by Georgie Lee
His father’s fury whipped back to Jasper. ‘How could you? How could you live in this house and deceive us like you did? We loved you, took care of you and all the while you were sneaking behind our backs to betray every value we hold dear.’
Jasper closed his eyes, hearing his uncle’s accusations in his father’s, except here he deserved them. All the things his father and Jane blamed him for doing, he’d done. He opened his eyes and faced him, ready to confess to everything, even if it destroyed for good their love and concern for him. He refused to hide his real self any longer. ‘I didn’t come home and do it. I did it in Savannah, too. This is what Uncle Patrick taught me, not the cotton trade. How to lure men into his gambling house and use their weaknesses to enrich myself. He hid it from you and taught me to do it, too.’
His father’s jaw slackened and for the first time ever he seemed at a loss for words. His siblings exchanged surprised looks, but his mother’s fallen face as she stared at the rug hit Jasper the hardest. Like her son, everything she’d believed about her favourite brother was being ruined. He didn’t want to tear his family apart or cause any of them more hurt than he’d already inflicted, but he was done with lying. This was who he was and this was his past, and they must finally see it.
‘If we’d known what we were truly sending you to, we never would have done it,’ his mother offered in a soft voice, struggling like the others to take in the news.
‘I don’t blame you or Uncle Patrick. I blame myself. I could have written to you and come home when he told me his secret, but I didn’t. I chose my path in Savannah and I chose it here.’ He turned to Jane who nervously spun the bracelet on her arm, as uncertain now as she’d been the morning he’d almost broken their engagement. ‘If I could go back and change it all I would. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I only wanted to ensure those I love, especially you, were secure in a way that I wasn’t at the end in Savannah and I did it the only way I knew how.’
Jane’s fingers stilled on the bracelet, but she said nothing. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to reveal his heart to her, but she had to know he loved her. He always had. Maybe it would help her not to regret so many things the way he did. If he could undo it all he would, but it was no longer possible.
Jasper shifted on his feet, eager to leave. He couldn’t stay here, not with everyone staring at him as though he were some ugly thing masquerading as a husband and son. He’d violated the beliefs they held sacred and passed himself off as an imposter. It was time for him to go.
* * *
Jane stared at the empty doorway to the sitting room, avoiding the accusing and censorious looks of the Charton family. She couldn’t face them, especially Milton and the sneer he tossed at her or the disappointment in Mr Charton’s eyes. After all their years as friends of her family, everything they’d done for her, she’d rewarded their affection by betraying their trust. She deserved every bit of the shame covering her. Except it wasn’t only her own actions garnering their condemnation, but Jasper’s, too, and he was no longer here, having left her to face his family alone. He had said he loved her before he’d gone, but it didn’t matter if he wasn’t willing to remain beside her. Once again someone she loved had left her and she wasn’t sure he would ever return.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, she held her head high and walked slowly out of the room. Tears blurred her vision and she hung on tight to the banister to stop from tripping down the stairs. In less than an hour her world had fallen to pieces and she was more alone than the morning the nurse had shooed her from her mother’s sickroom.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the entry hall, wiping her eyes in an attempt to pull herself together in front of Alton, who waited beside the open door. The tears wouldn’t stop and no matter how tall she stood, the old butler she used to accept peppermints from continued to watch her with a mixture of pity and disapproval, and it tore at her.
Outside, she wrapped her arms around her against the chill, unwilling to go back inside for her wrap. She approached the carriage with slow steps, hesitant to go home and sit alone while all of her and Jasper’s mistakes haunted her. She was tired of being alone and wouldn’t do it any more. There was only one place she could go, to the one person who’d never walked away from her, even when she’d done her best to push him away.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Jane?’ Philip stood behind the butler as Jane stepped through his door, the front of her dress spotted with tears. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Jasper’s gone,’ she choked out. ‘And everything is a mess.’
Philip opened his arms and she flung herself into them and began to weep into his coat. He rubbed her back while he led her across the foyer and into the sitting room where Laura joined them, offering her embraces along with Philip’s. They didn’t press her to speak, but waited patiently while she cried until Laura had to excuse herself to see to the children.
Then at last Jane sat back and dried her eyes with Philip’s handkerchief and told him what had happened. Philip didn’t shake his head in disappointment or greet her confessions with the heartbroken disbelief Mr Charton had offered. He simply listened while she explained about the hell, their fights, her visit to Mrs Hale and Chester Stilton’s scene at the Chartons, and how Jasper had left them afterwards.
‘He isn’t going to come back to me, I’m sure of it. He’s going to leave me like so many others have, like I deserve for what I did to Mother and Father.’
Philip frowned, perplexed. ‘What did you do?’
‘I brought the fever into the house by disobeying them.’ Jane hiccupped. ‘If I hadn’t, they might still be alive.’
Philip shifted on the sofa to face her. ‘You don’t believe it’s your fault they died, do you?’
The dark secret she’d carried for years demanded she remain silent, but she was tired of acting like one person to shield the other wounded one beneath, or pretending like Jasper to be someone she was not. ‘I was the one who went to the fair with Jasper and Milton because I wanted to see the elephant, despite Mother telling me not to go. I was the one who brought the fever into the house and gave it to her and Father. I’m the one who caused them to die. I’m sure everything I’ve had to endure these last few years is a punishment for what I did.’
Tears welled in her eyes again and the years of blame pressing down on her were made worse by tonight and the heartache of losing Jasper.
Philip laid his hands on her shoulders and met her eyes. ‘It wasn’t you who got them sick. It was Father. He’d been in St Giles to collect a debt, but the man who owed him was suffering with a fever. A number of the people in his building were, but no one had said anything for fear the authorities would send them to the pest house or quarantine their homes. As soon as Father realised how sick the man was, he forgave the debt and left. His charity wasn’t enough to stop him from contacting the illness, or giving it to Mother.’
‘But my cold?’
‘It was an unfortunate coincidence you were sick around the same time.’
Jane stared at the vines in the carpet beneath her feat, stunned by what she was hearing. Her disobedience hadn’t killed her parents, it had been something far beyond her control. It didn’t seem possible and yet it was. ‘I never knew.’
‘I never thought to tell you because I didn’t realise you blamed yourself for what happened.’
‘I never told you or anyone because I was too ashamed, as I was too ashamed to admit the troubles between Jasper and me.’
‘Laura and I guessed as much.’
Of course he did, but for the first time it didn’t anger her. ‘You knew about Jasper’s gaming hell, too, didn’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he answered without hesitation or apology. ‘I’ve vetted every man who’s ever come to me for a loan, I did doubly so for the one who wanted your hand. I discovered it then.’
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‘Yet you still let me marry him. Why?’
Philip rested his hands on his knees. ‘Do you remember how, after Mother and Father died, you wouldn’t leave my side?’
She nodded. ‘I was afraid I’d lose you, too.’
‘I feared the same thing.’
‘You?’ She gaped up at him. ‘You’re never afraid!’
‘I am, more than I’m sometimes willing to admit.’ He placed his arm around her and drew her into the crook of his shoulder. ‘You were so precious to me. You always have been, since I first saw you wrapped in Mother’s white shawl when I was sixteen. When they left us, I was terrified of failing you as a guardian.’
She slipped her arms around her brother’s waist and held him tight. ‘You’ve never failed me.’
He hugged her closer. ‘Do you remember, in the weeks after the funeral, how Jasper used to come here every day asking you to play with him?’
‘I do.’
‘One day, he came by when you were asleep on the sofa in my office. When I met him on the portico, he asked again if you could come out. I explained how it might be some time before you’d be ready to play and it would be best if he didn’t return until then. Do you know what he said to me?’
‘No.’ She sat back, amazed. She’d never heard this story.
‘He said he knew you were sad and afraid, but he was still going to come every day because he didn’t want you to be lonely. He wanted you to know he was here for you and would be until you were ready to meet him again. I admired how, at eight years old, he possessed enough insight into what you were facing to be so persistent, and was grateful he kept coming back until the day you were finally ready to leave my side. It’s why I let the two of you get away with half the things you did when you were younger. I was confident he’d watch out for you and keep you safe.’
Tears slipped down Jane’s face as she remembered the morning Jasper had come here again and she’d finally been able to meet him in the garden, to smile and play for the first time in weeks.
‘He reminded me of our conversation the day you two were betrothed,’ Philip continued. ‘He told me you were lonely again and needed him, and if I didn’t agree to the betrothal, he’d come back every day until I did. I realised then, despite his secret activities, and whatever he was facing from Savannah, together the two of you could handle them all.’
Jane wiped the tears off her face. ‘But we haven’t.’
‘You will.’ Philip took her hands in his. ‘You’ll find a way.’
Jane studied her brother’s long fingers entwined with hers, struggling to take in everything he’d said. For all these years she’d been mistaken about so many things, including herself. If she’d had the courage to speak about it sooner, she might have viewed the events of her life, herself and even Jasper differently. She let go of his hands and stared at the large diamond in her ring, turning it back and forth to catch the rainbows inside the stone.
Philip was right, Jasper had always cared for her as she’d cared for him. His refusal to give up the hell hadn’t been about choosing it over her, but his desire to look out for her as he’d always done and to see to the welfare of his employees and the widow he felt he’d wronged. Even when they’d faced his family he’d done all he could to protect her, to step between her and them and take the blame for what was happening. Then he’d said he loved her and still walked away. It left her as confused about what to do as the day she’d visited Mrs Hale.
Mrs Hale.
‘She was right,’ Jane murmured.
‘Who was right?’
‘Mrs Hale. She said I knew best how to help Jasper and I do. He’s the one hurting this time and he needs me to come back for him as often as it takes to make him see he is a good man.’ Like Jane, Jasper believed he wasn’t worthy of love because of his past. It was time to prove he was wrong.
* * *
Jasper climbed up the stairs of the warehouse, his hand shaking as he reached into his pocket to fish out the keys to his office. He stopped in the darkness, not wanting to fumble for the metal like some drunk off his liquor. He pressed his hands against the rough wood of the wall. He’d walked the streets for hours, trying to settle himself before he’d come here, reluctant to face that this was all he had left and all he was. For a while he’d begun to believe he might be more than ruined men, cards and bets. Jane had helped him imagine it, but not even her love had been enough to overcome his past or his flaws. They’d flooded over him like a storm wave and he hadn’t been able to stop it.
The memory of his father’s disgust when the truth had come out made him screw his eyes shut. The family who’d rushed to embrace him when he’d stepped out of the carriage from Portsmouth, gaunt and stinking of fever, had recoiled from him tonight. It was like the morning he’d set sail for America when he’d believed he’d been banished from everyone he’d ever loved, flung out of the family like some unwanted coat. They’d been right to send him away, to distance themselves from the weakness inside him. It had consumed everything good and wonderful in his life, including Jane.
I should go back to her and try to make things right. He dropped down one step, ready to leave the darkness of the gaming house for the light she offered, then stopped. After the way he’d treated her, he couldn’t hope to regain her heart. He’d chosen this over her and didn’t deserve her forgiveness or her love.
A strange quiet met him as he trudged down the hallway. The click of chips and the clink of the ball in the Hazard wheel were gone along with the cadence of voices punctuated by laughter. The door to the gambling room stood open.
Jasper stared inside the room in disbelief. It was empty except for Mr Bronson, who sat at a table turning a chip over and over in his fingers. Jasper hadn’t seen him this dejected since word had reached him from outside the city of his father’s passing. Around him, cards lay scattered on the baize, chips discarded and chairs at haphazard angles to the tables.
‘What happened?’ Jasper’s question broke the silence and halted the steady turning of the chip in Mr Bronson’s fingers.
Mr Bronson tossed the chip aside and rose, surveying the empty room. ‘Lord Fenton came barging in here with the constable. Demanded we shut down. I challenged him to show me where in the statute it said what we’re doing is illegal. When neither his lordship nor the constable could cite the bill, they left. But so did all of our clients. None of them wanted to find himself in gaol or in the newspapers. After the dust up, they aren’t likely to return.’
Jasper rested his hands on the back of a chair and leaned hard on his arms. Months of striving to bring this together, to create something for himself, while balancing all of the many lies he’d created to allow it to flourish, had all been ruined. Along with it went the livelihoods of his dealers and footmen and the future support for Mrs Robillard, and especially Jane. He’d come here because he’d believed this was all he had left and even this had been ripped from him.
‘I’ll open the club as soon as I can and I’ll employ the dealers and footmen there. You’ll have a place there, too.’ He’d already wounded his own family. He wouldn’t see others suffer or children starve because of him.
‘I can’t. These merchants of yours will recognise me from here and they’ll avoid me and anything connected with me like the plague. Luckily for you, few people can connect you to this place.’
Jasper dropped into a chair, his belief in the club helping him or anyone else fading. ‘They will soon enough.’
Jasper told him what had happened at his parents’ house, his voice echoing off the wooden walls and through the empty room. ‘In less than one night I’ve managed to lose everything.’
‘You still have your wife and the two of you are clever enough to come out of this some way.’
‘She isn’t likely to help me, not after what I’ve done.’ He tapped the green ba
ize as he looked around at the messy room.
Mr Bronson hauled himself up, and dropped a wide hand on Jasper’s shoulder. ‘She didn’t look down on me when we met, or scold me for leading you astray. She took me for who I am and didn’t judge me for it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen you come here with more enthusiasm for being rid of this place than you ever had for owning it. She helped bring about this change in you. She can help you, if you let her.’
Mr Bronson patted his shoulder, then wandered out of the room, leaving Jasper alone.
Jasper studied the paintings in their gilded frames, his insurance against ruin, but they meant little. It was all money and nothing more, as worthless to his soul as it had been to buying food in Savannah. Jane had been the one thing of value he’d possessed and he’d lost her.
‘Jasper?’
Jasper stood and whirled to find Jane standing in the gaming room doorway, as welcome a sight as the ship bobbing in the harbour in Savannah ready to take him to England. ‘Jane, what are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you. You’re my husband and if you think I’m going to allow you to push me out of your life, then you are very much mistaken.’ She wound through the tables to reach him, as tenacious as on the afternoon she’d slipped into his bedroom. This was the Jane he remembered and had first fallen in love with, not the wounded one in his parents’ house, the one he’d never wanted to hurt. ‘It’s time for all the guilt and blame to end, for both of us.’
‘There is no both of us, just me and what I did.’
‘No, for years I believed everything terrible that happened to me was because I deserved it for making my parents sick. It tore me up inside until I was convinced I wasn’t worthy of love. I was wrong about it and so are you.’
‘I have done bad things.’
‘And they end tonight.’
‘It doesn’t change my past or my breaking my promise to you. You wanted to be cherished and not to be humiliated, and I failed to do both.’