It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels

by Grace Burrowes

  Something about her casual dismissal of his words eased the tension in his chest.

  She stopped suddenly and turned around. “Here.”

  “Oomph.”

  She slammed another branch into his chest. “You carry these, and I shall collect this pile here,” she said, stooping down to pick up the last shorn pile of evergreen branches.

  Jasper stared after his wife’s retreating frame, as she picked her way gingerly down the snowy rise. “Where are you going now?”

  Katherine didn’t even break her stride as she continued down the hill. “I’m returning to the castle. I’ve much to do to prepare for the eve of Christmas.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, and counted to ten.

  If anyone had told him even a fortnight ago that he’d be wed to a saucy minx with a stubborn spirit, he would have laughed in their outrageous face. He had been so very determined to maintain the isolated existence he’d dwelt within for the past four years. More than that, he’d embraced the life he’d made for himself. If he didn’t accept people into his life, he could not risk being hurt as he had upon Lydia’s death.

  Only now, with these stirrings of vexing annoyance, and wry amusement, he’d come to realize he missed feeling…alive.

  Jasper set out down the hill. His long legged stride quickly ate up the slight progress Katherine’s much smaller legs had made.

  “I told you I do not celebrate Christmas.”

  “And I told you I intend to celebrate anyway, Jasper. So it would seem we are at an impasse,” she said, her gaze trained in the distance.

  Her tone suggested she had little inclination of abandoning her efforts.

  “My wife died three days before Christmas.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Katherine drew to a slow halt as Jasper’s words saturated the air around them.

  My wife died three days before Christmas.

  Which made so very little sense, because she was Jasper’s wife. His words slammed into her with all the force of the blustery winter wind.

  He spoke not of Katherine but of another; a woman who held his heart and consumed his thoughts and for whose memory was still so strong, he left white sheets draped upon the furnishings to blot out reminders of the real duchess.

  Suddenly his avowal to not celebrate Christmas made sense. Katherine’s arms fell by her side, and branches tumbled with a soft thump into the thick blanket of snow. And because she really knew not what to say to fill this strange disquiet, she said. “Oh.”

  Just that…oh. Not for the first time in her life, Katherine wished she possessed Anne’s effortless ability fill awkward voids of silence. Then, Katherine would know just what to say to ease her husband’s jagged hurt.

  Instead, she forced herself to look up at him.

  Jasper’s curiously empty stare remained fixed at a point beyond her shoulder. Her chest tightened at his suffering, more tangible than a physical wound.

  Katherine might represent a formal contract, based on not even the slightest hint of affection on his part, but in the days she’d come to know Jasper, she cared about him, and could not bear the sight of his suffering.

  “I am so sorry,” she said quietly.

  His shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. She thought he might speak but words did not come.

  Then it registered…three days before Christmas.

  Her mind turned quickly.

  Oh God. The day they’d left the inn had marked the anniversary of his wife’s passing. The day Katherine had lamented over her still virginal state, Jasper had been mourning the wife of his heart. She gave her head a slight, sad little shake, as so much of Jasper’s surly coldness became clearer.

  “I swore to never again celebrate, not just the Christmastide season, Katherine, but anything. It seemed an insignificant sacrifice to make in terms of what I’d done.”

  Katherine suspected she might look upon the holiday season with such seething resentment if she were to experience the kind of loss known by Jasper. If she were to lose her own husband…her throat worked reflexively at the tortured imaginings of a world without Jasper. In a short span of time, he’d come to mean so very much to her. Her eyes worked a path across his face. She detected the faint muscle that twitched at the corner of his eye. “You didn’t do anything, Jasper. Lydia’s death, it was not your fault.”

  He dropped the branches. They fell with a soft thump into the snow. His mouth twisted in an empty smile. “I killed her because of my desires to continue the Bainbridge line.”

  Katherine moved close and took his hands in hers. His body stiffened, and even through the fabric of their gloves, her skin warmed at the contact of his touch. She squeezed his hands. “It is illogical for you to blame yourself. Of course you would have had a family with Lydia.” A pained ache tugged at Katherine’s heart as the momentary dream of a babe flitted across her consciousness. She looked at their connected fingers. “You blame yourself because you love her.” Even now. “And would do anything to bring her back, but living a life devoid of all happiness will not do that, Jasper. It will only remind you of that horrid day of her death, and the dark days to follow. It doesn’t allow you to celebrate the years of joy you knew as her husband, and the love you carry in your heart, for her.”

  Jasper pulled his hand free and flexed his fingers as though he’d been repulsed by her touch. “If I hadn’t gotten my child upon her, then…” His words ended on a harsh whisper.

  Katherine tilted her head back and studied the thick grayish-white winter sky. Snowflakes danced and fluttered down, and she raised a finger to capture one of those elusive flakes. A fat snowflake landed upon her glove and quickly dissolved into a small bead of water. Here a moment, gone the next. So very delicate and fragile.

  Katherine folded her arms and burrowed into the folds of her cloak. “You mustn’t blame yourself, Jasper.”

  For years, Jasper had been besieged by nothing but despair at this time of year as it marked another passage in time of Lydia’s absence from this earth. Now, guilt of an altogether different kind filled him. At some point since he’d pulled Katherine from the Thames, the ache in his heart for the loss of Lydia had dulled, and lifted.

  Katherine spoke and her words pulled him from the thick, quagmire of guilt he slogged through. “Do you know, I hate London,” she said.

  Jasper hated London, but it hadn’t always been that way. There’d been a time when he’d been more comfortable in London at the height of a Season, than anywhere else.

  “My family had a property in Hertfordshire. Mother found it too provincial and quite detested our visits there. Father enjoyed the hunting. And I,” she glanced over at him, “I enjoyed every aspect of it. Lush green, rolling hills. Magnificently tall trees made for great big swings. I would sit upon this wide, wooden swing and read Byron’s poems. They were so very romantic and beautiful and I loved them with an innocent heart.” She painted such a beautiful, bucolic image, Jasper wanted to join in her memory of simpler times.

  He said nothing in response, instead trying to follow along with her disjointed thoughts.

  “As I told you before, Father gambled away everything.”

  The muscles in Jasper’s stomach tightened at the reminder of her wastrel father’s ill-regard for a young Katherine and her family.

  “He lost the cottage in Hertfordshire,” she said quietly. “The last night we lived in that cottage, I took one of Cook’s knives and etched my initials into the wood frame of my bedroom door.” A woeful smile curved her lips. “I wept from the moment I learned we would be forced to surrender the property in Hertfordshire until the day we departed, never to return.”

  Jasper imagined his strong, beautiful Katherine, with a knife, carving away at her bedroom door as her shoulders shook from the force of her sobbing. His eyes slid closed. There was a special place in hell reserved for cowardly bastards who left their families destitute. And when Jasper joined Katherine’s father in the bowels of hell, he’d punish him for having ever
reduced her to tears.

  Jasper reached out and brushed the back of his knuckles across the satiny smoothness of her cheek.

  His touch seemed to draw her from the pained remembrance of that moment. “Then the creditors collected my books.”

  His hand paused mid-stroke. Oh, God, he didn’t want to hear another blasted bit of this bloody story.

  “They took every single volume, and I swore I’d never, ever again pick up another book of Byron’s sonnets,” she said. “With the loss of nearly all our personal belongings and estates, the silly sonnets of love and purity and innocence all seemed so very puerile.”

  Katherine leaned into his touch the way a kitten stole warmth from its master. “I swore I’d never read another book of poetry again,” she said.

  Jasper understood that, all too well.

  “But then, I began to miss the words. Those sonnets had carried me away to beautiful places of love and even loss. No matter how much I pledge to never touch a volume, my heart craved it as much as my mind.” Katherine stepped away from him, and wandered ahead several steps, until he was filled with a sudden fear that she intended to leave and he’d never know the remainder of her story.

  Except, she only paused at the peak of the hill, and stared out at the smallish-looking landscape below. “I felt that in picking up another book, it made me weak, and it reminded me of all my hurt and anger and resentment. But the heart knows what it needs, Jasper. I could no sooner refrain from opening the pages of another book than I could give up food. I allowed myself just one poet.” Katherine reached for another flake. She caught one effortlessly between her gloved fingers.

  Wordsworth.

  “Wordsworth,” she said.

  “Byron and all those other romantic poets seemed so very silly, but Wordsworth, he seemed real. His words are not always joyous and hopeful.”

  He understood, because it had been what had drawn Jasper to the poet’s works.

  With that one story, Jasper now understood her desire for the lone copy of Wordsworth’s volume at the bookshop. His heart thumped hard in his chest, as he silently acknowledged her great sacrifice—she’d given the lone book to him.

  Jasper stood there, appreciating her delicate profile.

  As though she felt his gaze upon her, Katherine turned around to face him. “I hated my father for losing everything that I’d at one time valued. I resented the loss of all those material possessions, but you see, Jasper, if none of those great sadnesses had befallen me, I would have never discovered Wordsworth.” She lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug. “Perhaps it seems a very small consolation, after all, Wordsworth can never rival Byron in terms of greatness but happiness can still be found—just on a different page.”

  Somewhere along the way, they’d ceased to speak of poets. Rather, a more significant meaning was buried within his wife’s words.

  Jasper trailed his eyes over her pert nose, her full lips, and the cat-like slant to her brown eyes. Oh, Katherine is that what you believe you are? A mere consolation? A lesser work?

  Nothing could be further than the truth.

  Katherine cleared her throat, and walked back over to the forgotten pile of branches. She bent down and proceeded to collect the thick, evergreen branches. Unbidden, Jasper strode over to her. He hesitated.

  She paused in her efforts, and from where she knelt in the thick blanket of snow glanced up.

  Jasper lowered himself to a knee. “Here,” he murmured. He relieved Katherine of her burden and then made short order of picking up the other displaced branches. He stood.

  Katherine caught his gaze with hers, and then smiled up at him. “I imagined you would leave them here, considering my intended use for them.”

  He frowned and glowered at her from the corner of his eye. “I’m not an ogre, Katherine.” Is that what his new wife believed? That he’d show his displeasure by abandoning her to her own efforts.

  “Well, sometimes you are.” A mischievous glimmer sparkled in her eyes.

  Jasper’s lips twitched in response. “Yes, yes I am,” he concurred.

  It struck him then, how very much he’d like to remain here atop this snowy knoll, just the two of them and the quiet peace of the winter sky. The snow continued to fall down at an increasingly, heavy rate, and it wouldn’t do for them to remain in the cold this far from the castle. “We should return,” he said, the words dragged reluctantly from him.

  Katherine placed her fingertips along his forearm. His body went taut at her delicate touch. She seemed unaware of his body’s physical reaction to her nearness; the mad rush of desire that coursed through him, his racing heart, the quick, rise and fall of his chest. He wanted her. He wanted her with an aching desperation that dared him to spit in the face of the pledge he’d taken, all to claim her as his own.

  “You do realize I intend to use these to decorate for Christmas?”

  “I do,” he drawled. He’d come to know Katherine enough to know nothing would deter her from whatever she endeavored to do.

  “And you’ll not issue any further complaint on the matter?” She eyed him with the skepticism of one who expected she was being tricked in some way or another.

  “Katherine, would any complaints on my part yield a different outcome?”

  She chewed at her lower lip. The wind caught a brown ringlet. It fell across her eye. She blew it back. “No.”

  He gave a curt nod, and shifted his bundle.

  “I should also inform you now, husband,” he’d noted she seemed to use the term husband when she was upset with him. “I intend to celebrate with a great Yule log and a magnificent feast,” she said as they stomped through the snow.

  The British would be wise to turn his relentless wife upon the French to halt Boney’s mad efforts of domination. The bloody French would be powerless when faced with Katherine’s steely resolve.

  Lost to his own ponderings, it took a moment for Jasper to realize Katherine no longer walked beside him. He paused, and turned back around.

  Katherine stood frozen in the winter landscape.

  “What is it?” The quiet of the winter storm carried his words with a false loudness.

  “I don’t even know what you eat.” Her warm breath blended with the cold, and sent little puffs of white air past those plump lips.

  “What I eat?” A branch fell from his arm, and Jasper cursed. He bent down to pick it up. With her abrupt shifts in conversation, Katherine would drive him madder than a Bedlamite.

  She gestured with her hands. “Well, that is to say, I do not know what your favorite meals are. It just seems like the thing a woman should know about her husband.” Red color slapped her cheeks. Katherine glanced down at the snow, and scuffed the tip of her black boot along an undisturbed patch of earth. “Not that we have a true marriage, of course.”

  An overwhelming desire to take her in his arms and explore each corner of her body, filled him. With her clever and courageous spirit, Katherine was so vastly different than any young lady he’d ever known.

  A snowflake landed on the tip of her nose. She stared at it until her eyes crossed in the middle.

  He shifted his branches and brushed away the moisture.

  Katherine widened her eyes, seeming as startled as he himself was by his touch.

  Jasper turned around and resumed walking.

  He knew the moment she’d reached his side, not simply because of the crunch of snow under the heels of her serviceable boots but because his body seemed to have developed an innate sense of awareness. Perhaps it came of a bond shared from saving a person from certain death, or perhaps it was something more, something he could not allow himself to think of.

  “I prefer roast chicken,” she continued, “and croquettes of sweetbread. I adore them served hot with a slice of lemon.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mother detests lemons and is always insisting Cook finish the sweetbread with parsley, but sometimes Cook will set aside a dish served with lemon just for me, and I’ll sneak down to the kitchens lat
e at night. Of course, the sweetbread is no longer hot at that point, but the gesture is a lovely one, don’t you think?”

  He believed his wife talked—a lot.

  “If you’ve not given a consideration for the Christmas meal,” she went on.

  “I have not,” he said curtly.

  “Then, perhaps you’ll allow me to see to the preparations with Cook,” she said, as though he’d not even spoken.

  They reached the base of the hill, and started down the path Jasper had followed when he’d first set out in search of Katherine. Only now, a fresh cover of snow had covered all trace of his boot steps.

  “And of course, no feast would be complete without a splendid dessert.”

  “Of course.”

  At his dry response, Katherine shot him a sideways glance. She pressed her lips tight together, and jerked her chin up a notch in clear displeasure.

  The swirling wind, and the freshly-fallen snow turned up by their steps the only sounds in the silence, it struck him then, how just the sound of her voice filled him with a lighthearted enjoyment he’d thought forever lost. He mourned the absence of her words, spoken with such enthusiasm.

  They continued on. By the stiff set to his wife’s shoulders and the swiftness of her step, he deduced he’d earned his wife’s displeasure. And why shouldn’t she be annoyed? Always smiling and merry, she’d bound herself to him, a miserable, cold, unfeeling blighter.

  The long drive came into focus. Jasper paused at the edge, even as Katherine marched ahead. “Turtle soup.” His voice echoed around them.

  Katherine’s steps slowed, but she remained with her eyes fixed ahead, toward the castle.

  “And roast quail. I detest orange pudding, but love Shrewsbury cakes,” Jasper said. He adjusted the pile of branches in his arms so they were more precisely arranged, and tucked them under his arm. He resumed walking.

  Katherine once again fell into step beside him. From the corner of his eye, he detected her stare directed upward at him. He expected her to fill the silence.