Page 87 of Lord Garson's Bride
Fen looked skeptical, as she took the cup and saucer. “Give me that. You’re just playing with it. I’m really glad you came to me today, Jane. I’ve wanted to talk to you for weeks, and it’s hopeless trying to find a private moment at any of the crushes we’ve attended.” To Jane’s relief, she began to sound a little less militant. “Am I wrong in thinking you need a friend?”
Jane hadn’t arrived with any plans to confide her troubles. She’d just felt a craving for some undemanding company to distract her from endless brooding on her hopeless and destructive love.
“I believe we’re friends,” she said cautiously. The ton was a hotbed of gossip. Much as she liked Fenella, she wasn’t in a hurry to spill her secrets.
As if she read her mind, Fen sent her a straight look. “You can tell me to mind my own business. Usually I do. Interfering is much more in Caro or Helena’s line. Anyway, I expect I can guess most of the trouble.”
Jane frowned. “I didn’t say there was trouble.”
Fen’s glance was unimpressed. “You don’t have to. If you lose any more weight, poor Hugh will have to buy you a whole new wardrobe, and you work too hard showing everyone you’re having a good time to actually be having a good time. You look more brittle than that delicious sugar biscuit—which I might point out you didn’t deign to taste.”
“You…you’re very frank.” Jane stood up, her knees shaky. This attack wasn’t what she’d sought. “I can see I shouldn’t have come.”
“Don’t go. Please.” Fen caught her hand, before she could turn away. “You think I’m rushing in where angels fear to tread. But I hate knowing you’re unhappy.”
Jane was so close to breaking, the friendly gesture had her blinking back tears. “Is it obvious?”
“No, not at all. Most people wouldn’t have a clue.” She tugged Jane’s hand. “Sit down. Have some more tea.”
“I’ve spent my whole life hungering for some excitement,” she said, subsiding back onto the couch. “I envied Susan so much because she had a season, while I missed out.”
“Now you’re a grand success.” Fenella paused. “Yet it doesn’t matter a fig, because you’re in love with a man who loves someone else.”
Jane’s breath caught on an audible gasp. “I can’t talk about this.”
“You should. It would do you good. You can trust me, you know. I’d give anything to see Garson settled. He’s had a rum time of it and behaved like a complete hero throughout.”
“And all he has to show for his gallantry is a broken heart and a loveless marriage,” Jane said bitterly, before she thought to stop herself.
Fen’s eyes were searching. “Are you sure it’s loveless?”
“Well, I love him,” she admitted. Just saying the words aloud to someone, even if it wasn’t Hugh, felt like shifting a boulder off her soul.
Fen smiled. “Of course you do. But isn’t there any chance he loves you?”
“When he proposed, he told me that he’d always love Morwenna Nash.”
The name she’d come to hate hurtled into the conversation with a crash.
“My dear, I’m sorry.” Fenella’s lovely face glowed with compassion. “When I met you, he was obviously in alt that he’d married you. You seemed so perfect together.”
Jane shrugged, unable to force any words past the jagged lump in her throat. She and Hugh were perfect together, but he remained too mired in past disappointment to see that. Honestly, sometimes she wanted to bang that noble head against a wall until he saw sense.
She swallowed, then swallowed again, before she could ask the question that had tormented her since her marriage. “Please, can you tell me what she’s like? Nobody ever says. They just speak her name, then pause as if they’re in the presence of something holy.”
“You poor thing.” Fenella looked appalled. “Your imagination must be running wild.”
“It’s like fighting a ghost,” she said in a reedy voice.
Fenella squeezed her hand. “We all got into the habit of protecting Morwenna, after the news that Robert had died in a skirmish at sea. They were so in love, and she couldn’t move past her grief.”
“You did.”
Fenella sighed. “It took me a lot of years to start living again. You don’t shake real love off in an instant.”
“No.” Jane was discovering that, much as she wished it were otherwise.
What a lot of misplaced love the world contained. Morwenna longing for Robert. Hugh longing for Morwenna. Fenella longing for her first husband. Jane longing for Hugh. It was like a childhood game of chase, if one ignored the broken hearts littering the playground.
