Page 80 of Lord Garson's Bride
“I’m not upset.” Her voice was cool, and she didn’t look away from the window.
Hell, he wished he believed her. “It was time she heard a few home truths.”
“She’ll get over it.”
He wasn’t so sure, but he’d felt like cheering when Jane stood up for herself. Especially when she’d described him as a wonderful husband.
If it wasn’t the clash with her sister that troubled her, it must be what the Frames said. He recalled that odd, rather awful moment when she’d turned her head to avoid his kiss. “I’m sorry you overheard that nonsense when we were outside, Jane. People love their tattle.”
She turned to look at him. Because the ride was short, the lamps inside the carriage remained unlit. Now with the dimness hiding the subtle shifts in her expression, he regretted that.
“Of course they do, Hugh.” She sounded calm and sensible, the way she’d sounded when he proposed. “It’s not like Lady Frame said anything we didn’t already know.”
“I’m sure if anyone felt sorry for you at the start of the night, nobody feels sorry for you now.”
To his surprise, she responded with a huff of derisive laughter. At the ball, she’d laughed frequently, dazzling her partners. When Hugh had whirled her around the floor in the promised waltz, she’d been incandescent with gaiety. He hadn’t believed it was real then. He still didn’t.
“Now I’m out in society, people will realize I’m not a complete antidote. At least I hope I’m not. Or is that fishing for compliments?”
It was an attempt to stop him asking probing questions, that’s what it was, but he accepted her unspoken request to keep the conversation superficial. “What a pity you broke my favoritefishing pole so many years ago. I’d forgotten all about that, until you mentioned it at Caro and Silas’s. Did you enjoy your first ball?”
“Very much. Thank you for taking me.” She shifted on her seat to face him. “I’m sure I was so wide-eyed that it must have been a complete bore for you.”
“Quite the contrary. I had a superb time.” At least he had until supper. “Apart from having to put up with all those men ogling my wife.”
She shrugged, and he saw she truly hadn’t registered the scale of the success she’d made. “I suspect novelty explains that. Novelty, and the fact that I polished up into something quite acceptable. After all their hard work, Madame Lisette and Helena would be disappointed if I didn’t.”
“Madame Lisette and Helena be damned.” Annoyance edged his tone. “You were the loveliest woman in that ballroom, Jane, because you’re so vital and alive and, yes, beautiful. Your new clothes only bring out what was there all the time, even in Dorset.”
She made a fluttery gesture. “You’re being kind again.”
He was getting bloody sick of hearing that. Particularly when something in her relentlessly cheery tone hinted that for once she didn’t see his kindness as an altogether positive trait. He leaned forward and kissed her, not just because he wanted to—although he always did—but to confirm his suspicion that something was amiss.
At the touch of his lips, she stiffened, reminding him of the woman who had shrunk from him on their wedding night. What the hell? He was about to retreat, when she started to kiss him back with a desperation he could taste. She twined her arms around his neck as if she held on for dear life, the way she’d cling to a branch in a flooded river to stop being swept away.
But there was no flooded river, and no chance that she was going anywhere but home with him.
Troubled anew, he pulled back and caught her wrists, bringing them down to her lap. “Jane, something’s wrong. Please tell me.”
A reverberant silence fell, long enough to send his imagination into a spin. Had something horrible happened at the ball that he didn’t know about?
Then she took a shuddering breath and leaned forward to place a clumsy kiss on the corner of his mouth. “What could be wrong? I’ve just been fêted at my first ball. I finally told my sister to mind her own business. Now I’m going home with my lovely husband. I’m the happiest girl in London.”
Doing it too brown, Jane.“You don’t sound like the happiest girl in London.”
Although she sounded like she tried to be. The amount of effort she put into the act betrayed her.
Her smile flashed in the darkness. “It’s late. I’m tired. Truly, it’s been a lovely night, Hugh. Stop fretting.”
He caught her hands. “Perhaps we should stay home tomorrow and forget the opera.”
She shook her head, the rubies and diamonds in her hair catching the light from a passing street lamp. “Oh, no, I want to go to everything we’re invited to. I told you—I plan to be out every night.”
He heard that same desperation he’d tasted in her kiss, but for pity’s sake, he’d asked every way he knew for her to tell him what worried her. Perhaps the wise husband would wait until she was ready to confide in him. He always strove to be a wise husband.
Well, most of the time.
The carriage pulled up outside the tall, white façade of Rutherford House, and a footman ran forward to open the door. It was only when they were inside that Hugh finally got a properlook at Jane’s face. She did appear tired, fine drawn with strain and something that looked very like unhappiness.
