The Runaway Countess (13 page)

W
hack!
Whack!

The sudden thundering, pounding noise jolted Jane from sleep. the whole house seemed to be shaking, as if caught in an earthquake. she shot up in bed, the sheets tumbling around her, and for an instant she had no idea where she was or what was happening.

The noise echoed away, leaving only the patter of the rain on the window and her own harsh, uneven breath. She realised she was in her own bedchamber. The lamp she usually left burning on the bedside table had gone out, but she could make out the shapes of the dressing table and the old
chaise
.

But what was that noise? Just a dream? Or was something wrong with Emma?

‘If she let Murray run free again…’ Jane muttered, remembering the last time Murray escaped Emma’s room and wreaked havoc. She pushed back the blankets and swung her legs out of bed, only to freeze at the sound of a deep, rough male groan.

Hayden
. Hayden was in bed with her.

Jane twisted around to see his black hair tousled on her pillow. The bedclothes were twisted around his waist, the faint light from the window playing over his bare skin. The whole evening came flooding back to her—his lips on hers, his body sliding over hers, the hot pleasure as she cried out at his touch.

He reached out and looped his arm around her waist. He tugged her closer, and she was wrapped up in the smell and heat of him. The familiar, arousing scents of bare skin and warm sheets, of the night that closed around them and made the rest of the world invisible.

‘Where are you going?’ he said hoarsely. His eyes didn’t open, but he drew her closer against his body. She tried to resist the urge to melt into him, to nestle close to him and let
everything else be damned. It felt so natural when they were together like this, so—right.

But she couldn’t quite forget what woke her from her dreams in the first place.

She pushed against his shoulders as he laughed and dragged her closer. ‘Didn’t you hear that noise?’ she said.

‘What noise? I was asleep until you woke me with all your fidgeting about, woman.’

‘How could you have missed it?’ Jane said, then she remembered. ‘Oh, yes. You could sleep through a shipwreck.’

‘Well, we’re not at sea now. It was just the thunder. Come back to bed.’ He bent his head to the soft curve of her shoulder and pressed a light, butterfly-dancing kiss to her skin. His lips drifted over her, soft, gentle, as his fingers lightly skimmed over her arm to grasp the edge of her shift’s short sleeve.

‘It’s hours ’til morning,’ he whispered, his breath drifting warmly over her skin.

Jane shivered and twined her hand in his tousled hair. She nearly gave in, nearly tumbled into him, until another pounding volley shattered the quiet all over again.

It was like a sudden dash of freezing water.
Jane pushed Hayden away and leaped down from the bed.

‘You see?’ she cried. ‘It’s not thunder. Something is happening.’

Hayden fell back on to the bed with a groan. ‘I don’t suppose you could just ignore whatever it is and take that gown off.’

‘Of course I can’t.’ Jane tugged her sleeve back into place and snatched up her dressing gown from the chaise. ‘Barton Park is my home. I can’t let it just be invaded by—whatever it is. Hayden, do get up!’

As she hastily tied back her loose fall of hair, Hayden reluctantly pushed himself up and put on his breeches. For an instant she was struck by the intimacy of the moment, of dressing together in the darkness. He moved so gracefully, so naturally, as if they did this every day.

There was another flurry of loud knocks, shaking her out of that stunned moment, and she spun away from the sight of Hayden pulling on his shirt. She stuffed her feet into a pair of slippers and yanked open the door.

Emma stood on the landing, peering down at the hall. Murray cowered at her feet, not
much of a watchdog. Jane could hear now that the noise was someone pounding on the door.

‘Who could it be?’ Emma whispered, as if the invaders could possibly hear her.

‘Probably just someone caught in the storm,’ Jane said firmly. She couldn’t let Emma see her uncertainty. No one ever accidentally wandered to Barton Park, they were too far off the better-travelled roads. ‘I’ll go down and see.’

‘No, I’ll go,’ Hayden said as he stepped out of her chamber, the re-lit lamp in his hands. Emma’s eyes widened, but she didn’t really look terribly surprised to see him there.

‘Stay here,’ Jane told Emma, and she hurried down the stairs behind Hayden. He strode towards the door, looking calm and perfectly in charge despite the fact that he was in his shirtsleeves with rumpled hair. He always did manage to look as if he owned any room he was in and for once Jane was glad of that. Glad not to be alone.

He threw back the old bolt on the door and pulled it open. The sound of the falling rain grew louder, pouring into the creaky silence
of the house. Jane stood on tiptoes to peer over his shoulder.

‘Hayden, my friend! We’ve never been happier to see anyone in our lives,’ a man shouted over the thunder. ‘Devil of a night, eh?’

Even though the voice was slightly slurred with drink, Jane recognised it as Hayden’s friend Lord John Eastwood, who had been the best man at their wedding. She had never minded him as much as some of Hayden’s wilder friends, he was a funny, quiet sort of man who carried an air of sadness since he had lost his young wife. But what the devil was he doing
here
, in the middle of the night, at her home?

‘Glad you decided to rusticate, Ramsay,’ another man said. ‘Otherwise we’d be trapped out on that godforsaken road.’

‘Carstairs, John, what happened to you both?’ Hayden said with a rough laugh. ‘You look like you’ve been dragged to hell and back.’

‘So we have,’ John said. ‘But don’t say that too loud—there are ladies present.’

‘If you can call us that!’ a woman cried. ‘Let us in, Ramsay, it’s freezing out here.’

As Jane watched in stunned disbelief, Hayden drew the door open and five people tumbled in. At first they were an indistinct, dark blur, a tangle of cloaks and great coats and water dripping in sheets on to her floor. But then she saw it was three men and two women. They laughed and cursed, dropping their wet things carelessly. She could smell the rain, wet wool, expensive perfumes and the sticky sweetness of brandy.

‘I do know that,’ Hayden said, his voice a strange blend of strained affability and slight irritation. ‘You all remember Lady Ramsay, I’m sure.’

The cacophony suddenly ceased, like birds scattered from a tree. The gathering turned to stare at her and Jane felt her throat tighten as the lamplight fell over their faces. She knew John, of course, and the other two men were also cronies of Hayden’s, fellows he often went carousing with—Sir Ethan Carstairs and Lord Browning. One of the ladies she did not know, a little apple-cheeked blonde giggling behind her hand.

The other woman was Lady Marlbury. Hayden’s former mistress, or so all the gossip said. She was as tall and gloriously, vividly beautiful as ever, despite her rain-soaked red hair. She looked as if she was about to burst into delighted laughter.

Jane resisted the sudden strong, burning urge to slap her.

‘Of course. Lady Ramsay. It’s been far too long,’ John said, the first to recover his manners. He hurried over to bow over her cold hand. ‘I’m sorry to burst in on you like this. We were all on our way back to London when our carriage became mired in the mud. Luckily Carstairs remembered that Ramsay was staying here.’

Jane swallowed past her dry throat. ‘It’s good to see you again, Lord John. How is your sister, Susan? She was such a good friend to me when I first arrived in London as a green country girl.’

‘She is very well—just had her second child, you know. And you know Sir Ethan Carstairs and Lord Browning, of course,’ John said quickly. ‘And Lady Marlbury. This is Browning’s friend, Mrs Smythe.’

‘How lovely to see you again, Lady Ramsay,’ Lady Marlbury said, still smiling. ‘So kind of you to offer to provide a port in the storm.’

Jane could remember offering no such thing. In fact, every instinct told her to toss them all back out immediately. Barton Park was
her
home,
her
refuge, and they were everything she had run away from when she left London. But she knew she couldn’t. Every rule of civility held her back.

She glanced at Hayden, who was studying his friends with a half-smile on his face. Was he happy to see them? Glad to have his dull country days interrupted? The warmth and contentment of the night spent in her bed, wrapped in his arms, vanished and she was so very cold. She tightened her robe around her.

‘Come in, I’ll fetch some brandy and get the fire started,’ Hayden said, ushering them towards the sitting room.

‘You’ll start the fire?’ Lady Marlbury said with a merry laugh. ‘My goodness, Ramsay, but you
have
become domesticated out
here in the wilds. What sort of upside-down place is this?’

They all followed Hayden, a laughing, jostling band who acted as if they were suddenly dropped into a seaside holiday, not stranded in a strange house—Jane’s house.

Jane turned to see Emma standing halfway down the stairs, looking after them with an expression of intrigued astonishment on her pretty face.

‘Emma, can you fetch Hannah?’ Jane said, trying not to reveal her own stunned, uncertain feelings. ‘And make cook see if she can make some sandwiches. It seems we suddenly have company.’

‘Who are those people?’ Emma asked, her eyes wide.

‘They are friends of Hayden who were stranded in the storm,’ Jane said as briefly as she could.

‘Only Hayden’s? You didn’t know them in London?’

‘Yes. I knew them.’

Emma looked as if she was aching to ask more, but she just nodded and hurried away
to rouse Hannah and the cook. Murray scurried off behind her, his tail tucked down.

Jane wished with all her might that she could run off after her sister. She could already hear the loud laughter and jokes from the impromptu house party and it filled her with a sick feeling from the pit of her stomach. Her home was being invaded, just as the London house had been after they married. Already she could feel the cold tentacles of that old life, that life of fashion and lies, reaching out to grab at her again.

How could things change in only a moment like that? Jane leaned on the newel post and stared up the dimness of the staircase. When she fell asleep, she was wrapped in Hayden’s arms, warmed by the most tentative and fragile of hopes. Now…

Now she just wanted to flee again. Yet if even Barton Park could be invaded, no place was safe.

Jane took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She had her
duty
, as Hayden had often reminded her in the past. The duty of a countess and a hostess. She would see them through.

That resolve wavered a bit when she stepped through the sitting room door and saw the scene spread before her.

The cosy room where Hayden and Emma had played cards after dinner only a few hours before was transformed. The shabby sofas and chairs were pushed into a group around the fireplace. Hayden and John knelt in front of the hearth, piling up the kindling while the others shouted suggestions and jokes, and fell into fits of laughter.

Lady Marlbury rested her hand on Hayden’s shoulder and leaned closer as if to examine his work. ‘Really, Ramsay darling, I don’t think being a chimney boy is your calling. That will never burn. You have far finer talents you should be using.’

Hayden glanced up at her with a lazy smile. ‘First the fire, I think. Then…’

His hooded gaze slid past Lady Marlbury to land on Jane where she stood in the doorway. She felt utterly frozen in place, unable to turn away and unable to move forwards. She stared at Lady Marlbury’s hand, resting so casually on Hayden’s shoulder, and she wanted to yank out the woman’s no doubt
falsely red hair by the roots. She wanted…she wanted…

She wanted things to be completely different with Hayden. For Hayden and her. For a few hours, she’d even imagined they
were
different. Now they just felt horribly the same.

She closed her eyes and for an instant she was back at another house party, one where she felt like she knew no one and wasn’t sure what to say or do. But Lady Marlbury knew—she was standing with Hayden, her hand on his arm, laughing up at him, making him smile at her. Making jokes with him Jane couldn’t understand. That was when she had realised her life with Hayden was not going to be as she had dreamed. That he had an existence she hadn’t been, couldn’t be, a part of.

And when she opened her eyes she was there all over again, but it was in her own house now. the past rushing in to infect the present.

‘Look, I think the fire’s starting,’ Lord Browning called. Everyone else turned to the hearth amid exclamations of hilarity and Hayden pushed himself to his feet.

He moved across the room towards Jane and it seemed to her as if everything had turned hazy and pale. A dream. Hayden wasn’t real. Nothing was real.

But she was damned if she would let him see the deep sting of disappointment that had seized her heart. She held her head high and smiled brightly, just as she had done through all those London balls. Lady Marlbury was watching.

‘Emma has gone to wake Hannah and the cook,’ Jane said. ‘We can get a few rooms ready very soon, if your friends don’t mind sharing. We aren’t really a large enough house for a proper house party.’ She glanced over at the group around the growing fire. Mrs Smythe was perched on Lord Browning’s knee, still giggling. ‘But I am sure they won’t mind sharing.’

‘I’m sorry they showed up like that, Jane,’ Hayden said quietly. ‘I wasn’t expecting them.’

‘Of course not.’

‘But I can’t turn them out in the rain. John is my oldest friend.’

Jane saw that Lady Marlbury was watching
them surreptitiously, still smiling even though her eyes were narrowed. ‘Not just John, I think.’

‘Jane, please. Everything was going so well. They’ll be gone as soon as their carriage is repaired, and then…’

‘Then what?’ Jane said, and cursed herself at the sharp sound of those words. She couldn’t let Hayden see, let him have the power to hurt her again. She closed her eyes for a moment, then went on, quieter. ‘Don’t apologise, Hayden. This is your life. I’m glad of the reminder. Now, you must see to your friends. I’ll go find Emma and help put the guest rooms to rights.’