Impatience tightened her lips. “Of course I worry when you bowl up unannounced in the middle of the night, looking like the world has ended.”
“I’ll come back after breakfast. I apologize for disturbing you.”
To his surprise she stepped back and gestured him inside. “You may as well come in. You’re here now.”
“But I woke you up,” he said, longing to accept her invitation, but on edge because he’d arrived with such good intentions, and already everything went to hell.
“I wasn’t asleep,” she said flatly.
Guilt stabbed him anew. Her unhappiness was his fault.
“You’re acting like a blockhead. Stop haunting the front step and come inside and tell me what’s the matter. It must be important, if it’s brought you all the way back from London.” Her voice hardened. “Especially as three days ago, you gave me to understand you’d never darken my door again.”
“As you say, I’m a blockhead,” he said uncomfortably.
What an arrogant fool he’d been, last time he saw her. He had a sinking feeling he’d been an arrogant fool from the beginning. He’d acted like his feelings were all that counted. How the hell had Jane put up with him as long as she had?
She subjected him to a thoughtful survey, then to his surprise smiled. “Not always.”
Her smiles had been so rare lately that painful emotion closed his throat. He couldn’t have responded, even if he wanted to. At this rate, he’d have to write her a bloody letter to tell her he loved her.
She turned and walked away. Without making a conscious decision, he found himself closing the door and trailing after her. His eyes clung to the subtle sway of her hips under the flowing silk. Her magnificent hair was confined in a long plait that snaked down her back.
She showed him into a drawing room. From where he stood in the center of the floor, he watched with unwavering eyes as she wandered around lighting candles. If this was the last time they were alone together, he wanted to print every detail into his memory.
At least she wasn’t angry. Nor had she raised the mental barrier against him that first appeared in London and was as high as Mont Blanc by the time he visited her down here. He was too keyed up to trust his perceptions, but if he had to describe her mood, he’d say watchful.
“Please sit down,” she said coolly.
He removed his hat and gloves and set them on a delicate ormolu table. “No, thank you.”
“Very well.” She came to a stop beside the mantelpiece and studied him. “Tell me what this is all about.”
He hastened into speech. He had so much to say, so much that he needed her to know. “I saw Morwenna.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he condemned himself for a sodding moron.
Jane made a faint, wounded sound and pressed back against the wall. Even in the uncertain light, he saw that she went as pale as milk. Then she gathered her defenses around her. She drew herself up to her full height, and her eyes narrowed on him. “How delightful for you.”
He flinched at her sarcasm. “No, you don’t understand.”
“On the contrary, I understand very well. Did she proclaim her undying love?”
“She’s in love with her husband. She always was.”
Jane’s expression turned stony. “Well, that’s even better, isn’t it?”
“How so?”
“Because now you’ve seen her, your self-pity has something fresh to feed on. You can keep pining for her as the great lost chance of your life. You don’t need to engage with her as a real woman you live with day to day. She just stays on her pedestal, like a marble statue, pristine and perfect and unassailable.”
Bile rose to sour his mouth as he listened to Jane pour out her bitterness. “Jane, I’m hellishly sorry that I’ve hurt you.”
That also turned out to be the wrong thing to say. A sweep of her hand dismissed his apology as too little too late. “What’s the point of being sorry? You warned me what to expect when we married. I changed the rules of the game, not you.” He could hardly bear to hear the pain fraying the edges of her voice. “Although you could have saved yourself the trouble of rushing all the way to Hampshire to inform me that your lady love is as exquisite as ever.”
His brows drew together. She made him sound so cruel. Cruel and childish and selfish. Once she’d considered him a hero. He hated how he’d fallen in her esteem, which was mad when he’d also come to hate the way she thanked him for any kindness, like a beggar receiving scraps at the kitchen door.
But he supposed, his queasiness sharpening, that was exactly what she felt like. By heaven, he needed to prove himself worthy of her. And he needed to tread carefully, because he was as close to losing her now as he’d ever been.