by Jaima Fixsen
“Of course I am,” Laura said. “I have such a love for theatre.” She could have added something about it being a passion of her late father’s and drop in that he was a French count, but they could work that out for themselves. She needn’t resort to thrust and parry tactics. She felt safe surrounded by Rushfords. If they accepted her, who else mattered? Not a one, according to them. There were advantages, she was discovering, to Rushford pride. It insulated her—until she noticed Saltash. He must have entered his box during the interval. He was staring at her.
Lofty pacifism was beyond her now. The indignities of being assaulted in the street, trussed up and bundled in a carriage, jolted across the country, and desperately conniving for her freedom flooded over her. She’d eviscerate him. Her fingers tightened around her fan as she rose from her chair, heedless of Anna’s restraining hand.
“You wish to visit him?” Jasper asked, following her eyes.
“I’m going to corner him. Not cower here,” she said. Jasper stood and put his hand in the small of her back.
Lighting her face with a sparkling smile, Laura waved artlessly, moving in for the kill. “Uncle!” she called.
The sharp-fanged ladies beside her hushed. “Uncle!” Laura called again, letting her voice carry. He could cut her, but even so, the damage was done. Tonight these ladies would go home and pull out their peerage, searching out the page where it informed all and sundry that the Duke of Saltash had married a Frenchwoman. It might even say that the duchess had a sister, one Marguerite Leonie Lecroy-Duplessis, widow of a Comte of the Ancien Régime, who was survived by two living children, Jacques-Marie Phillipe and Laure Seraphine. Even if it didn’t, they’d uncover the truth before long.
A mottled flush rose to the duke’s cheeks; beside him the duchess made frantic work with her fan. He nodded.
“Excuse me,” Laura said, beaming at the shattered ladies as Jasper swept her out of the box. “It would be unkind not to give my regards to my uncle.”
By the time they entered his box, Saltash’s face was bright as raw beef. In perfect contrast, his wife was pale, her gauntness only accentuated by her gown of ivory lace. A young girl with a square chin sat beside them, leaning forward, her hands tight on the arms of her chair.
“Is this—”
“Your cousin,” the duchess answered.
“We haven’t met before,” Laura said. The five of them exchanged courtesies, every smile as hard as chipped granite, but Laura scarcely noticed. Her attention was fixed on the duke.
“I see you’ve landed on your feet,” Saltash muttered.
“In spite of you. Again,” Laura said. “We will invite you to the wedding, but I advise you to absent yourself. Find a reason to take yourself out of London. I’d hate to let slip anything about my recent journey. It wouldn’t look well at all.”
“You—”
“Ah.” Jasper raised a hand. “Enough, sir. It is sufficient for you to nod and look as if you are pleased to see us. Yes, yes, a little wider—that’s the dandy!”
Saltash growled. The duchess crumpled her handkerchief.
“Madam, you are so very good to put up with him,” Jasper said, glib as ever. “I’ve always said it’s a mercy you’ve not given him a son—I hope he thanks you often. Not because he’s mean and a bounder and his bloodline deserves to die—but it’s proof, madam, of your wonderful fidelity. I dare say, if you’d had your sister’s spirit, you’d have cuckolded him years ago.”
He dropped the insult as casually as a gunner lighting a fuse—but it was the girl who reacted, starting in her chair. Saltash and his wife were motionless as tombstones.
No son…and Saltash had a long-standing mistress. Who was also childless. “Jasper—” Laura began, as the duchess turned even paler and closed her eyes.
“You’ll stand for this, Papa?” the girl asked, bright spots in her cheeks spoiling the haughty tilt of her chin. “I—”
Saltash didn’t move.
Jasper glanced at Laura, then focused again on Saltash through narrowed eyes. “How unforgivably clumsy of me. I’d always assumed—your daughter—I mean—”
Laura took her cue and laid a hand on Jasper’s arm. “Darling. Don’t say anymore.” She bestowed a twinkling smile on her poleaxed uncle. “The next act is about to begin and I think we should take ourselves off before causing more mischief. Of course, you are welcome to the wedding, aunt. And you too, cousin.” She started for the door. “So sorry! The most regrettable accident! Au revoir!”
She made it to the corridor before seizing Jasper’s arm. “How did you know?” she asked, pulling him aside, close to the wall. She’d never suspected. Her mother had never even hinted at such a thing, but she must have known. Why else all those worries for her sister?
“That she’s not his daughter? I didn’t. Just trying to be as offensive as possible. Never dreamed I might be hitting the truth. Though once I said it, I remembered certain facts—”
“Their faces,” Laura whispered. “He couldn’t have known.”
“Foolish of him to ignore the evidence. He must be truly awful at cards.”
He grinned so provokingly she had to hide her mouth behind her fingers. Even so, a half-squashed laugh escaped. “Yes, but what have you done?”
“Given him plenty to think about,” Jasper countered. “It’s the least he deserves.”
“But my poor aunt!”
“I know.” Jasper squeezed her hand. “She must have had some spirit once. Trust her to find it again. It’s not your trouble. He’s behind you now and that’s bound to be a good thing.”
“You took your time returning,” Henrietta said when they retook their seats.
“We were recovering in the corridor,” Jasper said. “I shared a joke with Saltash.”
Henrietta glanced at the duke, then eyed them suspiciously. “He doesn’t look like he enjoyed it. I trust you are all right now?”
Laura nodded. She would be.
*****
Cramming the whole family together was more diverting than Jasper expected, but surprisingly fatiguing. Sophy and Tom were here, staying in Rushford house instead of Tom’s London home. They claimed it was so Sophy could have more time with Lord and Lady Fairchild, but Jasper suspected his mother still wasn’t entirely reconciled to Tom’s unfashionable address. She kept urging him to sell.
Anna and Alistair came by most days with their son Henry, who along with Henrietta’s boys wreaked the sort of havoc that, for now, Ollie could only dream of. Jasper watched Sophy’s startled eyes following those three terrors whipping through the library, then coming to rest on the daughter bundled in her arms. “Give her another year,” Jasper said, unable to resist.
“Nonsense. She’s perfect,” Tom said, lifting Ollie from Sophy’s hands. He kissed her waving fist and passed her to Jasper just in time for her to spit up on his coat.
“What did I tell you?” Tom said, smirking at Jasper as Sophy searched for a handkerchief.
“Ours will be drier,” Jasper called to Laura. “Make a note of it, please!”
“I didn’t think you cared overmuch for children,” Laura said.
Jasper shrugged. “Seems an unavoidable fate.” Walking to the long windows, he freed one hand to close them and fasten the latch. “You’re not so bad,” he said, looking down at Ollie, “but your cousins, now…” He glanced at Laura again. “Ours will be quieter.”
“If you say so,” she said.
He hoped so, but didn’t plan on finding out straight off. Children and family were well and good, but they undoubtably kept him from seeing Laura alone. After sharing her all week with his parents and nephews and cousins and sisters, he thought it would be nice to keep her to himself for at least a little while.
“I’ll return her now,” Jasper said, tipping Ollie back into her father’s arms. “It appears I need to change.” At the door he caught Laura’s eye and she followed him from the room.
“Ready to escape this madhouse?” he asked.
/> “Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy it.” She smiled at him. “You’d better hurry up and kiss me while there’s still time.”
Jasper inclined his head. “I am, as ever, your obedient servant.”
Of course they didn’t have long before she was summoned away for a final dress fitting. At dinner he could only watch her down the length of the table making conversation with his father and Alistair while he tried to keep up things at his end with Sophy and Henrietta and Laura’s brother Jack. Superstition, and his mother, kept Laura hidden from him the next morning until Tom and Alistair commandeered him and brought him to church. They were early—in order to have plenty of time to roast him, Jasper suspected. He didn’t mind. But he did keep an eye on his watch.
*****
“Think they’ll ever leave?” Jack asked, peering from the window of Laura’s room as Jasper’s family trickled out the door and into the waiting carriages. “We’ll be late.”
“Lady Fairchild doesn’t believe in punctuality. That’s for lesser mortals,” Laura said. “We’d better wait a quarter of an hour or we’ll get to the church before them.”
“They’re not a bad lot I suppose,” Jack said.
“Even Jasper?”
“I could grow to like him,” he said.
“Do,” Laura told him.
Jack smiled and crossed the room, picking up her hands and turning her around. “Very pretty,” he said. “But Maman would have stitched it better. She’d be happy, though. And proud.”
“Are you?” Laura asked.
“Yes. And sorry. I shouldn’t have stayed angry with you.”
“I forgive you,” Laura said, with an airy wave of her hand.
Jack laughed. “Good. Maybe you’ll forgive me too, for going round and thrashing that doctor friend of Saltash’s. Condemning him in a letter to the Royal Society was not quite enough.”
“You didn’t!” Laura gasped at him.
“I’m afraid I did. Wanted to do the same to Saltash, but Jasper said no, you’d both taken care of him. I think—” Jack hesitated. “He’s right about—well, he’s both right about you and right for you, it seems.”
“I was too headstrong,” Laura said. “I’m sorry, Jack. But it turns out well, doesn’t it? We’ll both be in Suffolk. You’ll have to get yourself a housekeeper, though. The state of your cuffs—you look as if no one cares for you and it isn’t the case.”
“I was almost enjoying letting myself think so,” he said. “But self-pity gets old after a while. Can we go? Has it been fifteen minutes yet?”
“I don’t know but I’m tired of waiting.” She beckoned him and together they went downstairs. “Thank you for coming to give me away.”
“I’m glad to do it. Easier than trying to keep you.” But he smiled as he said it and pressed her hand.
The church was full of society gogglers, as Lady Fairchild declared it should be. Waiting to walk down the aisle, Laura felt a similar excitement to the kind she used to feel before the rise of a curtain. With Lady Fairchild as an example, it was easy to see she’d still have opportunities to perform, if not the same range of parts she used to enjoy. A small sacrifice but worth it, to marry Jasper.
He was at the front of the church, looking too handsome to be allowed. Laura whisked her face out of sight. “Am I presentable?” she asked Jack, more worried than she cared to admit. She’d played to larger audiences countless times, but this—this was real. Jack’s reassurances didn’t make it to her ears. Her legs felt shaky and her stomach dived as the music cued her forward. Taking Jack’s arm, Laura miraculously made it to the altar without stumbling—it would have ruined the solemnity and infuriated Lady Fairchild. The unfamiliar fidgets left her once she took Jasper’s hands. Abandoning habit, she forgot the watching eyes. They might have vanished, every one. Even when Jasper raised her veil and turned her round for all to see, Laura saw only a blur of faces as they hurried from the chapel.
He helped her into the coach. Laura sighed. “The breakfast now, I suppose.” Lady Fairchild had made all kinds of plans. Breakfast and chatting and congratulatory toasts seemed terribly prosaic things just now. She felt new and the feeling wouldn’t last once they were brought out for general inspection.
“Would it break your heart if I told you no?” Jasper asked.
Laura looked at him and felt a glimmer of hope. “Mine will survive, but I don’t know what it will do to your mother’s.”
“She has my father to console her.”
A smile was creeping out despite her efforts. She ought to stop him, but she wouldn’t.
“See, my darling wife, it’s a little backwards, but I realized when we were in the church that we were both cheated in the matter of marriage proposals. So I propose we do it over again. I’ll ask you the right way and you can accept me without the intermediary of Mrs. Stoke.”
“We’re already married.”
“I just—I just want everything to be right.”
“It won’t be, you know,” Laura cautioned. “We’ll probably fight over our children. Maybe I’ll turn extravagant. I was too tired to notice before, but perhaps you snore.”
“I don’t mind a good argument as long as it’s civil,” Jasper said. “I like to win and though I’ve not had much practice at it, I can turn out a decent apology when required.”
“I know,” Laura said.
“You also like to argue, to have your own way, are not extravagant, but I can indulge some of that should you choose to be. I don’t want to think about children yet, though I intend to practice making them, and I assure you I would never be so coarse as to snore.”
“Then I suppose that’s right enough for me,” Laura said.
“Me too. Now. My proposal.” He cleared his throat. “Miss Edwards, in the course of our acquaintance I have become most sincerely attached to you. Will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
Laura snuggled into his shoulder. She could reply in languid syllables, ‘I suppose so,’ or laugh and call him a nod, reminding him she’d already done so. If she were an utter fool. He was right. They both deserved the best from each other. She would speak only the truth. No acting.
“I’m not sure I deserve you,” Laura said, stopping his protest with her fingers. “Let me finish. You have my heart. And if, impossibly, I’ve earned your regard, I accept it because you are the truest man I know. And because I love you.” She kissed him.
“Well, that’s good,” Jasper said, sliding his arm around her. “It would be mortifying to be as in love as I am and not have the feeling returned. No, really,” he said, over her laughing protests, “I made myself ill trying to hide it from you.”
“Simpleton,” Laura said. “I’ve loved you for ages. Before you brought me to London even. Probably ever since that breakfast at your sister’s house when you kept flinging lines of Sheridan, trying to catch me out. Couldn’t you tell?”
“No, but I like that story,” he said, crossing his ankles. “Tell me more.”
Where to begin? “There once was a girl who needed thirty pounds.” Laura paused, struck by how different life had become. She’d been so wrong-headed. Happiness wasn’t a finite something you wrested for yourself. It stuck to your fingers as you gave it to others. Just look at Jasper. He gave her happiness in abundance and still had smiles to spare. With a smile of her own, Laura settled back in her seat to tell her husband exactly how she fell in love with him.
Coming December 2016:
The Reformer
Mary Buchanan has bigger worries than the radical journalist living next door who’s spoiling her father’s digestion: unrequited love for a footman, a fractious aunt, awaiting her destiny…
Then she meets the reformer, this Mr. Samuel Brown. Destiny is closer at hand than Mary has supposed—if she can just get Mr. Brown to realize it.
Find out more at jaimafixsen.com
Author’s note
I started writing Fairchild because I ran out of books to read by Georgette Heyer
and Eva Ibbotson. Often imitated, never duplicated they say, and I suppose the end result is something like that.
Sophy’s story began as a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s Princess and the Pea. The second book in the series, Incognita, shaped itself around another Andersen fairy-tale, The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Jasper’s story is different. He speaks to me easily—more than any other character, which may be why he is such a general favorite. True to form, his story didn’t want to behave. I stacked my bedside table with collections of fairy tales, but couldn’t pull myself away from eighteenth century comic playwrights like Farquhar, Goldsmith and Sheridan. Layered deceptions, villainous schemes, headstrong ladies and dashing blades exiting and entering scenes at a flying clip: this world was irresistible.
The Fairchild stories, to me, are about family. Sometimes you have to listen. So I did.
About the Author
Jaima Fixsen lives in Alberta, Canada with her handsome husband and clever children. Mostly, she just tries to keep up.
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