Chapter 15 #2
“That’s nothing but an excuse!” His jaw snapped shut. “Claiming there is nothing else to do amounts to giving up. And she was my family, Jessamine. She deserved more than giving up.”
All at once, Jessamine felt as though something had clicked into view, as though she had finally put on a much-needed pair of glasses.
Andrew was not cold and unforgiving. He grieved his cousin, but worse, he held himself accountable for every bad thing that had ever happened to her, and blamed himself every time he thought of her.
“Andrew,” Jessamine whispered, shuffling closer. “You can’t carry this burden around with you for the rest of your life.”
“It’s the least I deserve. After all that, Rebecca is dead, and what did I do to save her?”
“You came the instant you knew.”
“No,” he said grimly. “I came once my father and George were dead, and I had inherited the title and everything in its name. No one had written to even tell me Rebecca was with child. She had not written.”
He looked so disgusted with himself, Jessamine could have cried.
“She was ashamed,” Jessamine said.
“And she thought I would judge?”
“My father…” Jessamine cleared her throat. “She was deceived by my father, and she saw that as a personal failing. She didn’t even want to tell me, even though this made William my brother.”
“She did tell you,” Andrew said, looking down into Jessamine’s face as though he were seeing her anew.
“Yes. After some time. But she told no one else. I imagine…” Filled with daring, Jessamine reached up to brush her fingers along Andrew’s jaw. “I imagine she knew she could not lie to you.”
Andrew’s fingers wrapped around her wrist, but he didn’t pull her away. His fingers shifted along her bare skin, just a fraction, but enough to send sensation dancing into her toes. Although it made no sense, she felt his touch everywhere.
That soft scrape of his fingers across her bare skin ignited something in her very soul.
“She loved you,” Jessamine went on. “And when I first met you, I couldn’t see why. But I think I understand it now.” She smiled sadly and made the decision to offer him her own pain as a means of soothing a little of his. “Did I ever tell you about Percy, my… My brother?”
His fingers made another distracting slide. “No. Tell me.”
“A year before my mother died, she gave birth to a baby boy,” she began.
Jessamine’s chest felt too tight. This was a story she had told almost no one in her life. Mostly because, when she thought about it, everything in her ached. But for Andrew, who had confessed so much, she would find a way of putting it into words.
“I was eight years old.”
Andrew was sitting closer now, although she hadn’t noticed him move. His arm brushed against hers, offering warmth and comfort.
“I came in to see my mother and the new baby. My father had already tired of my mother, I think, and he was nowhere to be found. He never loved her.” Her lip curled, but her voice shook as she spoke. “I think he was hoping she would die in the birth and leave him with a son.”
Andrew squeezed her hand. When had their fingers become intertwined?
“A man like that is not your responsibility,” he said. “And his actions are not your burden to bear.”
“Well, this isn’t about him, because my mother did survive.
This, anyway.” She shook her head. “This is about Percy. He was so tiny. I remember thinking that, because I was smaller than everyone else, and he still felt so small in my arms. I held him, and my mother smiled, and I thought, perhaps, we could find happiness together, and then…”
She gritted her teeth against the potency of the memory, though it had happened so long ago.
“He started convulsing,” she whispered. “Just—he couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know what to do. I panicked. Mama took him back and tried to soothe him. All the maids and the physician came back… No one noticed me for the longest time.”
She had been stuck in the corner of the room, watching with terror in her heart as Percy’s life teetered on the edge.
It took only a few minutes for him to die.
“I’ve never heard any person make the sound my mother made when Percy stopped breathing,” Jessamine continued, her voice thick. “It was… it was as though it had come from the very depths of her soul. Thirteen years ago, and I can still remember the agony in that cry.”
Andrew lifted her entirely, pulling her across the bed until she sat across his lap, legs dangling over the side. His hands came to her eyes, knuckles brushing away her tears. She hadn’t even known she was crying.
“The thing is,” she croaked, “I know it wasn’t my fault. I know Percy would have died even if I weren’t holding him… but I was.”
“It’s not your fault,” he murmured. “Babies… they die all the time. It’s tragic, but it’s not your fault.”
This didn’t feel as though it could be Andrew, so gentle and soft now when he was capable of being so harsh. He’d been a soldier, a captain, commanding men and getting his hands dirty, yet those same hands held her as though she were precious.
“I’m sorry.” She drew in a sharp breath. “I didn’t mean… All I meant was to illustrate that I understand. A little.”
“Perhaps we both carry guilt we shouldn’t,” he said, smoothing down her hair and brushing it back from her face.
This close, she could see every tiny line and crease and dimple of his skin. His absurdly long eyelashes. A dimple at the very base of his chin. The colors in his blue eyes: yellows, browns, greens, and grays.
His fingers slid along her chin, stopping just before her ear. His thumb brushed her mouth.
She was iron to his magnet. The force that drew them together was impossible to ignore, impossible to resist. His eyes seemed alight now.
“Jessamine,” he said, and his voice scraped across her name, making it sound rough and needy.
Heat ignited in her lower belly.
“Andrew.” She threaded both hands in his hair. “Don’t turn me away now, please.”
“No.” His other hand skated up her side to her shoulder, then back down.
His fingers were still on her face, and he searched her expression as though he expected to find something there.
Whatever it was, Jessamine didn’t know. All she knew was this new and strange hunger.
This was no longer about Rebecca or about Percy; this was about the way he looked at her, as though she consumed him.
As though he wished to devour her.
And she wanted nothing more than to be devoured.
His breath flowed over her lips. They were in a bedchamber, his bedchamber. On a bed.
Jessamine gripped his shoulders, holding him close.
“You make it… impossible,” he said, eyes fluttering closed for an instant, “to do as I vowed I would… To keep my hands to myself when all I want is to unravel you.”
And then he kissed her, and the want in her chest became an inferno.
Jessamine kissed him back with all the frantic desperation she felt in him.
This time, she would not end matters before they progressed.
This time, she would see it through to the very end.
Whatever that entailed.