by Sara Lindsey
He made a sound of disbelief.
“I was. I already knew that I was falling in love with you, and I didn’t want secrets between us. But then things got so out of control that I forgot.”
“A likely story,” he said scornfully. “Even if it is true, which I very much doubt, you should have told me about the diary once I had found the brooch.”
“I couldn’t tell you about the diary. Not without talking to Charles first. The knowledge contained within was likely to have the greatest impact on your relationship with him. Charles was adamant that you not be told. He believed himself responsible for Laura’s death, and he was certain you would blame him, too. He feared you would prevent him from seeing Edward.”
Jason said nothing, so Olivia pressed on.
“At that point, of course, neither of us was aware you suspected Laura of having an affair. Once I learned about your suspicions, I told Charles he had to confess to you or I would do it. I couldn’t let you go on thinking Laura had betrayed you.
“And up until today, I thought Charles had confessed to you that night. I thought that was what changed your mind about me, about us. That you had realized that you could trust and love again. I realize now that I misinterpreted some of your words, perhaps because I wanted so badly to believe this magic transformation was real. When I realized it had never happened at all, I panicked. All this time I thought you loved me. You never said the words, but I simply thought two people couldn’t be the way we were together without love. But if you still believed all that nonsense about all women being unfaithful, that meant you didn’t trust me not to run away someday. And if you didn’t trust me, you certainly didn’t love me.”
Jason sat, unmoving as a statue save for the little flicks of his wrist as he guided the team.
“Please,” she begged. “Say something.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say. I can barely take it all in.”
She nodded, her eyes bright with tears. “I never wanted to fall in love, you know. I never thought I would meet a man like one of the heroes in books, and I was worried I’d end up with my heart broken. This last month has been like a perfect dream. I want you to know that I don’t regret loving you, Jason.”
When at last they reached Weston Manor, Jason drove round to the stables. As he handed her down, she realized he looked more disheveled than she’d ever seen him, and there was a lost, wild look in his eyes.
And she had been the one to put it there.
Did he hate her? she wondered.
Did he wish she’d never come into his life?
She refused to believe he had been happy, living as he was. If one could even call it living. He had been drifting along, simply existing. But there was no denying his life had been far less complicated before she had come into it.
He was always so strong, so steady, and she found it unnerving to see him so undone now. Reach out to me, she wanted to say. Let me be your support. You don’t have to go through this alone. But he did have to face these demons alone. She couldn’t heal the hurt inside him, no matter how much she wanted to.
Jason began to walk, not toward the house but out on the grounds. She followed him, knowing there was still more to be said between them. It was painfully cold, but Livvy found she was oddly grateful for the weather. If she focused on the fact that her toes felt like icicles, she wasn’t thinking about everything else going on.
Which was really a very good thing, because if she actually thought about everything that had happened that day, about where she had started and where she was headed, she suspected she would look even more lost and confused than Jason did.
Finally he spoke, and she knew from his tone of voice that the man who had been her lover was gone and in his place was the reserved marquess she had first met. It was an effort not to break down entirely.
“I believe I can safely say certain things were brought to light today which neither of us has come to terms with as yet. Your flight, if nothing else, indicates a situation more complicated than cold feet. You want me to trust you, but I am not sure you trust me, or if you even trust yourself.”
Olivia heard Jason speaking, but she was having difficulty focusing on his words. There was a blessed sense of numbness settling over her.
“I’m afraid there is no couching this in niceties. Are you in a condition that necessitates we wed to morrow?”
A condition? Did a broken heart count as a condition? “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
Was he breaking their engagement? After her precipitous flight with Charles, did an engagement even still exist to be broken?
Broken, broken, broken.
Broken trust.
Broken heart.
A broken engagement fit in nicely.
“I shall have to speak plainly,” Jason said. “Is there a chance you are with child? Have your courses come?”
Olivia suddenly felt as though she were standing too close to a fire. Despite all the wickedly intimate things she had done with Jason, discussing her courses was too embarrassing. In any case, she wasn’t talking to Jason now, but the Marquess of Sheldon.
Her cheeks flamed, but she shook her head. “I am not with child.” For the briefest moment, she thought she saw a flash of disappointment cross his face, but that was foolish, she told herself. If anything, he was likely relieved.
“Well,” he said, “that is a relief.”
She gaped at him. She might have guessed he was thinking it, but it was really too much that he had said it aloud.
“I only meant that if you were with child, we should have to go through with the wedding tomorrow as planned. Since you are not—”
“I think I understand you quite well, my lord.”
“I don’t think you do. I feel I rushed you into this engagement. There are no laws as to how long a betrothal may last. I believe it would be better for both of us to have time to find answers to the questions raised today. It seems rather inauspicious to start a marriage under a cloud of doubts and suspicions, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know. What exactly are you saying? What will happen on the morrow?”
“I think it best we call off the wedding.”
“Oh!” The startled exclamation burst from her lips. “I—I see.”
“I don’t mean we shouldn’t ever get married. Only that tomorrow seems undesirable given the events of today. You need some time to decide what you want.”
I want you, she wanted to rail at him. I want you to love me.
“You need time as well,” she said. “I imagine learning the truth about Laura will affect your view of everything.”
“Of course it does, damn it!”
It was the most emotion she’d seen from him yet.
She tried not to be jealous of Laura, because clearly it would get her nowhere.
“Have you realized you’re still in love with her?” she asked in a tremulous voice.
“I don’t know how I feel, aside from guilty. If I hadn’t been such a hardheaded bastard, Laura might still be alive. My son might still have his mother.”
Lord, she ought to lock him and Charles in a room together and let them thrash out who was the guiltier party.
“There’s no way of knowing that, Jason. Her death was an accident, a horrible accident, but it wasn’t your fault.”
He shook his head. “No, if she’d been able to come to me with her problems, if she’d trusted me to see things right, she wouldn’t have been out that morning.”
“Perhaps not that morning, but she would have gone riding again. You and Charles are both so determined to blame yourselves. Both of you made wrong decisions, but such is human nature. And if there is blame to go around, Laura must take her share, too.”
“Laura is the innocent party in all this,” Jason said sharply.
“No.” She held up her hand. “Hear me out. You yourself said that she didn’t trust you enough to come to you with her p
roblem. Laura should have trusted you enough to know you would do the right thing and help Charles.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re a good man, Jason Traherne.”
He let out an ugly laugh. “A good man,” he repeated. “Would a good man decide his late wife was guilty of adultery without just cause?”
“I admit it was not well done of you, but given your childhood and the somewhat suspicious circumstances, I can understand why you jumped to the conclusions you did.”
She pressed her fingers to his cheek. It was meant to be comforting but he jerked away as if she’d scalded him.
“Jesus, Livvy, your hands are like ice. Where are your gloves?”
“I forgot them. I’m afraid I didn’t plan anything very well today.” She had grown accustomed to the cold, but his actual mention of it seemed to make the numbness disappear. Her teeth began to chatter.
“Little fool.” He swore under his breath. He shrugged off his greatcoat and put it around her shoulders. It was warm and smelled deliciously like Jason.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s get you back home.”
And that, Olivia thought, was the problem. Weston Manor wasn’t home anymore. Home was where Jason was. He was what she’d been looking for all along. She hadn’t been looking for adventure, not really. She had just associated adventure with what she really wanted but had been too scared to hope for.
Love.
A lover. A husband. A hero.
Not the perfect hero she had once dreamed of, but a man whose scars and imperfections touched her soul. He filled the deepest reaches of her heart, and that terrified her, because she wasn’t sure Jason would ever be able to find room for her in his.
Chapter 20
“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ ”
Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 5
Jason spurred his horse on, but he couldn’t outrun the demons that lay behind him any more than he could avoid those waiting before him. When he sensed the gelding was flagging, he returned to the castle. Once he’d handed the reins over to a groom, he began to walk, unable to stand the restless energy that filled him. He always ended up in the same place.
He didn’t know how many long hours he’d spent sitting in front of his mother’s grave. He’d come to the little plot of land attached to the rectory almost every day since he’d returned to Arlyss, sitting for hours in the bitter cold just staring and waiting. He needed a sign, an answer to his problems, but his mother gave him as little in death as she had in life.
It had been three long, lonely weeks since he had left Olivia. Three long weeks of wondering where his life had gone wrong. Three lonely weeks of not knowing how to find his way again.
He looked up as a shadow fell over him. “Katherine!” He was surprised to see her. He had assumed she would be with Olivia.
“Hello, Jason. You look terrible.”
“It’s nice to see you, too, but I’m afraid you’re a bit early for Christmas.”
She laughed. “Am I only allowed to visit once a year?”
“No, of course not.” He got to his feet and brushed the dirt and grass off his breeches. “Is Charlotte with you?”
“No, I left her with my sister. I felt that what I had to say to you was best done without her getting underfoot.”
“Have you come to berate me, then?” he asked.
“I only want to talk to you. Will you walk with me?”
He inclined his head in assent.
“When I married your father, you were already a grown man, and you clearly didn’t need a mother figure fussing over you. But I always felt you could use a mother’s love, and when I made my vows to William, I made a vow to watch over you as well. But it seems I’ve failed you. I didn’t realize how deeply your mother’s abandonment affected you, and now this business with Laura . . .”
“There was nothing you could have done, Katherine,” Jason said gruffly. “Your visits, year after year, when you would doubtless have rather been with your family have meant a great deal to both me and Edward.”
“You and Edward are my family, Jason. And you’re wrong. I could have spoken to you about your mother.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good. My father tried to get me to talk about her for years, but I refused to listen. Eventually he gave up.”
“No, he never gave up. He knew the day would come when you would want to know more. There’s a letter he wrote in the bank vault in London, or, if you would like, I can tell you what I know.”
“Please.”
“You are aware that your parents’ marriage was arranged. Your mother was the youngest daughter of the Duke of Repton. She was just fifteen when she wed your father. I’m afraid she was very spoiled, and while William indulged her spending habits, he later realized he had unintentionally denied her the one thing she truly craved.”
“Which was?”
“His attention. As the baby of her family, the entire household had doted on her. She supposed her husband would do the same, but William had little interest in her. Things improved a bit when you were born. Your father took a natural interest in you, and having birthed the heir, your mother received attention as well. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, you were soon put entirely in the care of servants.
“I want you to know that your father later regretted not having spent more time with you when you were young. He was raised in much the same way you were, though, and he never imagined a father was supposed to take interest in a child, even his heir, before that child was old enough to assume adult responsibilities. I think, had he lived longer, he would have been different with Charlotte—” Her voice broke.
“I know he would have done things differently. My father became a different person when you married him, Katherine. He began to live and enjoy life.”
“I miss him. I know there was talk about the difference in our ages, but I truly loved William.”
“I know you did. I never doubted it. And he adored you.”
She dabbed at her eyes. “I am sorry to say he never loved your mother, nor did he understand her. He preferred an evening by his own fire reading poetry, while your mother was desolate if she missed a single event of the Season. But the less interest your father paid her, the more she coveted it. She tried everything possible to make him notice her.”
“Such as having an affair?”
“I’m not certain. I think by then she might have accepted that your father would never dote on her in the way she wanted. If she could not get attention from William, she must have decided to seek it elsewhere.
“I am only telling you all this so you understand that while your mother was a selfish, spoiled individual, she was also extremely unhappy. I have asked myself time after time how any mother could abandon her child, but the truth of the matter is that your mother was, in most respects, a child herself, and you had already been taken from her long before she ran off.”
“I see,” Jason said, not knowing what else to say.
“Do you? You are an intelligent man, Jason. You must realize your mother was closer to the exception than the rule. I was never false to William. My sister has never been untrue. And now you know Laura was faithful.”
“When Laura died, I thought I would die, too. I hardly remember that first week. I know I drank constantly. And then I wasn’t sad, but angry. I was furious with her for dying. The anger was easier to live with than the pain of knowing she was lost to me forever. That was when I started looking for ways to blame her for what had happened. The more I searched, the more I found, and when I laid all of the pieces of the puzzle out, there was only one explanation I could come up with. Now that I know the truth I can le
t go of the anger, but I’ve only traded anger for the guilt of having so misjudged her.”
“Laura would have understood. She wouldn’t want you to torment yourself.”
“How can I not? She might still be alive if—”
“You certainly can’t know that. Are you going to spend the rest of your life peering into the past, making yourself mad over things that can’t be changed? Laura would want you to be happy, Jason. You have to forgive yourself and let her go.”
He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “I know.”
“Don’t you think, if you let yourself, you could find happiness with Olivia? I know it was not well done of her to run off, but can’t you see your way to forgiving her?”
“I already have. She’s certainly not the first bride to have second thoughts, nor will she be the last. And my reaction proved she had good reason to flee.”
“She understands why you acted as you did. She loves you.”
“I love her, too.” The words were surprisingly easy to say. He had admitted his feelings to himself, but this was the first time he had voiced them. “I love Olivia,” he said again, marveling at the rightness of the words upon his lips. “I love her so much I sometimes think I’ll burst from it. I realized it when she ran away with Charles, but the feelings were there before that.”
Katherine braced her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you telling her this? She’s been miserable since you left.”
“It’s nice to know I’m not alone in the feeling,” Jason remarked. “But I’m not what she wants. She wants a perfect man, like out of one of her novels. I’ve already hurt her and disappointed her so many times. If I love her, shouldn’t I let her go? She hasn’t even had a Season yet. Maybe she’ll find a better man.”
“And could this better man ever love her as much as you do? Because I have read some of these novels myself, and there’s only one trait the hero always possesses.”
He was scared to even hope. “What?” His lips formed the word, but no sound came out.
“He loves the heroine with everything he was, everything he is, and everything he hopes someday to be with her by his side.”