by Jane Lark
And as for her father, she had seen neither of her parents after she’d married. She’d always wondered if they’d regretted what they’d done. She hoped they’d been tormented by it.
Jane shook her head and felt her expression turn cold as she stammered out, “Th … thank you. I … It is a … A shame. Forgive me. My Lord, we should be going.” The last was said to Robert as she yanked her mare’s rein and turned. The animal whinnied in reproof of the sharp tug on the bit in its mouth. Jane kicked into a trot without waiting for Robert’s answer.
“Your Grace,” she heard the man say behind her before Robert took his leave.
“Whoa! What is it?” He called forward, over the clip-clop of horseshoes as they left the labourers’ cottages behind. “Wait!”
She did not slow.
“Jane! Wait! Walk a while, will you?” he said, grasping her reins as he reached her, and forcing her mare to slow. “Pray, tell me. What happened back there, for Samuels and I are in the dark?” He spoke with the mocking pitch he’d used in London.
“I hardly care.” She glared at him, casting on him all the bitter, impotent anger which belonged to her father and the Dukes of Sutton.
“Sweetheart,” he urged quietly, his fingers gripping her hand instead of her reins. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” He laughed. “Then you are not the girl I remember. Becoming a duchess made you arrogant, Jane. I’ve never seen you address anyone so bluntly in my life.”
She tried to tug her hand free, but he refused to let go, and she refused to answer.
“Tell me?” he asked, cajoling.
“Tell you what, that I have no love for a man who would barter his daughter for a title, and certainly no sympathy for him losing his lands? He sold me to Hector.”
Robert let her reins go and sat back as if her words had struck him like a physical blow.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jane concluded, meeting his gaze. “I should not have come. I’m sorry, Robert, it was a mistake.”
“Whoa,” he said, gripping her reins again. “I am nothing to do with your father, or Sutton?”
Angry and tired of fighting, of surviving, Jane just looked at him. You walked away. You turned your back on me. The words were left unspoken. “I was going to tell you at the abbey—”
His eyes narrowed. “Then tell me there.” His voice was a harsh whisper suddenly, then he let her reins go and jerked his stallion away. In a moment, he was galloping ahead of her.
She followed.
He took an irresponsible jump over the wall at the bend in the road.
She jumped it, mere feet behind him. Then his stallion kicked turf up before her through fields full of livestock, scattering sheep.
When they reached the stream, his stallion surged ahead and jumped to the opposite bank.
Her mare slowed and walked tentatively through the water.
Robert disappeared from view.
Jane pressed on and saw the abbey ruins rising towards the sky beyond the hedge. When she reached them, she found his stallion grazing, and Robert nowhere in sight. She dismounted, dropping to the ground.
“You are going back then?” He stood behind her. “With no thought to discuss the decision with me.”
Jane turned around and left the mare to graze.
He was leaning in a doorway of the ruin, his shoulder to the stone, his arms folded over his chest.
She had to face this conversation. It was her fault it was harder. She had given in to need the other night, not him. She owed him the opportunity to have his say now. “I told you two days ago I thought I should.”
“Yes, well, a lot has happened since then.” He stood straight.
She turned and walked on, following the outer wall which towered above them. Some of it was coarse stone, but in some places the ornately carved frontage survived. The hem of her skirt began to darken in the damp grass.
“Had I known the decision was already final, it would not have,” he said, beside her now, matching her pace.
She glanced sideways, only to be stilled as his hand gripped her elbow.
“Have I done something wrong?”
She pulled her arm loose, facing him and stepping back. “No, it is not you.”
“Not me?” His eyes were narrow and challenging. “Why go back then?”
Jane breathed deeply. “Robert, I have to sort things out with Joshua. I cannot keep hiding here.”
Robert didn’t move. He just watched her. “Do you wish me to come with you? Can I help you?”
“No.” He could not come. He would end up hurt, by Joshua, or in fighting Joshua. She had to let him go.
She walked on again.
She didn’t hear him follow, but refused to look back and let him see the tears which burned in her eyes. When she reached the gap where another side door had once stood, she walked through and crossed the raised floor which had been the chancel. Walking to the end of the ruin, she looked out onto the long dale. The hill beyond was the border of what had been her father’s lands.
Her arms folded across her chest and her fingers gripped her elbows. Sad and happy feelings tangled up inside her.
She finally knew everything there was to know of Robert, and she was leaving him.
“I don’t understand,” Robert growled behind her, clearly wounded. “Why did you give me your virginity if you intended to leave?”
She turned and her arms fell to her sides. “Why not?”
She could see the pain in his eyes as he came nearer.
Her anger was washed away suddenly, by the memories of this place, of him when they’d been young. She’d been happy then.
His fingers braced her waist. “There are a hundred reasons why not. You’ve kept hold of it for a long time, Jane.” One hand cupped her chin. “I thought you’d chosen me. I thought it a permanent thing. I was about to offer you marriage again. But you still do not want me, do you? What do you wish me to do, beg you to stay?” His voice, his eyes, and his touch, all unnerved her.
“Robert, I don’t mean to hurt you. But this is the right thing to do.”
“The right thing? To break me?” He looked upward and the hand cradling her jaw fell.
She gripped his upper arms. “I’m sorry, Robert. I do not regret it. I love you, but I cannot stay.”
His head dropped, and his gaze snared hers again. “Not can’t, Jane. Won’t. Marry me, and Sutton can go to hell. Let him have his father’s fortune. I am hardly going to let you starve. I will support you. Cease being greedy, Jane.”
“Cannot, not will not, Robert,” she answered on a whisper, refusing to debate it. She would not tell him it was for his own good. No man wished to think a woman protected him.
He didn’t protest. Instead, his hand slipped to the small of her back and jerked her against him. The action was fierce. Then his lips were on hers, and the fire flared between them. Memories of yesteryear were cast aside by the heated, sensual images of the last two nights.
The base of the ruined wall pressed into her thighs as he leaned her against it and began raising her skirt.
“You’re mine,” he said as the heavy fabric slid up her thighs. He gripped her bare flesh and lifted her on to the wall, parting her legs about his hips.
She should say no. She should. But she could not. She was desperate to know him one last time.
“I want to be in you.”
She nodded. She couldn’t speak. This was a foolish thing to do.
His flap was undone in a moment, and her skirt was bunched to her waist between them. Her bottom pressed uncomfortably on the rough stone as he kissed her violently again and filled her with an unbearable passion. She gripped his shoulders and held on against the vicious determination and pain with which he loved her. It was all so quick, raw and desperate. There was no art in it. It was base instinct. She had wanted to make him lose control. She had achieved it. But not through loving him. She didn’t like
it. She felt him purging himself of her. But she would bear the coldness of his last embrace if it eased him and let him exorcise his soul and wipe her from his memory.
He gripped behind her knees and she held his hips as he moved. Oh, she would still break, even to this savagery. Oh. Her body jerked with each stroke, the stone cutting into her bottom.
His eyes were fixed on hers. She clung to his neck and his shoulder when she splintered into breathless abandon. He gritted his teeth, and she panted and moaned at the impact of his crude thrusts.
Then he said, “Jane, darling, don’t go,” as he neared the end.
“Robert,” she said, her fingers running through his hair as his brow fell to her shoulder once he was spent. She heard him breathing steadily. His body remained still. “I have to,” she whispered.
A dreadful recognition dropped inside her, falling like lead. Sex was not just his paintbrush, it was his sword. It was how he’d coped with her loss before. It was how he defended himself against hurt.
His head lifted. “And if you are with child?”
“I will worry about that when it happens,” she whispered in answer. “But I promise I will tell you.”
There was an odd look in his eyes. They had hardened, shutting her out as they’d done that first night in London, but they also glimmered with fluid.
“And if you are not?” he answered, his voice cracking as he drew away from her and secured his clothing. “Will I hear from you then? Is this an affair, or just a brief liaison, Jane?”
She sighed, and her fingers touched his clean-shaven cheek. “I don’t know what this was. It was just the two us. Do you not see? Just because we should have always been us.”
“You love me. You have said so.” There was pain in his voice. “You say we should have always been together. You say my house, when I am here, is the only place you have ever considered home. And yet, you will not stay. Forgive me for my ignorance, Jane, but no, I do not see at all. Why are you going?”
“Robert—”
“Robert, leave me alone? Robert, stay with me? Or Robert, make love to me?” His words were cutting. “Please, do not tell me this was your friend’s idea to teach me a lesson?”
“Do not be ridiculous!” The flat of her palm struck his chest. He stepped back. She slipped painfully off the wall.
“Whether it was or not, you can congratulate yourself. You have succeeded, Jane. I give up.” His hands lifted in a gesture of helplessness as he held her gaze, and then suddenly, his eyes disengaged, and he turned and began walking away. “Fight your bloody fight with Sutton then!” he yelled to the air.
She followed, her heart thumping, trying to catch up with him as he passed back through the gap in the wall.
“If the money is so important to you!” he shouted, when he reached his stallion without looking back. “Have it and not me!”
“It is not the money!” she shouted in return as he set his foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle.
He turned the stallion to face her as she reached her mare. His gaze was hard, the man behind it invisible. “Forgive me, Jane, if I do not find the time to say goodbye.” With those cold, cutting words, he turned the stallion and rode away, pushing into a gallop, leaving her standing just as he’d done years ago.
Chapter Sixteen
Her heart was empty, but her mind was engaged in packing, and she refused to contemplate what she was leaving behind or what would happen now.
“Be careful with that,” she called to Meg as her maid folded one of her evening gowns.
“You’re leaving then?”
Jane looked up. Edward stood at the open door of her bedchamber. His words were inquiring, but his pitch accused. Her heart thundered. “I have to.”
“Robert has gone to Forth’s.”
She blushed, and a lump caught in her throat, but she refused to cry. She nodded and looked back at her maid. “That will do for now, Meg. Please fetch me some tea.”
When Jane looked back once Meg had left, Edward had taken a couple of steps into the room. He watched her intently. “I was wrong.”
“About what?” she queried, her hands clasping at her waist.
“Robert is not callous.”
“I know, Edward,” she answered, turning away to pick up a pair of gloves from the bed, unwilling to face this conversation.
“He is in love with you.”
Jane dropped the gloves into a trunk and looked back. “I know, Edward, but I cannot stay.”
“Why, because you do not trust him? If it was what I said in London, Jane, he has explained it all to me now. Father sent Robert abroad after he dropped out of Oxford, because he was on a course of self-destruction. He stayed abroad because of your marriage.” Edward came closer and touched her arm. “He could not bear to even be in the same country because he loved you, and you were married to another man.”
Jane made a face. “And we both know he was a monk for all those years.” She turned away and collected her silver hairbrush, comb, and mirror, then put them in her portmanteau. She’d worked all that out days ago and had begun to understand the myriad of emotions Robert Marlow hid behind his rakehell shield, but her choice could not change.
“You were married, Jane. Did you expect him to wait?”
“I expected nothing,” she answered, turning back to face Edward. “I’m sorry, but I cannot be the person he wants me to be, Edward. I have to go. I have no choice. I wish I could stay, but I can’t.”
“It is as Robert said then. You turned him down?”
“It is.” She nodded, feeling the lump rise in her throat again.
“Is there nothing I may say to change your mind?”
“Nothing.”
For a moment, he stood there, watching her with a perplexity that said he was still looking for a different answer. “You don’t think you will regret this?”
Regret it? I shall spend the rest of my life mourning that it cannot be so, but as much as I am hurting Robert, Joshua can hurt him more. “Regret it or not, Edward, I have to go,” she whispered earnestly.
He shook his head. “Come and say goodbye to Ellen and I before you leave. John and Mary-Rose will want to say their farewells, too.” He came closer again and touched her arm once more.
She nodded, unable to speak for fear she’d cry.
He kissed her cheek. “You are still my surrogate sister, Jane,” he said in a low voice as he pulled away. “If you ever need me … ”
He turned and strode away then, but Jane called, “Edward.” He looked back. “You will keep an eye on him, won't you?”
“I will, Jane. If nothing else, you’ve fixed things between the two of us which have been broken for years.” He gave her a tender smile and left.
Jane sat on the edge of the bed and covered her face with her hands, giving in to her silent despair and tears.
~
Robert walked through the hall at Farnborough, his forearm wiping his brow, before rolling his shirtsleeves down. He’d come from the stables. His muscles cried out, complaining against the physically strenuous work of harvesting. He’d thrown himself into manual labour to distract his thoughts from Jane and joined his people in the fields each day. There was something very cathartic in taking a scythe to the wheat.
In just his shirt and breeches, sweaty and dusty, he was nothing of the London rake now. His fingers pulled the clinging, sweat-damp cotton from his chest. Archer’s nose would lift in disgust when Robert reached his rooms, but at least there would be a bath waiting.
And then what? The hours of darkness were the worst, lonely hours of frustrated dreams and dark thoughts. He didn’t like his own company. He’d concealed it for years by sharing the beds of women he could seduce and leave without a second thought. But after he’d physically known the woman he’d longed for and loved all his life, he had no appetite for casual encounters any more. His old life had soured.
He began climbing the stairs. She’d been gone for two weeks, and the lance
of pain lodged through his chest was no less than when he’d left her at the ruins. He refused to let his mind dwell on whether or not there may be a child.
His fingers ran along the smooth polished wood of the banister.
Jane. God help him, he had no idea how to go on from here.
“My Lord!” Davis called as Robert reached the landing.
He looked back. “Davis?” The butler was climbing the stairs, a letter in his hand.
“Forgive me, my Lord. This arrived for you. I did not like to send it out to the fields.”
Robert took the letter. He must have walked past it in the hall. Davis bowed and excused himself.
Gripping it between finger and thumb and tapping it against the palm of his other hand, Robert strode on.
Archer was in Robert’s chamber and instantly assessed Robert with a critical scowl as Robert threw the letter on the bed and stripped off his shirt.
“I am sorry, my Lord. I hope you do not mind but I must say it. You are letting yourself go, sir.”
“Archer.” Robert shot the man a quelling look. “You know damn well I do mind, so keep quiet. I cannot see anyone here who cares. Is my bath prepared?”
“Yes, my Lord—” His valet snapped, about to say more, but Robert lifted a hand.
“Leave me then. I’ve no patience for your chiding. I’m too bloody tired.”
“My Lord,” the man conceded with a bow, still sounding irritated. “As you wish.”
Perhaps Robert was falling to pieces, but what did anything matter any more?
He sighed and continued undressing, then caught his reflection in the mirror. He’d not shaven in days, and his hair was sweaty and clung to his head. He did look awful. Yet the man in the mirror only matched the raw, wounded animal inside him. He felt numb and he cared for nothing, least of all, his appearance.
Stripped to just his breeches, Robert picked up the letter. It was from Sparks. Geoff was not normally on corresponding terms with Robert when he was out of town. Robert’s thumb broke the seal, and his eyes skimmed over the words, not really reading. He saw Jane’s name and started at the beginning again.
