Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kate tugged on Jessamine’s hand. “Can I hold him?”
“Of course.” Jessamine relinquished William to Kate, making sure the younger girl was sitting comfortably.
William stirred and made a fretful cry, but Kate merely jiggled him with a soothing motion that seemed to come naturally.
Irene watched on with such proud warmth on her fact that Jessamine found hard to look at. In the five days since the attack on William, she and Andrew had not spoken once. Yet again, he was avoiding her in her own home, and only spending time with William when she wasn’t there.
It was like being married to a ghost.
“She is such a darling,” Irene said fondly. “I wasn’t sure how I would feel about living with my husband’s younger sister, but it’s utterly delightful. And thanks to William, she will have some experience with babies before this one comes along.”
She patted her stomach, which looked as though it had become more rounded by the day.
“How are you faring with the pregnancy?”
Irene made a face. “There is nothing good I can say about the experience, except that it will eventually result in a child. If I could have my way, I would never go through this again, and just have a child. You did it the right way around.”
Jessamine pressed a hand to her own flat stomach.
She knew she ought to feel that way, but instead she just felt…
empty at the thought. There was nothing she wanted more than a child of her own.
No matter how much she loved William, and how much he was her child, she couldn’t stop herself from wanting to create one of her own, a baby who was half her, half Andrew.
“What is it?” Irene asked, a frown descending over her face. “What was that look for?”
Jessamine shook her head, stepping away from Kate and William to stand by the window. “It’s nothing,” she said.
“Nothing would not look like that on you,” Irene said. “I may be with child, but that doesn’t mean I stop having eyes, or stop wanting to be there for you. Has something happened? Something more, I mean.”
“I told you about the attack on William?”
Irene nodded, although she had probably heard the story from about five different sources by now, anyway. What Jessamine had intended as the event of the Season had been overshadowed by this tragedy. Now all anyone could discuss was Baron Lorthey and the fact that Andrew had seen his brother die.
And William.
Jessamine closed her eyes. “I spoke to Andrew that night, when William was safe and sleeping again. I mentioned how I would like a child of my own—our own—one day. A family. I always thought that was the plan. William is Andrew’s heir, but it’s always sensible to have more than one, just in case.
” Even though the thought of something happening to William made her feel sick.
“But he just… It was like the question pulled a lever inside him and changed everything. He told me that this was a marriage of convenience and nothing more, and that he didn’t want a family with me. ”
“He said all that?” Irene asked, her brows pulling together.
“Well, not in so many words. He said a marriage of convenience and no more would have to be enough, which is almost the same thing.”
“I would beg to disagree,” Irene said. “It sounds as though he wants it to be enough, whether it is or isn’t.”
“Well, what difference does that make? Whether it is or not, he wants it to be. And that means I will never get a family.”
Irene wrapped her arms around Jessamine. “I’m sorry, dearest. He should have known better than to do something like that to you. I thought things were getting better.”
“So did I. He made me…”
He made me love him.
“Oh, Jessie,” Irene sighed.
“Jessie?” Kate raised her head from the other side of the room, her attention diverted from William for the barest of moments. “What’s happening?”
Jessamine pasted a smile on her face and hurried back to the young girl’s side. “Nothing important. I was just thinking about what might happen to William if we don’t watch over him.”
“He is very small,” Kate agreed seriously. “And babies can’t do anything for themselves. Not like other animals. Foals and calves stand up and can walk very shortly after birth, but babies need years before they can do that.”
“It’s not very sensible,” Irene agreed, coming to sit by Kate’s other side. “It’s why we must look out for our children so much. And also why we love them so much. We always love things we have to care for.”
Jessamine’s heart gave a little pang. How true. She loved William like her own son, and she loved Andrew more for all the ways they had looked out for one another over the past few months.
She loved him. And now there was nowhere for that love to go.
“And I will look after your baby,” Kate said seriously. “Which means I will love him or her, too.”
“That’s right,” Irene said, casting a worried glance at Jessamine.
Jessamine did her best to summon a smile, little as she was feeling it, but even as she did her best to pretend for the sake of her sister, all she could do was think about how lonely the empty years of the rest of her life spread.
William needed her now, but he would not always need her, and without him…
What did she have?
Andrew tossed the brandy back and settled in the chair. His head spun, and he closed his eyes. Not seeing was preferable, anyway. When he looked, all he looked for was Jessamine, and that was hardly helpful in his current predicament.
If he could, he would drink enough to forget, but he’d tried that while in the army, and stealing tomorrow’s joy always came back to bite him.
Better he just learn how to live like this. A half-life.
“There you are,” Nicholas said as he settled in the armchair beside him. “I should have known better than to seek you out at your own house.”
“You tried looking for me there?” Andrew’s eyelids fluttered, but he couldn’t seem to summon the energy to look at his friend.
“Briefly. Your butler informed me you were out. I don’t believe I disturbed the lady of the house.” There was a meaningful pause where Andrew’s heart contracted, and he did his best to pretend he felt nothing. “Who, I believe, is also ignorant of your location.”
“When you’re married, you’ll understand.”
“Forgive me, Andrew, but I think I never want a marriage if it looks like this.”
Andrew snorted and finally opened his eyes, finding the room more or less where he’d left it. White’s, a place where plenty of men came to drink and play their sorrows away in the company of fellow men.
“I think I would never have wanted a marriage like this if I’d known,” he said. “Everything would have been easy if she wasn’t…” If she wasn’t her. “If I didn’t care what she thought,” he finished lamely.
“But you do,” Nicholas said.
“How could anyone not? I didn’t realize it the first time we met, but she’s an angel, near enough. And I’m…” He gestured at himself. “This.”
“Have you asked her what she wants?”
“She thinks she wants me, but that’s only because she doesn’t know how messed up my head is.
” Andrew looked Nicholas straight in the face.
“I see them every night. Everyone who died under my command. Sometimes I relive the moment of their death. It’s always horrific and bloody, and then I think about how I could have saved them if only I had behaved differently. ”
“And Baron Lorthey made you feel like this a thousand times more,” Nicholas said, for once finding nothing amusing in the situation.
“He reminded me that I can never move past it. I can never live past it. The best thing for us all is for me to take a step back from my life here. William will have everything I can give, but Jessamine is safer if she stays away. What if my proximity brings more people determined to bring harm to the people I—” He stopped himself from saying love at the last moment.
“I failed Rebecca. I failed the people under my command. How can I know that Jessamine will be any different? How can I best protect William when my record is such a failure?”
“You didn’t fail Rebecca,” Nicholas said, his voice sharper than Andrew had ever heard it.
“And saying so is disrespectful to her memory. She was your cousin, and you know her better than anyone else. She made her choices, and life happened the way it does. You could not have altered the hand of fate and prevented her death. If she had not fraternized with Lord Debley, she would not have gotten with child, and she would not have died birthing him. Are you to take blame for that, too?”
“I—” Andrew stopped.
True, it had been her decision to engage in an affair with a much older man, although he felt tempted to place the blame on Lord Debley rather than Rebecca. She had not been young, precisely, but she had been vulnerable, unhappy in a marriage with a man who disrespected her.
If Andrew had prevented the marriage from happening in the first place, perhaps none of this would have come to pass, but he’d been a child.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, he could accept that.
So all he could do now was look forward.
“Rebecca would have wanted nothing more than for you to take care of her son, whom she entrusted to your care,” Nicholas continued.
“And Jessamine’s. She is the godmother. Marrying her was the right thing to do for that.
And then, consider, caring for Jessamine as part of that is only going to be more of the right thing. ”
“Hurting her—”
“You protected her from Baron Lorthey, and you saved William. Are you to take the blame for Lorthey’s actions?
He lost his brother, but so did you. You lost everything upon returning to London, but you did not go around trying to kidnap small children and take some twisted sort of revenge.
His actions are his own. As for his brother…
” Nicholas poured himself a glass of brandy and raised it to the ceiling.
“I wasn’t there, but I know you, and I know you would have gone out of your way to save him if he could have been saved.
So, are you going to blame yourself for that, too? ”
Andrew scowled at his friend. “I see what you’re trying to do.”
“You are using the concept of failure to avoid confronting the fact that you have no idea how to be happy. You’ve spent your life avoiding it.
But you can be happy, you can deserve to be happy, and I am determined to help you see it.
” Nicholas folded his arms. “So you might as well accept that now. And go back to the wife waiting for you.”
“I doubt she’s waiting for me.” Andrew groaned, dropping his head in his hands. “How can I face her after telling her this is nothing more than a marriage of convenience?”
“An apology would be a good start.” Nicholas sighed.
“The poor girl loves you, Andrew. The least you could do is admit that you love her in return and vow to be there for her. No one is perfect, and even if you see the faces of your dead comrades every night, I expect she would rather you were in her bed to see them.”
“She doesn’t know—”
“Then tell her. And if by the end of it all, she doesn’t want you, then you may come crying to me. But not before.” Nicholas patted his shoulder. “We both know you want nothing more than to be with her.”
Nothing more was a strong turn of phrase. And yet Andrew couldn’t deny it was true.
“It’s what Rebecca would have wanted,” Nicholas said.
“I didn’t know her well, but she was a woman who never gave up on love even when it was denied to her.
She wanted you to care for William, and I expect she would have wanted you to love the woman you married.
Who, I might add, was also her best friend. So, will you do it? Will you tell her?”
Andrew dragged a hand through his hair. It was both harder and easier to contemplate a life separate from her. Then, he would never have to open his heart.
But it wasn’t worth it.
None of this was worth it.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Even if it kills me, I’ll do it.”