Chapter 22 #3
Leo had thought of that too, and how the money could be put toward the care her Aunt Flora would soon require.
Mrs. Zhao and Claude were doing what they could for her at the house, but over the last several weeks she had become more detached, and her bodily functions were also becoming more irregular and a chore for them to see to.
“I’d been considering selling 23 Charles Street,” Jasper said. “But now, I’m not sure I have to.”
Leo, too, had worried that he might need to sell the Inspector’s home, and the idea had filled her with sorrow. Perhaps Francine had seen the gift of the Craven Hill house as a way for her generosity toward the Inspector to keep going, in perpetuity.
“Selling it might still be for the best,” Jasper continued as she reached for her coat and hat on the stand.
Leo lowered her arm and stared at him, dismayed.
“It is far too large for one man and his housekeeper. It would be wiser to find a smaller home in a more reasonable neighborhood,” he explained.
“But…it is your home, Jasper.” Her chest grew heavy with regret. “It was the Inspector’s home. He loved it.”
She knew it wasn’t the structure, however, that he’d loved.
It was the memories the house held of his wife and children.
Perhaps he’d clung to it because he could not let go of them.
For a man as proud and independent as Gregory Reid, accepting Francine Stroud’s financial help must have been humbling.
But his desire to remain in the home that he’d shared for nearly a decade with his beloved wife, where his young children might have grown into adults, had been strong enough to endure whatever shame or embarrassment he might have felt.
As though Jasper saw all these thoughts swirling in her watery eyes, he stepped forward and reached for her cheek. His tender touch threatened to spill the gathering tears.
“Memories are not stored within the walls of a house, Leo. We take them with us, wherever we go.” He sighed. “And truthfully, I’m thinking more about what is ahead than what lies behind us.”
At his slow, sly grin, excitement simmered to life, pushing out the grief she’d been feeling over what might come of 23 Charles Street. Jasper wanted a future with her, and there was nothing to lament on that topic.
His hand lowered to rest gently against her bandaged throat, his palm warming her through the linen.
“The last time we spoke about…the future,” Leo began, thinking of the evening in her front sitting room, when Jasper had confessed to having spoken to Claude about courting her.
“We didn’t speak,” he interjected. “We argued.”
“I don’t want to argue again.”
“I don’t either.”
“And I don’t want to join a detective agency like Dita has,” Leo continued. “I shouldn’t have said that I did. I was only being contrary.”
He raised a brow as if to say, Were you now?
“But I want to work, Jasper. At the morgue, or taking on another private inquiry, if I’m asked.
I understand that if you and I are to be together, change will be inevitable, for both of us,” she said.
“But I won’t become someone I’m not…someone I haven’t ever been…
just to please your superiors at the Yard. ”
Jasper’s thumb coasted over her linen-wrapped neck where Connor had, only yesterday, removed the few sutures from her healing wound. The spot was sore still, and there would be a scar. But Jasper’s touch seemed to soothe the pain, and she had a few scars already anyhow. What was one more?
Jasper nodded, and at his next words, her whole body went numb with radiant wonder. “I cannot ask you to be someone you are not. I didn’t fall in love with whoever that might be.” He angled his head, and vulnerability flickered in his eyes. “I fell in love with you, Leonora.”
Once, when she’d been younger, Leo and her uncle had been caught just steps away from their home in a sudden downpour.
As they shrieked and laughed on their race to the front door, a bolt of lightning struck the pavement nearby.
So close, in fact, that a current of electricity reverberated through their limbs, up their spines, and even into their teeth.
She and Claude had stared at each other in shock for several seconds before realizing they were not injured.
And then, as euphoria at their good luck gripped them, they could not stop grinning.
A similar hot shiver of electricity fired through her now at Jasper’s confession of love. As he held her in a searching stare, awaiting her response, euphoria claimed control, and all Leo wanted was to kiss the lips that had just formed those words.
She lifted onto the tips of her toes and did just that. Her mouth was still against his when she whispered, “I love you.”
The words felt entirely at home between them, and as she had after that close encounter with lightning, Leo knew how fortunate she was. Jasper pulled back, just enough to look into her eyes.
“Does this mean you are giving me permission to court you?”
Leo smoothed his collar, slightly embarrassed by her inability to stop smiling. “I already thought you were,” she said, then shrugged lightly. “But for officiality’s sake, my answer is yes.”
He pressed his mouth to hers again, hard and fast, his lips turned up in a smile. “Good,” he said, then took her coat from the stand and held it up for her. “As my first act of official courtship, I’d like to take you to dinner.”
Leo was not so caught up in the moment that she forgot what she was wearing. She peered down at her dark, utilitarian, cotton gown, lacking a single ruffle or feminine frill, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat.
“I’m hardly suitable for dinner out.”
Jasper next presented her with her hat. “You look perfect.”
She knew she did not, but on second thought, she decided it didn’t matter. “Very well, I’m sure a chophouse won’t turn me away.”
“Or…” He opened the back door for her. “We could go to Charles Street and see what Mrs. Zhao has made.”
Her cooking was better than anything a chophouse might serve. “That sounds lovely.” Leo put out the gas lamps and joined Jasper in the doorway.
“Perhaps afterward, you’ll join me in the study for a drink. There is plenty of cherry cordial,” he reminded her.
She peered sideways at him, affecting a look of shock. “The study? Alone?”
“We could invite Mrs. Zhao,” he said, closing the door behind them. “But she might object to my kissing you.”
“Then she is not invited,” Leo replied.
Jasper’s bark of laughter echoed down the dirt lane behind the morgue. The rare sound was a gift, one she would wrap up and keep safe forever.
Thank you for reading Tears for the Forsaken, book 5 in the Spencer & Reid Mysteries.