The Runaway Countess Read Free Page A

were shadowed.
    ‘Jane would never know you now, you disreputable bastard,’ he told himself with a bitter laugh. He pulled open his wardrobe and reached for the first shirt hanging there. He pulled it over his head and splashed some cold water over his face. He wanted a brandy to fortify himself for reading Jane’s letter, but there was none nearby.
    He had to read it now.
    Hayden took the letter from the mantel and broke the seal.
    ‘Hayden,’ it began. No ‘dear’ or ‘beloved’. Right to the point.
    It has been some time since I wrote and I am sorry for being rather quiet. Matters have been so very busy here. As you may remember, Barton Park hasbeen neglected for some time and it has taken up so much of my attention. I believe I have made it quite comfortable again and Emma has left school to come stay with me permanently. We go along very well together and I hope that you are well too.
    The reason I am writing is this. It has been a long while since we lived together as husband and wife. It occurred to me that we cannot go on this way for much longer. You are an earl and must have an heir, I know that very well. I am also well aware of how difficult and expensive a divorce would be. But you are a man of influence in London with many friends. If you wish to begin proceedings, I will not stop you in any way. My life here is a quiet one and scandal cannot touch it.
    I will not stand in the way of your future. I trust that, in honour of what we once had, you will not stand in the way of mine.
    Sincerely,
    Jane.
    Hayden was stunned. A divorce? Jane wrote him after all this time to say he should seek a divorce? He crumpled the letter in his fist and tossed it into the empty grate. A raw, burning fury swept through him, an anger he didn’t understand. What had he expected would happen with Jane? Had he just thought they would go along in their strange twilight world for ever, married but not married?
    The truth was he had avoided thinking about it at all. Now he saw he must. Jane was quite right. Even though he avoided considering his responsibilities as much as possible, he needed an heir. When Jane lost the babies, that hope was gone as well as their marriage. It was like his poor mother all over again, only Jane had luckily been spared the fate of dying trying to give her husband a spare to go with his heir. Jane was saved—because she wisely left. Yes, she was right about it all.
    But something else was there, something she did not say in that polite, carefully worded little letter. He wasn’t sure what it was, what was really going on with her, buthe was sure there was more to this sudden plea for a divorce.
    My life here is a quiet one and scandal cannot affect it
.
    How quiet
was
her life at Barton Park? He had heard nothing of how she really lived in the years since they had parted. No one ever saw her and, after the initial ripple of gossip over their separation, no one spoke of her. They treated him as if he was a single man again, as if Jane had never been. Now he wondered what she did. Why she wanted to be away from him in such a permanent way.
    Suddenly he knew he had to see her again. He had to know what was really going on. She had left him, left their life together without a backward glance. He wouldn’t let things be easy for her any longer.
    No matter what Jane thought, she
was
still his wife. It was time she remembered that. Time they both remembered that.
    Hayden strode to the door and pulled it open. ‘Makepeace!’ he shouted.
    ‘My lord?’ came the faint reply up the stairs. Makepeace always disapproved ofHayden’s strange habit of shouting out of doors.
    ‘Call for my horse to be saddled. I am leaving for the country today.’

Chapter Two
    ‘W ho
is that?’
    Hayden’s best friend, Lord John Eastwood, looked around at Hayden’s sudden question. It had been a long, dull day
,
hanging about at the royal Drawing Room
,
watching all that Season’s crop of fresh young misses make their