Chapter Eight
It was all going incredibly well, and that could only mean one thing.
Well, not the letter burning a hole in his pocket. The letter from his brother—well, more of a note—was short, perfunctory, and galling.
Reginald—awfully sorry to be delayed in returning home. Do not worry, nothing to concern yourself with. I’ll explain all when I’m home. Peter
Explain it all when he got home—the cheek! As though he could explain away treachery…
But if one ignored the letter entirely and focused instead on the game before him… everything was going incredibly well.
Reginald grinned as he leaned back after hitting a particularly impressive shot on the billiards table. It was fast becoming his favorite room here at Stanphrey Lacey, a place that was calm, cool, and without—
“Reginald Blakley, how dare you lie to me!”
It was perfectly natural to flinch. Reginald did so instinctively, ducking down and holding up the billiards cue as a defense against the marauding—
Jessica?
“Jessica?” he said, unable to hide the surprise in his tone. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me! Is it true?” Jessica snapped, her eyes narrowed and her fists clenched at her sides.
Reginald opened his mouth…then closed it again. “Don’t you dare talk.”
Well, how on earth was he supposed to explain anything, then?
There was a snort of laughter from the other side of the billiards table. “Someone’s in trouble,” said Jessica’s brother in a singsong voice. “Someone’s in—”
“Say another word, Michael, and I will stick that billiards cue right up your—”
“Steady on, sis!” said the young man as his jaw dropped and he reflexively took a step back. “What has gotten into you?”
It was a fair question, though Reginald was glad he had not been the one to ask it.
Jessica looked…strange. Her cheeks flushed, yes, but not in the same way they normally were.
They were often tinged with the delicate blush of embarrassment, but this was different.
Bolder, a darker red—and there was no hint of shyness in her eyes, as there usually was.
She stood there, grasping the billiards table with her hands, looking like an avenging angel who had just been informed of all his sins.
Reginald swallowed. Surely, not all of them. Where had she found the time?
“You,” Jessica said, and it was a malediction that made Reginald take another step back. “You lied to me!”
“Ah,” he said weakly. “Well.”
What was a gentleman supposed to say about that?
Yes, yes, of course I lied to you!
And a great number of lies had been told, now he came to think. Oh, Reginald did not typically like to catalogue these things, but as Miss Jessica Chance looked as though she could quite readily tear the billiards table apart with her bare fists, perhaps it was time to take stock.
So: he had lied to her about precisely why he had wanted to marry her.
He had not told her how he had come to choose her, out of all her cousins.
He had lied about his parentage—that was, he had told others in the family about it, but not her. Surely, she considered that an omission?
He had certainly omitted the exact nature of his brother’s absence from the country.
Reginald tried, desperately, not to clench his own fists. That brother of his was the root problem of all this. It had been his foolish treachery that had meant he, Reginald, had had to take this outrageous step to secure the family’s name.
Which…he had also not told Jessica about.
So, he wondered as he looked up into his intended’s irate face, which of these lies, or lies by omission, had she discovered?
“You,” Jessica said, raising a hand to point at him—Reginald took another hasty step back. “You have been lying about the gambling debts you’ve been racking up with my family!”
“Ah,” said Reginald in a sweep of relief.
“Ah,” said Jessica’s brother, his utterance sounding a tad less relieved. “You know, I think I’ll just go and—”
“You can stay right there, Michael Chance,” Jessica said darkly, and Reginald was not surprised that the young man remained rooted to the spot. “Gambling! What would Mama say?”
“Mama never has to know.”
“Oh, so you would once again like me to keep a secret for you?”
Reginald’s head darted back and forth between the arguing siblings and tried not to smile.
Well, considering what it could have been, it was not much of a secret, was it? A few pounds here and there, and between family too—or at least, men who would soon be his family. What did it matter?
No, considering the little lies he had already told, along with the gaping lies of omission, he was fortunate indeed that Jessica had not uncovered any of them. If that occurred, he rather thought it would be his own billiards cue which would disappear up his—
“—greatly disappointed in you,” Jessica finished.
Much to Reginald’s surprise, as he did not consider a sister’s disappointment to be that great a threat, Michael hung his head.
“I am sorry, Jessica,” he said humbly.
The statement appeared to rid the young woman of all her ire. She deflated, took a deep breath, and said, “Right. Well. Good. Now go away.”
Reginald stiffened. “No. What about our game?”
“Got to go. Sorry, old man,” said Michael hastily, clapping Reginald on the arm and giving him a brief grin before adding in a whisper, “Just apologize as soon as you can get a word in edgeways. Works every time with my sisters.”
The rogue winked and then stepped out of the billiards room.
Ah. So perhaps the humble apology from the young man was not precisely what it appeared.
Clearly, Jessica was well aware of this, however, for she sighed heavily and before Reginald could protest, picked up one of the billiards balls and moved it from hand to hand. “He always apologizes, even when he doesn’t mean it. Especially when he doesn’t mean it.”
Reginald cleared his throat. “Ah, well, you know. Brothers.”
There was still a tension in the room somehow, but he could not quite put his finger on why.
The afternoon sun was starting its journey back down toward the horizon, though it would be hours before it dipped out of sight.
The warmth was pleasant this side of the house, and until a few minutes ago, the room had been full of his and Michael’s laughter as they’d played for another shilling. A shilling he had been about to win.
And now…
Now it was different. Oh, Jessica brought a sort of uncomfortable heat in his loins whenever she walked into a room, but this was different even to that.
There was a sharpness to her eyes, her expression one Reginald had not seen before. Almost as though she were preparing to say something. Something she did not wish to express.
Perhaps Michael was right. An apology, that would fix it. Whatever this was.
“I am sorry,” Reginald said, finding that he was, much to his own surprise. “I should not have told you I wouldn’t be tempted by a bet.”
“I don’t care about the gambling,” Jessica muttered, still moving the billiards ball from one hand to the other.
“You… You don’t?”
It was not often that Reginald was bewildered, but the word was particularly apt in this moment. She did not care about the gambling, and yet she had marched into the room like a Valkyrie.
So what was the problem? Why was she now examining him as though attempting to look through his skull into his very thoughts? And why was there a prickle of anticipation in his body that made him sense an incoming storm?
Jessica sighed and placed the billiard ball back down on the table—at least three inches, from Reginald’s judgment, from where it had been. “It’s not the gambling. It’s the not knowing.”
The not knowing.
His mind was working swiftly, but clearly not swiftly enough, and Reginald found to his great distaste that he was being left behind in the conversation.
“‘The not knowing,’” he repeated, hoping that by saying the phrase aloud, it would unlock its secrets for him.
No, he still did not understand. Was he supposed to have told her about the three pounds her brother owed him, and the half a crown he owed her father? The sums were so small, he had honestly forgot them entirely until she had marched into the room.
Surely, that could not be it…
Jessica swallowed, her throat bobbing in a way that distracted Reginald to no end. He wasn’t supposed to be looking at the curve of her neck, not thinking what it would be like to press kisses there, to taste her pulse—
“I wasn’t going to ask this, but I can’t help myself,” she said in a rush, drawing Reginald’s attention unexpectedly back to her face. “But finding out from my father that you’ve been gambling with him—”
“It was just for a few coins—”
“I know.” She was smiling now, and Reginald could hardly tell whether he should have been concerned or delighted. “I know, but it…it made me realize how much I don’t know you. Not in the way I want to. Not in the way I would want to know my husband.”
“My husband.”
Something strange happened to Reginald’s spine when she’d said those words. Small, perhaps generally innocuous, and yet they made his spine tingle and his shoulders crack.
He was to be her husband—and she was right, she did not know him. That had all been on purpose, but…
“Why me?”
Reginald’s whole body tensed. He could not have heard that correctly, could he?
Jessica was leaning her palms elegantly on the billiards table now, her head tilting to one side as she examined him, watched him, as she waited for the answer to her question.
He swallowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“I told myself I would not ask. I told myself it did not matter,” Jessica said, and there was a lightness to her voice that spoke not of nonchalance, but of great and delicate care.
“But finding out from my father—I know ’tis only for a few shillings, but it made me realize just how little I know.
And so I wanted to start at the beginning.
Why you chose me. Why… Why did you choose me, Reginald? ”
Oh, hell.
It was the question he had hoped she would never ask.