One Night With You (The Derrings #3)(13)

"Would you not enjoy a ride in the park?" Chloris needled. A ride in the park. A pleasure she had been denied since Marcus's death and Chloris well knew it. Jane inhaled deeply through her nostrils, striving for patience. As much as a ride in the park tempted to her, enduring Dahlia, Bryony, and Iris—who had yet to learn how to conduct themselves in public—produced a shudder. Yet she had little choice. If the girls had been promised the park, they would give her no peace until they got their way.

"Very well," she relented.

A scratching sound filled the air as Chloris scribbled on a sheet of parchment at her right. Jane resumed eating. After several moments, Chloris lifted her head. "I've given some thought to your request to come out of mourning."

Jane paused mid-chew, her teeth grinding. The request had been more a statement of fact and it had been made to Desmond.

"Indeed?" she asked, watching as her sister-in-law perused the sheet of paper in her hand, no doubt the evening's menu.

Chloris had claimed that task for herself shortly after moving in—one of the only household duties to hold her interest. Watching her, Jane loathed that she should sit so haughty and contented in what had once been her chair, performing a duty that had once been hers.

"Perhaps a drive in the park today will aid in"—Chloris angled her head to the side as if searching for the word—"easing you back into Society. Nothing too gauche, that. A drive with your nieces would not be unseemly."

Moistening her lips, Jane pushed further. "And later this week I'll take tea with the Duchess of Shillington." She raised her brows, holding her breath hopefully, thinking how nice it would be to not have to sneak next door.

"Tea?" Chloris blinked. "Oh, I think that is perhaps too ambitious of you. It would not do to appear too eager to end your period of mourning."

"Fifteen months is a seemly amount of time for any widow—" Chloris held up a hand. "We must heed Desmond's desires in this." Her eyes met Jane's with a solemnity that rankled. "You cannot think he would guide you ill, do you? Desmond is very wise, my dear. And men are so much better equipped to decide these things." For a brief moment, Jane wished she could shock Chloris by confessing the actions of her saintly husband the night before. But then that would reveal her own activities. Self-preservation held her in check. Until her stepson came of age and sent Desmond packing, she had to bite her tongue.

Forcing a smile that felt brittle as glass, Jane replied, "Very well." Setting her napkin aside, she rose to her feet. "I'll ready the girls and change my clothes."

"Change?" Chloris echoed, her wide eyes skimming over Jane's black bombazine. "Whatever for? What you're wearing is perfectly acceptable."

"I thought to change into something else. Perhaps gray? If I'm to begin easing out of mourning, gray is an suitable color to—"

"A drive in the park should be treat enough for you," Chloris declared, her blue eyes sharp.

"Don't tell me you intend to be one of those widows who gives the barest due to the passing of a husband." Turning her attention to her plate, she chased a kipper about her plate with her fork. "I would think you owe more to Marcus. After all, you brought nothing to your marriage save a paltry dowry. Your father is a baronet of no repute. If not for your sister's marriage to the Duke of Eldermont, Marcus would never have considered you. And don't forget you didn't even bless the union with offspring."

Mortifying heat swept up her neck. Her barrenness had been only one of the problems riddling her marriage, but it was the one for which she had felt acutely responsible. Having already conceived a child with his first wife, the fault clearly did not rest with Marcus. It didn't take long after their vows for the looks and whispers implying her infertility to begin.

"A woman who cannot provide her husband with children is not a true woman." Chloris puffed out her considerable bosom, seeming to swell with self-importance at her own ability to breed. Chloris caught her slippery kipper, stabbing at it with vigor. "Ungrateful creature! To even want to toss your widow's weeds aside with such quick disregard."

Jane clenched her fists at her sides until they grew numb, bloodless. A thousand angry retorts flashed through her mind. Heat stung her cheeks as she recalled the myriad of indignities she suffered at Marcus's hands. True, she had barred him from her bedchamber, but only after a year of marriage, and only after finding him in her bed with one of the upstairs maids. Her bed. The humiliation still burned hot, haunting her even now—a dog forever nipping her heels that she could not outrun.

It was one thing to know your husband conducted affairs all over Town, but quite another to be presented with that fact. She would forever recall the scorn twisting his face, his grating laughter when she demanded he end his indiscretions, end making a fool of her. Banishing him from her bed only earned her further laughter. His words rang bitterly in her head. I'll not miss your frigid body. What need do you fill? I already have a son. And there are far better women to warm my bed.

Pushing that ugly day far from her mind, she rose to her feet. Through cold lips, she declared firmly, "No one would accuse me of being less than circumspect." Striding from the room, she paused briefly at the door to direct Barclay to order a carriage around. Once inside her chamber, the small bedroom she had been banished to when Desmond and Chloris claimed the master bedchambers for themselves, she stripped off the black bombazine. Flinging open her armoire, she pushed unremitting black aside and removed a gray serge day gown from the far back. With sharp, angry movements, she dressed herself, sick unto death of black and determined to have no more of it. No matter what Desmond or Chloris said. Ungrateful creature!