It was a proper kiss, but it was not the kiss she had wanted. It was sweet and kind and intolerably chaste. Without haste, Neil released her, and pushed her back gently to look down at her with an expression full of pitying fondness. Her pride flared in her breast. Jane hated to be pitied.

"A farewell gift, I think," he said softly. "Your carriage has come."

"Don't think you gave that to me," she warned. "I stole it. I earned it."

The softness in Neil's eyes faded slightly.

"Either way, I believe it must be farewell."

"Must it?"

"It would be best." He drew away from her. Behind him, the open front door revealed her carriage pulling up. "If you are in love with me, our continued friendship will only cause you pain. If you are not in love with me, then you are playing games with me, and I cannot be friends with a woman who treats me as a plaything. So perhaps you should not tell me which it is. Perhaps we should not risk conversation at all. It can only confirm unhappiness for one of us. Mrs Walthrope, I do not wish to know for whom."

This was not as she had expected. She had expected to awake within him some of the passion she knew dwelt there – whether anger or lust, she had not known. His quiet disappointment and faint pity hurt her far worse than he could have known or intended. His dispassionate summary of her motives pinned her down in an unflattering light. She did not like that he saw her as pathetically lost in a one-sided love, or cruelly involved in a twisted and sluttish game of hearts. She did not like that she did not know herself which was true.

She set her jaw and abandoned her usual flirtatious manner for bluntness – a weapon she rarely effected. "Neil. I stayed away from you while you were married to her, but you're not any more. You're free, if you wish to be. And I'm free to make an attempt to win you. This is my attempt. My genuine attempt."

But he was shaking his head, and heading for the door, not looking at her. He stood with his back against it, one arm held out to direct her through. "I'm not free to be won. I'm not."

"You're unmarried." Jane looked him up and down contemptuously. "Unless you're in love. Are you in love? With her?"

"Jane. You should have left without a word. No more words, now, please. Please, take your leave and go."

But Jane could not go. For Jane, love was war, and she a proud warrior. She had always demanded of men one of two results: defeat, or conquer. Retreat was not a move in her repertoire. Nor was she accustomed to a man refusing to battle with her. She was weaponless against his retreat into dignity and coldness.

"Are you in love with her?" she demanded, once more. "Don't you at least owe me that?"

"Please, Jane. Just go."

He did not love her. He did not love the girl he had married. She was as sure of that as she had been of anything in her life. He did not love Verity, and still Jane had lost him to her. The revelation hurt her to the quick, to the core of the heart she kept so well guarded by smiling and coquetry and charm; to the heart that had never trusted any man, nor kindness, not certainly any woman since the day she had first felt what it was to be betrayed. And in the face of a man who embodied faith, not love, that fragile, twisted heart broke.

"She's a drunkard's daughter! She's a whore-branded drunkard's daughter!" Jane's voice, always melodious, now broke from her throat like tearing silk. "You are marrying her for honour! Honour! Not love! And she – she is... nobody. Nothing."

Neil turned white. Slowly, he shut the door on the waiting carriage, and came back into the hall.

"She is the most honourable woman I know. Again, and again, I have heard her maligned for her father – we cannot help our fathers. And yet her own actions – her fortitude, her strength, her principles – no one cares about them. All because she is a drunkard's daughter. Yes. A drunkard, and a liar, and a thief. A drunkard who lied to force an annulment upon us for his own material gain! How can I not marry her come January, Jane? You say I am free – I am not. I married her in good faith, and she me. Legally, our ties have been broken. Morally, I cannot abandon her."

"I thought you would be relieved by it," Jane spat. "I can see you don't love her. You, who have already lost so much for love, would now lose it all again for something as paltry as honour?"

But Neil no longer seemed to have words to say. He was staring, brokenly, at Jane, as though he did not recognize her, as though he did not want to.

"Seeing ghosts?" she asked acidly.

"How paltry do you think honour is?" Neil said slowly. "Jane... you thought I would be relieved? And you never flirted with me once until now. You knew my father was planning this, or you would never have come to Houglen. You knew – and you never warned me? No... Jane... Jane... you thought I would be relieved... you believed it was a good thing. You still do."

Her jaw jutted sullenly. "One day you-"

"No. No I won't."

"In time, when your ridiculous guilt complex has faded-"

"No." He shook his head. "Don't demean yourself further. You have waited for me all these months, that you might persuade me – what? To start an affair with you? To marry you? Or merely to persuade me that there are sweeter waters than Verity Baker? That's demeaning enough. You would go so far to ruin another woman's happiness. To so much effort. Don't demean yourself by failing at the task now. Go home without trying. Your only redemption lies in retreat."

She attempted to laugh. She attempted to smile. A harsh, uncertain cackle came from her. She choked on it. For the first time since she was a child, she felt the hot prick of genuine tears in her eyes. She had too much practice at controlling herself to let her mask slip entirely, even now. She tossed her head, and headed for the door, unable to speak, for fear she should lose control entirely.

"Wait."

Neil's voice was dead and cold as ice in winter.

"How did you know my father was planning the annulment?"

She twisted her head, and looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. Still, she could not speak. Now, she did not want to.

"How did you know?"

She opened the door. Her carriage was waiting outside. The footmen looked up at her. The driver gathered his reins.

"How did you know, Jane!?"

She ran down the stone stairs.

"Jane! Answer me!"

He came down after her. His fingers brushed her gloved wrist as he reached out. But she had always been fleeter of foot than him. She leaped the last six steps, and flew to the shelter of the waiting carriage.

The footman slammed the door behind her. The carriage began to roll away. She leaned out the window. Neil was slowing to a stop at the foot of the stairs. His hair was dishevelled, his face white, and his eyes wide and black. She saw her chance, in that moment, to win the war – and lose it simultaneously. Better – better than retreat.

"I came up with the idea, you fool. I'm a lawyer's daughter!"

The last sight she saw of Neil was him folding up to sit on the bottom step of his lonely manor, his head in his hands.

* * *

Neil had to sit still for quite some time on the chill steps in the night before he had the strength to rise and go to bed. It was one thing to be betrayed by his father, even his brother. It was very different to be betrayed by someone he had trusted. He could not understand why she would want to separate him from Verity; why she would be involved to this degree of machination. She had always been cruel. She had never, until now, been so wilfully malicious.

His shock became anger, and he cursed her, loathing every moment they had ever spent together. He loathed, in particular, the kiss. He had not pushed her away at the first moment because he had believed that she might be just a little bit in love with him. He had wanted to believe. It had excited his ego to believe that such a beautiful woman, who blatantly enjoyed the fruitless attentions of so many male admirers, could truly have lost a piece of her heart to him. Deep down, he must have always known she did not have a heart to lose. Cursing his own weaknesses now, he kicked at the stairs until his heels ached. She had played him, and they had both lost.

He went inside, finally, when a soft rain started up. By then, it was two in the morning. He dreaded his journey tomorrow. It never did well to leave a place in anger, and he was angry. He would leave in a cloud of bad feelings, and they would follow him to France.

He bolted the door, and traipsed upstairs in the dark, head bowed. Passing Verity's door, he stopped, and opened it.

He rather thought she moved as he came in, but when he got to her side, she was still, her face pressed into a pillow, her chest rising and falling with each gentle breath.

He had wanted – needed – to talk with her. She would dispel his cloud, she would persuade him things were not so bad – but even if he could, was she able to hear about what had happened downstairs without also being hurt?

No. To explain that he had kissed Jane, the woman who had coldly planned the demise of their marriage? He could not. And yet, surely, he would have to one day. It was not a secret he could keep from Verity forever. For his own sake, more than hers, he needed to confess, and receive her absolution. But to expose her to such hurt the night before they separated for months would be an inconceivable wound.

It was a tangled, tangled mess.

Not wanting to wake her, he backed out of the room, and went to lie, alone, in his bed, and frustrate himself with unending angry thoughts until morning.

~~~~

A/N: There. Better? Forgivable? Well. Perhaps. Next update Tuesday. Thanks for sticking with this story, Guys :)