Chapter Seventeen #3
Jessica bit her lip and tried desperately to hold on to the fact that she was angry at Reginald, very angry.
But the heat, the flames circling in her, did not feel like hate. They felt like love.
“I can see why you were so upset,” said a voice from a long way off. Jessica blinked.
Irene was staring, clearly troubled. “I suppose you are never going to see him again, after such a revelation. I suppose none of the family is.”
“I… I would not wish to dictate to anyone what they should do in their personal lives,” Jessica said awkwardly.
Never see Reginald again. That was what she had told him, after demanding that he leave Stanphrey Lacey. It was only now she was back home that she realized just what a lonely prospect that was.
A life without Reginald. A life without the man who made her smile, who had somehow won her heart—who had said that she had won his.
But how could she love a man who was so…so painfully and honestly logical?
“Is it possible that you have made a mistake?” asked Irene quietly. “We all knew there was some reason he asked for your hand before he even met you.”
Jessica swallowed. “No! No. No, I don’t… I don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know,” pressed her sister. “You are not absolutely sure.”
It was all so confusing. It had hurt, to know that the beginning of their connection had been so intensely cold, had marked her as someone who would be desperate to accept any proposal, any man, merely because she was a wallflower.
Though she had proven him absolutely right in that point.
But no, she would not have accepted any man in those circumstances. She was certain of that. There had been something special about the baron that had drawn her to him from the start.
Still, he would not know that. How gratified he must have felt that the dull-as-ditchwater wallflower had accepted him without a fuss.
She sighed. Jessica could not deny that though the beginning had perhaps been unfortunate, what had blossomed, what had grown between them…that had been something truly spectacular. Something special.
Something she had never expected to know.
But her own feelings aside, Irene had not mentioned her thoughts on the baron’s brother being accused of treachery. Whatever the man had done, whatever information he had leaked, could her family accept that? Her marrying into the family of a traitor?
Could she accept that?
She did not know the circumstances, or whether the man’s actions had been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. But she found she did not care. Lord Llyne—Reginald—was not his brother. And she would not punish him for his brother’s actions, even if all of London chose to do so.
Just as no one should have punished him—or punished her father—for the choices made by their fathers.
“It’s a good thing I have not canceled any of the wedding plans, then,” came a quiet voice.
Both Jessica and her sister spun around, but it was the former who cried, “Mother!”
“Well, disagreements almost always happen during an engagement. It is a natural part of the courting process, if you ask me,” said the Viscountess Pernrith leisurely as she stepped around the door she had clearly been hiding behind as she’d listened to their conversation.
“You should have heard the rows your father and I enjoyed in the lead-up to our wedding.”
The idea of their parents rowing was quite astonishing. Jessica stared, open-mouthed. “You and Papa?”
“He was in the wrong, mostly, but I was wrong to hold it so against him for so long,” her mother said gently, reaching the pianoforte and placing a hand on her shoulder. “If you love him—if there is absolutely any part of you that wishes for reconciliation—then you know what it is you have to do.”
Jessica tried to force down the nausea that rose up at the very thought. “Y-Yes. Yes, but…but I can’t.”
“Jess,” Irene began, but she was spoken over by their mother.
“You are a wallflower, Jessica, but that does not mean that you can just let life pass you by.”
Jessica laughed bitterly. “Oh, it is so easy for you to say that, Mama. You were the flourishing rose of your Season! You were beloved wherever you went. Grandpapa told me once that you had to fight men off with a stick.”
There was just a flicker in her mother’s expression. “Well… Well, not quite all of that.”
“He told me that you declined several proposals before accepting Papa,” Irene said—not quite accusatorily, but with a certain amount of direction. “You’re not like Jessica.”
She was so accustomed to the casual slight that Jessica did not even wince. “I cannot go to Reginald—to Lord Llyne. I cannot find the…the confidence, the bravery to do it.”
And she hated that about herself, and she had no idea why she could not bring herself to do it, except that she couldn’t.
Jessica tried to grin, but the tears were falling now and there was no point in attempting to stop them. “I’m just not brave enough. What if he rejects me? What if—what if he laughs at me? I love him, I couldn’t stand to face that. I’m not brave enough to take that chance.”