Page 30 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
‘What did you fight over?’ Jasper’s voice was soft at her ear, calming as his hands ran over her back in a smoothing motion.
‘A baby.’ She drew a harsh, ragged breath. ‘I thought I was pregnant. Adam didn’t want the child and I said horrible things to him.’ She rocked against him, the horror of those memories sweeping her. ‘He told me I was asking the impossible, that it was selfish for me to want a child, to put that burden on him when he didn’t want it. I told him he loved himself more than me, that he was cruel and self-centred. That I was sorry I’d ever married him.’
A wail escaped her. What an awful thing to say to someone. She’d never said anything of that magnitude to him before. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ She gulped for air. ‘I swear I didn’t mean it, but I didn’t get to apologise.’ Now he was gone, the house where they’d fought was gone. She would never get to make reparations to him directly. The best she could do was to seek justice.
‘Breathe, Fleur. Just breathe. It will be all right.’ Jasper repeated the mantra over and over, until he felt her body quiet and still against him. He would be calm for her sake. For his, though, he was boiling with rage. He wanted to do harm to Dead Adam. Too bad the man was already beyond his efforts. How dare a man make his wife doubt her place with him?
She lifted a tear-stained face. ‘I wonder if he hated me in the end? I can’t bear the idea that he died hating me, resenting our life together. It wasn’t all bad. We were in love. Most of the time.’
He could give her obliteration, but he could not give her what she really wanted: absolution. He had not known Adam Griffiths, had no guess as to what Adam had thought or felt. He had no insight to offer that wouldn’t sound like naive platitudes, that of course Adam loved her. Hell, he had no idea. But his heart broke just a little further. Damn Adam Griffiths and his work-obsessed heart. If he had such a woman as Fleur Griffiths, Jasper would be damned sure he made time for her, that he gave her children, as many as she wanted. ‘You’ve done enough for today. Let me take you home, Fleur.’ Home to Rosefields where they could walk in the peace of the garden, talk on the terrace in the still of the evening and make love in the bedroom until the hurt was eased.
‘I am sorry I went to pieces,’ Fleur said quietly as they took in the garden by starlight, sitting on the stone bench where they’d sat the night before. ‘I had not expected to see it all gone. The finality of that was overwhelming. I thought I had come to grips with it, with all of it. I was wrong. Sometimes the grief just comes out of nowhere.’ Even now her voice trembled a bit.
‘You needn’t apologise. When my father died I felt much the same way. Everyone was looking to me as the new Marquess. They expected me to be strong, to make decisions, to immediately step into my father’s shoes. It was, as you say, overwhelming. There was no time for me to grieve privately. I imagine it was much the same for you with the newspapers to run.’
And she would not have given herself a break to adjust. It wasn’t her way. In the time he’d known her she was always at work. She’d been ‘at work’ at the Harefield’s ball, garnering Parliamentary support. The only time she’d not been at work had been the night he’d met her at the theatre. She worked because it was what she knew, because it was what she and Adam had done together. Maybe it was part of her grieving, a tribute to him. Jasper wasn’t sure Adam deserved such a tribute.
‘How did your father die?’ She leaned her head against him and he took a quiet pleasure from their closeness and the ease of it.
‘He got pneumonia one winter and never recovered. One would not think a cough would bring down such a man as he was, always out riding, exercising. He seemed invincible to me.’ Jasper smiled at the remembrance.
‘Adam seemed invincible to me, as well.’ She sighed. ‘I thought there was nothing he couldn’t do. But I learned otherwise. He was not so perfect. His newspapers were in debt before I took them over and he didn’t tell me. He left me with a struggling newspaper empire, he left me alone and without a family, and there are days when I am furious with him for it. You see, I am truly terrible. I am angry at a dead man who left me behind to sort out his mess. Then I get mad at myself for being mad at Adam.’
He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. ‘You are not terrible. You are human, you are honest and something bad happened to you, something unpredictable and unanticipated.’ And it had changed the trajectory of her life. He would not have met her if it hadn’t happened. But other things wouldn’t have happened either. His brother would not be in jeopardy. It was a reminder that while today had been tense with its remembrances, tomorrow would be more so.
‘What would you like to do tomorrow?’ he asked quietly. They had yet to meet with the regional bank where Orion kept his accounts. The accounts would tell a critical truth about Orion’s culpability. In his heart he hoped that they might delay that visit because of what the revelations might do to them. He wanted more time with her before that happened, more time to think about how to survive this because every day he was with her, the more he wanted that: to survive this latest crisis with this relationship intact.
She thought for a moment, perhaps weighing the choices and consequences as he had done, perhaps, he dared hope, she wanted the same thing. After a while she said, ‘I want to stay here and write, if that’s acceptable? I thought we might also draft that bill for better dam oversight.’
He allowed himself the luxury of relief. He would have her, them, for a while longer. Of course, she would seek refuge in work. After seeing the wreckage, still so visible after a year, it was clear that the region needed help and that something had to be done to prevent other disasters. But there was something else in her eyes that he understood and it warmed him even as he recognised it as a delaying tactic. She, too, wanted more time. With him. Not the Marquess. Just him.
Fair enough. He wanted more time with her, enough time to sort through what happened next, after the accounts revealed a truth that would support one of them and dash the hopes of the other. How could he navigate the outcome without losing her—her sharp wit, her intelligence, her forthright nature, temper and all, without losing herpresencein his life. There were so many ways to lose her...and, he suspected, his heart. He’d not meant for that to happen.
Jasper lost no time in planning the days they did have together. After all, she wouldn’t write the whole day every day. He took her riding in the mornings, something she hadn’t done since she’d left her aunt and uncle’s, and watched her delight at being on horseback, cantering across Rosefields’s meadows. Morning rides turned into afternoon picnics beneath a June sky. There were strawberries to pick and stories to tell, of his childhood and hers. In the evenings there were al fresco dinners for two on the terrace and strolls in the garden, punctuated by stolen kisses and the final stroll upstairs to their bed accompanied by two realisations: the longer he was here with her the more obvious it was to him that he was falling in love and that each day moved them closer to the end. This could not last for ever.
‘I wish we could stay here for ever.’ Fleur stretched beside him on the picnic blanket one lazy afternoon when the blue sky was greyer than it had been lately. There were more clouds and they’d been playing the child’s game of seeking shapes.
‘Well, why not? We have food,’ he teased, reaching for the strawberries in a bowl. He popped one into her mouth. ‘We have a large blanket between us. We have each other.’ He grinned wickedly. There was no chance of being bored with Fleur. ‘What more could we want?’ He fed her another strawberry from their freshly picked horde. ‘I am glad you like it here. I’ll say it again, Rosefields suits you.’ And it suited him to have her here, to share this important place with her.
She turned on her side to face him, her auburn braid falling over one shoulder, her expression content. ‘It reminds me of my aunt and uncle’s home, only Rosefields is a much grander scale. My uncle had an endless amount of bridle trails. He was the master of the hunt for our bucolic corner of the world and I had a pony from the first day I came to live with them.’
Fleur gave a soft laugh. ‘My uncle took me to show me the stables before my aunt had a chance to even show me my room. He had a beautiful white pony waiting for me. I named her Sweetie and I thought she looked like a unicorn minus the horn.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Sweetie became my best friend. She was exactly what a lonely little girl needed to start life in a new place.’
Jasper threaded his fingers through hers, taking advantage of the moment. Fleur had never talked before so specifically of her childhood, of life before Adam. ‘How old were you?’ It was the first of many questions he wanted to ask.
‘Eight. Old enough to know that something bad had happened, old enough to remember my life before and old enough to know everything was going to change.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want it to change. I wanted my parents to come home. I wanted to stay at my house. Uncle’s house was larger, but I liked our manse with its ivy-covered brick walls, and Papa’s messy study and Mama’s tiny parlour.’
Jasper could imagine how uncertain the world must have felt for an eight-year-old. His own world had felt unstable when his father died and he’d had the benefit of being twenty-two. Perhaps we’re never old enough to lose our parents, he thought. ‘How did they die?’ he ventured softly.
‘It’s quite dashing, really. They were in the Mediterranean on one of Papa’s explorations—he was a cartographer—and their ship was boarded by pirates. Papa was also quite good with a sword and he stood to fight. It didn’t go his way. So, I became a permanent resident at my uncle’s.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Jasper meant it. He gave her a considering look, a new understanding of Fleur Griffiths emerging: a woman who’d first been a girl betrayed by love. She’d lost her parents, then she’d lost her aunt and uncle, then she’d lost her husband.
‘I was, too, but I also know I was lucky. It was an entrée into a whole new lifestyle. I went from being raised as a country gentleman’s daughter to being raised as a baron’s daughter. Life changed, opportunities changed and so did expectations.’ She’d mentioned those expectations before. Perhaps it was no wonder she’d been protective of herself in this relationship, less willing to give of herself emotional than physically. Until the day in Holmfirth, she’d kept her emotions—all except anger—on a tight leash.
In that regard, she was not any different than himself. He, too, felt betrayed by love. He, too, tiptoed around embracing sentimental emotions. And yet, here they were on a picnic blanket beneath a summer sky, falling for one another, their worlds turned upside down by the one thing they’d sought to avoid. It made no sense. It lacked all logic. Until one looked beyond social trappings of position and circumstance. In their hearts, they were alike: their hopes, their fears, the things they valued at their core like integrity, honesty and truth. The realisation shook him. It made him reckless.
‘I want to be your Sweetie. I want to be like that pony at your uncle’s. I want to be the person that makes it possible for you to step into your new life, the safe place you can run to when the world is too much.’ In this moment, he wanted that with all his being—to behers, to make up for the disappointments with Adam, for the loss of her aunt and uncle who had stood by her until she chose a different path.
