Lord Garson’s Bride (Dashing Widows 7)

But that’s why you married her, isn’t it?

He tried to ignore the snide little voice. But it stubbornly persisted.

You married Jane because she wouldn’t make emotional demands and insist you mend your broken heart. You married Jane because you knew she’d make the best of a bad lot.

Was he a bad lot? He hated to think he might be.

“Hugh?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he said impatiently, even as he couldn’t help recognizing how selfish he’d been when he proposed to Jane. He’d known he caught her at a disadvantage when she was about to become homeless. Now she was committed to a life without love.

After Morwenna left him, he’d resigned himself to a loveless future. But Jane was a warm, vibrant creature who deserved better than a husband who could never give her his heart.

A just man would give her leave to take a lover. Later. After she’d produced a couple of children. She deserved the freedom to fall in love, as surely she must. And men would fall in love with her. She’d whirl through London’s ballrooms, convincing every damn rake in town—as she’d convinced him—that the new Lady Garson was a prize indeed.

She should seek some happiness for herself, once she’d done her duty by her husband. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to picture her in the arms of some faceless cad. He made himself imagine her kissing the blockhead, taking off her clothes, lying naked in the sod’s bed, spreading her legs for the bastard.

He shifted abruptly on the leather seat and bit back a savage curse.

His wife might have a right to stray, but devil take it, he’d do everything in his power to keep her to himself.

Therein lay his dilemma. Until now he’d always believed he was a reasonable man, and that reasonable man pointed out that he wasn’t being fair. Just because he’d been unlucky in love, that was no reason to condemn his wife to an emotional desert.

Bugger it.

“Hugh, are you sure you’re all right?”

“I said I was.” His frustration with the conundrum made him snap.

“If you don’t want to go to the Oldhams’, we don’t have to.” She pulled her hand free of his, and in his blue-deviled state that seemed the first step toward forsaking him altogether. “It’s not as if we’re short of invitations.”

Invitations meant meeting men. And who knew which of those men might turn out to be the swine Jane fell in love with? Garson wanted to bundle her up in his arms, so she could never wander.

The worst of this was he’d brought it on himself. He could have stuck to his original plan to take her straight to Beardsley Hall.

Although there were men in Derbyshire, too. Neighbors and visitors, and guests of his neighbors. Not to mention the men she’d meet on trips into Derby or Matlock or York. The anonymous blackguard who stole her away mightn’t be in London at all. It wasn’t as if the provinces had put a ban on attractive coves with an eye for another man’s wife.

Danger lurked everywhere for a lady with an unattached heart.

Garson had entered this marriage, planning for a trouble-free future. A meek wife. Obedient children. Freedom to nurse his romantic disappointment, without anyone demanding what he was unable to give.

Instead he found himself confused and bad tempered. Obsessed with his wife. Jealous as a starving dog eyeing the only bone in the village. And hating himself for being such a blockhead.

Garson had a depressing suspicion that his mixed reaction to tonight’s success was only going to worsen as this visit to London progressed. He sucked in a breath that tasted rancid with self-pity and tried to sound like the affable man the world believed him to be. “Let’s go to the Oldhams’. You’ll enjoy it. It’s always a highlight of the season.”

A highlight of the season, and a one-way voyage to Hell.

*

Chapter Twenty-Six

*

Jane was still puzzling over Hugh’s odd humor, when she and Helena set out on the next day’s promised shopping trip. He’d seemed happy at Caro’s dinner, and she’d even caught a gleam of pride in his eyes when he saw her fitting in so well with his friends. Then on the short drive home, he’d been irritable and distracted.

She’d taken too long to notice the change in his mood, because she’d been brooding over what she’d learned about the Dashing Widows, particularly Fenella’s story about finding love after a crippling loss. She found Fenella’s courage inspiring and wished she could talk to Hugh about it. But he’d think she was trying to nudge him into forsaking his allegiance to Morwenna.

The humiliating truth was that he’d be right.