Chapter Eighteen
Jane
Reaching her destination didn’t take long, and Jane was pleased to note her instincts as to the Earl of Belhaven’s whereabouts were correct.
She entered the library without saying a word and closed the door behind her. She didn’t want an audience, or to incur the ire of Lady Adelaide. Jasper was at his desk, frozen, looking at her like he couldn’t quite believe she was real. Had he not thought she would follow him? The path between them was worn down and well-trodden. Their coming together felt inevitable, didn’t it? Or was that just how Jane felt?
Neither of them spoke for several moments. All of Jane’s bluster faded when she entered the library and saw him hunched there, looking so utterly defeated.
“What is it, Jasper?” she asked, stepping toward the desk. He recoiled, and her stomach fell. Trust the stern bastard to treat her like a leper rather than actually tell her what he felt. “Is my presence so disagreeable to you?” she asked, sarcasm weighing her words. But his face was twisted with so much emotion, her bite fell back once more. “You need only say the word and I will leave,” she added softly.
He stood so quickly his chair fell. “Do you honestly think your presence is disagreeable to me, Jane?”
His passion surprised her. “You have hardly spoken a word to me since your friends arrived,” she started defensively. “Why, you all but revealed to your guests that I am an unwanted intruder!” He wasn’t going to get away with it this time. Jane stood her ground, forcing herself to speak every word that was on her mind. “And then I am told that you spent the night by my side, only to have you rebuff me when I try to thank you for your efforts, efforts which so obviously strained your already limited patience for me. So why would I think otherwise, my lord, when you treat me thusly?”
He stepped around the desk. Another woman might have feared his approach, but Jane craved his anger, finding it all the more satisfying than his indifference. He stood mere inches from her, that all-too-familiar disapproval set in his brow.
When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “I avoid you, dear Jane, because I cannot be near you.” She tried to reply, but his hand reached for her jaw, his thumb gently covering her mouth. He tilted her head upward, forcing their eyes to meet. “I cannot be near you without thinking of taking you in my arms and making you mine.” Heat crackled between them. What had seemed like disapproval before, she read now as hunger. “Slowly,” he added.
Jane blinked and swallowed thickly, causing Jasper to let go of her jaw and turn away from her. “Oh,” was all she could manage to say.
“Oh?” he replied over his shoulder.
She stepped around him, forcing him to look at her again. “Is—is that why you avoid me?”
He turned his head away. “Everything about you sets me on a dangerous path.” But then he looked at her, really looked at her in a way that was so heated it felt indecent. “But I cannot escape you, Jane, not when you occupy my every thought.”
“That is your desire then?” she asked, breathless with need. “To escape me?”
His eyes fell to her lips. They were close now, so close to getting what they both wanted. Jane ached with desire; she knew he felt it, too. She placed her hands on his chest, an invitation. He looked down at them. Considered them. Pressed his lips into a firm line. He was on the edge; all she needed was for him to jump. Jane was already there, already drowning in him.
But the stern bastard won out in the end, pushing her hands away and putting distance between them. “I am doing my damnedest to stay away from you, Jane, because I cannot distract you from your purpose.”
She had been following his retreat, but his words made her stop. “My purpose?”
“You are here to recover,” he replied as though it were obvious. “How could I allow myself to selfishly muddle your desires?”
“Who are you to tell me what I desire?” Now it was Jane’s turn to be angry. “Can a person not be ruled by more than one? A gentleman would defer to the lady in matters such as this, no?”
He studied her as if seeking permission, as if he couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “I do not wish to take advantage of you.”
The man was infuriatingly cautious. “I may lack my memories, Jasper, but I know my own mind.”
He stared at her, his brow softening as he considered her. He stepped closer. Her heart raced, but not from fear. “All I want is for you to heal, Jane. I do not wish to complicate your life any more than it already has been, so I feel like an ass for how I am constantly drawn to you, and how I can’t seem to leave you alone—”
“I don’t want to be left alone,” she argued.
Another step closer. “And then I lash out at you as if any of this is your fault—”
“Yes, well, that does make you something of an ass.”
Even closer still. “And then watching you with Edgar has been sheer torture—”
“Edgar?” Jane asked incredulously. “You are jealous of him?”
He looked sheepish. “I know I have no claim on you, Jane, and a decent man would step aside and let you pursue whatever it is your heart desires, but—”
“I desire you , Jasper.” The words echoed around them, carrying so much more weight than she’d intended. Jane’s heart was in her throat, but she did not regret her candor. If anything, it was like the breaking of a dam. “Not him. Not anyone else. I want you almost as much as I want my memories. Christ, I may want you more. It feels as if the wanting will kill me and I know you don’t—”
He silenced her with a brand of a kiss, hot against her lips, and the world stilled. No, not stilled, it shifted, seismically and irrevocably. There would be no going back from this, no retreat into propriety. The kiss was a confirmation. An inevitability.
She felt shock course through him, as if Jasper himself hadn’t expected to be so bold. He began to pull away, but Jane was faster. She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought him deeper into her. He met her eagerly, lifting her off her feet, pulling her tight against the firmness of his body. His next kiss was not a shock. No, Jasper Maycott, a man who did not do things by half, took his time, teasing his lips against hers, the sensation so torturous, so heavenly, Jane thought she might faint again.
He pulled himself back, resting his forehead on hers. “Is this all right?” he asked breathlessly, his eyes soft and warm on her, no trace of the stern mask remaining. “I’m not hurting you?”
She shook her head and writhed against him in answer, her body begging him for more. Because Jane was a match, and Jasper’s touch was a flame, and all she wanted was to burn. She wasn’t thinking about her past or her future; she was unburdened by worry and fear. All she felt was him , and how the two of them fit together like they had been created for each other.
He kissed her again, and it was the culmination of the lingering looks they had shared, the barbs they had traded, the limits that they had pushed each other to, and something entirely new, something that could only exist because they had broken down every last wall that stood between them.
Her mouth opened against his, a sigh escaping her lips. Jasper swore so low it rumbled through his chest as his palm cupped her neck, leaving Jane to wonder if she had ever been here before. Had she felt this unbridled desire for someone else? It didn’t seem possible. Surely, she would remember this feeling, this uncontrollable urge to give herself over to another. To surrender entirely.
He licked against her lips and she opened for him again, this time eliciting a low moan from him, one that unraveled a molten heat inside her. Even without her memories, Jane knew she had never been kissed like this . She reached blindly for his necktie, fumbling to gain access to more of him. He let go of her only to assist her, ripping it off and throwing it to the ground. She kissed his neck and breathed him in, tasting the salt on his warm skin. He let out a soft growl as his lips traced from her temple to the boundaries of her injury in a gentle, delicious exploration.
He turned her face and claimed her mouth once more, as if desperate to taste her. They were melting together, their bodies less different than they were the same in that moment. Her hands were in his hair as she arched against him, needing to feel more of him against her.
Swearing again, Jasper lifted her off her feet and walked until he had pushed her up against a wall. She wrapped her ankles around his hips, notching the two of them together in a way that was both deeply wanton and deeply right. He smiled against her mouth and turned his attention to her chest, trailing kisses along the edge of her neckline, his tongue licking under the fabric of her dress.
“Please,” she begged, desire and need nearly overcoming her. Somehow, in a world of uncertainties, Jane knew exactly what she wanted. Him. Him. Only him. Jasper had said he had no claim on her, but that was a lie. The stern bastard had claimed her heart. Now she wanted to be the one to claim him .
He pulled at the laces at the front of her dress, loosening them enough for the chain she wore to escape from her bodice. The ring swung free and thudded against her sternum, glinting between them in the firelight.
He paused, raising his head to her, looking at her like no one had ever looked at her before. But he did not kiss her again; instead, he seemed almost puzzled.
“Please,” she whispered again, needing relief from the languid, torturous heat. “Jasper, I need you.”
But if saying his name had tethered them together before, it severed that connection now, like the sudden slamming of a door. He looked down at the ring and back at her, his expression shuttered. Guarded, even.
He set her back down on her feet unceremoniously. A chill wrapped around her where his arms had been.
“I’m sorry,” he began, but the silence only deepened after he spoke. He looked like a man tortured both by what they had done and the fact that they had stopped.
She found she had no patience for it, or him. “What is it you’re sorry for?” she asked, an edge to her voice. “Because I wanted that. I wanted you . And I have been nothing but honest with you from the start, as limited as my honesty can be given the circumstances, whereas I’m not sure you’ve ever been fully truthful with me.”
“I haven’t been,” he agreed, shattering what remained of Jane’s resolve.
She stepped away from him, her anger leaving her, shame and hurt rushing in in its wake. She straightened her skirts for want of something to do with her hands, heat rising to her cheeks. “Oh,” was all she could manage.
Jasper grasped her hand, halting her retreat. “It’s not what you think, Jane—”
“Isn’t it?” she asked, her voice small. “You have made it abundantly clear there is nothing between us. It is my fault for not listening.”
“What exists between us is real. I’m the one who should be blamed for not—” He closed his mouth, swallowing whatever he had intended to say.
Jane was done with letting moments pass, or words go unsaid. “For not what?”
He looked down at her hand, small in his, and back at her. “You’re the first person I’ve kissed since…”
There was the pain, the grief she knew so well. “Since?” she asked softly, but not kindly.
His gaze left her for the first time since their lips touched. He looked toward the window, casting half of his face in shadow. “Since my fiancée—since Annabelle died.”
Jane realized then that she had suspected as much. Jasper had clearly loved Annabelle, and only death had torn them apart. She thought back to the gallery, when he had cursed love for not saving his parents. She understood now that he had also been blaming love for not saving Annabelle, and by extension he had been blaming himself. His love had not saved her, not saved them, and he had been punishing himself ever since.
“I’m sorry, Jasper.” And she was. He had lost so much. So had Jane, but somehow, standing in the library with a man so tormented by his past, she felt almost grateful for her lack of memories. Her pain was an echo she chased, his was a specter haunting his steps.
“The worst of it is that what I feel for you is real, Jane. God knows I tried to deny it and I will not do so anymore. But…”
“But?”
He still couldn’t look at her. “When she died, I made a vow to never love another.”
In all her imaginings of what would keep the two of them apart, she hadn’t envisioned something as histrionic as a deathbed vow. And yet, so much of her life of late had felt like it had been ripped from the pages of a particularly sensational periodical. She shouldn’t have been so surprised by the Earl of Belhaven’s solemn promise, one that had shackled him to a rather grim future.
“Did—did she ask it of you?” She had to imagine that was the case if he felt obligated to uphold his end of the bargain. But how could someone exact such an oath from one they claimed to love?
He shook his head. “Of course not—”
“Then who was that promise for, Jasper?”
“You don’t understand,” he started, his normally neat hair falling across his brow in disarray, obscuring his eyes from her. She had never seen him so grieved. “This is how I’ve kept going. How I’ve survived.”
She pulled her hand from his and wrapped her arms around herself, weighing her next words carefully. “Surviving isn’t living, Jasper.”
He began to reach for her unconsciously, but stopped, letting his arm fall to his side, his hand forming a fist. “I know.”
But he did not say another word, did not give Jane even an ounce of hope for what might be. How could she have been such a fool? Hadn’t he told her nothing could exist between them? That it was a mistake? She had told herself over and over again that the mantle of sternness he wore was a mask, but she knew now that it was also a shield meant to keep people like her out. She felt no victory at having broken through.
Not if it meant she had something else to lose.
The library was quiet, but Jane’s mind was a riot of thoughts. Jasper only stared at her, his pain as evident as his desire had been. He did not hate her, no. Worse, she suspected that he cared for her in a way no one else ever had, or perhaps ever would. But it didn’t matter. They were both of them tortured by things they could not change, haunted by lives they did not recognize.
This time, Jane was the one to leave.