The Runaway Countess by Amanda Mccabe Page A

jewel he had cherished over all these years.
    But he knew he hadn’t yet earned another. Maybe he never would.
    ‘I don’t think Hayden is up to dancing yet, Emma,’ Jane said. ‘Besides, it looks like therain is coming back. We should return to the house, don’t you think?’
    Emma pouted a bit, but nodded and dashed off after her dog towards the terrace. Jane picked up her bucket and looped it over her arm before she fell into step with Hayden as they made their slower way back.
    ‘I hope we didn’t keep you up too long today,’ she said quietly. ‘How does your leg feel?’
    ‘Much better,’ he answered. ‘The exercise does me good. I could become far too indolent, lolling by your fire and eating your cook’s cream cakes.’
    Jane laughed. ‘Somehow I can’t picture you being indolent, Hayden. You were always dashing off to a race or a boxing match. Always seeking—something.’
    ‘I don’t feel like dashing around so much here,’ Hayden said, and he was surprised to realise those words were true. In the few days he had been at Barton he found his whirling thoughts had slowed. He hadn’t felt that old, familiar itch to be always going, doing. And not just because of his leg. Because of being around Jane again, around her serene smile.
    He glanced down at Jane where she walked beside him. He knew now what it was he saw in her here, what he could never give her—contentment.
    He looked back at the house. In the daylight it was easy to see how shabby Barton was, how many things needed to be done. New windows, the roof patched, the garden cleared. He remembered how Jane would speak of it after they were married, as if it was a tiny spot of paradise. A place of happy memories, so unlike his own family home. She’d wanted to visit it with him, but there was never time. Now he saw her ‘paradise’ was merely a small, ramshackle manor house. But she did seem happy there.
    ‘You work too hard here, Jane,’ he said.
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t mind the work. I want to help Barton and working helps me forget—things.’
    Things like the fact that she was married to him? Hayden stabbed his walking stick hard against the ground to try to ease the pang that thought gave him. ‘You are just one person. These gardens are too much for you.’
    ‘I can’t do all I would like, of course,’Jane said calmly, as if she was completely unaware of his inner turmoil. ‘But real gardeners are expensive, so I do what I can.’
    She was a countess,
his
countess. She shouldn’t be working at all, Hayden thought fiercely. She should be lounging on a satin
chaise
, approving the designs of the best gardeners there were to be had and then watching her dreams take shape.
    ‘I can tell you love it here,’ Hayden said.
    Jane really did smile then, a
real
smile that brought out the hidden dimple in her cheek he had once loved discovering. It almost felt as if the sun burst forth after a long, long night.
    ‘I do love it,’ she said. ‘It’s as if I can still sense my parents here and Emma is so happy. I know we can’t go on like this for ever, but—yes, I love it here. I wish…’ Her voice faded and she looked away from him.
    ‘You wish what, Jane?’ Hayden reached out to gently touch her hand and, to his surprise, she didn’t pull away from him.
    ‘I wish that we could have come here when we first met,’ she whispered. ‘That you could have seen it then.’
    ‘Do you think things would have been different?’
    Jane shrugged again. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps not. We are really such different people inside. I was just too foolish to see it then. Or maybe I just didn’t want to see it. But at least we could have been together here for a while.’
    They reached the terrace and Jane turned away to put down her bucket. ‘Do you feel like dining with us tonight?’ she said. ‘It won’t be London cuisine, but one of the neighbours did send over some venison today and cook makes a fine stew.’
    One of the