‘It was quite the crush.’
Jane gently smoothed back his hair and cupped her palm over his cheek. The faint roughness of his evening whiskers tickled her skin and the sky-blue of his eyes glowed in the shadows.
How very handsome he was, her husband. How her heart ached just to look at him. Once he had been everything she had ever wanted.
‘So I see,’ she said.
‘Everyone asked about you there,’ he answered. He turned his head to press a quick, careless kiss into her palm. ‘You’re missed by our friends.’
‘Friends?’ she murmured doubtfully. She barely knew the Westins, or anyone who had been there tonight. And they did not know her, not really. She always felt shy and uncomfortable at balls, another way she failed at being a countess. ‘I don’t feel like parties yet.’
‘Well, I hope you will very soon. The Season is still young and we have a brace of invitations to respond to.’ He kissed her hand again, but Jane had the distinct sense he didn’t even feel her, see her. ‘I hate it when you’re ill, darling.’
Feeling a tiny spark of hope, Jane caught his hands in hers and said, ‘Maybe we need a little holiday, a few weeks in the country with just us. I’m sure I would feel better in the fresh air. We could take my sister, Emma, from school to come see us. It’s been so long since I was with Emma.’
As she thought about it she grew more excited. Yes, she was sure a holiday would be a wonderful thing. A time in the country at Barton Park, just the three of them, no parties, no brandy. She and Hayden could talk again, as they used to, and be together—maybe make a new baby. Try one more time, despite her fears. They could leave the grand Ramsays behind and just be Hayden and Jane. That was what she had once hoped for so much.
But Hayden laughed at her words, as if she had just made some great joke. He let go of her hands and sprawled back on to the steps. ‘Go off to the country now? Jane darling, it’s the very midst of the Season. We can’t possibly leave now.’
‘But it could be—’
Hayden shook his head. ‘Staying in London would do you more good than burying yourself in the country. You should go to parties with me again, enjoy yourself. Everyone expects it of you, of us.’
‘Go to parties as you do?’ Jane said bitterly as her faint, desperate hope faded away. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change.
‘Yes, as I do. As my parents always did,’ he said. ‘It’s better than wallowing in misery alone at home.’
Jane wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly hollow and empty. Cold. ‘I am tired. Perhaps I will go away by myself to visit my sister. Poor Emma writes that she doesn’t like her school and I miss her. I just need some time away from London. I want to go home to Barton Park for a while.’
Hayden closed his eyes as if he was weary of her and this conversation. Weary of her emotions. ‘If you like, of course. You will have to return before our end-of-Season ball, though. Everyone expects that.’
Jane nodded, but she already knew she would not be back for any ball. She couldn’t return to this life at all. She needed to find her own soul again, even if she couldn’t make Hayden see that he needed to save his.
He gave a faint snore and Jane looked down to find that he had drifted to sleep right there on the stairs, in the middle of their conversation. His face looked so beautiful and peaceful, a faint smile on his lips as if he had already floated out of her life and into the one he had chosen for himself long before he met her. She leaned down and softly kissed his cheek and smoothed back his hair one last time.
‘I’m sorry, Hayden,’ she whispered. ‘Forgive me.’
She rose to her feet and stepped over him, going back to her chamber and closing the door quietly behind her. It didn’t even make a sound in the vast house that had never really been hers.
Hayden stared up at the ceiling far above his head, not seeing the elaborate, cake-icing whorls of white plaster. He barely felt the hard press of the stairs at his back, either, or the familiar feeling of a headache growing behind his eyes. All he could see, all he could think about, was Jane.
He closed his eyes and listened carefully, but she was long gone. There was only silence since she had tiptoed away and softly closed her chamber door behind her. Even his butler, Makepeace, had given up on him and left him lying there on the stairs. Cold air swept around him from the marble floor of the hall.
He had truly become what he never wanted to be—his parents.
Not that he was really like his father, oh, no. The elder earl had been all about responsibility and proper family appearances. It was Hayden’s mother who had liked the parties, liked the forgetfulness of being in a noisy crowd. But they had both liked brandy and port too much and it killed his father in the end.
His mother, rest her giddy soul, was done in by childbirth, trying one last time to give his father another son.
A spasm of raw, burning pain flashed through Hayden as he remembered Jane’s face, as white as the sheets she lay on after the first baby was gone, thin and drawn with pain.
‘We can try again, Hayden,’ she had said, reaching for his hand. ‘The doctor says I am truly healthy, there’s no reason it won’t work next time. Please, Hayden, please stay with me.’
And he’d taken her trembling hand, murmured all the right, reassuring things, but inside he was shouting—not again. Never again. He couldn’t hurt her again, couldn’t see her go through what his mother had.
When he first saw Jane, saw the young, hopeful light in her pretty hazel eyes and the sweet pink blush in her cheeks, he felt something he had thought long dead stir inside of him. A curiosity, maybe, an excitement about life And what might happen next. It was more intoxicating than any wine, that feeling Jane gave him. And when he touched her hand, when she smiled up at him…
He only wanted that feeling she gave him to last for ever. He had to have her and he never stopped to think of the consequences. Until he was forced to.
He’d done Jane a great wrong in marrying her so quickly after they met, before she could see the real him. No matter what he did now it seemed he could not make her happy. He couldn’t even see what she wanted, needed. She always looked at him so expectantly, so sadly, with those eyes of hers, as if she was waiting for something from him. Something he couldn’t even begin to fathom.
So he ran back to what he did know, his friends and their never-ending parties. And Jane grew sadder, especially when the babies were lost. Three of them now.
Hayden pushed himself slowly to his feet and made his careful way up the stairs. There was no sound beyond Jane’s door, just that perfect, echoing silence. He pushed the door open and peered inside.
Jane lay on her side in the middle of the satin-draped bed countesses had slept in for decades. Her palm was tucked under her cheek, her thick, dark braid snaking over her shoulder. The moonlight fell over her face and he saw she was frowning even in her sleep. She looked so small, so vulnerable and alone.
Hayden knew he had let her down very badly. But he vowed he would never do it again, no matter what he had to do. Even if it meant letting her go.
‘I promise you,
