The Runaway Countess (15 page)

He’d watched Ramsay do whatever he liked with whomever he liked in society, seen him carried along by his looks and his position and his easy fortune, for too long. Those days were over. And Ethan would use Emma Bancroft to help him end them. His own time was coming, very soon.

‘We’ll see about that,’ he said to Lady Marlbury, and spun around to stalk away. Her laughter followed him, but he knew that soon she wouldn’t dare laugh at him any more.

H
ayden leaned his head on the back of the dining room chair and stared up at the ceiling as his friends laughed and shouted around him. The dinner table was littered with empty wine bottles, many of which he’d helped consume. He felt the familiar sensation of heat and blurriness, of the devil-may-care-ness that alcohol used to bring him, and yet he felt strangely removed from the whole scene. As if he was someplace else entirely.

Or perhaps he only wished he was someplace else.

He squinted up at the ceiling and saw to his surprise there was a fresco painted there. A scene of a god’s dinner party, surrounded
by laughing cupids and pretty girls in filmy classical draperies, darkened with smoke, peeling at the edges, but still very pretty.

Hayden felt a faint stirring of interest as he thought how much Jane would like it if he had it restored. One more piece of their home brought back to life.

Their
home,
Blast it all
, he thought in a sudden burst of energy. Barton Park wasn’t his home; it couldn’t be. It didn’t matter how he’d felt since he came there, didn’t matter how the rare peace of the place had crept over him and how every minute with Jane he wanted to be with her more. This wasn’t his place because he hadn’t earned it and didn’t deserve it. Not after how he treated Jane in London, how he refused to listen to her and tried to go back to his old ways.

He’d wanted to change when he saw her again, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. That she saw his London life and thought it still had a draw on him. Now that life had come back to them, into Jane’s own house. He had a few drinks, a few laughs, and he felt himself slipping back to his old
ways like he was tumbling over an icy cliff. It felt just as perilous, just as unavoidable.

He sat up straight and looked out at his friends, everything slightly fuzzy at the edges from the wine. They were falling and tumbling from their chairs, shrieking with laughter over a story Browning was telling about an actress and some elderly
roué
trying to recapture his naughty youth. All except Lady Marlbury, who was only smiling distantly and occasionally giving Hayden a worried glance.

Surely he was really in trouble if even his former mistress looked at him in concern.

Once he had relished such a life. The drinking, the fighting, the laughter had made him forget everything else. Taken him out of himself. When these people showed up on the doorstep and he decided to let them in and give them the last of Jane’s father’s wine cellar, he’d thought maybe he could recapture some of that. That perhaps his new need for Jane could be rooted out.

Instead he only felt like he was in danger of becoming the old fool in Browning’s story. He found he wanted Jane more than he’d ever
wanted the forgetfulness of dissipation. And that revelation hit him like a thunderbolt.

Suddenly, the dining room door banged open and Jane stood there. Her eyes blazed and her lips tightened as she swept a glance over the party. Hayden half-rose to go to her, to tell her what he’d realised, but he fell back to the chair, words lost. It seemed he’d consumed more wine than he realised.

And the burning look she turned on him told him clearer than any words that she didn’t want any apologies or excuses from him now. His wife was quite, quite angry. And she had a right to be.

Nothing had changed at all.

Jane stood on the staircase landing, staring down at the flickering night-shadows in the hall as she listened to the sounds flowing up from the dining room. Shrieks of laughter, shouted curses, the ebb and flow of talk, the clink of glasses. The sound of a bottle shattering. It had only been a day since Hayden’s friends had arrived at Barton, but it felt as if her house had never been her own at all.

The three years she had spent here,
searching inside herself to find out what she wanted and how she should best move forwards, faded and she felt like Lady Ramsay of London again. Smiling, outwardly so serene, while she watched her husband break all her hopes. She’d run away from all that, willing to be alone, to be lonely, rather than let Hayden pull her down with him.

But then she let him back in, let him touch her heart again. She had let herself hope he could be what she once thought he was, that she once hoped they could be. Had she been a terrible fool?

Jane leaned on the railing and closed her eyes as she thought about those precious days here at Barton. Hayden working with her in the garden, lying in bed with her at night, talking so easily, as if nothing had come between them. Hayden laughing with Emma, bringing in the workmen to fix the roof.

Hayden holding her as they made love, more tenderly, more passionately, than they ever had before.

Jane curled her fists hard on the banister, holding on fiercely. No, she had not been imagining it all. These days had not been
some mere fanciful dream. Hayden told her things he never had before, things about his family, his past. He had let her see him, as she had let him see her. She couldn’t just let that go, couldn’t let her pain and her anger drive her to run away as she once had.

This was her house, damn it all. And Hayden was her husband, whether he liked it or not.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t be furious about what was happening down there in the dining room. Especially when she heard the sound of breaking glass again and a trill of musical laughter that could only be Lady Marlbury’s.

Jane tightened her shawl over her shoulders and marched down the stairs. Hayden was behaving wretchedly and it had to stop now. She wouldn’t let him vanish into his wild ways again. And she would not let her house be destroyed when it was just beginning to be repaired.

The dining-room door was ajar and she pushed it open to find a scene of chaos. Dinner was hours ago. She knew because she had turned down Hayden’s invitation to eat
with their guests and dined with Emma in her room instead, lecturing her sister about avoiding the wrong men.

Emma had begged to be allowed to go downstairs, just for a little while, just to ‘observe’. The strangely eager look in Emma’s eyes when she asked to go was yet another reason for Jane to want to take back her house. She didn’t want her sweet, naïve sister talking to these people, especially not to Ethan Carstairs. Emma had been much too quiet and daydreamy ever since Jane caught her behind that screen with Carstairs.

A loud clap of thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the house. Everyone in the dining room laughed even harder and raised their glasses as if to toast the storm.

The table was covered with the remains of a hastily concocted dinner that had no doubt cleaned out the cook’s pantry, a tangle of platters and empty bottles. Lord John Eastwood was not there. He had always been the most sensible of Hayden’s friends. Mrs Smythe perched on Lord Browning’s knee, as she so often seemed to do, and Carstairs was pouring out a glass of wine. Some of it
spilled out on the table. His hair was rumpled and his cravat loosened, but he didn’t look quite as dishevelled as usual.

Unlike her husband. Hayden was slumped in his chair at the head of the table, his forearms braced on the table with a brandy bottle between them. His cravat dangled loose and his waistcoat was unfastened. She couldn’t see his face; his black hair was tangled over his brow. He idly twirled the bottle between his palms as if fascinated by the movement.

Lady Marlbury leaned close to him to say something quiet in his ear. An instinctive flare of jealousy rose up in Jane, but even through that haze she saw that Lady Marlbury didn’t look flirtatious or triumphant. She looked—concerned.

Jane shoved the door open harder, letting it bounce off the wall with a loud bang that caught everyone’s attention. Browning and Carstairs scrambled to their feet, Browning’s sudden movement nearly knocking Mrs Smythe over. Lady Marlbury’s hand slid away from Hayden’s arm and Hayden himself looked up slowly. His blue eyes were
slightly reddened, his movements careful as if not to jar an aching head.

Jane’s stomach clenched as she remembered her last night in London. Hayden falling asleep on the stairs after a long night out, not listening to her when she was so desperate. So shattered.

She had to be stronger than that now.

She strode into the room, ignoring everyone but her husband. As she came closer, he braced his palms on the table and pushed himself to his feet.

‘Jane,’ he said roughly. ‘So kind of you to join us. Have a brandy?’

Jane took a deep breath, forcing herself to stay calm. She wanted no scenes, not here. Not in front of these people. ‘It’s very late, Hayden. Shouldn’t everyone retire?’

‘Late? The evening has just begun,’ Hayden said, waving his arm in a wide circle. He stumbled and would have fallen over the table if Lady Marlbury hadn’t caught his arm.

‘Lady Ramsay is quite right,’ Lady Marlbury said. ‘It is late and we have trespassed on your hospitality too long.’

She was the last person Jane would have expected to come to her defence, to be the voice of quiet reason. But as their eyes met behind Hayden’s back, she could see her own weary concern reflected in Lady Marlbury’s eyes. ‘Come with me, Hayden,’ Jane said firmly, far more firmly than she felt. But she couldn’t cry now.

‘We have guests, Jane,’ he answered.

‘I’m sure they will understand that it’s time to retire,’ Jane said. ‘Dinner has been finished for a long while, has it not?’

‘Damn it all…’ Hayden said loudly, and fell against her shoulder. She stumbled back, wrapping her arm around his waist to keep them both from falling, but Jane felt herself slipping towards the floor.

Lady Marlbury caught his other arm and held them all steady. ‘I’ll help you get him upstairs,’ she said quietly. ‘Lord John retired long ago and the others won’t be any help, I fear.’

The last thing Jane wanted was to accept help from Lady Marlbury, the woman who had made her feel so small, so insignificant, from the moment she married Hayden. But
Lady Marlbury was right. No one else was in any condition to help and she couldn’t get Hayden upstairs by herself. She couldn’t even hold him upright.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured, and between them she and Lady Marlbury half-carried Hayden out of the dining room. He had gone quiet again, almost as if he had fallen asleep.

They led him up the stairs and down the dimly lit corridor to Jane’s room. She hoped Emma really had gone to bed and wasn’t hiding to spy on everyone that night.

She and Lady Marlbury dropped Hayden on to the bed. He rolled on to his back with a groan, and immediately his eyes closed and he seemed to tumble down into sleep. Jane had that feeling of being back in London all over again, watching Hayden after a long night out with his friends.

‘Can you get his boots off?’ she asked Lady Marlbury as she wrestled his arm out of his coat sleeve.

The redhead nodded and set about pulling off his boots. ‘I truly am sorry we intruded on you like this, Lady Ramsay,’ she said quietly. ‘If I had known…’

‘Known what?’ Jane asked curiously. Lady Marlbury didn’t sound at all like her usual bold, sophisticated London self. She brushed her loosened hair off her brow as she turned to look at the woman.

‘Known that Hayden was here with
you
, of course,’ Lady Marlbury said. She lined the boots up carefully next to the bed. ‘He just disappeared from town and no one knew what he was doing.’

‘I’m sure he would have returned soon enough,’ Jane said. He had only come because of her extreme step of asking for a divorce, but she wouldn’t tell Lady Marlbury that. Nor would she tell anyone about the foolish hopes she’d harboured in the last few days. ‘He would grow bored here and go back to the parties.’

‘Do you think so?’ Lady Marlbury sounded so wistful that Jane was startled.

‘Of course. Look what happened tonight.’

They both looked down at Hayden, sprawled across the bed, his glossy hair tumbled, his cheeks shadowed with an unshaved beard.

‘No,’ Lady Marlbury said. ‘What he has grown bored with is the
ton
life.’

Was she right? Jane felt a tiny touch of hope, but she pushed it back down. She couldn’t let hope worm its way back in again, making her hope things that couldn’t be. ‘Why would you say that? We have been apart for a long time. He could have left London and come here at any time. He lives his life there.’

‘Perhaps once he did. Or perhaps he was only pretending. Hayden is a great actor, you know. He can hide from anyone, anywhere.’

Jane suddenly felt so very tired. She sat down on the edge of the bed and covered her eyes with her shaking hands. It was surely only her weariness that made her sit there in the darkness next to Hayden’s sleeping body, talking to the woman rumoured to have been his mistress.

‘I wish I had known that before I married him,’ she said frankly. ‘I believed so many foolish things then. I actually thought I could make him happy. I believed we
were
happy for a while, when what he really wanted all along was someone like…’

‘Someone like me?’ Lady Marlbury said, laughter lurking in her quiet, sad voice.

‘Yes,’ Jane answered. ‘Someone sophisticated and elegant.’

‘Oh, Lady Ramsay. He hasn’t wanted someone like me in a very long time. Our association was very brief and over before he met you. Though I confess I wouldn’t have minded if it had gone on longer.’ Lady Marlbury sighed. ‘I was what he thought he
should
want. You were what he really wanted. Everyone could see that when you married him.’

‘Then everyone, including me, was clearly wrong,’ Jane said, that weariness growing and growing until it covered her like the thick, dark clouds outside.

‘Were we? I do wonder. He has been like a madman ever since you left, running so wildly from one party to another, never staying in one place long,’ Lady Marlbury said. ‘But I have learned one thing in my life, Lady Ramsay, and that is we can’t ever run far enough or fast enough to get away from ourselves. I fear Hayden is learning that, too.’

She opened the bedroom door and paused
there to add, ‘I will leave tomorrow whether it’s raining or not, Lady Ramsay. It’s clear you and Hayden have matters that must be settled and I can’t interfere. But if I may offer one bit of advice…’