Chapter Thirteen #2
If Delia’s mother knew that a duke’s heir had proposed marriage, she would be over the moon. Except he had not proposed, had he? He had simply assumed she would fall over herself to be his wife.
What really upset Delia was her own response.
Her heart jumped at the thought of being Jasper’s wife, despite the insulting nature of his actual words.
Jasper was only treating her the way she had been treated her whole life, and if it was disappointing he so disregarded her feelings, the fact she continued to have feelings for him despite his treatment heated her anger to the point that she would not have been surprised if steam came out of her ears so that they whistled like a kettle.
Well! She might not be able to control how she reacted to Jasper, but she could certainly control how she acted. Nobody—not even the king himself—could force her into marriage if she just continued to say “no”.
Which she would, even though marrying Jasper would be the fulfillment of a dream—if only he loved her.
She had lived as an unwilling observer of a marriage in which the husband and wife were unequal in talents, intelligence, wealth, and family standing.
Her parents shared neither interests nor ambitions, and their only common ground was their joint delight in their only son.
What a miserable way to spend one’s life. She would rather not marry at all than endure the thinly veiled contempt her father held for her mother, or the boundless resentment that her mother felt toward her father.
Which was all very well, but wasn’t getting her message to Sister Louise written. While she had been washing the dishes from their lunch, Jasper had given her the items he had “fetched” for her letter—a very nice writing desk that held paper, ink, quills, a knife for trimming nibs and a blotter.
Delia took it out to the slope, and sat in the sun, looking out across the lake while she thought about what to write. “Say as little as possible,” Jasper had said. “There’s a risk that the message might go astray. We can explain in full when we see them.”
She wrote that she was well and would be back soon. It seemed very little, but perhaps it would be enough to set Polly’s mind at ease. Whether Sister Louise and the nuns were concerned about her, Delia didn’t know.
In the past few months, they had certainly shown her more affection—in a brisk no-nonsense sort of way—than her parents ever had, but wasn’t that what nuns were obliged to do, as part of the job description? According to the Gospels, “Love thy neighbor” was the second of the two great commandments.
Jasper had been writing his letters in the cavern, but he must have finished, for here he came along the path.
Delia felt the impulse to hurry the other way, embarrassed to face him after he presented marriage to her the way a horse trader might offer the last nag in his string—the one all the other buyers had passed over.
Don’t be silly. You have nothing to be embarrassed about. Her scold to herself kept her in her place, and he came directly to her. “Is that your letter?” he asked.
She nodded and handed it to him.
“These are mine.” He held up two folded documents.
“I am going to change into a dragon for the translocation. I am still finding it easier to reach my power in dragon form, though I hope that practice will make the magic more accessible to me in human form, too, in time. Please would you put all three documents on that flat rock there, each one separate from the others? Then step back out of the way.”
She took the letters and was about to carry out his instruction, but stopped when he spoke again.
“Delia, once I have sent the letters, could you turn away, please, and close your eyes? I shall change back. I am hoping my clothing will survive the change, but I don’t expect to be wearing it when I am back in human form. ”
Watching him change was interesting. Slightly nauseating, too, for the beginning of the process looked all too much as if he had exploded. He splintered into a kind of a sickly green and rusty brown cloud that spread rapidly out into a dragon-shaped mist then solidified.
It was over in seconds. The dragon—Jasper—abandoned the small pile of clothing that must have fallen from him when he turned into a cloud and stepped up to the rock where the letters waited. He stared seemingly into nothing then put a talon on one of the letters. It disappeared.
The next took longer. Jasper shook his mighty head and then refocused, and repeated the sequence twice more. At last, he touched the second letter. After only a moment of gazing across impossible distances, it, too, vanished, and the third went just as rapidly.
Then he turned those enormous tawny eyes in Delia’s direction.
She stared back, transfixed. Funny how she had not noticed, before he changed back to human form the first time, that his dragon eyes were the same color as his human eyes.
Yes, his green and gold coloring was identical to the glow that accompanied his magic—the same green with gold sparkles.
Jasper continued to look at her, tipping his head slightly to one side as if waiting for something. Oh. Yes. Clothing. Blushing, she turned her back, though that did not stop her imagination from picturing him as she’d seen him earlier in the day.
Her mother would say she was well and truly compromised by that alone, but since nobody beyond the two of them knew, it didn’t count, did it? And she trusted Jasper. He wouldn’t tell.
Would it be so bad to be married to him? Part of her said it would be wonderful, but that was the part that had been attracted to him from the beginning and had grown to admire him more and more over the months that followed.
Those very feelings made the thought of marriage to him both tempting and impossible. Perhaps if she were not more than half in love with the confounded man, they could have the kind of business-like arrangement he proposed: His use of her catalyst gift in return for the position of duchess.
But how intolerable to be in love with someone who regards me as an obligation and a convenience.
Delia would have to work with him as a catalyst. Everything she had read pointed to that.
But not all catalysts had been married to their dragon lords.
It would be hard enough being close to him without the added complication of marriage.
“You can turn around now,” Jasper said. “It is good to know that the clothes just fall off, and don’t disappear. I wonder if there is a way to use my power to put them on again as I re-form into human shape? I must experiment.”
“Will Sister Louise be able to answer the letter?” Delia wondered.
“Yes,” said Jasper. He offered his arm, and when she took it, he began strolling back in the direction of the cavern.
“The seals I put on the letters are keyed to me. They are all magic users, so they’ll know to put the seal in their return letters.
That way, they’ll come straight to me. Delia, you may have noticed that the second letter took longer. ”
“I did,” Delia agreed. “Did you have trouble finding someone?”
“One translocates by finding the unique magical trace of the person one wants. Or place, if enough magic has been worked there to give it its own magical trace. I found Findlater’s signature easily.
He was exactly where I expected him to be.
But when I tried to reach Sister Louise, she was not at the castle. ”
“Not at the castle,” Delia repeated, nonplussed.
“I had to reach out further,” said Jasper, “and try to guess where she had gone. She is three quarters of the way to London, and if they are using seven-league hoof wraps, she’ll be there tonight. Captain Harewood is with her, so once I found her, it was easy to find him.”
“Surely they would not have left Polly and the babies.”
Jasper nodded. “That is what I think. So, I assume Polly and the babies are with them.”
“Then,” said Delia, “I need to go to London.”
“I expect we shall receive our orders in the duke’s reply,” Jasper said.
To Delia’s mind, he looked somewhat smug. But if he thought her going to London with him meant she was changing her mind about marriage, he had another thing coming.