The Runaway Countess (7 page)

‘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 fool, 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.’

‘Which I did—and more, much more there in the summerhouse.’ Her cheeks suddenly turned pink, and she turned away. ‘No, it wasn’t all bad. I was just so young then, so foolish. I thought everything would always be just that way.’

‘We aren’t so young now, Jane. We’ve been married five years and spent barely two of
those years together,’ Hayden said, suddenly feeling very urgent. Somehow they had to connect again. ‘Surely we can talk. Perhaps I could even make you see me as you once did. The real me.’

For she was the only one who had ever
truly
seen him, just him, Hayden the man and not the earl. The man he was and the man he really wanted to be. And like an idiot he had thrown that rare treasure away.

Emma came running back in just at that moment, not giving Jane time to answer. But she
did
smile at him and, for the moment, that would have to be enough. Until he put his plan in order.

‘Keep your eyes closed,’ Hayden said sternly as he helped his wife down from the carriage
.

Jane laughed and shook her head, but she didn’t move away from his guiding hands on her shoulders or try to remove the blindfold tied over her eyes. ‘This is ridiculous
,
Hayden! I have seen your town house before.’

‘It wasn’t my town house,’ he said. ‘It was my parents’. More accurately, my mother’s
since my father did not care for it. But now it is
our
town house. I’ve had it completely refurbished, attics to kitchens, to make it ours.’

He helped her up the marble steps just as Makepeace, the butler who had presided over this place ever since Hayden was in leading strings, opened the front door and gave a deep bow. ‘Welcome home, my lord
,
my lady. I trust you had a pleasant time in the country.’

‘Most refreshing, thank you, Makepeace,’ Hayden said
.

Jane stumbled a bit on the top step, but Hayden held her fast with his strong arms
.
Refreshing said the very least of it. It had been—amazing. Beautiful. Transcendent
.
She had never imagined being so close to another person could be so wonderful
.

He led her through the grand rooms, the beautiful drawing room decorated in the very latest
à la greque
fashion, the music room with its gilded pianoforte and harp
,
the dining room with its vast expanse of polished table and many, many perfectly aligned, brocade-cushioned chairs waiting for elegant parties
.

Parties she would have to host
.

A full-length portrait of Hayden’s beautiful black-haired mother, in full countess splendour in velvet robes and coronet, peered down at her haughtily from her carved frame. A little white dog peeked out from her fur-trimmed hem, but it didn’t make her look at all cosy. She looked rather fearsome
.
And now her job was Jane’s. Her world was Jane’s and it was one Jane knew hardly anything about
.

Suddenly some of her silvery glow of happiness tarnished at the edges
.

But Hayden still held her hand, and she clung to it. He led her up the stairs and into a large suite of rooms, all done in blue-and-silver satin, with a massive carved bed curtained and draped in blue velvet and piled with embroidered cushions. A dressing gown
,
all frothed with swathes of tulle, was spread with a dazzling array of silver and crystal pots and bottles and brushes
.

‘And this is yours,’ Hayden announced proudly. ‘I had it completely redecorated for you in a way you would love. My room
is right there through that door, so we can be together every night.’