A Reluctant Bride

by Michaels, Jess

  His legs shook and he sank into the chair she had abandoned a moment before. He stared at the letter from Reynolds that had started it all.

  And then he looked toward Thomasina’s chamber again and knew he was utterly lost.

  * * *

  The rage that bubbled in Thomasina’s chest was an emotion she had rarely allowed herself to feel over the years. It had always been crushed down, first by others who told her it wasn’t right and later by herself because she had believed them. But now it boiled, threatening to overwhelm her.

  She loved Jasper, but she’d also trusted him. That was the material fact. She’d had faith in him, and all along he had been lying. Not directly. No, he was too proper to lie to her face. He did it by omission. He did it by using their connection to turn her away from everything that mattered. That stung far more than it should have and inspired the cold words she’d snapped out in their bedroom.

  His bedroom.

  She shook her head as other, more comfortable emotions joined that anger. Fear.

  No, not fear. That wasn’t a strong enough word for what she felt. It was panic. Panic over what could be happening to Anne at this moment. Jasper’s man of affairs had written to him about Ellis. That man seemed like a pure villain, and Anne had run away with him. Rook, the one she’d last been seen with, sounded slightly better, but only because no one knew a damn thing about him.

  So where was Anne? Was she alone? Frightened? Injured?

  Dead?

  Thomasina bent over as the thoughts bombarded her, clutching her stomach as the pain rose up and replaced everything else.

  “I would know,” she whispered, needing to say the words out loud. “I would know if she was dead.”

  The door behind her opened and she knew it was Jasper. She didn’t turn toward him, though. She buckled and he caught her elbow, dragging her into his chest, gathering her into his arms and carrying her to the settee. She allowed him to hold her, despite how angry she was. She turned her face into his shoulder, feeling the cloth of his robe against her skin as she wept into his arms for a moment.

  He merely held her, smoothing her hair with one hand. She waited for him to tell her to stop crying or to reassure her, but he didn’t. He just let her feel in the safety of his embrace.

  A safety that had been false. When she remembered that fact, she pulled away, inching to the other side of the settee.

  “No,” she whispered, all the heat gone from her tone. “No.”

  He nodded, as if he understood the betrayal she felt. The pain. He didn’t try to defend himself, as he had a moment before.

  “I’m going to tell you everything,” he said.

  Her gaze jerked up and she stared at his face, trying to read his expression and find the truth or the lie that she hadn’t been able to identify before. Trying to decide if she could trust him even a tiny bit.

  She wasn’t certain, so she shrugged. “Oh, thank you for that, my lord.” She heard the sarcasm that dripped from every word. He flinched at it.

  Then he cleared his throat and said, “You read the letters from Reynolds, so you know a little. Here is the rest. My brother, Solomon, was a wastrel and often a fool. There are rumors, of course, and his manner of death in a duel caused quite the stir in Society. They do not know the half of it. I didn’t even know a great deal until this happened with Anne.”

  “He was involved with this Maitland person,” she said softly.

  He nodded. “He was. I have no idea how they found each other, but I have no doubt that my brother was an active and willing participant in every scheme Maitland presented to him. He clearly dug himself a snug little hole with a criminal.”

  The anguish in his tone was plain and everything in Thomasina made her want to slide back down the settee and offer him the same comfort he had just given her. She fought against those impulses and nodded at him to continue. “How does Anne come into it?”

  “Maitland thinks Solomon betrayed him in some wretched deal they put together. In his mind, at least, there is a treasure that my brother had possession of. Withheld from Maitland. He wants it back. To do that, he made himself attractive to your sister. He thought he could make me bargain for her.”

  She leapt up. “But you refused? What kind of treasure could be worth more than my sister’s life?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know anything about a treasure, Thomasina. If I did, I would have given it to him by now. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what he’s talking about since the day I returned from Beckfoot. To find it.”

  She stared at him. “Beckfoot…wait, did you meet with this man?”

  The color drained from his cheeks. His lips pressed together and for a moment she saw how much he wanted to turn away from her and her question. But he didn’t.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “He called me to a meeting the day after she ran.”

  “Was my sister with him?” she gasped.

  “I would have taken her by any means necessary if she were,” he assured her. “You may believe many things about me, Thomasina, and some of them are true. But if I could have discovered your sister, I would have died to save her from whatever trouble she and my late brother have gotten her into.”

  She considered that a moment. She was angry with him for lying, but when she looked past that sharp emotion, she did know that he wasn’t the kind of man to hurt someone else. Not an innocent.

  “But you let this Ellis person escape,” she said softly.

  “There was little choice in the matter,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his face. She saw his exhaustion there. His heartache. His sense of failure. He’d been carrying all of it alone. By choice, but still alone. “Reynolds stayed behind in Beckfoot, trying to determine more about Maitland. That’s when he discovered that Anne had boarded a small vessel with another man.”

  “The other Maitland.”

  “Rook,” Jasper said with a shake of his head.

  “What kind of name is Rook?” she whispered.

  “Probably a name he…he carries from the street.”

  She couldn’t help the low moan. “The nickname of a villain. A piece on the chessboard that is secondary in importance only to the queen. What kind of man could he be?”

  Jasper held her stare. “I’m sorry, I don’t know. There’s so little information about him. They share a name, but I don’t know their connection in truth. Rook seems to have been involved in Ellis’s schemes but little is said about him. I don’t know where he is, where Ellis is, where your sister is. If I did, I would go there and bring her home to you, no matter the cost. But I don’t. And I’m trying.” He let out his breath in a long, shaky sigh. “I should have told you all of this from the beginning.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

  He ran a hand through his hair. “At first, I wasn’t sure I could trust you. Then I didn’t want to hurt you. And then I selfishly didn’t want you to judge me.”

  She bent her head. Those reasons didn’t satisfy her, but she understood them. This man, this proud man, wasn’t accustomed to depending on anyone else. Certainly, he couldn’t have pictured doing so with her.

  She looked at him evenly. “How have you been searching for the truth?”

  “Reynolds continues to work in Beckfoot and the surrounding towns. And I’ve been here searching my brother’s journals and personal diaries, trying to find a connection between him and Maitland that could tell me anything about this supposed treasure and where it might be.”

  “But no luck,” she said, her heart sinking.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Is that all of it?”

  He nodded. “Yes. All I’ve done and kept from you. All I know.”

  She pushed to her feet and paced away from Jasper, going to the window, where she stared out at the pretty gardens below. He had been doing so much, in truth, while she stood by, wringing her hands and waiting…just waiting…for someone to take charge. It had been that way all her life, hadn’t it? As
suming her father or one of her sisters would handle things?

  Only now she didn’t want to wait anymore. Anne was in serious trouble, worse than she had imagined, and Thomasina couldn’t be angry at being kept out of the loop if she refused to do anything but dither about the problem.

  For the first time in her life, she felt the strength to tackle it head on.

  “I’m helping you,” she said, her voice shaking as she turned from the window. “I’m not asking you for permission, I’m telling you that I’m doing it.”

  His lips parted in what she could tell was surprise. She waited for him to refuse her. But then he nodded. “Yes. Of course. I might do better with a person at my side who didn’t know my brother. You could see things I am not capable of seeing.”

  She blinked at his acquiescence. At his implication that she could be a true partner in such an endeavor. She folded her arms so he wouldn’t see how much that moved her.

  “Don’t lie to me again,” she demanded.

  He got up, a slow unfolding of all the beautiful muscle and sinew. He moved a step toward her and no farther. “I won’t. I don’t expect you to believe me. I know from experience that words mean nothing without action. But I will prove to you that I can be trusted.”

  “I hope that’s true,” she whispered, and meant it with all her heart. Right now she wanted so much to trust him again, but she had to keep herself at a distance.

  He shifted. “That leaves me with a question. Will you tell Juliana and your father what you now know about Anne and her whereabouts?”

  She drew back, for she had been so shocked by everything that she hadn’t considered that question. Now she thought about it carefully.

  “I…should,” she said. “Or else I’ll be as much a liar as you’ve been.”

  He nodded. “But it’s complicated.”

  She knew that comment was directed toward her. An explanation. Worse, she understood it and him. If she told Juliana the truth, her sister would take all the responsibility on her shoulders, bearing the weight of all the pain. Juliana had been made that way, to fix.

  If she told her father, she feared he might throw up his hands and abandon Anne entirely. It would be his last excuse to write her off.

  She pressed her lips together. “Yes, it is complicated. I will wait a few days, no more, in the hopes that together we can find more information and give them both something solid.”

  He inclined his head. “I would not dream of interfering in how you manage your family.”

  She narrowed her gaze at him. “I see what you are doing, trying to absolve yourself of your lies.”

  “I’m not. Yes, I had my reasons. I believed them to be the right reasons to keep the truth to myself. But my intentions and the results of what I did are separate things.”

  She folded her arms. It was so difficult to remain angry with him when he was being so…so reasonable. She fought to do so. “They are.”

  He drew a long breath. “Let’s get dressed. We can go to the library together and I’ll show you everything I have there. Then we can decide what to do next. Together.”

  She nodded as she followed him back into his chamber to retrieve her gown. But even though the conversation about his lies was over, she couldn’t shake the feeling of the betrayal. And wished that her husband had cared enough about her to tell her the truth.

  Chapter 20

  Jasper should have been reviewing the handful of journals he had pulled out during his search, double-checking the notations that could relate to Maitland. But he wasn’t. Instead his focus kept shifting to Thomasina.

  She sat cross-legged on the big rug in the middle of the library, her head bent over one of the journals, her gaze flitting back and forth as she tried to find a truth within his brother’s many lies.

  Hurt still lingered on her face. Fear. Anger. She had always been so open in her expression of her feelings. There was no artfulness to her at all, no lie. He liked that. And yet it made his betrayal all the more painful.

  But here she was, sitting in his parlor, helping him. For her sister, of course, but she had been…gentle when she hadn’t had to be about Solomon and his bad acts. Jasper had been holding tight to those secrets for so long, he actually felt better now that he’d loosened his grip. Now that someone knew the truth about his brother’s actions and the humiliation that lingered around every corner. He felt less…alone than he had been in years. Decades.

  Ever.

  She glanced up. “There is nothing,” she said, and her disappointment was heavy in her tone.

  He nodded. “That’s the same conclusion I’ve come to over the past week or so. The diaries detail my brother’s empty existence. But if Maitland is in these pages, he is hidden well. Which makes me think…”

  He trailed off, because he could hardly say the horrors that lingered in his heart. The words that would take all goodness from his brother’s memory.

  “What?” she asked, pushing to her feet and stretching her back gently. “What do you think?”

  He swallowed. “If Solomon hid his relationship to Maitland, it’s because he knew what they were doing was wrong. He wasn’t some imprudent fop Maitland played for a fool or tricked into action. Solomon was a full partner in their schemes.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “I suppose that is possible,” she said. “But we don’t know it for certain. I know the late earl didn’t protect his reputation much, but did your brother care for his power? Lord his title over those around him?”

  Jasper snorted out a humorless laugh. “God, yes. He loved to crow to me that I was only a second son, not as worthy as he was because he had our father’s title and his lands. He loved being an earl over all else.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry he took pleasure in cruelty,” she said, that kindness offered to him once again, even if he didn’t deserve it. “But that might be just as much an explanation as anything else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “A man like Maitland was far below him in stature. If he put their meetings in his books, their apparently close bond might have come to light.”

  “He could have seen it as lowering himself.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are kind to offer me a lifeline in this sea of…” He looked around with a shudder. “…shit. But either way, Solomon continues to prove himself entirely unworthy. I wish I could shake him now, try to scream some sense into him.”

  Her expression softened. “I’m certain you do.”

  He turned away. “If the journals are of no use, I suppose you and I must plan our next move.”

  “Your letters from Reynolds mentioned that you had some of your brother’s things stored here at the estate after his untimely death.”

  “Yes. And more than that, Maitland had expressed an interest in buying some of those things after Solomon’s death.”

  Her lips parted. “You think he believes this…this treasure might be amongst the items?”

  He nodded. “Perhaps.”

  “Then I think that has to be our next move,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t pursue it before.”

  He hesitated as emotions he didn’t normally allow flooded his entire body. He cleared his throat. “I don’t like to…to look at those things. I refused to do so after my brother’s death. Reynolds took care of it all.”

  She stepped closer. “Too painful?”

  “I would lie,” he said. “But I promised I wouldn’t do that anymore.”

  She reached out and took his hand. It was the first time she’d voluntarily touched him since she discovered his duplicity, and the warmth of her fingers on his was almost enough to buckle him. Somehow, though, he didn’t and merely stared at their interlocked hands.

  “You cannot avoid this, Jasper,” she said. “You cannot hide from the truth of him, or the truth of your feelings anymore. Not when so much is at stake.”

  He caught his breath. No one saw him, not truly. They saw the shell, the protective w
all he’d spent a good deal of time building around himself. This woman he had never intended to join his life with could see through him like he was made of glass.

  She had jumped over his barriers without even trying. Now she stood within his life, pushing out the boundaries he’d told himself no other person would ever cross.

  What was startling about that was that there was comfort to that fact. Comfort to the idea that this one person could come into his world and make herself such a part of it. That she could see his secrets and be willing to keep them. That she could touch those places he’d kept frozen for so long and melt them.

  He loved her.

  The thought raced through his twisted mind like an arrow on a straight, true course. It shocked his system and he staggered back, breaking the grip of their hands as he stared at her.

  He loved Thomasina. His wife. He loved her. And more to the point, he recognized just as clearly that this wasn’t a new sensation that burned in his chest. He had loved her for some time, piece by tiny piece, probably from the first moment he met her. Even when he was meant for her sister, he had been falling in love with her.

  That was why he could recognize her and not her other sisters. That was why he’d been drawn to her. That was why he hadn’t been upset by the idea that Anne had run and left him with Thomasina as his choice for a replacement bride.

  He loved her. And he had destroyed everything they’d been building. He’d hurt her, not just by keeping the truth of her sister from her, but by distancing himself at every turn.

  She stared at him now with empathy, yes, but also with wariness. A guarded quality that hadn’t been there before.

  In short, he had been just like his brother, selfish enough to decimate everything that mattered. And he might never get it all back. But he wanted it back. He wanted her trust and her sweetness and her gentleness. He wanted the bond they’d been building since their marriage. Now he would have to earn it.

  “Harcourt?” she said, tilting her head. “Have you thought of something important?”