Page 32 of A Deal with the Rebellious Marquess
And what do you care? What do you want from Jasper Bexley beyond an affair anyway?
Those were questions she refused to answer.
‘You are sad all of a sudden. What is it, Fleur?’ His eyes were soft with concern and she felt her heart crack just a tiny bit. She didn’t want to hurt him. Why did she always hurt the men she loved? She’d hurt Adam, and she was going to hurt Jasper. Her research was good. There was little chance Lord Orion Bexley was not guilty of negligence on the Bilberry Dam. Jasper loved his brother. Tomorrow would devastate him.
‘Aren’t you worried about tomorrow?’ She smoothed his waves away from his face. It felt domestic and wifely to make such a small, intimate gesture, to have the right to do it, to sit here on his lap, to talk so openly. These were just a handful of the intimate privileges she would lose tomorrow.
‘I can’t change what we’ll find. The reality is already out there. The answer we’re looking for already exists.’ He reached for her hands and took them in his own. ‘And I trust us, Fleur. We have pledged to handle whatever we find with discretion and good faith.’ His calmness and logic were soothing. He might be the only man she knew who would draw on the concepts of Plato in the midst of a crisis. She wanted to believe them, but they were incomplete and only addressed half of her worry.
‘What does Plato have to say about us? Haveyouthought about what happens to us tomorrow? Do we go back to being business partners?’ Or perhaps they went back to being nothing at all. This was her greater worry and that realisation carried its own shock. A month ago, her first worry would have been support for legislation. But tonight, she wondered if she could go back to business-only with him? Every time he was in a room, she’d think about Rosefields, about his big bed, about every consideration he’d shown her, how, for a short while, she’d been cherished for herself. And yet what other choice was there? How did she think this would end?
She pressed a finger to Jasper’s lips. ‘You don’t have to answer my question. Forget that I asked.’ She’d known the ending from the start and nothing had happened that would change that. Even if Lord Orion Bexley was miraculously expunged of his guilt, the ending for her and Jasper would not change. He would still be a marquess with expectations to marry a well-titled young gentlewoman.
His fingers curled warmly over hers, gently moving them away from his lips. ‘What doyouwant to happen with us? Don’t we get to decide? You talk as though the world will happen to us instead of the other way around.’
‘It doesn’t matter what I want. The facts are indisputable. I’m not on your mother’s list.’
‘You are onmylist. Maybe that’s more important.’ He nipped at her ear, but she had fallen out of a mood for teasing. She moved her head away.
‘I will not be a married man’s mistress,’ she said quietly. ‘Nor are you a man who would keep a mistress once he had a wife and family. Don’t you see? It’s no use. If we do not end now, we will end later. It is inevitable. Marquesses and newspaperwomen have no future together.’
His hands framed her face, warm and confident. ‘That is not the sum of who we are. We are people who share the surviving of loss, who know the true value of trust and deep commitment. We are not just our titles.’ He kissed her softly. There was more than one Rubicon to cross and this one was definitely more personal, more than the sum of what they found with Orion. ‘If we want our relationship to happen, we’ll find a way. Not even the findings at the bank will stop us.That’sthe kind of people we are.’ He smiled. ‘For instance, I want to find a way to get you upstairs.’
‘You might start with asking,’ she said coyly, sensing that the time had come to accept the inevitable even if Jasper wouldn’t. This was likely their last night together. They might as well enjoy it. She could hold tonight as a shield against all the lonely nights to come.
‘Asking? Is it as simple as all that? Who would have thought?’ Jasper laughed, rising from the chair with her in his arms. It was not a heavily disguised allegory.
‘For being a man of science, you’re not being very logical, Jasper.’ She laughed to cover the severity of her comment.
‘Perhaps you’ve changed me, just a little, or perhaps I don’t think my claim illogical to start with.’ He juggled her in his arms, passing the library table and her half-finished article.
‘Wait, I can’t leave it. Put me down. I just need five more minutes,’ she protested.
‘You can finish it tomorrow. We’ve done enough work tonight,’ Jasper said sternly, never breaking his stride. ‘In fact, we’ve done more in a week than Parliament does in a month. I am very proud of us and you should be, too.’
He turned sideways, manoeuvring them through the door into the hall and began the trek upstairs to their bedroom. ‘You’re smiling. Are you marvelling at my strength or the amount of work we’ve accomplished?’ They had achieved a lot. One day had turned into a week in which they’d stayed at Rosefields, isolated from the world, drafting a bill, writing letters to potential supporters, and she had written her articles. It had been a productive excuse to forestall their visit to the bank.
‘Can I marvel at both?’ Shewasmarvelling at his muscles. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been carried upstairs before.’ She laughed up at him. ‘You’ve done well, you can set me down.’
‘No.’ He grunted. ‘We’re not at the top yet and I am no quitter.’ There was allegory in that, too, and Fleur duly noted it. He was making this hard on her, on them. Perhaps she should have let him answer her impossible question. Perhaps if he could hear his thoughts out loud he’d realise that their time together had come to an end.
Fleur was afraid. Jasper felt it in her touch and tasted it in her kiss. Jasper held her close, watching her sleep. That fear was a base-note which had underscored their lovemaking. There’d been desperation in that lovemaking, too. Her fingers had traced him as if they wanted to memorise every line and plane and she’d wrapped her legs about him so tightly he’d worried she’d not let him go in time. As delicious as the prospect of spending within her was, Jasper did not want to take the risk. Although that would certainly resolve things. A child would push past the barriers she was so good at erecting, it would strip away all discussion of choice.
A child with Fleur. Perhaps a curly, auburn-haired daughter with her mother’s boldness and her father’s love of science? He’d build a university just for her. Or maybe a dark-haired son with his mother’s green eyes. Or a tall, broad-shouldered son with hair the colour of Rosefields’s autumn leaves. He laughed at himself spinning endless possibilities in the dark. Fleur would say they wereimpossibilities.
To be sure, he knew it was a notion born of midnight and madness. Marriage had never come up between them other than that he had to wed. They could not even agree on what happened after tomorrow. It seemed unlikely they could agree on something as big as marriage. And yet, hadn’t they implicitly tried it on this week with their prolonged retreat?
They’d made a good team. He’d liked working with her even as he understood the pattern that was enacting itself after her breakdown at Water Street. Work was her answer to grieving. Water Street had hit her hard and she was compensating for that with work, just as she’d once compensated for the loss of Adam. She’d tried to do it again tonight, too, by wanting to work on her last article instead of coming upstairs and facing what she thought would be their last night together. He’d not allowed it. Fear had to be faced if it was to be overcome.
‘I’m afraid, too,’ he whispered to Fleur’s sleeping form. He was afraid of what the bank accounts would show, afraid he would not be equal to the tasks required of him, equal to being the man Fleur would need him to be. If he could not rise to the task, he would lose her.
Tomorrow would just be the beginning of the battle and he wasn’t sure his record in battle was all that good. Look at Orion. For all of his best efforts to be a brother and father to him, Orion was struggling to make the transition to responsible adulthood. He was thirty. It was time, even well past time. Perhaps he shouldn’t be so eager to be a father. If he couldn’t raise his brother, what made him think he could raise a child? He pushed the thought away. Orion had been spoiled early on. He could not shoulder that blame. Midnight was a cruel mistress, prompting madness on one hand and maudlin reflection on the other. Such introspection was best left to the light of day.
His day started with an empty bed. Jasper rolled over with a groan, his hand meeting a cold pillow. She’d been up for a while and he hadn’t even heard her. He must have been deeply asleep. A little smile curved on his face as he thought of the reason for that. They’d worn each other out thoroughly last night. If she was up, she would be in the library finishing her article. His smile broadened. He liked imagining her at Rosefields. Then the smile faded when he looked about the room.
She was gone from his bed and her things were gone from this room. Last night, she’d left a chemise hanging over the chair. The chair was empty now. Jasper got out of bed and padded over to the bureau, pulling open the two drawers she’d claimed as hers. They were empty, too. Gone. No, not gone, he reasoned with himself. She was just downstairs. But she’d packed. Even her gowns were gone from the wardrobe.
A sense of betrayal stabbed at him. She planned to return to London tonight and yet all this time she’d said nothing about it. She was leaving him. After everything that had been said and shared last night, she wasstillleaving him. His immediate reaction was to run downstairs in his banyan and confront her, half-naked and raging. He’d not lied last night. Shehadchanged him. Her emotion had rubbed off. It took all the logic within him to realise confronting herwhilehe was angry was his worst option. It was, perhaps, even what she preferred. Fleurwanteda fight. A fight would make leaving easier. He would not give her one. A fight would allow her to run away...from Rosefields and from them. She would not thank herself for it in the long run.
