Page 29 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘You should have woken me.’
‘You needed the sleep. We have time.’ Their eyes met, a bit of the night leaping between them.
‘Time for what?’ she teased.
‘For this.’ He rolled her beneath him, his manhood morning ready for her. He might not be able to guarantee how the day played out, but he could make sure it began with a good morning and it could end with a good night.
It did not take long for morning desire to run its course and, though he would have liked to have stayed abed with her all day, duty called for them both. They helped each other dress, taking turns playing valet and maid. He brushed out her hair and sat on the bed watching her braid it into a twist. This was what it would be like with a wife, he thought. He would be privy to these little intimacies, things one could only learn about another by observing them, absorbing them, over time. Osmosis, a scientist might call it. It was another kind of unveiling, the revealing of layer upon layer until all was peeled back.
When she was done, Jasper went to her, putting his hands on her shoulders and pressing a kiss to her neck. He loved kissing that neck, loved breathing in the scent of her where she dabbed her perfume. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked, meeting her eyes in the mirror over the dressing table.
She reached a hand up to grip his. ‘Yes.’ She paused and sighed. ‘But I hate to leave this. Last night was beyond words. Not just the pleasure, Jasper,’ she tried to explain. He nodded. He knew what she meant. He did not think there were wordsforit.
‘We will come back. Our room will be here for us, waiting.’ He squeezed her hand in assurance. ‘Wecanhave more.’Ifthey were careful. It would be too easy to let the practicalities of the day ruin the magic they’d created last night. With luck, the spell would hold. Magic. Luck. Spell. He laughed at himself. These were not the words of a scientist. But neither was love. He’d best tread carefully here or he’d forget himself entirely.
Chapter Sixteen
She’d forgotten the intensity and extent of the devastation. She’d not thought she would. But somehow, over the course of the year, it had become muted. Not erased, just mitigated perhaps against the grief of her personal loss. Fleur stood in front of Quarmby’s Butcher Shop on Victoria Street, staring at the stone that marked the depth of the floodwaters. The water must have been six feet deep at least here.
‘Extraordinary,’ Jasper murmured beside her. Perhaps it was the very extraordinary quality of it that had indeed caused it to become muted. One could not live with such horror in full force day in and day out. But today, she felt she must. The reminder kept the need for justice fresh. Distance and time dulled the exigence and the pain.
Jasper was her rock as they walked the town. He listened to her recount the night and the days that followed. ‘In the dark, we could only hear it and in the morning we could see the wreckage it had left,’ she said as they turned towards the river where the damage had been greatest.
The weather was fair, an early summer day with blue sky overhead, but the weather could not disguise the lack of progress that had been made. After a year, the damaged bridge had not been rebuilt and several mills lining the river were still not operational. She understood the recovery effort would take time, that it was no easy task to dredge a river or to haul away machinery that weighed tons, or to bring in new building materials, draw up new plans and all that went with rebuilding. But that didn’t change the practical reality that every day a mill didn’t operate, people didn’t work, didn’t eat, didn’t provide for their family. Delays cost people money and jobs. Quietly, her heart went out to the families that continued to suffer residual effects of the disaster.
‘Whole mills collapsed that night,’ she explained as they walked. ‘Cottages gave way under the weight of the water flooding them. Mill equipment littered the streets along with livestock and furniture. All the pieces of people’s lives gone in a matter of minutes. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would have thought such destruction impossible.’
She told him about the dish cabinet with the blue set. ‘It was indiscriminatory, what was saved, what was lost, who lived, who died. The waters were no respecters of status or money. We learned later that there was a wealthy man, Jonathan Sandford. He had stock in the London Northwestern Railway. He was in the process of buying an estate and there was a rumour he had nearly four thousand pounds in his house the night of the flood, a small fortune. But he lost all of it and his life. His money was never recovered.’
She shook her head. ‘There are sadder stories than his, but his stays with me. He was successful, a good steward of his funds, he’d built a comfortable life for himself and his family. He was on the brink of attaining all he’d aspired for and there was no reason he should not have it. It took only thirty minutes for it all to be wiped away. A lifetime destroyed.’
She shot Jasper a strong look. ‘Logically, he should have had more. Science might offer sureties, but real life does not.’ Perhaps the story of Jonathan Sandford stayed with her because it was so much like Adam’s. Adam should have had more, too.
She traced the route of the river that night for him as their walk continued. She stopped every so often to write in a little book, making notes for an anniversary story. To keep interest in Holmfirth alive, it would be good to do a ‘where are they now a year later’ style story about how the villagers and townspeople had recovered and how they had not. Mills weren’t the only things that had been lost. Farmland had been lost, too. When they met people along the river road, she took a moment to interview them about their lives in the past year, their stories affirming the broader conclusions she’d drawn about the effects of the flood.
‘This is where Holmfirth gives way to Hinchliffe Mill.’ She paused at an unseen border. Water Street lay ahead. The one place she was most loath to go. She’d not even gone there in the days following the disaster. It hadn’t been possible. But now there was nothing holding her back except her own choice.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Jasper said quietly at her side. All day he’d been her strength. He’d walked beside her, reliving the disaster with her and through her. He’d waited patiently as she’d interviewed people, showing empathy and making enquiries of his own. He’d been impressive. People had responded to him.
She had responded, too. Seeing his sincerity in action, directed at people he didn’t know, affirmed that Jasper Bexley was a good man. He would go with her to Water Street if she asked it. He’d probably go even if she didn’t ask because that’s who he was. And he was right. She didn’tneedto go there. She could choose to turn around and go back to the Rose and Crown Inn, have her meetings, and return to Rosefields. Seeing Water Street would not impact her ability to investigate Lord Orion Bexley’s involvement.
‘I have to go,’ she said solemnly. It would bring a different type of closure than the closure she sought with her legislation and her call for justice. This would be a personal closure, maybe a chance to shut the book on her life with Adam, here at the place where they’d last been together.
‘Then we’ll go together.’ Jasper gripped her hand and they made the rest of the walk, slowly and with the dignity of a funeral dirge as if to endow the importance of the event with the respect it deserved.
Fleur did not know what she expected to see on Water Street. Something. Remnants of the place they’d rented, perhaps. It was an unexpected shock to see that there was nothing. Just a gap where the row of houses had been. A woman hurried past with a child. Fleur stopped her. ‘Madam, do you know if there’s any plan to rebuild these houses?’
Leery of a stranger, the woman shook her head and scurried on. But the impact of that headshake sent Fleur reeling. She’d come to Water Street, treating it as a pilgrimage, a chance to memorialise Adam and the others. But there was nothing she could make into a personal, mental shrine. Adam’s part in the tragedy had been entirely washed away, as if he’d never been, as if their stay on Water Street had never happened. There was no stone like the one at Mr Quarmby’s Butcher Shop to mark what had happened. A man had died here, a marriage had died here. The life she’d known had died here and there was no marker for it. Rage began to boil. That wasn’t right, that couldn’t be right. There had to be more.
‘Fleur, are you well?’ Jasper had a steadying hand at her back. ‘You’ve gone pale, perhaps you should sit down.’ Only there was no place to sit. ‘Or lean. Lean against me,’ he instructed. ‘I am worried you might faint.’
She took a shuddering breath. ‘I’m f-f-fine’, and felt his arm go about her. It took all her willpower not to sag into that embrace, to not simply give up.
‘I have seen fine, Fleur, and you most definitely are not,’ he scolded. ‘You’re also a poor liar.’
‘I am fine,’ she insisted, the need to argue bringing her some resilience. ‘It’s just the shock of seeing it. Or rather,notseeing it.’ Then, with his arm about her, concern for her clearly expressed in his eyes, the words began to come, how she’d stayed to play whist at Mrs Parnaby’s and the men had gone back early. Then came the words she’d not shared with anyone, not even Antonia and Emma. They’d had their own grief to bear. They hadn’t needed her grief and her guilt as well. There’d been no one else to tell. Besides, these were not things anyone wanted to hear.
‘I didn’t kiss him goodbye. I was angry with him. We’d argued earlier that evening. We argued a lot.’ Guilt jabbed hard. She should not have pushed Adam that night on the issue. Her anger rose. Guilt and anger pushed at her, the pressure of those emotions building. Why hadn’t she done better? Chosen better? If she’d only known. The strength of Jasper’s chest bore the brunt of her guilt, of her anger, her fists pummelling at an unseen enemy as the dam of her grief broke. ‘I should have been a better wife. If I had only known. I squandered our last hours. I should have apologised. I was too stubborn, too selfish.’ She sobbed.
