The Passionate Love of a Rake (17 page)

Jane was incredibly nervous when she arrived at Robert’s townhouse nearly a week later. Fortunately, Geoff and Violet were with her as the family party had been extended to include friends, a fact which Jane could not help but think had changed due to her inclusion.

She hadn’t known what to say when Ellen had invited her. The idea of making Robert feel uncomfortable in his own home had appalled her, but Ellen had been persuasive, and Jane had accepted, providing Ellen confirmed Robert’s agreement.

Geoff and Violet were not the only friends Robert had asked either. There was quite a group of their acquaintances, enough for Robert to avoid any need for welcome as they entered. Ellen immediately filled the vacuum and introduced them to her distinguished relations, the Marquess of Wiltshire and his wife – Ellen’s eldest sister and her husband, the Earl of Preston and his Countess – Ellen’s middle sister and her husband, and the Duke and Duchess of Bradford – Ellen’s youngest sister and her husband. Heavens, for a small family affair, a quarter of the House of Lords were in attendance, and the conversation buzzed vibrantly.

But later, when Jane sat silently on a sofa in the drawing room after dinner, watching the various activities and conversations, she was left with the familiar feeling of loneliness despite the crowd. She stole a look at Robert’s tall, immaculate figure. He was speaking with friends including Geoff, and, therefore, Violet, in the far corner, a move Jane would swear was deliberate. Over dinner, she’d been placed three seats from him, and yet, he’d successfully managed the conversation to ignore her.

He was hurt, and she had a feeling there would be no truce this time.

But even so, as she watched his back and noted the way his hair curled at his collar, the contour of his calves and thighs, his narrow hips and his broad shoulders, she knew she still loved him – longed for him.

The current pianoforte music ceased, and Jane was drawn back from her contemplation as a hand settled on her shoulder, a warm, male hand, Edward’s. “You’re quiet, Jane. Is everything well?”

“Yes,” she answered, forcing a smile. “I was just listening to Ellen. She has a wonderful voice and plays with such skill.”

A proud smile lodged on his face. “Quite. The first time I heard Ellen and John both sing, I admit, it took my breath away.”

Next, the four sisters sang together, a truly remarkable sound, as good as any professional performance. Once the song was over and the applause received, Ellen relinquished her seat at the pianoforte and came to stand beside her husband.

“Why don’t we play whist?” she said to Jane before calling across the room, “Robert, you will play?”

Jane blushed and longed for a hole to fall into.

“Sorry, I have just agreed to play billiards. Someone else will step up,” Robert answered bluntly, trouncing Ellen’s manoeuvre.

It was an obvious put-down, and Jane felt as though she would expire from humiliation as Ellen tried to persuade him. Jane rose, excusing herself and claiming she wished for some air. Then she slipped through an open French door, on to the balcony beyond. It was folly coming here. She should have known she was not welcome, and yet, some stupid, girlish hope had stirred in her chest when she’d received the invitation with a note confirming Robert’s agreement. It was obvious now, he had not agreed, merely complied.

The warm night air was barely any different to the close air indoors, thick with the scents of floral perfumes from the garden below, but the night was bright and starry. It reminded her of the night she’d lain in a punt with Robert, looking up at them.

She felt tears in her eyes.

Perhaps she ought to go back to Bath?

Perhaps she ought to just accept her fate and let Joshua have everything. She was still young, after all. She could become a governess or lady’s companion. Lord, how the
ton
would laugh at that, the Dowager Duchess destitute and forced into service. But what did she care? Nothing for such shallow people who knew her not at all.

“Jane.”

She jumped at the sudden intrusion into her solitude. Ellen stood behind her.

“I see how you look at him and how he looks at you,” Ellen said quietly. “When Edward and I met, Robert did his utmost to push us apart, not because he did not care for Edward, but because he does. He has a tendency, when he is afraid someone may forgive him for something for which he cannot forgive himself, to push that person away.”

Jane knew Ellen was speaking on Robert’s behalf, apologising for him, undoubtedly without his knowledge.

Jane looked at the garden and set her palms on the stone balustrade. “That is not the case with me. The fault really is mine.”

“But you have feelings for him? And he for you?” Ellen’s words were spoken as a question, but her voice said she already knew the answer. “Was there something between you before your marriage?”

“Yes.”

Ellen’s fingers touched Jane’s shoulder. “Then why not now?”

With a self-deprecating smile, Jane faced Ellen. “A better question would be, how? Who we were, then and now, are very different people. It was a long time ago, Ellen. The past is gone.” Jane felt a sudden affection for this woman. She’d become a friend.

“Need it be, if you both wish it to be different?” Ellen’s eyes were silver and jet in the darkness, her features white and black. It would be so easy if all things in life were black and white in clarity, but the truth was, things were many shades of grey. There were ifs and buts, not just yes and no.

“It’s too late,” was all Jane could answer.

“In my experience, it is never
too
late
, Jane. I know my brother-in-law’s reputation, but I have seen his immeasurable ability to love the children. You have seen the way he is with them. I think you are alike; both longing for more than life has dealt you. Why not try to find it together?”

Jane sighed, her heart hammering at the thought, yet she shook her head. “You do not understand, Ellen. It is too complicated.”

Ellen squeezed Jane’s shoulder for a moment then let go. “
Life
is complicated, Jane, but we must live it. Surely, it is best to do so with the person you choose beside you.”

Tears filled Jane’s eyes as she shook her head again. That was what she wished for, but it could never be. Ellen passed Jane a small handkerchief, then, after embracing her briefly, disappeared.

~

From the billiard room, Robert watched Jane prepare to leave. She’d worn amber silk tonight, a colour which engaged with her green eyes. Having Jane here was like having a living, breathing work of the masters in his home. Despite himself, he’d found his gaze wandering in her direction all night, just as it had now. With his shoulder resting against the door frame, he watched her in the hall, his cue gripped in his hand.

“Robert! Your shot!” someone called behind him, and as they did so, Jane turned in time to catch him staring. He could see a question in her eyes. A question which welcomed his attention and offered more.

No, not any more
.
I have had my fill of being kicked in the gut by you. I’ll not let you knock me down again
.

He narrowed his gaze in disgust and turned back to his game.

It was a good two hours later, after all their guests had left, that Ellen approached Robert to say goodnight, and when she leaned to bestow a sisterly kiss on his cheek, she whispered, “I knew the old Duke of Sutton. He was a manipulative man. If I were to make a guess, I would think Jane’s marriage was forced and certainly sour. I would feel sorry for her, if I were you.”

At her words, a cold shiver ran across Robert’s skin, and a sick feeling rose in his stomach.

Ellen did not stay to talk, instead she pulled away with a little smile that said quite bluntly,
go to her
, before turning to take Edward’s arm and retire.

It left Robert in a state of flux, all sorts of unwelcome thoughts racing through his head. Thoughts that told him perhaps
he
was the villain. Thoughts Robert did not want to face with a clear head.

“Forced?”
It implied the day he’d ridden away, when she’d told him of her engagement to Sutton, he had
deserted Jane.
Had she needed him then? When he’d left her there.
Had he left her to endure something that had not been her choice? Had she loved him then, truly, and been made to marry another man? A man old enough to be her grandfather.

To drown out the voice of conscience, he retired to the study and befriended a decanter of brandy.

His feet on his desk and his ankles crossed, Robert leaned back in his chair and put the doubts Ellen had generated to rights.

Jane had turned him down. She’d thrown his proposal back in his face. For God’s sake, he’d seen her in the arms of her stepson –
that
could not be explained away.

Bloody interfering woman
.

Ellen had spoken to stir his guilt, he knew it. But if it was true, he had guilt to be stirred.

But he’d have seen it in Jane’s eyes that day, surely, or heard something since.

He kept drinking.

Wouldn’t he? Perhaps her affair with the son was a sign of her unhappiness and not her debauchery.

Hell!

He filled his glass again and remembered his seething anger that day. Anger that was enough to make him blind and deaf to details he did not seek to see.

Hell!

He took another swig of brandy and let it numb his mind, unwilling to look at the past with any logic, as he cursed Ellen. Ignorance was bliss. He did not want to know.

Did he?

Hell!

~

Come morning, Robert awoke where he’d sat the night before, the shattered decanter on the floor amidst the last of the brandy. His head thumped, but his thoughts were clear. He needed to know the truth. He had to understand what had happened, if only to silence his conscience. He needed to see Jane at least once more.

It was far too early for polite calls when he left, clean-shaven and clothed, to look at least half-decent in comparison to his previous half-dead appearance.

He walked to help clear his hangover, his mind continually racing.

Was Ellen right, had Jane been forced into marrying Sutton? Had he ridden away that day and left her to endure a life sentence?

By the time he approached Grosvenor Square, it was just after eleven.

As he walked along the street, his cane rapped on the pavement, matching his long, quick, restless strides.

A few yards from Lady Rimes’s property, a man yelled down from the driving seat of a dray.

Robert’s progress was suddenly arrested. He was stunned as his eyes took in the scene. Jane was on the far side of the street, and the driver of the dray shouted in her direction. She looked horrified. Robert followed her gaze and saw Sutton.

He’d jumped down from his curricle, abandoning it in the middle of the road. As his tiger, the groom, ran to grab the horses’ harnesses, Sutton approached Jane. His body taut with anger, he moved almost at a run, bearing down on her. When he reached her, he yelled something in her face.

She did not flinch. She seemed to stand more erect, and her chin tilted.

Sutton’s hand lifted in an instant, and in the next, he dealt her a sharp blow.

She fell back, knocked to the ground by the force, even though her maid tried to catch her.

Robert was in motion before he knew it, and ahead of him, the street exploded in reaction.

Jane’s maid screamed abuse, and a couple of vendors and a bulky workman who’d been seated on the back of the dray surrounded Sutton.

He raised the whip, dangling from his hand, in threat against them all.

When Jane said something from her position on the ground, too quiet for Robert to hear, Robert thought Sutton would use the whip on her.

“Sutton!” Robert’s yell reached over the general hubbub.

Some of the gathering crowd expanding about Jane looked his way.

“Don’t you dare!” Robert ordered as Sutton’s gaze struck Robert’s. The rage in it turned Robert’s innards to ice.

What was this man capable of?

Sutton began backing away, growling one last threat at Jane, which Robert could not make out. Then the Duke turned and yelled at those about him, cursing until they parted and let him through.

By the time Robert reached the scene, his cane was gripped so tightly in his hand it was cutting into his palm. He realised then that, instinctively, the frippery had unconsciously become a potential club. He used it indiscriminately, but not viciously, to push through the crowd in order to reach Jane.

The onlookers had not guessed the abused woman was a dowager duchess and the man who’d attacked her, her stepson, a Duke. If they had, the tale would fly through the gossipmongers. It would be on the tongues of the
ton
by dinner and in the news columns tomorrow.

Robert let his cane fall to the pavement and heard it hit the stone with a dull, wooden rap as he dropped to one knee, uncaring of the dirt. His fingers touched the red mark on Jane’s cheek.

“Good God, Jane, let me help you.”

She looked at him with apparent relief, her eyes bright and sharp, as though he was a branch to grasp in the aftermath of Sutton’s storm. Then Robert saw her realise what he’d seen and her gaze dropped as her skin darkened in a deep blush.

He rose and turned to the crowd, intolerant of their ogling. “The show is over! Go about your business!”

At once, there was a change of tempo in her audience. Voices grumbled, gossiped, and surmised, but they started to disperse.

He turned back and helped Jane stand.

Too many emotions roiled inside him to fathom them all, but among them were sympathy, outrage, protection, and
love
.
God, there was still love
.

Once she was up, he gripped both her hand and her elbow.

“Are you up to walking?” he asked quietly, receiving a nod as her maid behind her continued a tirade against the Duke of Sutton, even though the man himself was long gone.

“Meg!” Jane silenced the woman, although not quite, her ranting only became unintelligible.