Chapter Eleven #2
My mother has absolutely no right to speak like that, Jessica thought furiously. No right at all to give her a sidelong look, to glance at her betrothed and to wink—wink!—at her daughter.
“Well, I quite understand,” the Viscountess Pernrith said blithely. “You know, your father and I—”
“Yes, I know the story, Mama,” Jessica said with a wry smile.
“My darling, the carriages are packed and the dragon isn’t going to wait patiently much longer,” her father called out from the front door. “Come along now.”
Jessica looked hurriedly at her mother. “Please, Mama.”
For a moment, she thought her mother might ignore her plea and request her immediate presence inside one of their carriages.
But the Viscountess Pernrith beamed. “Of course, my child. Ask one of your uncles to bring you back with them when they return to London, won’t you?”
“Darling!”
“Yes, Fred, I’m coming,” called her mother, and Jessica glowed, hardly able to believe it. “See you in a few weeks, Jessica—yes, yes, I’m coming!”
Jessica accepted her mother’s embrace and her two kisses on the cheeks, then watched through the window as she ordered a footman to remove her eldest daughter’s possessions from the carriage.
She spoke with the viscount, who frowned but nodded, looking up to catch Jessica’s eye in the window.
“Why hasn’t Jessica come out yet?”
“What is Jess doing there?”
“She’s not, is she?”
The cries and confusion of her siblings barely carried on the breeze, but Jessica was able to catch most of it, and she smiled with a twist in her stomach as the carriages pulled away and started their journey back to London.
It was the first time she had ever been without her family.
The thought jolted her painfully. Well, she was still with family, really—but there was something different about parents and siblings to cousins and aunts and uncles.
Something separate. She was the only Pernrith Chance here. The safety net of her sister, Reeny, who so frequently rescued her from the unpleasantness of awkwardness, was gone.
And Reginald was here.
“You know,” Jessica said quietly, her voice barely making it over a whisper, “this…this marriage of convenience is starting to become more and more…convenient.”
It took a great deal of effort to bring herself to look up as she spoke. Precisely what Jessica wanted to see in Reginald’s face, she did not know.
Delight? Joy? Reserve?
She certainly knew what she did not want to see.
Distaste. Awkwardness. Embarrassment.
All she saw was an open expression and slightly lopsided smile, which was completely impossible to decipher.
And then Reginald took her hand.
“Good,” he said gently.
Jessica’s heart fluttered and she knew she had never felt this way for any gentleman before—more than that, she never would.
What she was sharing with Reginald, what she knew they would share, was so precious that she did not wish to sully it by even considering that another man would make her feel this way.
But did he feel what she felt? Did his pulse skip a beat whenever she walked into a room? Did his soul sing whenever they were together?
“You know, now that you have decided to stay with me—at Stanphrey Lacey, I mean—we probably should put a little more thought into the wedding beyond the banns,” Reginald said, taking Jessica’s hand and slipping it into the crook of his arm as he led her through the front door and out onto the drive.
Jessica glorified in the way that he kept her close so instinctively. No waiting for permission, no hesitation, just a silent declaration of intent.
“I suppose we should,” she agreed as their steps meandered across the gravel onto the wide sweeping lawn.
“Though I hate to tell you that my mother will have arranged the vast bulk of the decisions by the time we return to Town. I would not be surprised if she changes the venue to London, even if it means asking the vicar here to join us there. Not the normal way of things, perhaps, but the Chances do things differently.”
“That they do.” Reginald’s chuckles hummed through her side, they were so close together. “Should I be worried? Your mother appears to me to have excellent taste.”
“Oh, she does. But if you were hoping for a small, quiet wedding with only family,” Jessica said, her lungs tightening, just for a moment, “prepare to be disappointed.”
She was not going to think about it. She was not going to picture the hundreds of guests that her mother, a former flourishing rose of the Season, was going to invite.
She was not going to imagine all those eyes staring, all those voices whispering, wondering how on earth the wallflower Chance had managed to snag a husband.
“I would have thought that a wedding with only your family would be, by definition, not a small or quiet wedding,” Reginald pointed out wryly as they walked past a croquet match that undertaken by a number of cousins.
So far, a physical fight had not broken out, but Frank was playing, so it was only a matter of time.
“I suppose you are right.” Jessica giggled, shaking her head ruefully at the thought.
“Having four siblings and eleven cousins does make for a rather rowdy party. I always looked forward to a quiet home outside London—not too far from my family, but not too close that they could drop in unannounced.”
“It sounds like Llyne Hall might be perfect for us, then.”
“Perfect for us.”
Tingles roared across Jessica’s body, her whole skin overtaken by the smallest of phrases.
“Llyne Hall?”
“Yes, it’s the barony’s seat in Kent. About a day-and-half’s carriage ride from London, so easy enough for a week’s visit, but not sufficiently close for a surprise tea party,” said Reginald with a grin.
“It’s nothing to this place, obviously. Only an eight-bedroomed manor on an estate of a hundred acres or so. ”
Only.
“It sounds…perfect,” Jessica murmured, tightening her grip on his arm.
Was this truly happening? Every now and again she had to almost pinch herself to believe that this was happening, that this wonderful man had chosen her, out of all the women in the world, and was going to make her so happy.
She tried to surreptitiously pinch herself as they rounded the corner of the croquet match—in which Frank was shoving Samuel sharply and yelling about cheating—and started toward the parkland.
No, that pinch had definitely hurt. She was not dreaming.
“I don’t know—I suppose I should, but there is no better time to ask—I don’t know what it is you want from life.”
Jessica looked up. She had been distracted by a herd of deer just visible through the trees, but now she was looking at him, it was to see nervousness on Reginald’s brow.
“‘Want from life’?” she repeated.
“Well, I am to be responsible for your happiness,” Reginald said firmly, as though this were something he discussed every day. “Your father has made that very clear to me.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “My father?”
“Your sister Irene has made that very clear to me,” he amended, and their laughter rang out across the parkland, startling the deer and making them disappear into the more densely planted trees.
“She instructed me, and I quote, ‘to keep her happier each day than the last.’ So I ask again, what do you want from life?”
What did she want from life?
What a question. It was not one she had ever seriously considered. She wanted a great deal, she supposed, but quite what, she did not know.
“I want… I want to be loved,” Jessica said, cheeks burning.
Before Reginald could say anything, she continued.
“And I want to love in return. I want to…to have my own home. To invite family, friends when I want, but to have it to myself with…with the person I love. I want to read every book every written, and hear all the music, and…and build a home. A place I can feel myself, where I never have to worry about being a wallflower because that is precisely where I belong. That… That is what I want from life.”
It was quite a speech, and already, Jessica was regretting a few of the phrases she had chosen. What gentleman wanted to marry such a bore as that?
“And, you know, throw parties,” she added lamely.
His laughter filled her and reassured her in equal measure. “Jessica Chance, you can’t lie to me. I know you.”
And he did. He did know her.
“I agree with the building a home,” Reginald said, wistfully now. “I want our children to grow up in a home where they are exuberantly loved. Wanted, adored, not just tolerated until they can be grown.”
A twist, a shudder low in her gut. Jessica swallowed it down and did not quite understand it. Our children. It was a heady thought, so heady that it made her head swim.
“—other than that, a quiet life,” Reginald was saying. “I am not much one for Society, though I suppose it has its uses. I like… Well. Country living. Riding, hunting, long walks. There are some very pretty cliffs near Llyne Hall, and some wildflowers there you just don’t get anywhere else.”
And Jessica’s breath caught in her throat. “Country living.”
It was all she had ever wanted. All three of her uncles had been wealthy enough for a townhouse and a country estate, and technically, her father had Wickacre—but that had been let now for over a decade to provide a steady income for her parents’ growing brood.
They had never been able to go to the country when London grew hot and unpleasant, except when they were invited to Stanphrey Lacey.
And soon… Soon she would have a home in the country. A place where she could walk uninterrupted on their hundred acres. A place where she could see the sea.
“I’ve never seen the sea,” she said aloud.
“‘Never seen the—’” Reginald halted, his astonishment evidently too great to consider the additional task of walking. “‘Never seen the sea’?”
“When would I have seen the sea?” Jessica rejoined with an awkward laugh. “I’ve always wanted to, but Papa wouldn’t take us to Brighton, and—”
“I want to give you the sea.”
She stared—stared at the earnestness in his face and the depth of candor in his voice. “I beg your pardon?”
Reginald stepped closed, placing his arms around her so that he did not so much pull her into an embrace, but he placed one around her.
One hand lifted, cupping her cheek. “Jessica Chance, I want to give you the sea. I want to give you rolling hills and wildflowers and space, space to be yourself and to know yourself and to know that you are worth the wildflowers and the rolling hills and the sea.”
Jessica could do nothing but stare up at this man. He was… He was…
He was dipping his head to kiss her, but while there was passion in the kiss, there was something more. Reverence, and need, and desperate respect, and a holding back, but only because there was so much desire to dam.
When Reginald lifted his head, Jessica could not help the little whimper of disappointment that the kiss was over.
“We are going to have such a good life,” he murmured.
Joy burst within her and Jessica hardly knew how she could stand there without shouting to the heavens. “We are?”
“We are,” Reginald said with a low chuckle. “Full of—of laughter, and happiness, and seashells, and—”
“And respect, and honesty, and wildflowers,” she added, swept away by the rush of words that he had said.
And he hesitated. Precisely why she did not know, but he hesitated. When he finally spoke, his voice was gravelly, his hand no longer cupping her cheek but brushing a curl out of her eyes.
“And respect, and wildflowers,” Reginald said quietly, his expression a little pensive. “And honesty.”