Chapter Nineteen
Jasper
Jasper didn’t move after Jane left him in the library.
The awareness that he had wronged her was so apparent his skin prickled with it, but he couldn’t go after her. Not after what he had said.
Not after what they had done.
And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. Not even a little. The moment their lips had met, he was hers and she was his, and in another life, they might have had a future together.
But reality was far more complicated.
Never before had he been ruled by such conflicting emotions. There was the ecstasy of having finally acknowledged the truth of what lay between them, of finally giving in to his desire and discovering Jane wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And then there was the wretchedness of his guilt.
Jasper had spent a year avoiding thoughts of Annabelle, certain that if he gave in and truly felt her loss, he would never recover. He had done it in order to keep going. His siblings had needed him to endure.
And yet he had thought of her more times since Jane had arrived than the rest of the year combined, and it hadn’t caused him unendurable pain. It was like looking at the portrait of his parents—the pain was there, would likely never leave him, but the remembrance also brought forth happier memories, or at least echoes of them. Someday he might be able to recall them at will and relive the goodness of knowing Annabelle, and the better person she had made him. He could almost glimpse it now. Almost.
He had sworn never to love again, building a wall around his heart. Enduring, as the Maycott family had always done. But had it served him? Had it made anything easier? Or had the wall kept others out? Others who needed his warmth more than they needed his strength?
Who was that promise for, Jasper?
Jane’s words echoed endlessly in his mind. He had no answer. He had thought the promise was for the family he lost and for the siblings left behind. It was a promise made out of desperation, and he had clung to it in his darkest moments, sure it was the only way forward.
That was why he had pushed Jane away when all he wanted was to give in to the relentless pull of her.
He sank into the armchair by the fire and buried his head in his hands. His mind was clouded by guilt and desire, yes, but above everything else, Jasper was consumed by fear. Fear that he could come to love another the way he had loved Annabelle, and lose them, too. Surely that was the most compelling reason to reestablish the distance between him and Jane.
When Helena at last found him, Jasper wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? Had he wasted a whole night in restless contemplation?
She came to his chair and he noticed she was bundled for the cold.
“You’re missing an outing to the pond and what promises to be Clarence’s long-awaited comeuppance for tripping Isobel three years ago. I’ve never seen her look more wicked than when Viola innocently suggested everyone go skating. What’s more, I think Clarence has forgotten his transgression and is blissfully unaware of what’s coming for him.” She paused and looked down at him slouched in his chair, her brow creasing. “What’s the matter?”
Lucian and Isobel both had offered themselves to Jasper as people he could talk with, but in the end, it was Helena he chose. Helena, who had lost her husband, would know the impossibility of what he felt.
“Do you believe in true love?” he asked bluntly, knowing there would be no easing into the subject. He had to act quickly, before he lost his nerve.
Helena let out a long breath and sat in the armchair next to him, removing her gloves as though aware she would be staying a while. “I do, Jasper.”
It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “Truly? Even after losing Marcus? You still believe there is one person for whom your devotion will eclipse all others?”
“One person? No.” She gave him a smile he tried not to read as pitying. “Love is not a finite thing, and loving again would not lessen what I felt for him.”
The part of Jasper that wanted to believe her roared to life in his chest, but the rest of him worked to smother it. “It doesn’t feel as though you would be dishonoring his memory?”
Helena’s brows shot up. “Is that what you think?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Jasper, why are you holding yourself to a standard she would never have expected of you?” Images of Annabelle flooded his mind. Kind, loving Annabelle. Was Helena right? She leaned closer to him. “If your places had been exchanged, would you have wanted Annabelle to be alone for the rest of her life? Would you have expected her to close her heart off, living only for the memory of you?”
The very idea of it disgusted him. “Never,” was his vehement reply.
“Then you dishonor her by acting as though that is what she would have wanted from you.”
The sudden clarity Helena’s words provided could have knocked him over. Annabelle had been as patient as she was kind, as generous as she was loving. Their time together had been unfairly short, but it had been long enough for Jasper to shed his immaturity, his selfishness, his greed and his vanity. He had grown as a person because of Annabelle’s steady influence. In loving her he had transformed, and in losing her he had shattered. It hurt to think she would not recognize the man he had become, cold and guarded and shut away from the world.
“You’re right,” he remarked, still stunned by it. “And I am a bloody fool who has spent all this time refusing to speak of her, to even think of her, terrified that I was betraying her by…well, continuing to live, I suppose. As though I should have died with her.” A tear escaped the corner of his eye. Jasper waited to feel shame, but none came. Another tear fell, splashing onto the back of his hand, unfurling a great knot in his chest. Why shouldn’t he allow himself to feel this deeply after so long a time spent shunning emotion? “You see, that was what I wanted, Helena. When she lay there dying, I prayed for it, because how could I live without her?” He looked over and watched as Helena wiped her own tears away, but he could not cease his dawning realization. “But then we lost Mother and Father and Anthony, and suddenly I had a duty to provide for the rest of us, and the only way I could fathom it was to seal off my grief and move forward.”
“Enduring as we Maycotts are meant to,” Helena added bitterly, echoing his earlier thoughts.
“I saw you as a grim burden I had no choice but to accept when I should have seen you as my salvation. Christ, who knows where I would be without you?”
A few heartbeats passed before she spoke. “You were our salvation, too, Jasper.”
She seemed to mean it, but Jasper couldn’t accept it. “A fine job I’ve done of that.”
“Give yourself an inch of credit. It’s only been a year since we lost them. We all needed one another to see our way through the storm. And the change I’ve seen in you since Jane arrived…” She let the sentence linger, inviting him to acknowledge the effect Jane had on him, should he wish to.
“She has been a welcome distraction,” he said, knowing she had been a great deal more, but that saying it aloud would only serve to pain him.
“Only a distraction?” Helena asked, her voice heavy with skepticism.
He couldn’t go down that road. “Nothing can come of it, Helena. Not when she might have a whole life to return to.”
“One that doesn’t include you?” Helena surmised.
“Precisely.”
She tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair, tilting her head. “Perhaps she could have both, her past and her present. Maybe they are not incompatible things.”
This time, he could not stop the burst of warmth in his chest that accompanied Helena’s words. Because that was what he wanted. A way forward with Jane, broken as he was by grief.
“It matters not. I’ve pushed her away too many times, Helena. I’m not even sure I want what it is I think I want, or if it’s fair to her to keep getting close only to realize I’m not ready.”
“Perhaps you should talk to her.”
It was a dreadfully simple concept, speaking to the woman at the center of his every thought. And yet the Jasper of a half hour hence would have feared it. That Jasper had pushed her away, warm and wanting, in favor of self-imposed isolation.
Christ, Isobel is right. I really am an idiot sometimes.
Jane undoubtedly deserved better than a man who had needed another’s permission to even fathom a different future for himself, but more than anything, she deserved an apology. He could give her that, at the very least.
He sighed. “I swore I’d never love again.”
Helena shook her head. “An empty promise.”
“And yet I meant it. Held myself to it, too.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Jasper, but rather that I don’t think you have much choice in the matter. None of us do.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “You cannot help how you feel, and if your heart is telling you Jane is the answer, who are you to deny it?”
He couldn’t accept that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
“Without her memories—”
“I’m not saying you have to marry her, Jasper.” She sat back in the chair. “I’m simply saying you needn’t fear your own feelings. You dishonor no one by listening to your heart.”
“Thank you, Helena.” He looked over to her and out the window. “You should join the others.”
She grinned as she put her gloves back on. “I wouldn’t want to miss Isobel’s revenge.” She stood and patted his shoulder as she walked past him.
“What about you?” he called out. Helena had been without her husband longer than he had been without Annabelle. He wanted to see his sister love again, should she wish it. “Do you think you will? Love another, that is.”
She turned back to him, her smile small as she shook her head. “Perhaps someday.”
…
The door to the Lavender Room was shut, so Jasper knocked softly, not wanting to startle Jane.
“Lady Viola?” she called. Jasper was not surprised by who she was expecting.
“No, it’s me,” he replied. “It’s Jasper.”
It was so quiet behind the door that he was sure she was ignoring him. He supposed he deserved it, and cursed himself once more for his blasted sternness. But then the door opened, and there she was, hair mussed, dress rumpled, eyes red-rimmed behind her spectacles. She was so beautiful, so vibrant, he almost ached to look at her.
“Jane,” he breathed, desperately wishing he knew her real name so he could ensnare her with it the way she had him.
She folded her arms across her chest. “What do you want, Jasper?”
“May I come in?”
She said nothing as she moved aside to let him in. It was a start. He stepped into the warm room, pausing in the center and turning around to face her.
He took a deep breath. “I am so sorry.”
“What is it you’re apologizing for?”
Jasper wasn’t sure where to begin. His sins were many, but he would start with the most egregious. “For my inability to confide in you long after you had proven yourself trustworthy.” He swallowed the desire to leave it at that. “I should have told you about Annabelle from the start.”
“Why didn’t you?” He could see that she was hurt by it. “You speak of our shared grief but kept your deepest pain from me.”
“I believed I was doing what I must. It’s a poor excuse, but it was all I had to hold on to. I thought if I acknowledged the loss of her, everything I had fought bitterly for would crumble and I would fail.”
“And? Did it? Did you ?”
He shook his head. “All I have learned is that I should have spoken of her sooner, though I suppose now is as good a time as any, if you’ll hear it.” Jane nodded and moved to sit in the armchair by her bed. Jasper was far too anxious to sit still. He had spent most of their time together concealing a part of himself, but all he wanted now was to be known by her, and to know her, as much of her as he could before it was too late. “Annabelle and I were engaged only a short time before she died last year of scarlet fever, just before my parents and brother. Her father was the vicar of Wrayford and she liked to go with him when he traveled through the parish, tending to his flock, as it were. She had a particular fondness for women and children in need. She was always finding work for widows and unwed mothers, tending to their children when she could, making sure they understood the power of an education. She was the light of her father’s life, and he hers. Even after we knew of the illness, she wouldn’t leave him to perform his duties alone.”
“A strong woman,” Jane offered.
“Indeed. I was with her when she died, and losing her almost killed me. But then I lost so much more, and suddenly I had people depending on me, and I could not fail. I bottled up that sorrow and refused to acknowledge it, and it worked, for a time. Or rather, I thought it did. I distracted myself by aiding my tenants, felling trees, building barns, anything to keep my mind from what we lost. But then you arrived.” It had only been days but Jasper felt in his bones that he had known Jane a great deal longer, like she had always been there in the orbit of his life. Perhaps they were two planets on converging paths, destined to align, however briefly. “At first, I saw you as another distraction, or better yet, someone I could save. An atonement, perhaps, for those I couldn’t. But you are so much more to me than that, Jane.” His voice cracked with feeling, but he needed her to understand him. “You forced me to recall the things I buried. But it did not hurt the way I thought it would. And I realized that acting the way I did about Annabelle almost made it seem like knowing her was a curse, but I was blessed to know her, as I am blessed to know you.” Both women mattered to him in ways he could not yet put into words, but he was relieved to find that whatever he felt for Jane was different from how he felt when he thought about Annabelle now. They were not linked, as he had feared they would be. “Each time you speak of your debt to me I am almost overcome with the need to tell you the truth, Jane.”
“And what is that?” she asked.
“That I am the one who is indebted to you, and I always will be.”
It wasn’t the sort of impassioned declaration one might expect from a man as besotted as he, but it meant as much to Jasper as more sentimental words would have. He suspected Jane would perceive the deeper meaning as well.
“Jasper,” she whispered, her voice laden with emotion. But he was not done.
He stepped closer to where she sat and kneeled before her. “Please forgive me, dear Jane. I know my transgressions against you are many, but the fault has never lain with you.”
She took his hand in hers. “There is nothing to forgive.” He did not expect her pardon, but it was a balm for his wearied heart. Her thumb rubbed across the back of his hand. “I would dearly love to know more about her, about all of them, if ever you wish to tell me.”
There was no heat in her touch, only a deep sense of caring. Jasper was surprised by how much he needed that from her. But then, that was how she had forced him to shed that protective layer, inch by inch, with her kindness and her stubbornness both, even when he had shut her out. Without it, his very soul was bared to her, but he did not fear her seeing him clearer. Jane had seen through his mask from the start. It was Jasper who hadn’t seen himself fully until now.
“I only wish I could help you the way you’ve helped me.”
She brought her hand to his cheek. There was that ache again, that feeling that his future was within reach, and yet also never further from his grasp. “You’ve done more for me than any stranger might deserve.”
“Especially one who ruined a perfectly good pair of boots,” he added playfully.
Her smile went wicked. “A first impression you’ll never forget, I’d wager.”
The ache deepened. “There isn’t a thing about you I’ll ever forget, Jane.”
Her eyes fell to his mouth. Jasper hadn’t dared to hope that they could return to what they’d left unfinished in the library. His only goal had been to apologize to her. But as he watched her bite her bottom lip, desire gripped him once more.
She pushed her fingers through his hair as though she could not help herself. There were no words to describe how it felt to have her touch him so intimately. Rapture, perhaps. Paradise. Utter bliss. “So soft,” she remarked. “I’ve wanted to do this since you brought me my spectacles. The way you looked at me could have set my skin aflame.”
“We spoke of debt then, too, do you remember?” His words were heavy with the desire he feared he could not contain much longer.
“It was hard not to feel like I owed you something,” she whispered.
“You do not owe me anything, Jane. You know that, right?”
She nodded. “And yet,” she began, trailing her fingers along his jaw, “I wish to give you everything.”
He stiffened at the admission, knowing he was inches away from taking her in his arms and finishing what they’d started.
But a howling at the door interrupted them. Mr. Darcy was demanding entrance.
“He likes how the sun comes through my window,” Jane said in the cat’s defense.
Unwilling to disappoint either of them, Jasper stood and went to the door to let the tiny beast in just as Isobel rounded the corner, her cheeks deeply pink and her eyes wide.
“You’re lucky it’s only me,” she chided lightly. “If Aunt Adelaide caught you alone in Jane’s room—”
“Well, it’s a good thing it’s you, isn’t it?” he replied smartly, snatching Mr. Darcy up from the ground and holding him against his chest. “How did your campaign of revenge fare? Is Clarence still breathing?”
She looked between him and Jane both before smirking in a rather knowing manner. “He’ll live, but how long can a man survive without his pride?”
“Too long,” he replied. “We are talking about Clarence.”
Helena and August appeared behind Isobel, all of them as pink-cheeked as their sister.
“Oh good, you’re here,” said Helena, graciously not mentioning the impropriety of it. “Viola and Freddie are thawing out by the hearth in the great room, but I wanted to find you and tell you we ran into Lady Cordelia at the pond.”
“Oh?” Her father, the Earl of Banfield, had been one of their father’s closest friends. He and his wife had been most persistent in their efforts to lure Jasper and his siblings out of their seclusion over the past year.
“Her parents are hosting a ball and hoped we’d attend,” said Isobel. “Lady Cordelia was certain we were sent an invitation. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Jasper?”
Jasper had long given up on managing the tottering pile of correspondence on his desk, and Battersby knew better than to bring an invitation to his attention. “I’m sure I don’t,” he replied stiffly.
“In any event, it is tonight and since she encountered us with a number of guests of our own, I didn’t see an easy way to refuse her.”
“You cannot seriously be thinking of attending a ball,” he scoffed. It was enough that their manor was filled with Jasper’s closest friends. To venture out into the wider world seemed an impossibility, to say nothing of what it might mean for Jane.
“It’s a masquerade, Jasper. You wouldn’t even have to show your face.” Helena raised a brow at him. “Seems a decent choice to ease our way back into Society, no? Besides, everyone has already retreated to their rooms to ready themselves. You’ll have a hard time dissuading them, Beatrice especially. She seems to think Lady Banfield will be an easy target for a sizeable donation to her charitable efforts of bettering the already immaculate grounds of St. James’s Park.”
August let out a low whistle. “Just think of what she could do with all that money.”
Isobel tsk ed before taking Mr. Darcy from Jasper’s arms and depositing him in her lap. “Waste it and her time both.”
“A noble endeavor, then,” August added.
“This is madness,” Jasper muttered to no one in particular.
Isobel rounded on him. “Think, Jasper. A night spent at a ball is one less night you’ll have to entertain your friends on your own.”
“It’s an easy win, Brother,” August added.
“I wouldn’t mind attending,” said Jane. Jasper was sure no one else noticed how she wavered ever so slightly as she spoke.
“It would be a clever way to discern if Jane has any ties to the area,” said August.
“Yes, of course!” Isobel exclaimed. “Why, we could solve the mystery of Jane-without-a-surname at last!”
Jane cleared her throat. “Or at least rule out some possibilities.” She looked over to him, pleading with her eyes that he acquiesce. The whole room was waiting for his answer, but none of them knew of the danger Jane was in, not even Jane herself.
But he didn’t necessarily want to reveal the truth to them all. Seeking a deflection, he cleared his throat. “I worry about—”
“You? Worry ? What a surprise,” Isobel huffed. “Precisely what do you have to be concerned about, Jasper? It’s a country ball, not an event in bloody Mayfair, packed to the hilt with hawkish Society mamas. You could hardly ask for a better or kinder reintroduction to the concept of a ball.”
His sister made a compelling argument, one he would have trouble pushing against. “It’s a very sensitive time of year—”
“All the more reason to seek out frivolity when and where we can,” she shot back, her anger rising.
“What if—”
“Christ, Jasper, what if what ?” She threw her arms in the air in exasperation. “Stay home if you must, but we are going, and that includes Jane. And if you try to stop us, I will simply enlist the help of Aunt Adelaide—”
“It isn’t bloody safe for Jane, Isobel!”
The room quieted at once, and Jane stepped between them, looking pale. “Why not?”
There’d be no getting out of it now. “You said something when we found you in the road, something you don’t remember, something that leads me to believe we should avoid things like balls until we know more.”
Her brow creased. “What did I say?”
He pressed his lips together in a frown. “Should we perhaps speak about this in private?”
She shook her head. “Your family knows as much about me as I do; it would hardly seem fair to keep this from them.”
Behind her, Isobel nodded in agreement. Jasper was far too aware that it would be impossible to change Jane’s mind on the matter, but it seemed wrong to utter her own dire plea back to her in so inauspicious a setting.
“Jasper,” she said, leveling him with the way her voice cracked over his name. “Please.”
He couldn’t keep it from her. Perhaps he never should have. He took a deep breath. “When I came upon you, you told me you were being pursued. I saw no one, but your fear was…visceral.” He paused, waiting for her reaction. But Jane was silent. He watched her chest rise and fall, the only evidence of her shaky breaths. She was doing her damnedest to hold herself together. “You were unconscious again before I could ask more of you.”
She nodded and looked down at the floor. Panic gripped him as he wondered if he was forcing her to relive her worst memory, one that had been buried for a reason. All at once he knew he never had a right to demand her past from her. Whether she remembered it or not, it belonged to Jane. If forcing her recollection was going to harm her, he wanted none of it. Let her be a blank slate. Let her forget that which would torment her.
But he would always remember that fear in her eyes. Anger filled him at the thought of Jane being in danger, but without knowing what had happened to her, he had nowhere to direct it.
If she asked it of him, he would tear the countryside apart to find those who sought to hurt her. Hell, he would go to the ends of the earth if it meant keeping her safe. He owed that to her, and so much more. Because back in the great room, when she had spoken in jest of him always coming to her rescue, Jasper had been struck by the truth.
Jane had been the one to rescue him, long before he knew he needed it.