further inwards. Jane saw now that her sister must have spent even more time exploring the maze than she had thought, for Emma seemed to know just where she was going.

  ‘Not at all,’ Emma said. ‘But just picture it, Jane! Wouldn’t this be a marvellous place for a costume ball? Especially here.’

  They turned one more tangled corner and were in the very centre of the maze. Jane almost gasped at the sight that greeted them, it was so unexpected and, yes, so romantic.

  Amid the octagonal walls was a small, open-sided summerhouse topped with a lacy cupola. It had once been painted white, but was now peeling to reveal the wooden planks beneath, and some of the boards had fallen away to land on the ground, but it was still a whimsical and inviting spot. An empty, cracked reflecting pool surrounded it, lined with statues of classical goddesses and cupids staring down at its lost glories.

  Emma was right—this would be a perfect spot for a costume ball. With torches, music, dancing, the light on the pool…

  And Hayden taking her in his arms to waltz her across the grass. She remembered he was such a good dancer, so strong and graceful that she had seemed to float at his touch. Had seemed to forget everything else but that they were together, holding each other, laughing with the exhilaration of the dance and being young and in love.

  No! Jane shook her head, refusing to remember how it was to dance with Hayden. She hurried up the steps of The summerhouse, but if she was trying to escape that way she saw at once it wouldn’t work. The round space was surrounded by wide benches that once held lush cushions and at its centre hung a swing.

  Just like the one in the garden at Ramsay House.

  Jane whirled around to leave, only to find that Hayden stood behind her on the steps. The overhanging roof cast him in a lacy pattern of shadows, half-hiding his face. He glanced around the small space, and she saw that he remembered, too.

  ‘Push me higher, Hayden!’

  He laughed in her memory, the sound as strong and clear and perfect as if that day had returned to the present. She felt again the heat of the sun on her skin, the way her loose hair tickled the back of her neck. His hands at her waist, holding her safe in the very same moment he sent her soaring.

  ‘You can’t go any higher, Jane,’ he insisted. And yet she knew she could, only with him. She seemed to soar into the sky, so very free. Until she landed back on earth and Hayden kissed her, his lips so warm on hers, the passion between them flaming higher than the sun.

  So very perfect.

  But perfection never, ever lasted more than a moment.

  Jane stared up at Hayden now, caught halfway between that golden day and the present hour. ‘I—I don’t think this swing would be safe to use.’

  ‘Not like the one at the lake at Ramsay House,’ he said quietly, roughly.

  ‘Not at all like that one.’ Jane brushed past him and hurried back down the steps. Emma was chasing Murray around the clearing, laughing, and Jane watched them as she tried to breathe deeply and remind herself that the Hayden she knew that day of the swing wasn’t the real Hayden.

  Just as that girl hadn’t been the real Jane. That was all just a silly dream. Then she had lost the babies and she woke up.

  She had to stay awake now, and guard her heart very, very carefully.

  Had Jane always been so beautiful?

  Hayden watched his wife as she ran along the garden pathway towards the terrace, laughing with her sister. Of course Jane had always been beautiful. She had drawn him in from the first moment he saw her, with the way all her emotions flashed through her large hazel eyes, with the shining loops of her dark hair he wanted to get lost in. Yes—Jane had always been so very beautiful.

  But she had also been pale and somehow fragile, moving through the world so carefully. Everyone in London had wanted to emulate her, her elegant clothes and hats, everyone had wanted invitations to her small soirées. Yet still that air of uncertainty clung about her. He had been so sure he could banish it, that he could make her happy while still not making himself vulnerable. When he couldn’t, the frustration and anger consumed him.

  Here at Barton, Jane wasn’t uncertain at all. Her pale skin had turned an unfashionable, but attractive, burnished gold. She was still slender, but she didn’t look as if she would break. As she twirled around in a circle with her sister, laughing with glorious abandon, she looked carefree.

  Happy.

  That was what he wanted so much to give her, where he had failed. When they were together, he had watched that fragile hope in her eyes fade to silent sadness, but he couldn’t seem to stop it, no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t really know what she wanted and he didn’t have it in him to discover it. He didn’t know how to even begin.

  How could he? He had learned nothing of emotions and connections from his own parents, nothing but how to be what they and society expected him to be—a rake and a scoundrel. A failure. He didn’t know how to be anything else, even for Jane.

  For an instant, Jane and Emma’s laughter faded and the overgrown gardens melted, and he stood before his father’s massive library desk.

  ‘Never was a man cursed with such a worthless heir!’ the earl had roared, while Hayden’s mother lounged on the sofa, drinking her ever-present claret and smirking at her son’s latest peccadillo. It was all she ever did. ‘If only your older brother had lived. You have disgraced us for the last time, Hayden. Obviously there is something in you, some curse from your mother’s family, that won’t allow you to be a true Fitzwalter. You are a wastrel and a fo
ol, and I wash my hands of you! You are no son of mine.’

  It was during a diatribe very like that one that his father had an apoplexy and keeled over dead on the library carpet, not long after his mother died trying to give her husband one more son. So his ‘wastrel’ son killed him in the end. And Hayden never saw any reason to rise above the low expectations set for him so long ago.

  Until Jane. By then it was too late. And he hadn’t protected her from the very things that brought down his own parents. He couldn’t fail her like that again.

  ‘Hayden, come dance with us!’ Emma called, twirling in a circle.

  Hayden was jerked out of the sticky tentacles of the past and dropped back into the present moment in the garden at Barton. Emma ran over to grab his hand, and Jane watched him with a bemused half-smile on her face.

  At least she wasn’t frowning at him for the moment. He wished she would really smile at him again, as she had that day on the swing at Ramsay House. She had laughed then, too, letting her wariness drop away and letting herself be free with him. The memory of that smile was like a secret jewel he had cherished over all these years.

  But he knew he hadn’t yet earned another. Maybe he never would.

  ‘I don’t think Hayden is up to dancing yet, Emma,’ Jane said. ‘Besides, it looks like the rain is coming back. We should return to the house, don’t you think?’

  Emma pouted a bit, but nodded and dashed off after her dog towards the terrace. Jane picked up her bucket and looped it over her arm before she fell into step with Hayden as they made their slower way back.

  ‘I hope we didn’t keep you up too long today,’ she said quietly. ‘How does your leg feel?’

  ‘Much better,’ he answered. ‘The exercise does me good. I could become far too indolent, lolling by your fire and eating your cook’s cream cakes.’

  Jane laughed. ‘Somehow I can’t picture you being indolent, Hayden. You were always dashing off to a race or a boxing match. Always seeking—something.’

  ‘I don’t feel like dashing around so much here,’ Hayden said, and he was surprised to realise those words were true. In the few days he had been at Barton he found his whirling thoughts had slowed. He hadn’t felt that old, familiar itch to be always going, doing. And not just because of his leg. Because of being around Jane again, around her serene smile.

  He glanced down at Jane where she walked beside him. He knew now what it was he saw in her here, what he could never give her—contentment.

  He looked back at the house. In the daylight it was easy to see how shabby Barton was, how many things needed to be done. New windows, the roof patched, the garden cleared. He remembered how Jane would speak of it after they were married, as if it was a tiny spot of paradise. A place of happy memories, so unlike his own family home. She’d wanted to visit it with him, but there was never time. Now he saw her ‘paradise’ was merely a small, ramshackle manor house. But she did seem happy there.

  ‘You work too hard here, Jane,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the work. I want to help Barton and working helps me forget—things.’

  Things like the fact that she was married to him? Hayden stabbed his walking stick hard against the ground to try to ease the pang that thought gave him. ‘You are just one person. These gardens are too much for you.’

  ‘I can’t do all I would like, of course,’ Jane said calmly, as if she was completely unaware of his inner turmoil. ‘But real gardeners are expensive, so I do what I can.’

  She was a countess, his countess. She shouldn’t be working at all, Hayden thought fiercely. She should be lounging on a satin chaise, approving the designs of the best gardeners there were to be had and then watching her dreams take shape.

  ‘I can tell you love it here,’ Hayden said.

  Jane really did smile then, a real smile that brought out the hidden dimple in her cheek he had once loved discovering. It almost felt as if the sun burst forth after a long, long night.

  ‘I do love it,’ she said. ‘It’s as if I can still sense my parents here and Emma is so happy. I know we can’t go on like this for ever, but—yes, I love it here. I wish…’ Her voice faded and she looked away from him.

  ‘You wish what, Jane?’ Hayden reached out to gently touch her hand and, to his surprise, she didn’t pull away from him.

  ‘I wish that we could have come here when we first met,’ she whispered. ‘That you could have seen it then.’

  ‘Do you think things would have been different?’

  Jane shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. We are really such different people inside. I was just too foolish to see it then. Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it. But at least we could have been together here for a while.’

  They reached the terrace and Jane turned away to put down her bucket. ‘Do you feel like dining with us tonight?’ she said. ‘It won’t be London cuisine, but one of the neighbours did send over some venison today and cook makes a fine stew.’

  One of the neighbours—like that David Marton? Hayden remembered how she had smiled at the man, how he seemed to belong here in a way Hayden himself never really could.

  ‘I’d be happy to dine with you tonight,’ Hayden said tightly. ‘I’m feeling much better, Jane, really. I should be out of your way very soon.’

  Jane glanced at him, an unreadable gleam in her eyes. ‘There’s no hurry, Hayden. Not when you are just beginning to recover here.’

  She slipped through the doors into the house, leaving Hayden alone on the terrace. He studied the overgrown gardens, the tangled flowerbeds and the ragged pathways. He had failed Jane. He had not been able to make her happy. But he saw now there was one thing he could give her that would surely make her smile.

  If he could just find a way to make her accept it.

  ‘Did you have a dog when you were young, Hayden?’ Emma asked. ‘Do you remember it?’

  Hayden grinned at her. He couldn’t help but smile at her as she gambolled with her puppy in front of the fire after a most congenial dinner. There had been much laughter and chatter about inconsequential, funny things. Even Jane had laughed and exchanged a warm glance or two with him across the small table.

  Or at least he fancied she did. Hoped she did.

  Jane definitely smiled now as she looked up from the account book she studied. ‘Hayden is not exactly old and decrepit now, Emma. I’m sure he can remember whether or not he had a dog.’

  ‘Despite my stick? And my grey hairs?’ Hayden said, waving the stick in the air. He nearly had no use for it any longer, yet he found himself strangely loath to let it go. It would mean he was well enough to leave Barton Park and he wasn’t ready to do that.

  Emma made a face, and tossed a ball across the room for Murray to run after. ‘Of course you aren’t old, Hayden. Just—oldish.’

  ‘Thank you very much for the distinction,’ Hayden choked out, trying not to fall over laughing.

  ‘So,’ Emma went on, ‘did you have a dog?’

  ‘Not a good dog like Murray,’ he said. ‘My father was quite the country sportsman and kept a pack of hounds, but I wasn’t supposed to go near them. And my mother had a rather vicious little lapdog who loathed everyone but her. But she quite adored it for some strange reason.’

  Emma’s pretty face crumpled. ‘Oh, poor Hayden! Everyone should have a dog to love. You must play with Murray whenever you like.’

  As if Murray agreed, he bounded up to Hayden and dropped his slimy toy ball at Hayden’s feet, marring his polished shoes.

  ‘Er—thank you very much,’ Hayden muttered doubtfully.

  ‘I’m not sure Hayden would really thank you for the favour,’ Jane said. ‘Emma, dear, could you fetch me the green ledger book from my desk in the library? I need to check something here.’

  Emma nodded, still looking most saddened by Hayden’s lack of boyhood pets, and hurried out at a run with Murray at her heels. Hayden glanced over at Jane and found her regarding him with something in her eyes he hadn�
��t seen in a very long time—sympathy.

  It made him want to snatch her up in his arms and hold her so very close, twirl her around in sudden bursts of joy as he once did when he would come home to Ramsay House and find her waiting for him so eagerly. Yet hard-learned caution kept him in his seat, across the room from her. He didn’t want to frighten her, not with everything hanging between them so delicate and tentative.

  ‘Emma is most enthusiastic in her interests,’ he said.

  Jane laughed. ‘Indeed she is. And you are very kind to her. I suppose it’s a good thing I never wanted a lapdog in London, they sound like fearsome little beasties.’

  ‘Oh, they most certainly are. Fifi was fierce in guarding my mother and biting everyone else who ventured near, a veritable tiny Cerberus. But if you had wanted one, if it would have made you smile, I would have fetched one in a trice and laid it at your feet.’

  Her smile flickered and she looked down at the book open in front of her. ‘A dog might have added a little—warmth to the house, I suppose. But not one that would insist on biting the ankles of every caller. I wouldn’t want to drive away all my friends.’

  Hayden couldn’t stop himself asking—he had to know. ‘It wasn’t all so very bad, was it, Jane? We had some good times.’

  She glanced up at him, and her hazel eyes were bright. A tentative smile touched her lips. ‘No, it certainly wasn’t all bad. I remember some lovely moments indeed.’

  ‘Like when the estate workers at Ramsay House unhitched our carriage horses and pulled us to the house themselves for the honeymoon?’

  Her smile widened, giving him a quick glimpse of the sweet, wondrous girl he’d first met. A quick moment to dare to hope. ‘And when I found you had ordered my chamber filled with flowers! I could barely move in there.’

  ‘And when we swam in the lake?’

  ‘You were a terrible swimmer,’ she said, really laughing now. ‘I thought you had drowned for one terrible moment.’

  ‘I only did that so you would feel sorry for me and kiss me.’