Grace leaned back, looking at turns surprised and impressed. “I see. Well, that is exactly what a lover should be. But if Jason didn’t want you, to give these things to you, he would have found a way around it. You know that as well as I do.”
“Do I?” Jacinda asked, rather surprised she and Grace were having this conversation, as if they were equals in the knowledge of what men wanted. Until recently, men had seemed like a different species to her, not just another gender.
“Of course you do,” Grace said with a tilt of her head. “And all this leads us back to Jason’s supposed betrayal.”
“It isn’t supposed,” Jacinda protested. “I asked him, pleaded with him, not to approach my father on the subject of my dowry or lack thereof. He did exactly that in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Because he thought he could help you,” Grace said with a heavy sigh. “And all these facts come together to prove to me, as they should to you, that this man cares for you. Deeply. I know men, Jacinda, and most of them never would have thought to interfere on your behalf at all.”
A flicker of excitement, of hope, made her heart beat faster and immediately Jacinda tried to quash it. Grace spoke convincingly about Jason’s heart, but she didn’t know his past like Jacinda did. She hadn’t heard his words in his office just a few hours before.
“Have you ever thought that you could marry him?” Grace asked.
Jacinda flinched. She had allowed herself those daydreams as a girl, but refused to allow them to worm their way into her soul now when they would only cause brutal heartache.
“He will never marry,” she said flatly.
Grace shook her head. “So he says, but—”
“He will not.” Jacinda pushed to her feet. “He has his reasons and I must accept that and not wish or hope for more. It will only bring disappointment.”
Grace moved to her feet too. “Jacinda—”
“Please.” Jacinda reached out and caught Grace’s hand in hers. “Please don’t make me say more.”
Grace searched her face for a long moment before she locked arms with Jacinda and squeezed her gently. “I won’t if that’s what you want.”
“It is.” Jacinda sighed as Grace motioned to the dining room door and they began to walk down to the more comfortable parlor. As a way to change the subject, she said, “I fear I’m already beginning to anticipate tomorrow and going back to my aunt’s.”
“Then don’t go back,” Grace said as they settled into the parlor. “Stay here. We’ll see how long it is allowed.”
Jacinda shook her head. “That is a tempting offer, I admit, but I cannot run from the inevitable forever. My father could come at any time to collect me, perhaps even sooner if I begin to demonstrate defiance against my aunt. I must be prepared, and I can only do that if I am back in Cordelia’s halls.”
“I wish I could help you,” Grace said, and Jacinda could see how helplessness was not something her friend felt much. She envied the duchess.
“I thank you for that. But I’ve learned over the years that I must accept what comes and not wish for more.”
But even as she said the words, Jacinda couldn’t help but think of Jason. He had made her wish for more. So much more. But that had been a foolish game and she had to forget it if she was to survive whatever would come next.
Chapter Eighteen
“Not every offer is worth considering.”—The Ladies Book of Pleasures
“You’re out of sorts,” Seth said as he handed over a strong cup of coffee.
Jason took it with a scowl. “I asked for whiskey.”
His friend didn’t seem put out by his peevish tone. “It’s too early for whiskey. And you had enough last night, if your bleary eyes and pasty skin are any indication.”
Jason didn’t argue, mostly because he couldn’t. After Jacinda left him, her final words ringing in his ears, his own emotions tearing him apart from the inside, he had numbed the pain the only way he knew how. With a bottle. Followed by another.
Today he regretted the action. Especially since the feelings he’d been fighting to erase stubbornly remained. He had still betrayed Jacinda, he still loved her and he still knew he could never have her.
“I would ask you a question, but that would imply I don’t know the answer,” Seth said softly. “So I won’t sport with your intelligence by doing so. I want you to know that I am aware you have been bedding Jacinda. And that something has happened that put a wedge between you.”
Jason stared at his friend for a moment, then downed half the bitter coffee in one burning swig. He covered his pounding head with one hand.
“She was upset indeed if she revealed all to Isabel,” he growled.
He sounded angry to his own ears, but he wasn’t. Not with her, anyway. If she needed friends, he would not deny her that. Certainly she didn’t see him as one presently.
“And Grace,” Seth added.
Jason groaned. “Of course, and Grace.”
“I did not think you would go so far,” his friend continued softly.
Jason tensed as he looked at Seth evenly. “You are disappointed in me?”
Seth’s hesitation expressed a great deal, but when he spoke his tone held no censure. “Confused. I thought you were making all these schemes in order to help Jacinda.”
“I was,” he protested. “When Carnthorn made his offer as her protector, I had no other choice. In order to keep her from doing something foolish, I offered her lessons in pleasure along with help to find a husband.”
Seth stared at him. “Carnthorn?”
Jason squeezed his eyes shut. So Jacinda hadn’t gone so far as to reveal all. And yet again, he had betrayed her secrets. But it was too late to go back now.
“Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. “The duke offered to make Jacinda his mistress and now she is obsessed with the idea of becoming a man’s lover.”
“Why?” Seth asked, his tone as incredulous as if Jacinda were considering joining a circus or running away to America to join in the current skirmishes there.
“Independence,” Jason sighed. “She has been so under the thumb of her father or her aunt or the disapproval of Society that the offer has given her a first hint of freedom. She would throw away everything she knows for that, even though I am close to having at least a few men legitimately interested in her hand.”
“You sound so happy about it,” Seth said, dry as a desert.
Jason glared at him. “If she were happy, I would be happy.”
Except that wasn’t true. Every time he thought of her as some other man’s wife, and especially as some other man’s lover, he felt like he was drowning.
“Why don’t you just marry her?”
“I’ll never marry,” Jason said, getting up and walking across the parlor to stare at the fire.
“You always say that, but you must know it isn’t possible,” Seth said. “Men of our rank are meant to marry and carry on our titles, so you know you will do so eventually. And you obviously care deeply for Jacinda. Why not solve two problems at once and stop being foolish?”
Jason turned on his friend slowly. Seth had not stood, but remained leaning back in his chair, arms folded. There was a look...almost of challenge on his face. As if he were daring Jason to tell him the truth, daring him to say something of meaning.
“What do you think you know?” Jason said softly.
Seth shrugged. “That you say you’ll never marry. And that you mean it. I would ask you why, but I think after all our years as friends that you would know you could turn to me. That I would listen, not judge.”
Jason scrubbed a hand across his face. “You wouldn’t like what I had to say.”
Seth nodded. “That is probably true. But only because whatever you have not said has been a burden to you for a very long time and I hate to see you in pain.”
“It isn’t that I haven’t said it,” Jason said slowly. “I told Jacinda, years ago. I handed her my greatest secret and she never betrayed it. Ne
ver used it against me, even if at times it might have helped her to do so.”
“Then she cares for you as much as you do for her,” Seth said.
Jason flinched. He knew that was true, or it had been. But the look in her eyes when she discovered he talked to her father was one of pure betrayal. He might have lost her, not just as his lover, but as his friend. That stung him to his core. Made him weak.
Made him want to tell Seth the truth if only so that his friend understood, as Jacinda did, why he could never marry. Why he was what he was.
“You believe a certain fairy tale about my father,” he began, his voice shaky. “A fairy tale that certainly is not true.”
With his hands shaking, he told his friend everything he had spent years concealing to everyone but one unexpected girl. He told him about his mother’s death at the bottom of a bottle, his father’s abuse. He even told him what he remembered about that night on the terrace when he had confessed to Jacinda and found a friendly ear and a piece of advice that had kept him from spiraling even further into reckless abandon.
When he had finished, Seth collapsed back into his chair, his face pale and his gaze filled with sympathy. “I had guessed some of the truth,” he said softly. “But not the worst.”
Jason drew back. “You guessed?”
Seth nodded. “You hardly spoke of your father after his death, not for good or for ill. I know that, even now, I think of my father and wonder what he would have me do, but you never have. And I knew you as a boy, Jason. There were always those who were happy to return to school after breaks, the scholars and the like. But you were no scholar and you were ecstatic to return.”
Seth sighed before he continued. “You have always held yourself apart, even from me, showing everyone this frivolous face. But with Jacinda, you knew, even as a young man, that you could turn to her.”
Jason took a place on the nearest chair and sank into it. There was no denying what his friend had said. “Yes.”
He thought of her that night on the terrace when she had been his confidante. He thought of all the other nights when he came into her room and found her waiting for him. Of all the nights he had danced with her, laughed with her, in the name of a friendship that had always been something more. She knew his deepest and darkest truth and had never shied away from that. It had bonded them even before he admitted to himself that he loved her.
“Doesn’t that mean something?” Seth asked, leaning closer.
“Of course it does,” Jason said, clenching his fists. “It means I could destroy her.”
Seth chuckled and Jason glared at him. There was certainly nothing funny about this situation.
“I think you’re afraid she could destroy you,” Seth said. “Or at least the you who has built his life around betraying what your father held dear.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Jason snapped, turning his face.
“And why wouldn’t you fear it? You’ve already admitted her words that night kept you from being even more foolish in your reaction to your father’s life and death. Jacinda changed you with merely a word, what in the world could she do with your heart in her hands?”
Jason felt his jaw tensing. “I don’t want to discuss this. It is a foolish conversation about feelings that I cannot have and a future I do not want. What I need to decide is what to do now.”
“Isn’t that what we’re discussing?” Seth asked, his tone deceptively mild.
Jason ignored him. “I’ve put Jacinda in a worse position by going to her father, and she does not deserve that.”
“So save her.” Seth shrugged as if the meaning to that should be perfectly clear to Jason.
“How?” he managed to push past clenched teeth.
Seth tilted his head, perfectly silent and stared at Jason. And now his meaning was utterly clear.
Jason pushed to his feet. “Thank you for the coffee. I should go home.”
Seth got up and followed him as he hurried across the parlor. His friend was quiet until the servant waiting in the foyer left to call for Jason’s horse. Then his friend cleared his throat.
“I understand why you feel as you do,” he said softly. “I just hope you won’t allow your contempt for your father to ruin something that could be life-altering in the most wonderful and unexpected ways.”
Jason stared at his friend. Seth was still a newlywed and obviously gloriously happy with Isabel. But Jason knew what he had sacrificed to marry her. Isabel might never have children and Seth’s line would be cut off. Only it wouldn’t be his friend’s choice. That truth made even Seth’s family hesitant about Isabel.
And despite all that, the marquis never seemed to waver about choosing his heart over what might have been more rational options.
“Not all of us can be as happy as you are, my friend,” Jason said softly, clapping Seth on the arm before he moved toward his horse as it was brought to him. “Not all of us deserve to be.”
He didn’t wait for Seth to argue—he merely swung up on his mount and turned toward the street, a sense of powerful unease settling over him, one he couldn’t ride away from.
It had all unfolded just as Jacinda feared. After hearing she had not come back to her aunt’s and spent a night with Grace, her father had rushed in, hustling her from Cordelia’s home within twenty-four hours so he could “keep her from ruining herself again”.
And that was how she found herself standing in the parlor of her father’s modest London home with not just the baron, but her brother Charles, her sister Lisbeth and her sister’s husband, Mr. Samuel Cass, a rather red-faced second son of a second son who had barely even acknowledged any of them since their “party” began.
Of course, her siblings and her father more than made up for that. She had hardly had a breath since they met in the parlor for drinks after the most excruciating supper she had endured in as long as she could recall.
What was most remarkable was that in the seven years since she had last lived in this home with them, her family hadn’t changed. Her brother remained cold and hard, his every word chosen with the most potential to cut. Her father was as grasping and judgmental as ever. And her sister was vain and self-absorbed, perhaps even more than before, since she now had a man of somewhat modest fortune to pay for her jewelry and gowns.
Which seemed to be the only topic of interest to Lisbeth, as she had been prattling on about it all night.
“I declare,” Lisbeth said even now, wrinkling her nose as she looked Jacinda up and down. “That gown grows more out of fashion every time I look at it. And you’ve gone out in that rag?”
Jacinda drew a deep breath, just as she had been forced to do before every time she spoke just so she wouldn’t scream with frustration. “I was not provided an allowance for clothing, Lisbeth. And I like this gown.”
Her sister wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Why?”
Jacinda looked down at herself. She was wearing a pale blue dress, simple but elegant, which was why she had asked for the design, since when she purchased it, she knew she would not have another gown for years. Yes, it was several seasons out of fashion, but it was one she had been wearing to a party one night when she had danced with Jason. Actually, now that she thought of it, all her favorite gowns had some memory which associated them with Jason, including her nightgowns.
“You cannot be serious,” her sister said, not waiting for Jacinda’s answer to her question. “Look, you are turning all red just telling that terrible fib.”
Charles had been smoking by the fire and he ground his cigar out before he turned. “Do shut up about the dresses, Lisbeth. No one gives a damn what Jacinda wears.”
Jacinda met his stare evenly and saw nothing but flat and emotionless cold in return. How in the world had Jason and Charles ever been friends? Her brother wasn’t good enough to shine the earl’s shoes.
“What do they give a damn about, Charlie?” she asked softly.
For a moment, her brother seemed surprised that she would dare question him
directly, but then he would be. She had hardly made a peep in the past, allowing everyone to use her as the family pincushion. But she was different now. Jason had said it and in her anger she had ignored the truth.
Yet here it was. This was hellish, yes, but she wasn’t afraid of them anymore.
“Your comportment,” her father barked, not allowing Charles to answer her question.
This was not a shock. She didn’t think her brother had been allowed to take control of anything in his entire life. Their father orchestrated all.
“Yes,” Charles said, trying to move forward and retake the conversation.
“They’ll all be watching you,” her father said, squashing his son once again. Charlie slunk back to the mantel to grab his drink, thwarted again.
She almost felt sorry for him, except that he clearly felt nothing but contempt for her.
“Of course they will be,” she said, shaking her head. “But that is nothing different than I have experienced since the Incident.”
Her sister flinched at the mention and her brother’s expression turned to one of disgust. Her father was less clear in how he felt about her bringing up the unspeakable.
“But it is different,” he said, his tone hard. “Because you have some attention now. Just as you did seven years ago. You fouled the entire situation up then. You won’t repeat that mistake.”
Jacinda pursed her lips. “I think I can assure you that I won’t get caught in a compromising position in a parlor again.”
Her mind immediately took her to memories of Jason in Grace’s parlor, taking her on the settee until the pleasure mobbed her and made her forget herself.
Her father’s ugly chuckle pulled her from those memories and back to the reality at hand. “You think being caught was your crime?” he asked. “No, your problem was that you couldn’t make good on the situation. A future was laid out in front of you like a path to the stars, and you failed miserably.”
Jacinda’s cheeks flared as her brother and sister both smiled in the face of his abuse.
A Moment of Passion (The Ladies Book of Pleasures) Page 18