“You know,” he said in a harder voice, sick to his stomach of playing the villain in this scene, “a monumental attack of the sulks isn’t likely to persuade me to love you.”
Jane stopped without turning. Her shoulders were straight as a ruler, but the white nape of her neck under the weight of coiled red hair was strangely vulnerable. God above, how he wanted her. He damn near died of wanting her.
“I’m not trying to manipulate you into caring for me, Hugh,” she said in a quiet voice. “You can’t make someone love you, as you should know better than anyone.”
He hid a wince. The jibe was low, but justified.
She went on before he could dig himself any deeper into a hole. “If I’m to go on, I have to find a small corner of sanity.”
By driving me mad, he wanted to say, but didn’t. Feeling awkward and useless, he watched her walk out of the shadowy stables and into the bright sunlight.
*
Chapter Thirty-Five
*
Jane sat in a low-backed chair beside the bedroom’s unlit fire, waiting for her husband and praying she could do what she must.
Meeting Hugh again cast her into such confusion. She’d missed him so much. She’d missed his presence in her bed. More, she’d missed his company. His sly humor, and sweet teasing, and kind understanding.
When she first saw him today, she’d had a job concealing her dismay. He looked ill, pale and strained. The deep lines running from his nose to his mouth added a forbidding sternness to his features.
The urge rose to enfold him in her arms and tell him everything would be all right.
She was glad she’d resisted. After almost a month at the Beeches, she started to feel her life was her own. Years as her father’s nurse, six months as a grieving daughter, then the whirlwind of her marriage had left her fragmented and on edge. The estate’s quiet beauty knitted a few of the holes in her soul together.
Five minutes in her husband’s company, despite his uncharacterist
ic testiness, wrecked her artificial calm and hard-won contentment as if they had never existed. Proof of his power over her. Proof also that she couldn’t go back to playing his second-best bride. It would annihilate her. Condemning herself to a future where the man she loved was a few feet away while endlessly out of reach would be purgatory.
A soft knock on the door indicated Hugh was outside. She beat back a poignant memory of all those nights in Salisbury when he’d slept in her bed. “Come in,” she said in a shaky voice.
He opened the door. She’d feared he might be naked, but he kept his breeches on and his white shirt hung loose around his hips. His long, elegant feet were bare.
When he saw her in her corner, he frowned. “You’re dressed.”
Clearly he didn’t approve. She bolstered her courage and made herself stop pleating her skirts. If only she didn’t have to do this. But she owed him a child.
“I’m not wearing any drawers.” She hoped he didn’t hear how her voice squeaked.
“Very efficient.” This bitterness was new since she’d left him. He’d taken her desertion so badly, much worse than she’d ever expected.
He crossed the room and took her hands. She started at the contact, as she’d started on their wedding night.
She waited for this sardonic stranger to treat her roughly. When he’d arrived, he’d been in a foul mood. But when he drew her up to stand before him, he was gentle.
“You’re not even going to let your hair down?” he asked softly.
She stared into his unforgettable face. The eyelids lowered over his brown eyes in a way that was familiar from a hundred seductions. If he touched her as if he cared, when they both knew he didn’t, the travesty of what they did together would become unbearable.
“This is…this act is for you to get a child, Hugh.” Just as he no longer sounded like he had a grudge against the world, she sounded tremulous and unsure. Like a bride again.
He raised her hands and set a kiss on each set of knuckles. “Must it be just that?”
Longing swept through her like wildfire. His tenderness posed such a danger. This was how she’d tumbled into this impossible love in the first place. He acted like she was the only woman in the world when it was all lies.
“Yes, it must.” Stiffening, she tried to withdraw. “You’re not a cruel man, Hugh. Do what you must, then leave me to find what peace I can.”