The words were spoken with such glacial certainty, that Jane felt as if she’d fallen through the ice of a frozen lake and was left floundering. “I only just discovered the letters in the attic. I didn’t even know until the night you were attacked, and by then it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.”
She hoped the recollection of their night together would bring him back. The tender confessions. The desperate joining of their bodies. The love they both felt. Even though he’d never said the words, she’d felt it spilling out of him and into her.
“All you had to do was tell me. That simple,” he said through clenched teeth and then looked out the hackney window as if dismissing her from his presence.
“Simple?” She swallowed down another jolt of panic. “If I had shared the contents of those letters, I know precisely what you would have done. You would have turned your back on your birthright. On your family. And you would have done it without thinking twice. You’ve spent your life keeping everyone at a distance. You even put conditions on your time with me, keeping a barrier between us, disappearing whenever I got too close.”
His gaze swerved back to her, a smile twisting his mouth as he drawled, “Oh, that’s not true, Jane. In fact, I’d say you and me have been quite close. Quite close, indeed.”
“It was different with us, from the very beginning,” she said quietly.
“You’d like to think so.”
“You’re doing it now. You’re trying to hurt me to keep me far away. You’ve lived most of your life without letting anyone in. You keep yourself locked up like your bedside table,” she said, trying to get him to see reason.
“You keep talking about my flaws and failings. Well, what about yours, hmm?” He growled. “You know how your parents don’t give a damn about you? Well, have you ever once thought that it might be your own fault? That you and your little quirks are nothing more than a constant headache? Who wants to deal with all the chaos that follows you?”
She flinched at the attack, feeling it penetrate the vulnerable surface of her heart.
But she swallowed down the pain. Trying hard to believe that he didn’t mean it, she shifted to the edge of the bench and laid her hand on his knee. She needed to convince him that she hadn’t abandoned him.
“I understand your reasons for saying these cruel things,” she said. “You’ve been hurt so badly throughout your life that you expect it now, from everyone. But I’m telling you that I made a mistake. Please don’t let this consume you and ruin us. Raven, we belong together, no matter who you are.”
Desperation made her reach out for his hand. She had to pry his folded arms apart, so that she could lay his palm against her cheek.
“Stop it, Jane. Just stop it.” He pulled free, shrugging her off, voice rising as he continued. “You’re more cruel and cunning than any of them because you made me want this. You made me believe I had a family. Then you just stood there while it was being ripped away.”
She shook her head, frantic, tears clogging her throat. “I didn’t know what to say. I knew shortly after Herrington began that you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Pity, that.” He tsked. “So, tell me, Jane. Were you just amusing yourself for a bit of research, hmm? Will this be part of your book—a scoundrel’s lessons?”
“No. Please listen—”
“At least I got something out of it, too,” he sneered, deaf to her pleas. “Though, in hindsight, I think the manner of payment for your services is rather steep. You may want to go a bit easier on the next bloke who falls for your lies. But I’ll say one thing in your favor”—he reached across and set his hand on the carriage door—“you make it easy for everyone to walk away and never look back.”
Opening the door, he leapt down to the street without a backward glance.
Jane wanted to call out to him. But when she opened her mouth, only a deep wrenching sob came out, the agony so overwhelming that no sound accompanied it.
She doubled over, her mouth frozen open as if in a silent scream that no one would ever hear. And for the first time in a long while, she felt completely alone and utterly invisible.
Chapter 34
The first thing Jane did upon arriving home was to collapse into Mr. Miggins’s arms. The stoic butler did not seem at all surprised, but simply put his arms around her and let her have a good cry. When she’d managed to collect herself enough, he gave her a handkerchief and told her that he’d have the kitchens send up a nice tray to her rooms.
The tea did nothing to console her. It was simply a liquid with leaves, heated to a certain temperature, and she couldn’t even bring herself to care about the properties of steam. All she did was lie beneath the coverlet and cling to any part that still carried Raven’s scent.
It was impossible to believe how quickly it had ended.
In fact, she couldn’t believe it. Her mind refused to accept it.
There was no logic in their separation, not when her skin still recalled the sensations of his touch as if expecting him to stride in and brush the hair from her face and hold her close. Not when her lips still pulsed with the tender memories of their last night together and might forever be bruised from his sweetly frantic kiss. And not when her heart still belonged to him.
The artist on her portico had painted an entire series of imagined scenarios of their future together. Her inner scribe kept a catalogue of his language. It contained the meaning of every growl and grunt, along with every type of caress and kiss.
She was not a person given to nightmares, but she imagined this was what one felt like—the inability to escape, the racing panic to get away from the most painful moment of her life.
How did one move on from such devastation?
The answer did not come. And likely never would.
Jane didn’t expect to see her parents that night. Nevertheless, they slowly strolled through the doorway and looked around her room, as if touring a museum or a shop, seeming to pay no attention to the young woman sobbing into her coverlet.
“Have you c-come to tell me s-something?” she asked when she was able, her voice breaking in hiccupped sobs.
“It is all out now, dearest,” Mother said. “Everyone is talking about how he was nothing more than a fraud, like the others before him.”
“He’s not a fraud. He just doesn’t know what to believe. There were two children in that house, true, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t Merrick Northcott.”
“That’s neither here nor there. With everything that has come out, Mr. Northcott—or whoever he is—has lost favor with the ton.”
“And no daughter of mine is going to be ruined with all of society watching.”
Jane went cold and still. “What do you mean?”
“I think it was in the way that Lord Herrington indicated that you were conspiring to marry that man,” Mother said with a nod as if agreeing with herself. “It was all very scandalous. And so many people noticed the way you had rushed off after him. It might have been forgiven when he was the heir, but now . . .”
“Then we heard a strange accounting from a certain Baron Ruthersby. As soon as you left, he came to me and declared that he’d met you in a brothel of all things. Even though it couldn’t be true, the damage has been done, nonetheless. The Marquess of Aversleigh overheard him,” Father added with a stern frown. “Therefore, I’ve no choice but to send you to America. Fear not, though, I’m sure everyone will eventually forget about this entire episode, much like they forgot my brother’s misdeeds. Or at least they had done . . . until tonight. Now who’s to say how long it will be before their memories are erased once more?”