Amanda McCabe - The Runaway Countess

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.

Back home at Barton Park she had started to feel better, slowly, day by day. She had started to feel the sun on her skin again and hear the birds singing. The weed-choked gardens didn’t care what she looked like and Emma certainly didn’t. Things seemed quite content. So it had come as quite a surprise how much she enjoyed Sir David’s quiet attentions.

She leaned towards the mirror to peer more closely at her reflection.

‘No one in London would recognise you now,’ she said with laugh. And, indeed, no one would recognise the well-dressed Lady Ramsay in this woman, with her wind-tossed hair and the pale gold freckles the sun had dotted over her nose. She reached for her hairbrush and set to work.

She suddenly felt giddily schoolgirlish in how much she looked forward to this tea party.

‘Ramsay? By Jove, it is you! Blast it, man, what are you doing in this godforsaken place?’

Hayden slowly turned from his place at the bar. He had just been asking himself that very thing, What was he doing in a country inn, sipping at tepid, weak ale, running after a woman who clearly didn’t want him, when he could be in London, getting ready for a night out at balls and gambling clubs?

He had just come to the startling realisation that a night out gaming and drinking wasn’t something he would miss very much when he heard those shouted words. They were a welcome distraction from his own brooding thoughts.

He turned away from the bar and saw Lord Ethan Carstairs making his way across the crowded room towards him. Lord Ethan was not what Hayden would call a friend, but they were often in the same circles and saw each other at their club and across the gambling tables. Lord Ethan was rather loud and didn’t hold his liquor very well, but he was tolerable enough most of the time. Especially at moments like this, when Hayden needed distraction.

‘Lord Ethan,’ he said. ‘Fancy seeing you here. Can I buy you an ale?’

‘I won’t say no to that,’ Ethan said affably as he leaned against the bar next to Hayden. To judge by his reddened cheeks and rumpled hair, and the dishevelled state of his expensive clothes, he had been imbibing the ale for quite a while already. ‘My damnable uncle is making me rusticate for a while. Says he won’t increase my allowance until I learn some control and I am completely out of funds.’

‘Indeed?’ Hayden asked without much interest as he gestured to the innkeeper for more ale. Everyone knew that Ethan’s Puritanical uncle, who also held the Carstairs family purse-strings, disapproved of his nephew’s wild ways. Hayden sympathised. His own father had so often been disapproving.

And now here he was, drowning his doubts in drink. Just like his father. That was certainly something he did not want to think about.

‘Most unfair,’ Ethan grumbled. He took a long gulp from his glass, the reached into his pocket and took out a small, gold object he twirled through his fingers. Hayden recognised it as an old Spanish coin the man often used as a lucky charm at the card tables. ‘I’m on my way to some country pile to wait him out. But what are you doing so far from town?’

Hayden shrugged. He might as well tell the truth. All of society would know soon enough, when he either came back to London with Jane by his side or instigated scandalous divorce proceedings. ‘I am on my way to Barton Park to see Lady Ramsay.’

‘By Jove!’ Ethan sputtered. ‘I had forgotten you were married.’

‘My wife is delicate and prefers the country for her health,’ Hayden said, as he always did when someone asked about Jane. They seldom even bothered any longer.

‘I see. I remember they said she was a pretty little thing.’ Ethan’s gaze narrowed, and for an instant it was as if the ale-haze cleared in his bloodshot-blue eyes. ‘Barton Park, you say?’

‘It’s her family home.’

‘I think I have heard of it. Isn’t there some tale of treasure or some such there?’ Ethan laughed, and that instant of clarity vanished. ‘We can both rot here in the country for a while, then. Damnable families.’

Damnable families . Hayden almost laughed bitterly as he sipped at the terrible ale. He wasn’t even sure what it felt like to have a family, not now. He had been alone for so long it seemed like the only way he could be. The only way he could avoid hurting anyone else.

Once, for a moment, he had seen what it could be to have a real family. He had a flashing memory of a sunlit day, of Jane with her dark hair loose over her bare shoulders, smiling up at him. She took his hand and held it against the warm skin of her stomach, where he could feel the swell of their child. The first child that was lost.

He knew now that that was the most perfect moment of his life, but it had only been an illusion. Jane was done with him now. But he wasn’t done with her. Soon enough she would see that.

‘I have to be on my way,’ Hayden said. He pushed his half-full glass away. ‘Good luck with your rusticating, Carstairs.’

Lord Ethan blinked at him. ‘Same to you, Ramsay. Maybe we’ll meet again soon.’

Hayden nodded, though really he was quite sure they wouldn’t. He left the stale-smelling room behind for the innyard. As he waited for a fresh horse to be brought around, one of the servants said, ‘It looks like rain is coming, my lord. Might be best to wait to ride out.’

Hayden peered up at the sky. It had been a pale blue when he arrived at the inn, hazy with country sunlight, but now he saw the servant was right. Grey clouds were gathering swiftly and the wind was colder.

But the thought of going back inside to drink some more with Ethan Carstairs was most unappealing. He had already waited too long to go after Jane—he needed to get on with the business of confronting his wife.

‘I haven’t far to ride,’ he said as he swung up into the saddle. But he hadn’t been gone long from the inn when the lowering skies burst open on a clap of thunder and rain poured down.

Hayden was glad of the cold, it seemed to drive him onwards and cleared his head. He galloped faster down the narrow, rutted lane, revelling in the speed and the wildness of the nature around him. All too often in London he felt closed in, trapped by the buildings and the noise, by all the people watching him.