Chapter Twelve
There needed to be a reckoning. Orion had to account for his time on the Bilberry Dam commission, yet, despite knowing how desperately that accounting was needed, Jasper was loath to have the conversation. It was why he hadn’t gone straight to Orion’s favourite club off St James’s and dragged him out immediately after he’d left Fleur’s office for the last time.
That reckoning was also why he’d decided to leave Fleur. This was war, this was shame. Neither were conditions upon which a relationship could be built. How could he face her if she was right? That was the shame—that he’d been ignorant of his brother’s role in the dam’s demise. And if she was wrong, there would be shame on her side, too, or resentment. The scandal would always be between them as a competition one of them had lost.
He hoped it would not be him. He was the Marquess. He was supposed to protect his family and his people. But people had died and possibly because of a position he’d put his brother in by arranging for a spot on the commission. Beyond the shame of what he perceived as his own culpability, how could he possibly consort with the enemy? Whether she was right or wrong, he had an obligation to protect his brother and by extension the family. But as much as he didn’t want her to be right, he also didn’t want her to be wrong. She had much at stake and he appreciated how difficult her position was.
In the weeks since he’d left her, he’d done what he could for both Fleur and for Orion. He’d had his solicitors prepare an offer for the northern newspapers in an attempt to mitigate publicising the suspicions being raised against Orion. It would help them both; she needed the sale, and he needed the silence.
However, in the interim, Orion had slipped through his fingers. His brother was gone, leaving only a note that said he was lying low until the scandal blew over. Which meant Orion was avoiding not only the scandal, but also him and the reckoning. That was concerning. Jasper felt compelled to see his brother’s action as a sign that Orion had something to hide, something he did not want to confess any more than Jasper wanted to hear that confession. Once he knew, he’d have to act one way or the other. But what kind of action could he justify? Baconian logic was of no help here.
He scanned the shelves of Meltham House’s well-stocked library until he found what he was looking for, his worn copy of Bentham’s collected works. It was easy to spot with its faded red cover amid the sleek, smooth spines of lesser read books. Perhaps he’d find comfort in the familiar pages outlining utilitarianism as a political moral compass. If not comfort, perhaps direction, a prompt for what he ought to do when the reckoning came not only for Orion, but himself as well. He did not delude himself in thinking the scandal would not touch them all if it picked up enough momentum.
Jasper poured himself a brandy and settled in his favourite chair beside the empty fire. He took a moment to appreciate the quiet of the house. It seemed he hadn’t had quiet for days between putting together the offer to buy the papers and evenings out escorting his mother to balls, sometimes two or three a night. But tonight, he’d been firm. He was staying in. No balls, no visits to his clubs to talk politics. Tonight was for him, to settle his thoughts and perhaps to come to grips with them.
He was halfway through his glass of brandy and Chapter One when the commotion reached him. He sighed. Perhaps an evening of peace and quiet had been too much to hope for. He set aside his book, listening to the brisk clack of heels and the rustle of skirts in the corridor. If his mother thought to cajole him into going out, she was going to be disappointed.
Strident tones sounded in the hallway. ‘I will not be kept waiting so that you can come back with an excuse as to why he will not receive me.’ That was not his mother. That was... Fleur. His reckoning was here in Meltham House. Which meant... She knew everything. Umberton. Wincastle. Meltham. He had nowhere left to shelter. Like the old elk of his childhood, he was flushed into the open.
He barely had time to rise and brace for battle before Fleur Griffiths blew into the library, disrupting his calm with the force of a spring storm. ‘You are a bastard of the first order!’ Her eyes blazed with green fire as she made the accusation.
His butler stumbled in her wake. ‘My lord, I am sorry. I asked her to wait.’
Jasper waved a hand. ‘It’s all right, Phillips. I will see her.’ He would face his reckoning like a man. It’s what he deserved, but he would also face her with the hope that from argument arises a new truth. That was what Aristotle believed anyway. He wasn’t sure Fleur Griffiths shared those beliefs. The higher truth was that, despite their differences, they needed each other in order to get to the bottom of this business with Orion. Tonight would test that hypothesis.
Phillips left them and Jasper took a moment before speaking to drink her in: the flashing eyes, the flush of her cheeks, the heave of her breasts, her breath coming fast in her anger. She wore a plain blue skirt and a high-necked white blouse trimmed in lace, her hair done in her usual sensible chignon. She’d come straight from work. His offer must have arrived and all else had unravelled from there. It had always been a risk. Perhaps he’d wanted her to find out, wanted to end the pretence between them.
‘Please, come and sit and you can tell me why I’m a bastard.’ He used his coolness to calm her storm. He’d learned many things about her during their short time together. One of them was that she liked to fight, liked the heat of argument. Undermining that heat was his best chance of having a logical conversation with her.
‘I prefer to stand,’ she snapped, taking up a position near the sideboard with the decanters, dangerously near breakable items. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. He resumed his seat, wanting to juxtapose his outer calm with her obvious turmoil. In truth, he had his own turmoil to contend with. In spite of their contentious circumstances, she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen. His body roused to her anger as much as it had roused to her passion. Challenge was a heady aphrodisiac to a man with power.
‘This is not a social call, Lord Meltham.’ She nearly growled when she said his title.
‘I did not think it was. You are angry because you feel lied to.’ Validating anger often took away the fuel for that anger. Fleur’s anger thrived on opposition. Just as fire thrived on oxygen. He would take her anger’s oxygen from her.
Her eyes blazed. ‘Don’t do that. Do not pander to me by explaining my anger to me. I know damn well why I am mad. You misrepresented yourself in order to inveigle yourself into my good graces.’ He didn’t usually hold with women using profanity, but it was damned sexy on her. It stirred him, made him want to get up from his chair and fight fire with fire. He held on to his composure a little longer. Perhaps she was counting on that. Perhaps she was trying to melt his ice even as he tried to cool her heat.
‘I am Lord Umberton. I did not lie about my identity. I will own that it is not my highest-ranking title. But it’s right there in Debrett’s for anyone to find. You could have looked it up.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘That’s ironic advice from a man who claims he wants to be known for himself. Now, you want your titles to speak for you. As it happens, I prefer to let people prove themselves. I did not look you up because I wanted to form my own impressions.’
‘You liked those impressions. You liked the man you saw,’ he reminded her, even as his body reminded him that he liked her, too, differences aside.
‘I did,’ she confessed bluntly. ‘My instincts are not usually so wrong.’
There was condemnation in her eyes. Not all of it was for him. There was plenty for her as well. She blamed him for misleading her, but she also blamed herself for being taken in and he hated that. He also disliked, that she saw this as a personal failure at a time when she shouldered so many other burdens. He had inadvertently added to those burdens and he’d put a chink in the armour of her confidence when she could not afford it. That was not an intended consequence. He wished he could erase that. Since he could not, he could perhaps explain it.
‘I am all those things. I am interested in dam legislation. I am interested in preventing accidents like the Bilberry Dam in the future. I am also interested in you—just you—although I am not sure how we separate that interest from our circumstances.’ He softened his tone and allowed himself the luxury of letting his eyes rest on her. ‘Nothing I did with you, nothing I felt about being with you, was a lie.’ Those few days were some of the most vibrant he could recall in recent history.
‘That does not change the fact that you betrayed me!’ Fleur railed. His attempt to steal the fuel for her fire was failing. ‘You used how I felt about you, you manipulated my trust and then—’ she reached for one of the crystal tumblers next to the decanters ‘—you broke it!’ Glass shattered against the hardwood floor. Her eyes blazed.
‘Fleur!’ He was out of his seat, but she was faster. She grabbed another tumbler and smashed it.
‘How do you like that? How does it feel to have something broken?’ she raged, smashing another. ‘You lied to me, you had sex with me, you pretended to care about me! You are a cad of the highest order. You betrayed me on all levels.’
The hell he had. His self-control was gone now. He gripped her by the forearms, wresting the last tumbler from her and dancing her back to the wall, out of reach of shattered glass and things that could be converted into shattered glass. ‘Stop it, Fleur!’
‘You didn’t betray me?’
‘Be fair, you betrayed me that night at Harefield’s,’ he growled. ‘You used me, you pretended I was Adam.’ The gloves were off now. ‘No man likes being a stand-in for a dead husband.’
‘Maybe I did use you,’ she sneered. ‘It doesn’t mean I deserved to have you lie to me.’
They were pressed against one another, his body trapping her, keeping her from the rest of his glassware, their chests heaving with the exertion of their anger.
He seized her mouth in a hard, bruising kiss, to stop her words, to stop the anger, to make a different argument, to prove to her...something. He shouldn’t have done it, but he wasn’t thinking clearly.
She bit down hard on his lip. ‘Ouch!’ He drew back, wiping his hand across his mouth and coming away with blood. ‘What the hell?’
‘What the hell is right! How dare you kiss me, when you know damn well what it’s like with us, how we spark, how we burn and look what that’s got us!’ She pushed him and stepped around him. It had got him a virago in his arms and a shattered crystal tumbler set on the floor. ‘There are weighty considerations between us that we cannot shove aside or solve with a kiss. There is the issue of your duplicity and there is the issue of your brother’s culpability.’
No, she didn’t get to do that. The issues of fault weren’t entirely all his. ‘Don’t forget there is also the issue of your newspaper’s marketability and your voracious tenacity for justice, which may be misplaced,’ he said quietly, his own calm reasserting itself. ‘Not all of the issues are on my side of the equation.’ She could have her anger, but he wanted to make sure she understood it accurately, truthfully.
He gestured to the chairs beside the cold fire. ‘Will you come and sit now and sort through it all with me, see what can be salvaged?’ He picked up the last remaining tumbler and poured her a drink to match the one he’d left beside his chair.
She scowled, but she took a seat and the drink. If it wasn’t exactly peace it was at least détente. They sat in silence for a short while, each one assessing, measuring the other. He braved the silence. ‘Have you thought about why I would introduce myself as Umberton?’
She slid him a disapproving look. ‘To get close to me, to earn my trust so that I might share with you what I have on your brother. You would be able to thwart me. Perhaps even try to talk me out of it with arguments about doing what was right, about considering the consequences and the purity of my own motives even while you sat there knowing full well the impurity of your own motives. You did not seek to guide me with good counsel, but to protect your brother.’
That last stung. She was referring to the arguments he’d made at Verrey’s and she wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d made those arguments in the hopes of forestalling more articles naming Orion as the guilty party as much as he’d made them out of common sense. ‘They were and are still valid arguments,’ he said.
‘Arguments that you have vested interest in and you hid that,’ she replied.
‘Careful, Fleur. Can you say you have no vested interest in pushing this story, this investigation out into the public?’ he queried.
‘I am doing it honestly. I am not hiding behind any pretence. I am not fabricating evidence to fit my own needs. If your brother is innocent, I’ll admit that. At least I will have got to the bottom of it. Either way there will be closure for myself and for others who lost loved ones and are still searching for some reason, some understanding behind it,’ Fleur said earnestly.
‘Even if the board of directors would prefer another outcome?’ Jasper nudged the argument a little further along. She might believe she was merely on a quest for the truth, but sometimes the truth didn’t sell newspapers.
‘Of course,’ she snapped. ‘I am insulted that you would think otherwise.’
‘Just as I am insulted you would think me a charlatan,’ he scolded. ‘Have you stopped to think how you would have responded if I’d entered your box that night at the theatre and announced myself as the Marquess of Meltham? Would you have listened to me? Would you have allowed me to meet with you at your offices? Would you have shared your information with me? Or allowed me to help with the dam legislation?’
He studied her profile as he waited for an answer, watching the first hint of a smile curve her cheek as she stared into the empty fireplace. In those moments he wished it were autumn so that they might have reason to sit beside a warm fire together. It was a potent domestic fantasy he needed to handle with care.
‘You know I would not have,’ she admitted.
‘Correct, because you were at war with Meltham. But you were not at war with Umberton. He had a clean slate, from which real discussion took place. Is it any mystery I took that option?’ He leaned towards her. ‘Are we not the better for it? Instead of sworn enemies, we are now friends who can decide how they want to handle these circumstances.’ At least that was what he hoped.
For once in her life, Fleur didn’t know what to say or even to think. She ought to find the suggestion that they were friends ludicrous in the extreme. It was an extraordinary idea, one that was matched only by the extraordinary circumstances she found herself in—sitting in the Marquess of Meltham’s library rationally discussing his brother’s culpability in her husband’s death.
This was not the encounter she’d expected when she’d stormed out of the office and into his town house. She’d expected a fight, expected to throw things—hot words, a glass or two, to give full vent to her spleen, to her sense of betrayal. And she had. But as a result, she’d expected to be bodily removed from the town house. She would have written about that and painted Jasper Bexley, Marquess of Meltham, with the blackest of brushes, an obstructor of justice, a man who was above the law, who threw his title around to protect a guilty brother.
Instead, he’d asked her to sit, to voice her grievances and he’d answered them, explaining his perspective while holding himself and her accountable. It definitely had her off-kilter but not so far off that she’d forgotten what she’d came for.
‘I will not let it be that easy.’ She gave him a strong stare, although it was difficult to look at him and not see Umberton, not see her lover, a man she’d trusted with her body and her mind. ‘You cannot justify your deception because you feel the consequences were worthy. One cannot say bad behaviour is suddenly good because something good came from it.’
She’d had enough of men making that argument. Adam had kept the state of the newspaper from her, no doubt thinking to protect her from worry. And now, Jasper Bexley had deceived her, too. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘you did not deceive me with the intent of friendship in mind. That was an accident.’
‘A happy accident,’ he countered. ‘As I said, we get to decide how we go on. What shall it be, Fleur? Shall we go forward with forgiveness and friendship or with fear and mistrust?’ There was no true ‘we’ about it. He was leaving the decision up to her and she thought it rather unfair that he made it her responsibility to end things when he’d been the one to walk out.
‘There is no decision because there are no choices.’ Which was probably for the best. The way he was looking at her now, those eyes of his steady on her, his interest, his want, naked in them, there for her to see, made her wish it could be otherwise. But ‘otherwise’ was not practical. ‘The issues between us are too large, they divide us too thoroughly. And even if they didn’t, our association would undermine our individual credibility.’ Even without the issue of his brother between them, she knew better than to think they could be friends.
He took a swallow from his glass for the first time since she’d sat down. ‘I think I’ll need you to explain all of that to me. You must excuse my denseness. I’m not a man used to being without options.’ He was half teasing, half serious.
‘You will be inclined to protect your brother. I can understand that even if I can’t support it. On the other hand, I cannot let the truth go unpublished for the sake of...’ She groped for the words. She’d been about to say for the sake of a lover. ‘For the sake of someone I care for. I cannot be driven by my emotions, or the truth becomes subjective.’
She sighed. ‘The chasm is too wide. Either I will be right, or you will be right. Either way, there will be consequences. Which leads me to your idea of friendship. I do not think friendship can survive such pressures. Aside from that, us associating together—the Marquess of Meltham, brother of the maligned Lord Orion Bexley, and the widow of a prominent man killed at the dam Lord Orion Bexley oversaw, will not build credibility for legislation. People will suspect a conflict of interest and neither of us will look well. Perhaps me most of all, since it impacts my ability to be taken seriously at the newspaper.’
Especially if they were found to be friends and Lord Orion Bexley turned out to be innocent. People would wonder what had driven that conclusion and if she’d arrived at it honestly or if it had been kissed out of her. It was a double standard that one always asked such things of a woman, but never asked them of a man.
He nodded, his hand cradling his glass. ‘A man you care for? I am honoured by the description. It gives me hope,’ he said in a soft tenor. ‘I care for you, too, Fleur, despite our differences.’ He reached for her hand and the warmth of his touch sent a delicious shudder through her as he lifted her hand to his lips, his eyes intent on her.
‘I must disagree with you, though. This difference needn’t keep us apart as I once thought. The day I left you in the office, I meant that kiss to be goodbye. I thought there was no way through it. But that’s not true. Lately, I’ve come to believe that we need each other to see this done. Where you see a chasm I see commonality, something that brings us together instead of setting us apart. We are both searching for the truth about my brother’s involvement in the dam accident. We both claim honest intentions to see right done, whatever the outcome. Why not work together?’
He gave a small sigh and she saw how much the proposal cost him. Despite his usual confidence there was worry she might refuse. It was a refusal he would take personally.
‘If Orion is guilty, I want to make reparations. I want to see that the families are taken of. It can never bring loved ones back, but it can bring practical ease, a way for them to move forward.’ His brow furrowed and she felt his grip on her hand tighten. ‘Discovering the truth scares me, Fleur. Part of me doesn’t want to know.
‘For the past year, I’ve not questioned the original report’s verdict that this was a comedy of errors, all conspiring to create the circumstances of the accident. But you’ve shown me it could be different, that one man could be at fault. Now that I know that’s a possibility, I can’t ignore it. If I did ignore it at this point, I’d be guilty, too. I could not live with my conscience. Although, I hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s a damnably awkward position to be in to choose what is right—protecting one’s family or protecting the truth.’
She nodded. She felt for him, she really did. His stance on the issue was admirable in the extreme. Not all people would face such a dilemma head on with such integrity. She found that integrity appealing. Adam had been such a man, always standing up for what was right, standing up in print for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves even when it was unpopular with those who funded newspapers.
There was no doubting the sincerity of Jasper’s confession or her response to it. She wanted to believe him, wanted to join forces with him. His argument was persuasive. It made sense that they work together. Too much sense. She should not accept it at face value.
When an answer sounded too good to be true, it probably deserved more consideration. Was working together simply the ‘easy’ answer? The answer that allowed them to pursue not only the truth of Orion’s involvement, but also the chance to explore the truth of their personal attraction? More time together meant they could continue what they’d started in Harefield’s garden.
That posed its own delight and its own danger. To continue their affair would personalise the context of their interaction—there was the risk of emotions and growing attachment forming, emotions that could potentially colour their quest. She could get hurt if that was the case. Jasper was a hard man not to like with his integrity, sincerity and tousled good looks.
Was he counting on that? The woman in her who fully understood how the world worked was wide awake now. Did he think to use her emotions against her if Lord Orion was as guilty as she thought he was? Did he think she would give up her quest for him?
‘I want to be clear. I will print what I find, feelings for you notwithstanding.’ Best to air that right now before things went further even if it meant ‘things’ didn’t go further. After all, a man who manipulated a woman with sex was a man for whom integrity was merely a fa?ade. That was not the man for her. That was not her idea of working together. It still stung that Adam had not told her about the debt. That had been a betrayal of their partnership. She would not set herself up for another betrayal.
Anger flickered in Jasper’s eyes. She’d attacked the bastion of his honour. But she had to know. ‘Do you think that is the sort of man I am? To use a woman for sex? To manipulate a person’s feelings for personal gain?’ There was no denying that he’d been honestly engaged in Harefield’s garden, present in their pleasure body and mind as far it went, while she had not. She didn’t like the idea that she’d dealt him some hurt that evening, even if unintentional.
‘Can you blame me for thinking it when you’ve offered to buy the northern newspapers? If you were looking to protect your brother, it’s not a bad strategy. Buying them ensures stories of your brother’s perfidy won’t be printed. The populace may never hear of it. Then, seducing the head of the London Tribune could be a means by which to silence the printing of her findings in the largest city in England. Out of devotion to you, perhaps you think she’d forgo the story,’ Fleur described the scheme bluntly.
‘You do know how to wound a man, Fleur. It’s a plausible plan except for one thing: the head of the London Tribune would never allow herself to be swayed by such sentiment.’ He favoured her with a smile that warmed and complimented. ‘I am as sure of that as I am of the sun rising in the east tomorrow. I know such a strategy would never work with you. Integrity will be the saving of us, both yours and mine.’
‘And trust,’ Fleur added. ‘We’re trusting each other to know our boundaries, to know the cost of the kind of relationship we want to pursue, to accept limitations, and most of all, to keep our promises when circumstances might tempt us to rethink them.’ There was no might about it. Circumstances would evolve that would put that temptation right in front of them. ‘So, I ask you again. If not to protect your brother, why did you offer to buy the northern newspapers?’ There was no time like the present to test their promises of integrity and trust. This partnership might be over before it began.