Page 23 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘What the hell is right! Howdareyou kiss me, when you know damn well what it’s like with us, how we spark, how we burn and look what that’s got us!’ She pushed him and stepped around him. It had got him a virago in his arms and a shattered crystal tumbler set on the floor. ‘There are weighty considerations between us that we cannot shove aside or solve with a kiss. There is the issue ofyourduplicity and there is the issue of yourbrother’sculpability.’
No, she didn’t get to do that. The issues of fault weren’t entirely all his. ‘Don’t forget there is also the issue of your newspaper’s marketability and your voracious tenacity for justice, which may be misplaced,’ he said quietly, his own calm reasserting itself. ‘Not all of the issues are on my side of the equation.’ She could have her anger, but he wanted to make sure she understood it accurately, truthfully.
He gestured to the chairs beside the cold fire. ‘Will you come and sit now and sort through it all with me, see what can be salvaged?’ He picked up the last remaining tumbler and poured her a drink to match the one he’d left beside his chair.
She scowled, but she took a seat and the drink. If it wasn’t exactly peace it was at leastdétente. They sat in silence for a short while, each one assessing, measuring the other. He braved the silence. ‘Have you thought about why I would introduce myself as Umberton?’
She slid him a disapproving look. ‘To get close to me, to earn my trust so that I might share with you what I have on your brother. You would be able to thwart me. Perhaps even try to talk me out of it with arguments about doing what was right, about considering the consequences and the purity of my own motives even while you sat there knowing full well the impurity ofyourown motives. You did not seek to guide me with good counsel, but to protect your brother.’
That last stung. She was referring to the arguments he’d made at Verrey’s and she wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d made those arguments in the hopes of forestalling more articles naming Orion as the guilty party as much as he’d made them out of common sense. ‘They were and are still valid arguments,’ he said.
‘Arguments that you have vested interest in and you hid that,’ she replied.
‘Careful, Fleur. Can you sayyouhave no vested interest in pushing this story, this investigation out into the public?’ he queried.
‘I am doing it honestly. I am not hiding behind any pretence. I am not fabricating evidence to fit my own needs. If your brother is innocent, I’ll admit that. At least I will have got to the bottom of it. Either way there will be closure for myself and for others who lost loved ones and are still searching for some reason, some understanding behind it,’ Fleur said earnestly.
‘Even if the board of directors would prefer another outcome?’ Jasper nudged the argument a little further along. She might believe she was merely on a quest for the truth, but sometimes the truth didn’t sell newspapers.
‘Of course,’ she snapped. ‘I am insulted that you would think otherwise.’
‘Just as I am insulted you would think me a charlatan,’ he scolded. ‘Have you stopped to think how you would have responded if I’d entered your box that night at the theatre and announced myself as the Marquess of Meltham? Would you have listened to me? Would you have allowed me to meet with you at your offices? Would you have shared your information with me? Or allowed me to help with the dam legislation?’
He studied her profile as he waited for an answer, watching the first hint of a smile curve her cheek as she stared into the empty fireplace. In those moments he wished it were autumn so that they might have reason to sit beside a warm fire together. It was a potent domestic fantasy he needed to handle with care.
‘You know I would not have,’ she admitted.
‘Correct, because you were at war with Meltham. But you were not at war with Umberton. He had a clean slate, from which real discussion took place. Is it any mystery I took that option?’ He leaned towards her. ‘Are we not the better for it? Instead of sworn enemies, we are now friends who can decide how they want to handle these circumstances.’ At least that was what he hoped.
For once in her life, Fleur didn’t know what to say or even to think. She ought to find the suggestion that they were friends ludicrous in the extreme. It was an extraordinary idea, one that was matched only by the extraordinary circumstances she found herself in—sitting in the Marquess of Meltham’s library rationally discussing his brother’s culpability in her husband’s death.
This was not the encounter she’d expected when she’d stormed out of the office and into his town house. She’d expected a fight, expected to throw things—hot words, a glass or two, to give full vent to her spleen, to her sense of betrayal. And she had. But as a result, she’d expected to be bodily removed from the town house. She would have written about that and painted Jasper Bexley, Marquess of Meltham, with the blackest of brushes, an obstructor of justice, a man who was above the law, who threw his title around to protect a guilty brother.
Instead, he’d asked her to sit, to voice her grievances and he’d answered them, explaining his perspective while holding himself and her accountable. It definitely had her off-kilter but not so far off that she’d forgotten what she’d came for.
‘I will not let it be that easy.’ She gave him a strong stare, although it was difficult to look at him and not see Umberton, not see her lover, a man she’d trusted with her body and her mind. ‘You cannot justify your deception because you feel the consequences were worthy. One cannot say bad behaviour is suddenly good because something good came from it.’
She’d had enough of men making that argument. Adam had kept the state of the newspaper from her, no doubt thinking to protect her from worry. And now, Jasper Bexley had deceived her, too. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘you did not deceive me with the intent of friendship in mind. That was an accident.’
‘Ahappyaccident,’ he countered. ‘As I said, we get to decide how we go on. What shall it be, Fleur? Shall we go forward with forgiveness and friendship or with fear and mistrust?’ There was no true ‘we’ about it. He was leaving the decision up to her and she thought it rather unfair that he made it her responsibility to end things when he’d been the one to walk out.
‘There is no decision because there are no choices.’ Which was probably for the best. The way he was looking at her now, those eyes of his steady on her, his interest, his want, naked in them, there for her to see, made her wish it could be otherwise. But ‘otherwise’ was not practical. ‘The issues between us are too large, they divide us too thoroughly. And even if they didn’t, our association would undermine our individual credibility.’ Even without the issue of his brother between them, she knew better than to think they could be friends.
He took a swallow from his glass for the first time since she’d sat down. ‘I think I’ll need you to explain all of that to me. You must excuse my denseness. I’m not a man used to being without options.’ He was half teasing, half serious.
‘You will be inclined to protect your brother. I can understand that even if I can’t support it. On the other hand, I cannot let the truth go unpublished for the sake of...’ She groped for the words. She’d been about to say for the sake of a lover. ‘For the sake of someone I care for. I cannot be driven by my emotions, or the truth becomes subjective.’
She sighed. ‘The chasm is too wide. Either I will be right, or you will be right. Either way, there will be consequences. Which leads me to your idea of friendship. I do not think friendship can survive such pressures. Aside from that, us associating together—the Marquess of Meltham, brother of the maligned Lord Orion Bexley, and the widow of a prominent man killed at the dam Lord Orion Bexley oversaw, will not build credibility for legislation. People will suspect a conflict of interest and neither of us will look well. Perhaps me most of all, since it impacts my ability to be taken seriously at the newspaper.’
Especially if they were found to be friends and Lord Orion Bexley turned out to be innocent. People would wonder what had driven that conclusion and if she’d arrived at it honestly or if it had been kissed out of her. It was a double standard that one always asked such things of a woman, but never asked them of a man.
He nodded, his hand cradling his glass. ‘A man you care for? I am honoured by the description. It gives me hope,’ he said in a soft tenor. ‘I care for you, too, Fleur, despite our differences.’ He reached for her hand and the warmth of his touch sent a delicious shudder through her as he lifted her hand to his lips, his eyes intent on her.
‘I must disagree with you, though. This difference needn’t keep us apart as I once thought. The day I left you in the office, I meant that kiss to be goodbye. I thought there was no way through it. But that’s not true. Lately, I’ve come to believe that we need each other to see this done. Where you see a chasm I see commonality, something that brings us together instead of setting us apart. We are both searching for the truth about my brother’s involvement in the dam accident. We both claim honest intentions to see right done, whatever the outcome. Why not work together?’
He gave a small sigh and she saw how much the proposal cost him. Despite his usual confidence there was worry she might refuse. It was a refusal he would take personally.
‘If Orion is guilty, I want to make reparations. I want to see that the families are taken of. It can never bring loved ones back, but it can bring practical ease, a way for them to move forward.’ His brow furrowed and she felt his grip on her hand tighten. ‘Discovering the truth scares me, Fleur. Part of me doesn’t want to know.
