It Happened One Night: Six Scandalous Novels

by Grace Burrowes

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  As Katherine entered her husband’s office, she peered at the purely masculine, massive space resplendent in deep sapphire and black colorings and Chippendale furnishings. She stared about bemused at the size of the one room that could have housed the entire first floor of her family’s former Hertfordshire cottage.

  Katherine took in the elaborate Renaissance works of art upon the walls, the long-case clock, and gold-trim throughout the border of the room. She’d lain awake more times than she could remember, from fear as her worldly possessions were stripped away from her family, fearing they’d be destitute, hating Father as each property was taken, until barely anything remained. They could have paid all of father’s debts surely with the wealth to be found in this one room. And yet, when everything had been taken from her family, she’d refused to surrender to the despair.

  How could she show Jasper that his past needn’t define his future? Show him there were new days and different smiles and unfamiliar laughter. He could love the time he’d known with Lydia and yet appreciate that he lived.

  She turned to look at him.

  Jasper met her gaze square on and then he stalked over to the sideboard and picked up a decanter.

  He sloshed several fingerfuls of brandy into the glass, and her stomach tightened. She’d never before seen him drink.

  Then again, when would she have?

  She hadn’t even considered the fact that he might partake in spirits. Or that he might do it frequently or infrequently.

  As if he noted her stare, Jasper’s broad, muscle-hewn frame stiffened. “What?” he growled. He took a long swallow of his drink.

  “You w-wanted to see me.” She detested the faint tremor in her words, and prayed her husband did not note the quiver there.

  Katherine should have well-learned by now that her husband possessed a heightened sense of awareness.

  His frown deepened. He set his drink down, and folded his arms across his chest. “Katherine, I would speak to you of your—”

  “I don’t want you to drink,” she blurted. An immediate rush of heat filled her cheeks. His brows dipped. She hurried on. “I know it is not my affair whether you drink or not, particularly as ours is a marriage of convenience, but drink makes one unpredictable and unreliable, and,” stop talking, Katherine. Stop talking, “and I would feel vastly better,” not that you’ll necessarily care if I feel vastly better if you don’t drink spirits, “and if it is just the same to you, I’d rather you abstain from drink.”

  He said nothing for so very long, Katherine thought mayhap he’d not heard her spoken words.

  Jasper walked over to her, and stopped. He reached up and brushed the back of his knuckles along her jaw. “Is that what your father did, Katherine? Did he indulge in spirits?”

  Her skin burned from the butterfly soft caress. She swallowed, and managed a jerky nod.

  “And then he lost your family’s wealth and property,” he said with a gentleness she’d not come to expect from him.

  Katherine wet her lips. Jasper’s gaze dropped to her mouth, and fixed there. “He drank heavily and gambled even more heavily. Mother did not voice any disapproval. She said it was not the place of a wife, but when they took my last book of poetry, I lay abed wondering if her words might have made some difference in our circumstances.”

  His eyes moved somberly over her face. “And you’d ask that I not indulge in spirits?”

  The heat in her cheeks spread, and spilled down her neck, and coursed lower. She had no right putting requests to a man who’d wed her on a matter of convenience. Yet… Katherine nodded. “I would.”

  He said nothing. The steady beat of the long-case clock marked the stretch of silence.

  Her gaze slid away, and then Jasper dropped his brow to hers. “Very well, Katherine.”

  She tilted her neck back to look at him. “Very well?”

  “Very well,” he repeated.

  She gave him a tremulous smile. “Thank you, Jasper.” She leaned up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. She spun on her heel to leave him to his work.

  Strangers had stormed his castle. Boughs of holly and ivy now hung throughout his home. A babe occupied his guest chambers.

  With all that, it appeared his wife intended to walk out of his office.

  Katherine grasped the door handle.

  Yes, yes, she did intend to walk away from him.

  “Katherine,” Jasper’s voice boomed off the walls.

  She turned back to face him. “Yes, Jasper?”

  “I brought you here to speak to you.”

  Katherine held up a finger. “Asked me here.”

  He lowered his brows.

  “You asked me here,” she clarified. “Remember, I’ll not be ordered about.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine it,” he drawled. King George himself couldn’t order this one about.

  Her full, kissable lips pursed in a way that made him want to cross over to her and lay claim to the sweet nectar of her mouth.

  His gaze moved beyond the lush pout of her red lips, lower to the graceful curve of her neck, downward, and pausing upon breasts sized perfectly for the palms of his hands.

  Katherine cleared her throat. “Are you all right, Jasper?”

  No, you’ve driven me to distraction with unquenched desire you spirited minx.

  Jasper folded his arms across his chest. “I wanted to speak to you of your family.”

  Katherine opened and closed her mouth several times. “My family?”

  He nodded once.

  Her fingers smoothed over the sides of her floral patterned day gown, the only tell-tale gesture of her nervousness at their current exchange. “Oh.” Katherine glanced momentarily over at the door, as though considering escape, and then returned her attention to Jasper. “It is ever so wonderful they have come, isn’t it?”

  At his silence, she trailed the tip of her tongue over the seam of her lips. He’d trade all the money in his coffers to lay her down here in his office and worship her mouth with his own, to learn the secrets of her body that made her cry and moan with breathless desire.

  “Jasper?”

  Jasper started, and tugged at his immaculately folded cravat. “I do not have company at Castle Blackwood.”

  She nodded in a way that suggested she understood as much. Then, “Is that all, Jasper?”

  He angled his head, flummoxed by Katherine’s agreeability. He’d expected there to be all manner of foot stamping and fiery shouts from his spirited wife’s delectable lips. “It is clear then?” Because in the time he’d come to know Katherine, he’d come to realize that nothing was ever truly clear.

  Katherine nodded, this time more emphatically. The sudden gesture sent a brown curl falling across her brow. “You are perfectly clear, Jasper. There are to be no guests.” She brushed the strand back. “If you’ll excuse me.” She started for the door.

  A mere ten more steps and she’d be out the door, away from his office, and he’d be alone with his dark musings and deepest yearnings. An odd panic filled his chest. “You will speak to them, then?” he called out, as her fingers pressed the handle.

  Katherine spun back around, her lips screwed up. “Speak to whom?”

  Jasper closed his eyes and counted to ten, and because counting to ten didn’t seem to have any calming effect on him where his wife was concerned, he instead sent a prayer skyward for patience. “Your sister and her family,” he said, when he opened his eyes.

  Katherine raised a hand to the panel of the door, and drummed her fingertips in a distracted, staccato rhythm. “Whatever for?”

  Oh, Christ. “About leaving,” he snapped. Enough with this blasted discussion, already.

  Katherine’s hand froze mid-beat and then fell by her side. She took a step toward him. Then another. And another. Until the tips of their feet met. She looked at him through eyes of impenetrable slits that would have raised holy terror in any other man. “You’d have me send my sister out for the hol
iday?”

  Jasper frowned, and glanced over at the heavily curtained windows. “It is not snow-…Oomph” His words ended as Katherine jabbed him hard in the chest.

  “You would have me send her and sweet Lizzie—”

  “Lizzie?”

  “Her and Michael’s babe,” she didn’t so much as pause. “You would send them away in this cold, forsaken weather for the holiday?”

  “Not now,” he amended. “But after they’ve rested a day or so.” He lowered his voice. “I believed I was clear when I said there are to be no guests.”

  Katherine’s brows shot to her hairline.

  Jasper tugged at his collar. He’d imagined himself incapable of being shamed.

  Katherine proved that thought wrong with the next jab of her finger. “And they are not guests, Your Grace.” They appeared to be back to the whole Your Grace business, “They. Are. Family.” She jabbed him again. “And they are staying. All of them. Are there any other matters you cared to discuss?”

  Jasper shook his head.

  She gave a flounce of her curls. “Very well. Then if you’ll excuse me.” And with all the grace and aplomb of Helen of Troy, Katherine strode from the room with a determined step. She slammed the door in her wake.

  The abrupt movement displaced a log within the hearth, and the fire snapped and hissed with a fury to match Katherine’s rage.

  Jasper shook his head. “Well, then, I am very glad we had this discussion, Your Grace,” he murmured into the quiet.

  He grinned.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Katherine stomped through the castle, wishing she hadn’t donned her ivory satin slippers, instead wishing she’d opted for the thick, black serviceable boots she wore in her jaunts through the snow. Because the soft pad of her slippered feet served as no suitable match for the outrage thrumming through her.

  “Guests,” she mumbled beneath her breath.

  Yes, the solid, click of her boot-heels upon the hard, stone floor would be vastly preferable.

  A maid peeked out from one of the doors, and then must have seen something dark in Katherine’s expression, for she ducked back into whatever room she’d been tending. Katherine didn’t even know how many rooms or what manner of rooms existed within these cheerless, dank walls.

  She increased her pace. And this is what he’d turned her into? A frowning, scowling, boot-wearing, fast-moving duchess, who inspired fear in her staff.

  With a quiet curse, Katherine spun back around, and walked several paces. She paused inside the doorway.

  A parlor.

  She wrinkled her nose. A rather garishly gold parlor.

  Her gaze landed upon the maid who polished a small porcelain figurine. The maid gulped and fell into a deep curtsy. “Your Grace,” she said softly.

  “I’m sorry,” Katherine blurted.

  The young maid cocked her head, frozen in the dip of her curtsy. “Your Grace?”

  Katherine waved her hand. “For…for…being unpleasant. It was not my intention.” The girl angled her head further. “To be unpleasant, that is.”

  The maid’s mouth fell open wide, like the trout she and Aldora used to fish from father’s well-stocked lakes. Well, his one-time well-stocked lakes. The fish were one of the first items to go upon Father’s gambling debts.

  “Have a good day…?”

  “Mary,” the young woman blurted. “My name is Mary.”

  A perfectly suitable Christmastide name. An unspoken reminder that this was a joyous time of year; a time of beginnings and hope and birth. “It is a lovely name,” she said with a smile.

  The maid beamed. “Why, thank you, Your Grace,”

  “Lady Katherine,” she corrected. If she wasn’t to receive guests and her family was not welcomed, then the friendship of a maid would be welcome.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” the maid held her hands up in shocked protest.

  “Of course you can. It’s merely a name,” and I’m hardly a wife, in the true sense. Why with just a slip of paper, an unconsummated marriage could be annulled. Not so very easily, but still, it could be severed, and… “Of course you can,” Katherine said again.

  Mary smiled, and curtsied again.

  “Good day, Mary.”

  “Good day, Your…Lady Katherine.” Katherine turned and took her leave, and continued to make her quiet path through the house, this time less fury to her footsteps.

  She ran her fingers over the wallpaper, done in dressed stone, a somber, dark remodeling done at some point to match the foreboding darkness of Castle Blackwood. Katherine paused in the corridor and traced the fabric fauxed to look like stone. How very real it seemed, how very much like the thick blocks that were used to construct this castle many, many years past. And yet…she layered her palm to the wall, aware the texture of the smooth fabric was at odds with the image presented to those who walked by these walls.

  From the corner of her eye, she detected the white sheet draped across a door.

  Then, no one passed through these halls.

  There are to be no guests.

  Katherine removed her hand from the fabric and hugged her arms to her chest. No one had visited this castle since her husband shut himself away from the world and ordered draperies hung upon doors and over objects reminding him of all he’d lost.

  Suddenly, a vicious, potent loathing of that wholly pure white sheet filled her. She’d be glad to never see a reminder of the color white.

  Her feet carried her onward, toward the drapery. Katherine tilted her neck back and stared up at the covering. She grasped it between her fingers and tugged it free. It danced down in heavy, noisy flutters, unleashing a soft breeze.

  Katherine glanced around, but the corridor remained eerily silent. Who would be here after all? Certainly not Jasper, who’d not come after her. And why should he? Katherine was nothing to him.

  Nothing at all.

  With a stony set to her lips, she pressed the handle, half expecting it to be locked. The door opened and she stepped inside.

  An ivory silk wallpaper striped in thick gold bands lined the portrait room. Katherine hesitated, but an enigmatic pull lured her deeper into the generous space.

  With a slowness of step, Katherine moved down the row of lords and ladies and children forever memorialized within these hallowed walls. Paintings of long ago, of ladies in modest, somber tunics, and gentleman with thick, well-trimmed beards and serious frowns.

  Katherine paused beside a portrait of a stunning couple with a small boy at their feet. The brittle set to the woman’s red lips bespoke of anything but happiness. One of her hands rested upon the sleeve of a familiar-looking, great big bear of a man with a broad nose and blackness in his emerald green eyes. The gentleman’s hand lay possessively upon the shoulder of a somber, angry-looking boy. Katherine stepped closer. Oh, God. Her heart tugged, and she focused on the boy’s young, but harshly noble, features.

  Jasper and his parents.

  My parents were cold, selfish individuals. It was a match based on their mutually distinguished positions in Society.

  She shivered, and the cold inside had little to do with the chill of the dark, closed-off room and everything to do with Jasper’s miserable childhood.

  Katherine’s father had left her family in financial ruin. He’d left them desolate and seen them stripped of all their worldly possessions. As a young girl, she’d known the cloying fear of their desperate circumstances. But never once had there been a shortage of love in their oftentimes noisy, usually chaotic, household. Katherine shared a bond with her twin sister Anne, and a deep love for Aldora and her young brother Benedict. Even Mother with her social aspirations for her children had shown affection toward her daughters and son through the years.

  So very different than the world forever captured upon canvas by a too-knowing, intuitive painter. An artist who’d accurately immortalized the resentment, the loneliness, the hurt, of a boy who could be no more than nine or ten years of age.

  She clos
ed her eyes.

  Oh, Jasper. Is it a wonder you’ve this rigid shell about you?

  Unable to bear looking on the remembrance of his past, Katherine turned to go, when her eyes snagged upon another of those single white sheets.

  She wet her lips, but could no sooner leave without ripping that covering down than she could turn Aldora out for the holiday.

  Directly opposite the unhappy rendering of Jasper’s family, hung the covered portrait. Katherine made the very long walk to that sheet, and in a single pull, delicately tugged it from the top of the mahogany frame, inlaid with gold, narrow bandings.

  Her heart thudded hard against the wall of her chest, and her breath caught on a shuddery gasp.

  For all the misery and vitriol captured in Jasper’s parents’ renderings, this painting depicted the very opposite—joy, unfettered love, tranquility.

  The golden beauty, stood with the tips of her long, elegant fingers resting upon Jasper’s sapphire blue coat sleeves. Only this Jasper, this Jasper was nothing like the cynical boy of nine or ten years. His gentle, loving stare forever fixed upon his wife’s perfect, heart-shaped face. The woman, no—Lydia, gazed up at Jasper with such unadulterated love, Katherine felt like the worst sort of interloper. It was as though the artist snuck upon an intimate exchange and forever committed it to the canvas. Their locked gazes depicted two who shared a secret that none of the mere mortals looking on were privy to.

  Katherine rubbed her chest, in an attempt to dislodge the odd knot formed in her chest. Her efforts proved futile.

  This moment, this was why Jasper stared at Katherine and the rest of the world with icy disdain. This was why he frowned and snarled and snapped like an injured animal. Because how could one know this…this…splendor, and ever survive after having it so cruelly plucked from their grasp?

  Katherine bent down and picked up the thick, shockingly heavy white sheet filled with a wholly selfish, and horrible urge to toss the covering back upon the mahogany frame.

  Because then she wouldn’t have to see it, and know just why Jasper could and would never love her.