“Jonas,” Alina gasped, tears springing to her eyes despite her attempts to hold them at bay. “You can’t mean that. I committed no sin within the bonds of our marriage. Even if I had looked to another, you know that you had been declared dead, and I a widow, for full-on nine months before you returned. It could not have been infidelity.”
“That’s a weak confession, if I’ve ever heard one.” Jonas smiled, looking like a ghoul in the firelight. “Alina, my dear, I do not think you waited nine months to get entangled with this worthless man, this barrister. I think you carried on your secret trysts long before my ship was lost at sea. I’ve seen the way he looked at you; I know now why you were unhappy in our marriage and why you so resented our marital bed.”
This was too much. Alina couldn’t hold her thoughts back any longer, and her words poured out like hot lead onto her husband. “How can you be so blind and ignorant?” she cried. “Jonas, I did not engage in any illicit affair while we were married—not even after your death did I dare to hope there was real happiness for me. No, Jonas. Mr. Pendleton was not the reason that I was unhappy in our sham of a marriage—you were. I had to sit by and watch you all those years, parading your other conquests before me at dinner parties, engaging in affairs right under my nose, and acting as a father never should to his impressionable young son. I resented our marriage bed because you brought other women into it. I resented you because you are cruel and heartless—”
Jonas had stood, towering over Alina, and at last her words froze in her mouth. He was looking down at her with a sort of removed disdain. “There, my dear. All these years I’ve been hoping to provoke you to anger, and you remained sitting there like an ice queen, as though nothing can touch you.”
“Now you have your satisfaction,” she spat out angrily.
“Not quite.” He took her by the shoulders and pulled her up to a standing position. She tried to pull away, but he held her firmly in place. “I will only be satisfied when I have finally gained freedom from this detestable marriage. Too long I have wondered around in the shackles of your love—I now have the means of sending you away and requesting a formal separation.” He pulled the letter out again and dangled it before her noise, taunting her. “Don’t you wish you’d taken this when you could, and thrown it in the fire? You never were one to seize the opportunity.”
Tears began rolling down Alina’s face. “Jonas, I promise I did nothing with him.”
“I believe you,” he whispered, leaning in to speak very close to her ear. “That’s the beauty of it. You can know that I believe you—me, the one person who doesn’t matter. Because I don’t think the rest of the world will, and certainly not my new solicitor and the legal courts.”
“New solicitor?” she asked.
“Yes, your special Mr. Pendleton is, alas, no longer a trustworthy money handler. I’m afraid I had to write him a rather bad review, and contact a few of his wealthier clients to dissuade them from continuing further in his service. You’ll understand, darling.”
“You are despicable.”
“Perhaps, but I have all the power here.” His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “It took a shipwreck and some time abroad to show me what I really want in a woman, and I’m afraid being tied to your pious skirts is no longer an option.”
“It never kept you from having your fun before.”
He yawned, as though suddenly bored of the conversation. “I’m ready for a change—what can I say?—and you’ve given me the ticket.”
Suddenly, a spark of hope lit in Alina’s heart. Perhaps, after all, this was the answer she was looking for. She would live a life of poverty, perhaps, but she would live it free from Jonas’ cruelty.
She took a shaking breath. “I will pack tonight,” she informed him. “I will be gone in the morning.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he said with an expert curve of his eyebrow. “Please, let’s not make a fuss of this. Pack your plainest belongings and I’ll call you a carriage at dawn.”
Alina nodded. She would have little time under the circumstances to collect all that she needed, but if all she had were the clothes on her back and little Jinx in her arms, she ran a chance of finding some happiness.
At last, Jonas released her shoulders and pushed her away from him. “Go on to bed, lovey. You’ll need your rest.”
She stumbled upstairs, thankful beyond words that Willa wasn’t there when she entered her room. She worked quickly, stripping a few simple gowns from the closet and laying them, with some boots and a few worthy accessories, in a suitcase. She would wake early and pack Jinx’s belongings. Then she lay down, still wearing her gown from the night before, and fell into a fitful, nervous sleep.
****
She woke, miraculously, before dawn.
Alina had been fearful that she would oversleep, considering how late last night’s confrontation had gone, but nerves and fear prodded her awake. She dressed in a simple brown riding dress with a fitted coat and gloves, then she took both suitcases in her hand and tiptoed downstairs. The carriage had not yet arrived, and Jonas was nowhere to be seen.
She took the stairs two at a time, running back to Jinx’s bedroom. She knew he would hate being woken this early. He always had such a hard time in the mornings, and he would be confused about why they were leaving, but he was a strong boy and she would explain everything on the way.
When she reached the doorway, she froze. The light was already on inside her boy’s room. She pushed open the door and saw Jonas sitting in the rocking chair by the window. Jinx was nowhere to be found.
“Good morning, dear,” he said, with sugar-sweet tones. “I thought you might try something here, so I intervened last night. The boy is sleeping peacefully in my room.”
“What do you mean, ‘try something?’” Alina felt a sickening understanding grow in the pit of her stomach. “I have just come upstairs to pack Jinx’s things.”
Jonas yawned and stretched, coming slowly to his feet. “I think I made myself very clear last night. You are to leave. You, and no one else. I am still Jinx’s father, and I cannot subject him to a life of your stilted morality and molly-coddling. You will leave now, quietly, without him.”
Tears sprang to Alina’s eyes. “You can’t do this! I’m his mother.”
“That’s exactly why I can do it, dear. You know the courts will support me in whatever I do—a mother has no claim over a child if the father can provide a healthy and stable living environment.”
Alina knew it was true, but the whole thing seemed to be unfolding before her like a terrible dream. She took a deep breath and set the suitcases down. “Please, Jonas. You can still come and see him. You know he needs me to look after him.”
“I know he needs more regular discipline and a mother who won’t cater to his every wish.”
“You’re really going to do this?”
“I grow weary of this pleading, Alina. Pick up your bags and take them downstairs.”
Alina swayed for a moment in the center of the room, watching everything she cared about—everything she lived for—being snatched from her grasp. “May I bid him farewell?” she asked at last.
Jonas tilted his head to the side in undisguised annoyance. “What do you think, Alina? Of course not. You will only worry the boy and bring drama into this house.”
Alina took a few stumbling steps backwards, then picked up her bags and carried them downstairs with dull, ponderous tread. She thought she saw a small shape hiding behind the curtains as she passed, but she knew better than to send Jinx into the path of his father’s wrath. Instead, she turned around and announced loudly to Jonas, “Tell Jinx I love him very much. If you would allow it, I would take him with me to the ends of the Earth.”
“Of course I’m not going to tell him that,” Jonas snapped. “Stop stalling, woman. The coach is here.”
Alina walked outside with a heavy heart, hardly feeling the gentle touch Georges gave her as he took her belongings and stowed them in the back of
the coach. He helped her in, not meeting her eye, and settled her against the plush back of the carriage. She thought for a moment he would say something—express sympathy for the situation that had befallen her, or offer some advice—but in the end he just cast a frightened look back at Jonas, pressed her hand once more in uncharacteristic tenderness, and closed the door behind her.
Alina looked out the window at Marshall Gardens as the carriage began to pull away. She was straining for movement at the curtains when she suddenly saw a small figure streak out of the front door, past Jonas and Georges, running full-tilt after the carriage.
She leaned out the window to tell him to stay, and heard Jinx screaming desperately as he ran: “Mama! Please, don’t go, Mama! Don’t leave me!”
It happened as though in slow motion—Alina was watching her precious son run across the street, and then she saw the dark shape coming in from the side. It was a cart, pulled at a quick pace by a horse, and the driver didn’t see the tiny form running beneath him. There was a thud, a sickening crunch, and one thin child’s cry before Alina’s scream split the morning air.
Chapter 24
The first few moments seemed like years. Alina was leaning out the window, watching Jinx’s body slam against the wheel of the cart, bend beneath, and then flop, deserted in the cobbled street. He lay there like a limp doll as the cart rolled on, hardly feeling the small body it had eaten up in its tread.
“Stop the carriage!” Alina screamed, her breath muffled by tears, her heart racing frantically. Jonas was still on the stairs, watching in silence. Why was he not running to the boy? “Stop the carriage!”
It was too slow—the tragedy, her boy’s little body in the street, the damn carriage refusing to stop—she wrenched at the handle, forcing the door open, and leapt from the moving vehicle into the street. She stumbled from the momentum but was back on her feet in an instant, running toward Jinx with her skirts in her hands.
Jonas was moving now, she could see that in her peripheral vision, but it was Georges who made it to the boy’s side first, George’s hands that turned him over as Alina fell to her knees beside him.
“Is he alive? Tell me he’s alive.” The tears were coming like rain. There was blood. A lot of blood. Jinx lay white and still as a piece of cloth, his eyes closed. Georges leaned over him, and put his ear to the boy’s chest.
“He breathes,” he said gently, looking up at Alina with agonized eyes.
Suddenly, Jonas was there, barking orders and standing above the scene like a taskmaster driving his crew.
“Get a doctor,” he yelled at Georges.
The older man pretended not to hear, and Jonas was forced to deliver his command to one of the other household servants gathered around. “A doctor,” he said again, then, as an afterthought, “and a surgeon.”
Alina pulled Jinx into her arms, wondering how she could have ever thought he’d grown in recent days. He felt so much smaller than he had yesterday playing with the ivory sticks at the hearth. Yes, she did feel a shred of breath come from between his slightly-parted lips. She clung to that breath like a lifeline.
“Give Georges the child.” Jonas demanded. “Alina, give him the child, now.”
Alina stared up at him with a dead feeling in her heart. If he thought he was going to pry her away from her son now, he had another thing coming. But in the end, he didn’t pull her from Jinx. Instead, he bowed his head and stepped aside while she struggled to her feet on Georges’ arm and carried the boy step by step into the house.
“Do you need help, my lady?” Georges asked quietly, motioning for the crowd of onlookers to disperse.
She shook her head. “He’s small, Georges, too small.”
Something wet and warm was snaking its way down her arms and the front of her dress. “He’s bleeding,” she said. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
They brought the boy back into the parlour, the nearest room, and laid him on the settee, turning him over as gently as possible to inspect the damage. There was a jagged cut along his back and, from the collapsed look of his chest, he’d broken some ribs. There was a labored sound to his breathing, and a gash bleeding profusely on his head.
Alina felt her vision blurring with the horror of her worst nightmare come to life, but she fought back against the confusion with every bone in her body. Jinx deserved her full attention in this moment. She began to rip the cloth from the hem of her dress for bandages, but Georges put his hands on hers and wordlessly pointed to the bucket of rags one of the maids had brought. They were soaked in hot water, undoubtedly cleaner.
“Just to stop the bleeding. The doctor and surgeon will be here soon,” he said kindly.
“Why won’t he open his eyes?” Alina asked, her voice hollow in the room, frantic. “He should have opened his eyes by now. Jinx, sweet one. Jinx, open your eyes.”
“It’s alright, my lady.” Georges put a bandage in her hand. “Don’t worry about his eyes right now, just help me with his head.”
They wrapped the bandages as best as they could manage, with Georges helping to steady Alina’s shaking hands. All the while, Jonas stood removed in a corner of the room, watching in silence. Alina didn’t know if he was stricken with worry or just uncertain what the role of a father was in such a situation. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
The doctor arrived much more quickly than she’d imagined, and he fell immediately to his knees by Jinx’s bedside, pulling out his medical bag to check the damages. He pulled back the boy’s eyelids and checked them with a candle, then began prodding about the child’s back with his fingers. Jinx cried out, and Alina put her hand on his head, turning an imploring eye to the doctor. “Please, he’s hurt there. Don’t push too hard.”
“I have to,” he answered coolly. “I know this is alarming, ma’am, and if it’s too much for your sensibilities…”
“No, of course not.” She swallowed, and tried to be calm. “Whatever you need to do.”
The surgeon arrived shortly afterward, and the two set a bone in Jinx’s lower leg, wrapping his leg, his ribs, and eventually his head in bandages. Each set of bandages had to be cleaned first, and ointments were applied to the gashes before they were wrapped. Jinx looked small and lifeless throughout the whole of the procedure, though Alina continually reassured herself of his breath by lowering her ear to his chest.
At last, the task seemed to be done. The doctor carried the boy to his bed and the maids helped tuck him in, his small hands laying atop the bedspread, his eyes still closed. He had stirred very little during all the procedure, and was breathing shallowly again.
“What is your verdict?” Jonas asked. Alina jumped. He had been so silent since the accident that she had not thought of the obvious fact that he would follow them upstairs to Jinx’s room. She hated his presence there, like a foul reminder of what had led to their son’s injury.
The doctor passed a hand over his brow and shot a look at the surgeon. The surgeon shook his head. “I’m not to know, I’m just here for the heavy lifting.”
“I’m not to know, either,” the doctor said. “I know the bleeding wounds look the worst, but he seems to have some reflexes still in his legs. I don’t think he will be paralyzed. We’ve set all that to the best of our ability, and we will fight to stave off infection. You will need to clean the wounds regularly.”
There was something he wasn’t saying, and Alina pressed him. “What else?”
“As I said, the bleeding wounds are not what concern me. It is the head wound. In such matters, it is hard to know what the outcome will be. Sometimes, there is a full recovery. If there is bleeding inside the brain, however, there is nothing I can do. We will know soon, if he wakes. If he doesn’t wake…” He trailed off, and Alina stifled a sob.
The doctor bowed, his hat in his hands. “I will return to examine his condition tomorrow. Is there someone who can stay by his side tonight?”
Longing for a Liberating Love: A Historical Regency Romance Book Page 19