Chapter 17
The vicar was speaking when Caroline felt the air inside the chapel shifting.
It began as a whisper — a faint rustle among the pews, the flutter of a fan snapping closed. Then, like the breaking of a tide, the murmurs swelled into something jagged, uneasy. The taut silence before the storm.
The vicar, startled by the sudden motion, hesitated mid-blessing.
A man had risen from the pews.
Jasper.
His face was pale, his eyes wild, his hair disheveled as though he had spent the night wrestling with demons. He stood rigidly at first, his hands clenched at his sides. Then he took one slow step forward, and another, boots ringing sharply on the marble floor.
The guests turned in their seats, craning to see.
“Jasper,” Lady Ophelia hissed from her place near the front, half rising. “Sit down this instant.”
He did not move. His gaze fixed on Richard with something between fury and despair.
“You think this is funny, don’t you?” he spat, his voice hoarse. “You always did.”
Richard stiffened, every muscle tensing beneath his coat. “Not now.”
“Oh, now,” Jasper snarled, his composure unraveling. “Now is perfect. Let them all see. Let them see what the Devil truly is.”
Gasps rippled through the chapel. Caroline’s hand tightened instinctively on Richard’s arm, though whether from fear or instinct she did not know.
Richard’s voice dropped to a warning growl. “Stand down, Jasper.”
But Jasper only laughed—a harsh, broken sound. “Stand down? When have I ever stood up, Richard? You’ve seen to that, haven’t you? Always above me, always taking what was mine.”
“Enough,” Richard snapped. “This is neither the place nor the–”
“Nor the time?” Jasper’s shout cracked through the air like a whip. “You’ve taken everything from me—even time!”
The congregation shifted uneasily. Fans fluttered, whispers hissed.
Richard took a step forward, his voice low but lethal. “Say another word, cousin, and you’ll regret it.”
But Jasper’s expression twisted, his fury too long contained to be stopped now. “Regret? I regret nothing—except not killing you outright when I had the chance.”
A stunned silence fell.
Caroline’s breath caught. Her gaze darted between them, confusion and horror mingling. “What is he talking about?” she whispered.
Richard’s eyes flickered, the faintest crack in his stony mask.
Jasper took that as invitation enough. He laughed again, wild and desperate. “Tell them, Richard! Tell them how you vanished. Tell them what really happened when you were taken from England. Oh, no—of course you won’t. You don’t remember. That was the brilliance of it.”
“Jasper,” Richard said sharply, but the warning only seemed to fuel him.
“It was me!” Jasper shouted. “I had you attacked, you fool. I paid to have you press ganged! You were supposed to vanish forever after the war. It would have been cleanly done. You were never supposed to return, so that I could have Louisa!”
A collective gasp tore through the pews. Fans snapped shut; whispers erupted like birds startled into flight.
Lady Ophelia rose fully now, her face drained of color. “Jasper, stop this madness!”
But Jasper’s confession sliced the air like a blade.
Richard went utterly still. His expression did not change, but the tension around him thickened until even the air seemed afraid to move. The scar along his cheek stood stark in the candlelight.
“You–” his voice was barely a whisper, low and deadly. “You did this.”
Jasper met his gaze defiantly, though his chest heaved with each breath. “You had everything—Ashwood, the title, the name, the power. I had nothing. She loved me, but she was bound to you. So yes. I did it.”
The guests recoiled, scandal blazing in their eyes.
Caroline’s pulse thundered in her ears. Her mind spun with the revelation.
Richard’s voice came again, quieter, colder. “You ruined me for love?”
“For survival,” Jasper said hoarsely. “For once in my life, I wanted to breathe without your shadow on my throat. But now you’re back again, overshadowing everything.
You have a perfect bride, even Louisa is too happy to see you.
You’re pushing me to the sidelines once more and I will not have it.
I shall shame you as you have always shamed me. ”
Richard’s hands clenched at his sides. Caroline saw the struggle flicker across his face—the soldier’s instinct for vengeance warring with the man’s need for control.
“Get out,” he said finally, the words edged with steel. “Before I forget that we share blood.”
The crowd murmured approval, the ton’s hunger for drama momentarily sated. It might have ended there—had Louisa not risen.
Louisa rose slowly, her face as pale as the marble pillars that lined the chapel.
The sound of her movement silenced the murmurs for a moment. All heads turned, and even the musicians, startled, lowered their bows. She looked fragile, trembling—yet her voice, when it came, carried through the air like a thread drawn taut.
“Stop,” she said.
Jasper froze mid-breath.
“Enough.”
Her eyes glistened, but her spine remained straight. She took a step forward, the hem of her gown whispering across the stone floor. The candlelight trembled with her movement, flickering over the curve of her face—a face beautiful still, but marked with sorrow.
“Jasper,” she said again, softer now, “you’ve said enough.”
The congregation held its collective breath. Even Richard, who had not yet moved from his place before the altar, looked at her as if seeing a ghost from another life.
Louisa’s gaze swept from Jasper to him, the conflict in her expression raw and unmistakable.
“I cannot let this go unanswered,” she said, her voice shaking. “The truth belongs to us all—not only to you.”
She clasped her hands before her, as though to keep them from trembling.
“You speak of betrayal,” she continued, turning to Jasper, “but you forget the rest. You forget that I loved you even when I was bound by duty to the Duke. Our families had made arrangements, but it was you I wanted. I begged you to be patient, to let time grant us peace. And yet you destroyed everything instead.”
The ton gasped. A few women pressed handkerchiefs to their lips.
Louisa turned to Richard then, her eyes filled with tears. “You never knew why, did you? You believed the world had taken you—and perhaps, in a way, it had. But it was not the sea, nor fate. It was him, because of me.”
Her voice broke on the final word.
Richard’s stare did not soften. If anything, it became harder—not with cruelty, but with the weight of all he could not yet say.
Caroline’s breath came shallow beside him. Each revelation landed like a blow. She had seen Richard as ruthless, impenetrable—the Devil of the Ton. But this? This was a wound that had never healed.
Louisa drew herself up, her chin trembling. “I never wanted your ruin, Richard. I swear it. I wanted only freedom—and love. But neither of us were given that choice.”
Her hand went to her abdomen almost unconsciously then—a small, instinctive gesture.
The motion drew Richard’s attention at once. His eyes followed the movement, his frown deepening.
Louisa hesitated only a moment before lifting her chin and speaking again, her voice suddenly quiet but clear enough to pierce the noise.
“I am with child.”
The words fell like thunder.
A hundred whispers burst into speech, gasps rising from every corner. Fans snapped shut with sharp, accusing cracks. The string quartet faltered into silence.
“Good God–” someone exclaimed.
“Whose child–?” another hissed.
Louisa’s cheeks flamed. “It is Jasper’s, of course! He’s my husband after all. But now, he has ruined our unborn baby.”
Lady Ophelia had turned white as snow. “Louisa,” she breathed, “for the love of heaven, not here...”
But it was far too late.
The world had already seized upon the revelation.
Richard stood utterly motionless, the storm around him seeming to break against a wall of stillness. Only his hands betrayed him—fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles shone white.
The scar on his cheek appeared darker under the candlelight, like an old wound newly opened.
Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. “I wanted to tell you long ago. But fear held me. Fear of what would happen to Jasper, to me. And now...” She shook her head helplessly. “Now there is no going back.”
Caroline could hardly breathe. Her mind raced, her thoughts tangling into confusion. She had married a man she barely understood, only to discover that the tragedy of his past was not cruelty—but betrayal.
The Devil had been made, not born.
Jasper gave a bitter laugh, though it trembled on the edge of despair. “A child,” he said softly, almost wonderingly. “Mine.”
Then his face contorted, fury overtaking shock. “And still you look at him,” he spat at Louisa, pointing at Richard. “Even now, even here, you look at him as though he were the sun and I but his shadow!”
Louisa flinched. “Because I cannot forget what you did to him.”
Jasper’s voice rose to a shout. “What I did? I did it for us! For love! You wanted him gone, don’t deny it. You wanted him gone so you could have me without shame.”
“I wanted peace,” she whispered.
“Liar!”
He took a step forward, his eyes wild, the veins standing in his neck.
“You took my place, Richard,” he said, voice trembling. “You always do. And now you think to stand there, noble and untouched, while I rot beneath your boots?”
Richard’s silence was answer enough.
Caroline reached for his sleeve, her voice low but urgent. “Richard—please. End this before it worsens.”
He did not look at her. His jaw was set like stone, his gaze fixed on Jasper. “Leave, or I will make you.”
Jasper’s mouth twisted into a smile that was both pain and madness.
“Then you’ll have to kill me,” he whispered.
The ton held its breath.
For one dreadful moment, the room seemed balanced on the edge of violence.
Then Louisa’s sob broke the stillness.
She stumbled forward, hands outstretched, as if to shield Jasper from his own ruin. “Just stop this,” she cried. “Please. For the sake of our child.”
Jasper hesitated, the words striking through his fury—but the shame that followed burned hotter still.
He turned toward the crowd, his voice breaking. “Do you see? Do you see what love costs a man?”
The ton recoiled, their scandalous delight suddenly curdled into fear.
“Enough,” Richard said again, voice like iron.
But Jasper only laughed—and that laugh carried the sound of something coming undone.
The sound that filled the chapel now was no longer polite murmuring or genteel shock—it was raw panic contained by etiquette’s thinnest thread.
Louisa had sunk to her knees before the altar, her hands trembling, her tears falling soundlessly onto the marble. The vicar, pale and sweating, looked from one cousin to the other as though he had stumbled into a battlefield rather than a wedding.
Caroline could hardly hear her own heartbeat for the noise. Every whisper struck like a hiss of fire.
Richard stood like a statue carved from iron, unmoving even as the world splintered around him. The veins at his temples stood out sharply; the scar on his face seemed darker, his jaw a blade of fury held in check only by force of will.
He turned his head slowly toward Jasper.
Jasper swayed slightly where he stood, one hand in his hair, eyes wide and glittering. “You want me gone,” he said thickly, “because you can’t bear what I’ve said. But you can’t erase it, Richard. They all know now. The Devil of the Ton—the duke betrayed by his own blood!”
“Enough,” Richard repeated.
Jasper’s voice rose to a roar. “You think yourself master of this house, of this family, of every damned thing you touch. But you’re nothing without me. You always needed me to be lesser, so you could be more!”
He took a staggering step forward. Edmund, from the aisle, began moving toward him.
“Jasper,” Lady Ophelia whispered, “please–”
But he was not listening. His gaze darted wildly, searching for some weapon to hurl, some wound to inflict. Then his eyes landed on Caroline.
She had moved to Richard’s side, her face pale but composed. There was no fear in her stance—only shock and sorrow.
Jasper laughed—a terrible, unsteady sound.
“So, this is the new prize,” he said, his voice rough. “The fiery Duchess, the one they say tamed the Devil. Tell me, my lady, does it thrill you to lie beside a monster?”
The room gasped in unison. Caroline felt heat rise to her cheeks, anger flaring beneath the humiliation. “You forget yourself, sir.”
“Oh, I forget nothing,” Jasper said, striding forward. “If Richard took Louisa from me, I will take you from him.”
Before anyone could move, he seized Caroline by the arm.
The shock of his grip tore a cry from her throat. His fingers bit into her flesh, and the delicate lace of her sleeve tore under the pressure.
“Jasper!” Richard’s voice thundered through the chapel, echoing off stone and glass.
The sound halted every breath in the room. Even Jasper flinched—but he did not release her.