“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.”
Fenella looked appalled. “You poor thing. 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 game of chase, if one ignored the broken hearts littering the playground.
“We were all delighted, when she and Hugh became engaged. He’s a good man and perceptive enough not to push her too far too fast.”
Hugh was a good man. Jane braced to ask the question that she’d never been brave enough to ask her husband. “Do you know if Hugh and Morwenna were lovers?”
Fenella pondered before she answered. “I don’t believe so. In fact, I’m almost sure not.”
Jane shouldn’t be relieved to hear that. After all, the problem was his spiritual connection with his beloved, not anything physical they’d done. But nonetheless she was pleased.
Fenella went on. “That’s part of the problem. Garson never got to know Morwenna as a real woman with all the normal imperfections.”
“In his mind, she’s like an exquisite painting.”
“Yes. That makes it frightfully hard to live up to her image, I’m sure. And he’s such a knight in shining armor. Morwenna’s tragic loss made her doubly appealing, even if she wasn’t so beautiful.”
Of course Morwenna was beautiful. Fairytale princesses awaiting rescue from their towers always were.
“He’s always collected lame ducks, right from when he was a boy.” Jane sighed. “You could say I’m another lame duck. When he proposed, my father had died, and I was facing some unappealing choices after my cousin inherited my home.”
“You’re a very different woman from Morwenna, Jane.”
“Which doesn’t help.”
“Nonsense. Hugh and Morwenna weren’t meant to be. Morwenna never stopped loving Robert, and now they’re together and blissfully happy. Hugh has no hope of winning her back, even if honor permitted. You’re here. She isn’t.”