The Runaway Countess

Chapter Two

‘Who is that?’

Hayden’s best friend, Lord John Eastwood, looked around at Hayden’s sudden question. It had been a long, dull day, hanging about at the royal Drawing Room, watching all that Season’s crop of fresh young misses make their curtsies to the queen. John’s sister, Susan, was one those misses and he had been recruited to help her. Hayden in return was recruited to help John survive the deadly dullness of it all.

Only for John would Hayden brave such a place and only after a stiff gulp of port. They had been friends ever since they were awkward schoolboys, drawn together by a shared humour and love of parties. John’s family took Hayden in on holidays when his own family was too busy for him.

But even for the Eastwoods he was regretting venturing in there, to the over-gilded overheated room stuffed with girls in awkwardly hooped satin-and-lace gowns and towering plumes—and their sharp-eyed, avidly husband-hunting mamas.

A new young earl like Hayden was just a sitting duck, or a fox flushed out of hiding. He wanted to run.

Until he saw her.

She stood amid the gaggle of white-clad girls, overdressed just like them, with the tall headdress of white feathers in her dark hair threatening to overwhelm her slender figure. She was silent, carefully watching everything around her, but she drew his attention like the sudden flicker of a candle in the darkness.

She wasn’t beautiful, not like so many of the pretty blonde shepherdess types clustered around her. She was too slim, too pale, with brown hair and a pointed chin, like a forest fairy. Yet she wore her ridiculous gown with an air of quiet, stylish dignity and her pink lips were curved in a little smile as if she had a secret joke no one else in the crowd could know.

And Hayden really, really wanted her to tell him what it was. What made her smile like that. No one had caught his attention so suddenly, so completely, in—well, ever. He had to find out who she was.

‘Who is that?’ Hayden asked again, and it seemed something in the urgency of his tone caught John’s attention. John stopped grinning at his current flirtation, a certain Lady Eleanor Saunders, and turned to Hayden.

‘Who is who?’ John asked.

‘That girl over there, in the white with the silver lace,’ Hayden said impatiently.

‘There are approximately fifty girls in white over there.’

‘It’s that one, of course.’ Hayden turned to gesture to her, only to find that now she watched him. Her smile was gone and she looked a bit startled.

Her eyes were the strangest colour of golden-green, and they seemed to draw him in to her, closer and closer.

‘The little brunette who is looking this way,’ he said quietly, as if he feared to scare her away if he spoke too loudly. She had such a quiet, watchful delicacy to her.

‘Oh, her. She is Miss Jane Bancroft, the niece of Lady Kenton.’

‘You know her?’ How could John know her and he could not?

‘She had tea with Susan last week. It seems they met in the park and rather liked each other.’ John gave Hayden a sharp glance of sudden interest. ‘Why? Would you like to meet her?’

‘Yes,’ Hayden said simply. He couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t stop trying to decipher what was so immediately and deeply alluring about her.

‘She’s not your usual sort, is she?’ John said.

‘My usual sort?’

‘You know. Dashing, colourful. Like Lady Marlbury. You’ve never looked twice at a deb before.’

Hayden couldn’t even remember who Lady Marlbury was at the moment, even though she had been his sometimes-mistress for a few weeks. Not when Miss Bancroft smiled at him, then looked shyly away, her cheeks turning pink.

‘Just introduce me,’ he said.

‘If you like,’ John said. ‘Just be careful, my friend. Girls like her can be lethal to men like you and you know it.’

Hayden couldn’t answer that. When was he ever careful? He wasn’t about to start now, not when feelings were roiling through him he had never felt before. He set off across the crowded room, leaving John to scramble after him.

And Miss Bancroft watched him approach. She still looked so very still, but he saw her gloved fingers tighten on the sticks of her fan, saw her sudden intake of breath against the satin of her bodice. She wasn’t indifferent to him. Whatever this strange, sudden spell was, he wasn’t in it alone.

‘Miss Bancroft,’ John said, giving the girl a bow. ‘Very nice to see you again.’

‘And you, Lord John,’ she answered, her voice low and soft, musical, with a flash of gentle humour in its depths. ‘It is a most dutiful brother who would brave a Drawing Room for his sister.’

John laughed and half-turned. ‘May I present my very good friend, Hayden Fitzwalter, the Earl of Ramsay? He especially asked to make your acquaintance. Hayden, this is Miss Jane Bancroft.’

‘How do you do?’ she murmured. She made a little curtsy and slowly held out her hand to him.

Her fingers trembled a bit as he folded them in his own, and her cheeks turned a deeper pink. Jane, Jane.

And in that moment he was utterly lost…

Curiosus Semper.

Careful Always. Jane had to laugh as she tore a trailing veil of ivy away from the stone garden bench and saw the motto carved there. The letters were faded with time, encrusted with the moss and dirt of neglect, but they were still visible. She would wager her ancestors never could have foreseen how sadly ironic those words would be for their family.

She stood up and dusted some of the soil and leaves from her gloved hands. Her shoulders ached from kneeling there, clearing away some of the tenaciously clinging vines, but it was a good ache. Work meant she didn’t have to think. And there was plenty of work to be done at Barton Park.

As she stretched, she studied the house that loomed across the garden. Barton Park had belonged to the Bancrofts for centuries, a gift to one of their ancestors from Charles II. Legend had it that the house was part of the payment in exchange for that long-ago Bancroft marrying one of the king’s many cast-off mistresses. But the marriage, against all odds, was a happy one, and the couple went on to make Barton Park a centre of raucous parties and all sorts of debauchery.

Just the sort of place Hayden would have liked, Jane often thought. Perhaps if she had been more like that first mistress of Barton Park things between them could have worked out. But the Bancrofts that followed were quieter, more scholarly, and not as adept at accumulating royal gifts. Their fortune dwindled until by the time of Jane’s father there was little left but the house itself, which was already crumbling with neglect.

Little but the legend of the treasure. The old tale about how one of the first Barton Park Bancrofts’ many licentious guests had dabbled in highway robbery and had hidden his ill-gotten treasure somewhere in the garden. Jane’s father, as he grew sicker and sicker, had become obsessed with the idea of this treasure. He told Jane the story of it over and over, even sending her out to try digging in various spots around the grounds.

Then he died and her mother had told her different tales. Harder, more bitter stories about the truth of a woman’s insecure place in the world, of how finding the right husband—a rich husband—was all that mattered. Jane was frightened to think she might be right. Money and position could bring security, of course, and she craved that so much after the uncertainties of her childhood. But surely there must be more? Must be some chance of a happy family? Of being a good wife and mother, despite the poor example she had always seen before her.

Then her mother also died and Jane went to have a London Season with her aunt while Emma was sent to school.

Both those destinations had ended badly for the Bancroft sisters. Jane had found she had more of her fanciful father in her than she ever would have thought. She had imagined she had found a fairy tale, a happy-ever-after with Hayden, until she discovered she was in love with an illusion, a man who never really existed except in her dreams. She didn’t know how to fit into his world and he couldn’t help her. They had been so young, so foolish to think that they could even try, that their passion in the bedroom could be enough to make a life together.

So her father had been wrong in relying on fairy stories. But so had her mother. A rich husband was not all a woman needed.

Jane tossed her trowel and garden gloves into a bucket and examined the house. Barton Park was not a large dwelling, but once it had been very pretty, a red brick faded to a soft pink, centred around a white-stone portico and surrounded by gardens, a mysterious hedge maze and a pretty Chinoiserie summerhouse. Now the stone was chipped, some of the windows cracked and the lovely gardens sadly overgrown. She hadn’t gone in the hedge maze at all since she moved back.

Jane did her best. She and Emma lived on a small bequest from their mother’s family, which Hayden could probably claim if he wanted, but it was surely too insignificant to interest him. It paid for their food, a cook, 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.

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.