George read Jane’s letter for the seventh time in half an hour, and her words still inflamed him like a midday sun.
Where had she gotten the idea to write such a thing? And how was he going to survive, first, the knowledge that she had, and second, the reality that he could do nothing about it?
The letter started starkly enough with a simple “George.” That George, no dear to qualify it, rang terror in his soul, made him pause to read further. Thankfully, after terse goodbyes and depictions of plans to leave London on the morrow, the epistle dissolved into the stuff of midnight fantasy. True, it was not very imaginative. Jane made use of circumstances and situations they’d already shared to paint a quite vivid picture of her previous night’s dreams. But what she lacked in originality she made up for in passion. Jane never did anything in half measures, including, it seemed, writing erotic letters.
Then it had ended abruptly.
Poked ten thousand knitting needles straight into his heart, that did.
“George.” Martha’s voice wandered through the door before she did.
George shoved the letter beneath a nearby book. Martha couldn’t very well read it from across the room, but it felt, somehow, like she’d be able to sniff the air and know—Jane had sent George a naughty letter.
“There you are,” Martha said, sailing across the room and sinking into a chair with a long, weary sigh.
“Here I am.” He laid his arm on top of the book. What if the book fell, not only releasing the letter, but somehow projecting it into the air where it would flutter perfectly onto Martha’s lap? He pressed his forearm harder into the tome.
“Have you visited Jane lately?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Your intended is close by, but as far as I’ve been able to observe, you’ve not made one step out of this townhouse in two days. Is something amiss? Have you had a lovers’ spat? I sent a formal invitation to the New Year’s Eve ball, and she politely declined. Declined. Can you explain that?”
“No lovers spat. But… I have called off the engagement.”
Martha raised her brows twice in quick succession, like she hoped each movement might transform his words into something other than they were. “Impossible.”
“Entirely possible. And necessary.”
Martha pushed upright slowly, her gaze fixated on George as if he were a suspicious youth and she a vigilant shop keeper. “And why is that, George Franklin Pierre Moreland?”
He cringed. She’d resorted to using his entire ridiculous name. She hadn’t done that since, well, he could not remember when. But the practice had set him shivering in his boots as a child, and it still did apparently.
“After you and Wix left on Christmas Day, she… did not leave. And we were woken in the middle of the night by screaming. It was then I remembered I am not a man in any position to marry.”
“Uncle Neville had a hallucination? Nightmares?”
“And he got hold of a knife. I was not cut. But Jane saw. She says it did not scare her, but who would not have been terrified?” His own heart had almost stopped when he’d seen that long silver blade in his uncle’s hand.
“Awful, George. I’m sorry, brother. The first time Sebastian witnessed a fit, he was shaken for days. Reliant as he’s been on laudanum at times, he did not like to see how it could consume a man. I would not blame her if the experience scared her.”
“Nor I. I rather expect it. But she was so…” How to explain it? “Solid. It seemed her only care in the world was me. I”—he hung his head and looked at his empty hands—“did not think I could love someone else as I love her.”
“And yet you refuse to marry her?Tsk. Coward.”
George looked up slowly. “Pardon me, dear sister?”
Martha sighed and sank back into her seat. “Marry her. I do not see what the fuss is about.”
“You do not understand what the fuss is about? You lived with Uncle Neville same as I. Why did you marry Wix?”
“Because I was in love with his kind soul.”
He’d wanted to believe that as a boy, but he’d known better. “You married him because you wished to have some sort of life away from the nightmare. You were saving yourself and me, too. Wix’s presence has been invaluable to the both of us, a calm in the storm our parents’ deaths set rumbling about our lives.”
Martha rose to her feet. “Is that what you think?” She lifted her hand to her mouth and rested her knuckles over her lips. Her gaze wavered and wandered around the room. “Perhaps partly.” Her watery eyes returned to pin George. “I love him, too. And I did when I married him.”
“I know you do, you did. But by marrying him, you also removed yourself from a home filled with more chaos and dread than cheer. I will not be responsible for placing Jane in one.”
