Chapter Nineteen #2
There was no time to talk, no time for a pelisse, not even time to find the errant family umbrella that seemed to have a mind of its own and wander about the place, only coming out from hiding when it was lovely and sunny.
Jessica grabbed the door handle, wrenched the door open, and stepped outside.
She was drenched within a moment. The rain, which had looked pretty and sparkling as it had slid down the panes from the drawing room, was torrential. It splattered her skirts, poured down her sleeves, and quickly pasted her curls to her forehead.
Jessica ignored it.
There were few carriages about and even fewer pedestrians in this weather, so she did not need to hesitate before she crossed the road. Holding her arms stiffly by her sides, she approached the man she had hoped never to see again and spoke coldly.
“Well?”
Reginald, Lord Llyne, looked at her with wide eyes. “You shouldn’t be out here!”
“You were staring at my home. There was talk,” Jessica said woodenly. Well, it was technically true. Irene had said something. “Well?”
“But you’re going to get wet!” Reginald said, clearly alarmed.
Going to get was not quite the right way to phrase it. Based on the chilly trickles down her shoulder blades, Jessica would hazard that she was already wet through.
“I am wet,” she said blandly, trying not to notice the rugged line of his jaw and his intensely kissable lips. It was so unfair. Why does the man have to be so…so handsome? “Please, say what you came to say, then go.”
Reginald hesitated. His umbrella had prevented the worst of the rain, but his feet had to be soaked and the bottoms of his trousers were sodden.
“At least come closer so you can gain protection from my umbrella,” he said quietly.
Jessica tried not to think about the temptation. “No, thank you,” she said curtly. Even an inch closer to the man who made her want to throw herself into his arms would be too close. “What did you want to say?”
Until now, she had managed to avoid looking directly into the man’s eyes, but as the silence elongated out between them, Jessica found that she could no longer resist.
She looked up, into Reginald’s stormy eyes, and wished things could have been different.
She wasn’t sure quite how different. Just not…this. Not misunderstandings, and anger, and lies. Not desperation from him to be part of her family, in any way he could. Not realizing that she was considered low-hanging fruit, so desperate that she would accept any offer of marriage.
Perhaps if they had met across a ballroom, or seated next to each other at a dinner, things could have been different.
She had to trust that he would have loved her even in those circumstances. But a voice inside her mocked her, telling he never would have looked her way without that desperation to seek a suitable Chance wife. And that voice’s whispers hurt.
Jessica swallowed, hardening her heart. They had not met under beautiful beginnings. Their circumstances had been this. He might have believed that she would grasp at any chance she could take to be married, but she wanted more than that.
Better than that.
“I… I had a whole speech prepared.”
Jessica watched as Reginald swallowed, his throat bobbing and reminding her of illicit kisses. She knew precisely what that part of him tasted like—
She blinked. Concentrate!
“I had a whole speech prepared that was designed to make you forgive me,” Reginald said, his grin nervous and lopsided. “I was going to convince you that…that I was the man that you should want. That I was the right sort of gentleman for you to marry. That you should marry me.”
The rain continued to pour down, falling into Jessica’s eyes, but she did not look away.
She braced herself. He had not come to tell her he was moving on with another. “Go on, then.”
“No.”
Jessica’s lips parted in astonishment. He had come all this way, stood outside her home staring at her through the rain, made her come out in this downpour…and he still wasn’t even going to fight for her?
“No,” repeated Reginald, smiling ruefully as he lowered his umbrella, closing it up and leaning it against the house they were standing outside as the rain now beat down on him. “No, I won’t. A speech designed to convince you to marry me isn’t fair on you.”
It was difficult not to gape. “I… I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to convince you to love me,” he said simply, rain now dripping into his hair.
“I don’t want to use words to trick you into forgiving me.
I could say any number of things that would manipulate you, Miss Jessica Chance, and I won’t do that.
I admire you, I respect you too much for that. ”
Jessica blinked, partly to rid her eyes from the rain and partly because she was struggling to comprehend just what this man was saying.
“You see, I have made so many mistakes already. I think it’s about time I stopped making mistakes and started making the right decisions,” Reginald said, with almost a laugh.
“Jessica, I have made so many mistakes! Not telling you how this all came to be. Pretending to myself that I did not care for you, that all I sought was the security of a respected family’s connection.
Rushing into a marriage to fix a problem that did not even exist.”
“‘Did not exist’?” Jessica found herself taking a step forward through the sheet of falling rain, hardly able to hear the man standing before her. “You’re speaking of your brother?”
“My brother—I thought he was a traitor to the Crown, but now it appears I was wrong about that,” Reginald said heavily. “And I was wrong about you.”
Jessica stiffened. So he is only here to offend me!
“I was wrong in thinking that I could get to know you and not fall desperately, head over heels in love with you.” Reginald’s gaze raked her face.
“I was wrong in thinking that I could withhold my own feelings and make this a true marriage of convenience, not caring if my bride was hurt by my family’s scandal.
I was wrong thinking that I could live a day without you, Jessica, because I-I can’t.
I can’t do it. Not anymore. Not ever again. ”
Emotions churned within Jessica and she tried to blink away what could have been tears or could have been rain. She did not know.
“You hurt me,” she said quietly.
“And that is something for which I will never be able to forgive myself,” Reginald said hastily, stepping forward.
Jessica took an instinctive step back and she saw the pain flash across the man’s eyes, heard the hitch in his breath.
“I…” She swallowed. “I knew from the start it was a marriage of convenience, but to read that list—”
“I should never have written that list,” Reginald said hastily.
“But you did.” Jessica looked up at him, searching his expression for she knew not what. Repentance? That was there in abundance. Was it enough? “To be compared, my whole life, to always know there were others in my own family more beautiful, more intellectual, more entertaining…”
Her voice trailed away as thunder rolled above them. The rain did not cease. Her gown was sticking to her now, the damp reaching all the way through her chemise to her skin.
When Jessica looked back at the man opposite her, it was to see that his woolen coat was just as wet, and his eyes were just as soft.
“I wanted to be someone’s first choice,” she said simply. “I thought, when you first arrived at Stanphrey Lacey, that I was. That you had chosen me because you wanted me.”
“I did not know what a fool I was then,” Reginald said delicately, and when he stepped forward this time, Jessica found she did not want to step back. “I would be even more of a fool if I were to lose you for a second time.”
“You lost me because of your own actions,” Jessica reminded him, her lungs shortening as his intoxicating presence took another step toward her.
Reginald pushed a damp curl of hair away from her face and her skin burned where his fingertips brushed it. “I know. What I want to know is, can I win you back because of my own actions?”
And then she was kissing him. Jessica knew she would not be able to stand it, stand him for much longer, and it was a relief to step into his embrace and lift her lips to be worshipped.
Reginald evidently did not need any further convincing. He captured her lips with a low groan of need that crushed her mouth, but Jessica accepted it, accepted the fervor and the need, his hands swiftly cupping her face as though he had been hungering for her for days.
The pleasure that rippled through her teased to a higher peak as his tongue swept across her lips and parted them, delving deeper as one of Reginald’s hands left her face but swiftly grabbed her waist, pulling her close.
The rain poured down and Jessica could hardly tell anymore where she stopped and where Reginald began.
Then the kiss was over.
The kiss was, but the embrace was not. Jessica pulled back just enough to look into Reginald’s eyes and prepared herself to say what she must.
“No more secrets,” she said sternly.
“Never,” Reginald said, leaning forward for another kiss.
Jessica held back, trying not to smile. “No more rankings.”
“Never again,” he murmured, trying with a laugh to capture her lips. “Unless it is to say you stand above all others. Far above. Kiss me, Jessica.”
“Only when you agree to marry me.”
The words had been those she had dreamed of these last few days, words she had hoped she would one day say, but she could hardly believe that in this downpour, they had fallen from her lips.
Reginald stared. “You—You want to marry me?”
“You are not perfect,” Jessica said quietly, “but—”
“Tad of an understatement.”
“But neither am I. I don’t want perfection, Reginald, that was never what I hoped for.” Jessica grabbed his lapels to pull him closer. Oh, this man. “But I want honesty. I want truth, and I want devotion, and I want… I want you.”
It cost her a great deal to say such things, laying her heart bare and making it possible for the man to injure her.
But as she looked up at Reginald’s open expression, she knew he would not. Not on purpose, at any rate—and was that not what trust was? Knowing that a person’s intentions were good and even if—even when they failed to be the best they could possibly be, to love them, anyway?
Reginald lowered his forehead to hers and their breath mingled, both of his hands now around her waist as a passerby tutted. “Jessica, I do not deserve you.”
“No, perhaps not,” she murmured, joy singing so sweetly in her that she was rather surprised that he couldn’t hear it. “But I want you. We can learn together, grow together. I just want to be together.”
“Always,” said the man she loved, kissing her forehead before capturing her mouth once again to lavish another kiss as the rain poured down. “Always.”