“He’s coming after her,” Rathe said firmly, and their gazes locked in understanding.
Grace wrapped her arms around her husband’s waist. “Maybe he loves her,” she said softly. “Maybe you’re right. He is chasing her—and she wants him to, even if she doesn’t know it consciously.”
“Maybe he does,” Rathe returned. “If he didn’t, would he run after her like this?”
Suddenly they smiled at each other, understanding exactly what the other was thinking— that they were doing the right thing in not telling Jane that Nick was coming and in bringing the two together. “Oh, we’re terrible!” Grace said.
“We?” Rathe protested, but his dimples were deep. “This is your scheme, I’m just an innocent accomplice.”
“Darling, the terms are a contradiction.”
“You are a contradiction,” he murmured, kissing her. “So smart, and so beautiful.”
“And you,” she said throatily, kissing him back, “are unrepentant. Haven’t I reformed you yet?”
“Keep trying,” he managed to gasp.
The divorce would be final when he returned.
It was a happy thought in an otherwise grim day. The Earl of Dragmore stared out the window of the rented hansom at First Avenue. It was a rough ride, due to the cobbled street. He barely noted how New York had grown in the ten years since he’d left the States, he was too preoccupied. He and Chad had just arrived on a passenger ship and were on their way directly to his brother’s home on Riverside Drive.
He intended to scour every hotel until he found them.
He still could not believe she had left with his best friend—he still prayed, desperately, for a reasonable explanation.
He knew, or he thought he did, that Jane cared about him. No woman could be such a superb actress, could she? He winced at his thought, because Janewasan actress, and he had forced her into marriage with him. What they had shared was good sex, nothing more. Instantly he corrected himself. They had shared a grand passion, one he certainly had never experienced with any other woman before.
And then he remembered her reading to Chad and Nicole in her sitting room, their outing in Hyde Park, boating on the lake. He remembered their breakfasts, Nicole dominating with her outlandish temper, and he remembered dancing until dawn. They had shared more than even a grand passion.
And even though she had left him, again, lied to him and left him, run away with his best friend, stolen his daughter—he still wanted her.
He still loved her.
Of course, if she was Lindley’s mistress he would kill him, and he hoped then he would be so disgusted he would no longer want Jane. Anger vied with need, and the result was a coiled, confused desperation.
As soon as he had discovered that Jane had fled, he had hastened to Robert Gordon’s, expecting to find her there. Gordon had informed him that Jane had left for America. The earl had been shocked.
“She loves you very much,” Gordon had said bluntly. “And Patricia’s return has killed her.”
Was it true? Did she really love him?
His plans to follow her were delayed because he decided to take Chad for that long-overdue visit to meet his grandparents. Soon he found out that Lindley had also gone to America, on business. The coincidence was impossible, and he was enraged. Gordon confirmed that they had gone together.
“Is she fucking him?” the earl had shouted, at that moment wanting to kill them both.
“I told you, she loves you!” Gordon was hot to defend Jane. “Lindley has always been her friend, even if he is in love with her himself. But Jane is not that type of woman, and if you don’t know it, you should!”
He did know it, didn’t he? She had given herself to him when she was seventeen and had not given herself to another man in the years since. Until perhaps now, in anger and in hurt …
He could not bear the thought. And as much as he felt he could kill if this was the case, another side of him, the dark desperate side, would forgive her anything if only she would return to him.
His brother’s home was a red brick mansion set high on a hill, surrounded by brick walls topped with a wrought-iron curtain. Nick smiled wryly as the cab turned through the open gates. Rathe had certainly done well for himself, he mused, not just a little bit surprised. His brother had always said he was doing rather well in his business affairs, which consisted of many diverse investments across America, but Nick had had no idea that he had done this well. Tall, stately pines from upstate, undoubtedly, graced the long sweeping drive. Beside him, Chad was bouncing in his seat with uncontained excitement.
Nick reached out to touch him, his own heart starting to thud.
It had been just a couple of years since he’d seen Rathe, but even that was too long. This thought led to another. If two years was too long to be apart from his brother, how about the more than ten that had passed since he’d seen his parents? He felt a surge of old anguish, but it was duller now, the old hurt and betrayal having recently faded. Because of Jane. He knew he was doing the right thing in returning to America. First he would find Jane and settle matters between them. He was not going to Texas without her. And then he would take Chad west, to the ranch that was just as much his heritage as Drag-more. To see his grandparents, his grandfather.
And it was because of Jane. He knew that a year ago he wouldn’t have even considered a trip to Texas. A year ago had been before Jane. Before she’d given him her love and warmth and incredible courage, before she’d reminded him, shown him, what love meant, what a family meant. Now it was almost hard to believe that he’d put off this trip, this resolution withhisparents, withhisfather, for so long. But in a way he understood. Before Jane, nothing had really mattered. She had changed all that; she had changed his life.
