LITMIR.BIZ

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a maid, fuel for the fires, but not a carriage or a team of gardeners. No grand parties, but she had had her fill of those in London. She had found she wasn’t at all good at them, either attending or hosting them. There could be money from Hayden, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch it.

      Jane sighed as she pushed the loose tendrils of her brown hair back into her scarf. Emma was sixteen now. In a couple of years she should have a London Season, though Jane had no idea how to pay for it or how to weather London gossip in order to launch her.

      Not that Emma seemed in the least bit interested in a Season. She was a strange girl, always buried in books about botany or running off to the woods to collect ‘specimens’ or bring home new pets like rabbits or hedgehogs. She liked the quiet life in the country as much as Jane did. They both needed its peace. But Jane knew it couldn’t go on for ever.

      That was why she had forced herself to write to Hayden after all these years. It had taken days of agonising before she could take up that pen to write the letter and even more before she could send it. Then there was…

      Nothing. The days had gone by in silence with no answer at all from her husband.

      Her husband. Jane pressed her hand to her stomach with the spasm of pain that always came when she thought those words. She remembered Hayden as she had last seen him, sprawled asleep on the stairs of their London house. Her husband, as beautiful as a fallen angel. How horribly they had disappointed each other. Failed each other.

      She tried so hard not to think about him. Not to think about how things were when they first married, when she had been so naïve and full of hope. So dazzled by Hayden and what he gave to her. By who he was and the delights they found together in the bedchamber. She tried not to think about the babies, and about how losing those tiny, fragile lives showed her how hollow and empty everything was. She couldn’t even fulfil her main duty as a countess.

      During the day it was easy not to think about it all. There was so much work to be done, the gardens to be cleared, the meagre accounts to go over, a few neighbourhood friends to call on or join for tea or cards. But at night—at night it was so different.

      In the silence and the darkness there was nothing but the memories. She remembered everything about their days together, the good and the bad. How they had laughed together; how he had made her feel when he kissed her, touched her. How in those moments she had felt not so alone any longer, even though it was all an illusion in the end. She wondered how he was now, what he was doing. And then she wanted to sob for what was lost, for what had never really been except in her dreams.

      Yes. Except for those nights, life would be very tolerable indeed. But it wasn’t just Emma’s future she needed to think about, it was her own. And Hayden’s, too, even though the future had never seemed to be something he considered. He was an earl and also an orphan with no siblings. He would need an heir. And for that he would have to be free, as complicated and costly as that would be. She had to offer him that.

      And she needed to be free, too.

      Jane pushed away thoughts of Hayden and the unanswered letter. She couldn’t worry about it now. She scooped up the bucket and made her way along the overgrown pathway to the house. They were expecting guests for tea.

      As she stowed the bucket next to the kitchen, the door suddenly flew open and Emma dashed out. She held a wriggling puppy under one arm and the dirty burlap bag she used for collecting plants over the other. Her golden-blonde hair was gathered in an untidy braid and she wore an old apron over her faded blue-muslin dress.

      Even so dishevelled, anyone could see that Emma was becoming a rare beauty, all ivory and gold with their mother’s jewel-green eyes, eyes that had become a muddy hazel on Jane. Emma’s beauty was yet another reason to worry about the future. Emma might be happy at Barton Park, but Jane knew she couldn’t be buried in the country for ever.

      ‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ Jane asked.

      ‘I saw a patch of what looked like the plant I’ve been seeking by the road yesterday, but I didn’t have time to examine it properly,’ Emma answered briskly. ‘I want to collect a few pieces before they get trampled.’

      ‘It looks like rain,’ Jane said. ‘And we have guests coming to tea soon.’

      ‘Do we? Who? The vicar again?’ Emma said without much interest. She put down Murray the puppy and clipped on his lead.

      ‘No, Sir David Marton and his sister Miss Louisa. Surely you remember them from the assembly last month?’ Their last real social outing, dancing and tepid punch at the village assembly rooms. Emma would surely remember it as she had protested being put into one of Jane’s made-over London gowns and had then been ogled and flirted with by every man between fifteen and fifty. Sir David had danced with her once, too, then he had spent the evening talking to Jane.

      ‘That old stick-in-the-mud?’ Emma said with a scoffing laugh. ‘What is he going to do, read us sermons?’

      ‘Emma!’ Jane protested. ‘Sir David is hardly old—I doubt he is even thirty. And he is not in the least bit sermon-like. He and his sister are very nice.’

      ‘Nice enough, I suppose, but still very stick-in-the-muddy. When he danced with me at the assembly he kept going on about some German philosopher with terribly gloomy ideas. He didn’t know anything about botany. And his sister only seemed to care about hats.’

      ‘Nevertheless, they are nice, and they are to be our nearest neighbours since they took over Easton Abbey,’ Jane said, trying not to laugh at her sister’s idea of proper social discourse. ‘You need to be here when they call. And properly dressed, not drenched from getting caught in the rain.’

      ‘I won’t be gone long at all, Jane, I promise,’ Emma said. ‘I will be all prim and proper in the sitting room when they get here, ready to talk about German philosophy over cakes and tea.’

      Jane laughed as Emma kissed her cheek and hurried away, Murray barking madly at her feet. ‘Half an hour, Emma, no more.’

      ‘Half an hour! I promise!’

      Once Emma was gone out the garden gate, Jane hurried through the kitchens, where their cook was making a rare fine tea of sandwiches and lemon cakes, and went up the back stairs to her chamber. Emma wasn’t the only one who needed to mend her appearance, she thought as she caught a glimpse of herself in the dressing-table mirror. She could pass as the scullery maid herself.

      And somehow it seemed so important that Sir David and his sister not think ill of her appearance.

      As she tugged the scarf from her hair and untied her apron, she thought about Sir David and their recent meetings. He was a handsome young man, in a quiet way that matched his polite demeanour. With his sandy-brown hair and spectacles, he seemed to exude an unobtrusive intelligence that Jane found calming after all that had happened before in her life.

      She enjoyed talking to him and he seemed to enjoy talking to her. When she had declined to dance at the assembly, saying only that her dancing days were behind her, he did not press her. But he was kind enough to dance with Emma and listen to her talk about plants, even though Emma seemed to find him ‘stick-in-the-muddy’.

      So when Jane had encountered him and his sister in the village, it seemed natural to invite them to tea. Only to be a friendly neighbour, of course. There could be nothing more. She was a married woman, even though she had not seen her husband in years.

      She was a married woman for now, anyway. And she could not quite deny that when David Marton smiled at her, sought her out for conversation, she felt something she hadn’t in a long time. She felt—admired.

      Even before she left London she had begun to feel invisible. The one person whose admiration mattered—her husband—didn’t see her any more and all the chatter in the fashion papers about her gowns and her coiffures didn’t matter at all. Nothing mattered beyond Hayden’s indifference. She started to feel invisible even to herself, especially after she had failed in her main duty to give her husband an heir.

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