The Runaway Countess by Amanda Mccabe Page B

humourless laugh. ‘My wife demands a divorce and she thinks I should just write back a polite little letter? Saying what? “Oh, yes, Jane dear, whatever you want.” It’s not that simple.’
    Jane closed her eyes tightly against the sight of Hayden sitting there in her bedchamber, so close, but so, so far. ‘I know it’s not simple at all. But surely we can’t just go on as we have been for ever. You need a real wife, an heir. And this sham of a marriage—’
    Hayden suddenly slammed his plate down on the floor. ‘Our marriage is not a sham! Westood up in that church and made our vows before all of society. You are the Countess of Ramsay. My
wife.’
    Jane couldn’t bear it any longer. He was right; when she walked down that aisle there had been nothing of the sham about it. She had wanted only to be his wife, to live her life with him. But nothing had turned out as she expected, nothing at all. And when the babies, their last hope, were gone…
    ‘I have never really been your wife, have I?’ she said, her voice thick with the tears she had held back for such a long time. ‘We never wanted the same things, I was just too foolish to see that back then. We were so young and I didn’t know what would happen.’
    ‘What is it that you want, Jane? What have I not given you?’ He sounded confused, hurt.
    Yourself
, she wanted to shout. But she could never say that. She had built her pride up again, inch by painful inch, here at Barton. She couldn’t let it crumble away again.
    ‘I couldn’t give you an heir,’ she said quietly. ‘I couldn’t be the kind of grand countess you needed. So I gave you the chance to move forwards in your own way.’
    ‘Or perhaps you want the chance to marry that man Marton.’
    Jane gave a choked laugh. Maybe she
had
harboured vague hopes of moving forwards with David Marton, or someone like him. Someone kind and peaceful, who wouldn’t break her heart all over again. But that had only been a dream, so far from reality. She had to be done with dreams. They had never brought anything good.
    ‘Sir David has been kind to me, yes,’ she said as she turned away from Hayden and fussed with the clean bandages and the basin. ‘So has his sister.’
    ‘You’ve made many friends here, have you? To replace the ones you left in London?’
    Jane didn’t like his tone, dark and suspicious, almost disgruntled even. He had no right to be suspicious of
her
, not after all that had happened in London. Not after Lady Marlbury. She twisted the bandage in her fist.
    ‘What friends did I ever have in London?’ she said. ‘Everyone we ever saw was
your
friend. I had to fit into your life, even if I was a very square peg in a very roundhole. So, yes, I have made some friends here. The neighbours and the villagers are kind to Emma and me, they don’t gossip about us. They don’t laugh at us behind our backs. I’m not lonely here.’
    ‘You were lonely in London?’ he said and sounded incredulous. ‘What did you not have there? What did I not give you? I tried to make you happy, Jane. I gave you what any woman could want.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Jane cried. She could feel her emotions, so tightly tied down for so long, springing free and spiralling beyond her control. The pain and anger she’d thought gone were still there. But so was the tenderness. ‘You gave me houses, carriages, gowns and jewels. What else could a woman possibly want?’
    Except love. A family. What she had wanted most when they married. There they had failed each other.
    ‘What did you want from me, Jane?’ he said, a near-shout.
    ‘You left me alone.’ She spun around to face him. Her handsome husband. The man she’d loved so much.
He
was all she hadwanted. And he couldn’t give her that. ‘When the babies were—gone. When I tried to tell you what I needed. I was so alone, Hayden.’
    He shook his head. There was such confusion in his eyes, even though she’d told him this before. Tried so hard to make him see.