Silently Mariposa bid Jason farewell and, in her heart, thanked him for seeing her as far as he had. Not since her father’s death had someone taken the time to look out for her.
The other passengers were blessedly quiet. Perhaps everyone would keep to themselves and the journey could be undertaken without incident.
Mariposa nearly jumped out of her skin when something was, without warning, laid on her lap. Her eyes darted in the direction of the delivery. She could not say what she’d expected to see, but the sight of two scones lying inauspiciously on a napkin caught her entirely by surprise. Who had put them there, and why?
She raised her eyes enough to look at the passenger next to her on the seat. Instantly, her heart leapt into her throat. Jason. He hadn’t left her.
His eyes darted in her direction. He didn’t smile, didn’t say a word. In fact, he didn’t look particularly happy to be back in her company. He simply pulled out the folded newspaper he held under his arm and turned his attention to it, not sparing her another glance.
Mariposa’s heart sank. Only upon receiving Jason’s silent dismissal did Mariposa fully realize the change she had undergone over the few short weeks she’d known him. She had sought him out, knowing from Stanley that the Jonquils were a family of trustworthy and caring individuals. She had at first thought of Jason Jonquil as a source of information and assistance but little beyond. Along the way he had become a friend, a confidant, and somehow more.
Mariposa could hear Stanley’s voice echoing from the past as they’d talked of their childhoods and parents. “Our father raised us to be gentlemen,” he had said. “We none of us can turn our backs on a person truly in need.”
That Jason had remained with her out of a sense of duty could not have been more clear. For a fleeting, glorious moment, she’d thought he had come back because he cared, not in a benevolent way but personally, tenderly. But she was only another in a long line of Jonquil charity cases.
What right do you have to even hope for such a thing? she silently demanded of herself. You, who so ill-used him?
Even an entire night spent suffering from hunger could not make the scones taste like anything other than air. She ate but did not savor.
Though she repeatedly looked in Jason’s direction, his focus never shifted from the paper he held. At such a distance from London, the paper could not have been any less than four or five days old. Having been in Town only two days earlier, nothing in the paper could truly have been news to him. That she warranted less attention than stale bits of gossip and outdated news items humbled her further.
He was willing to see her to her destination. The least she could do was cause him as little inconvenience as possible. Their fellow passenger sat directly across from Jason, reading a book. It would be some time before they made another stop.
She knew from experience how to blend in with her surroundings. The skill had proven lifesaving during their wartime travels. The execution of that skill, however, had always rendered her extremely lonely. Once again, she pulled herself tightly into her corner of the carriage and leaned her head back against the squabs to the extent her bonnet would allow. Perhaps she would be lucky enough to sleep and could pass the next leg of her journey lost in pleasant dreams.
Sleep was not so slow in coming as she feared it might be. The complete silence around her, coupled with the rhythmic swaying of the coach and her nearly overwhelming exhaustion, quickly did its work.
Through the haze of pending sleep, she thought she felt something touch her. When a moment later the sensation repeated itself, she became more fully alert. Years of necessary watchfulness, especially at night, jolted her awake.
She grabbed at the hand that had brushed her face and brought her eyes into frantic focus. Jason’s apologetic expression did not, at first, register.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he whispered. “Mater says that sleeping in a bonnet is not very comfortable.”
Her fuzzy mind could not fully comprehend what he’d said.
“I was attempting to take yours off without waking you.”
Take off her bonnet? Mariposa nodded, awake enough to acknowledge that she had been uncomfortable wearing it.
She fumbled a moment with the ribbons but managed to untie them and slip her bonnet off. Jason took it, setting it on the seat across from her.
“Thank you,” she said, still whispering.
He nodded but didn’t speak. Somehow, that hurt as much as his earlier silence. Did he dislike the idea of talking with her so very much?
She glanced quickly at the man traveling in the coach with them. Seeing his attention remained riveted on his book, she quietly asked Jason the question that had lingered in her mind. “Why did you come back?”
“Come back?” He spoke as quietly as she had.
“At the last stop,” she said. “I thought you had decided to leave me. Why didn’t you?”
His brow knit, his eyes focusing on her. No anger or resentment touched his expression. He looked, instead, confused. “In all honesty, I am still sorting that out.”
Her whisper broken by a push of emotion she hadn’t expected, Mariposa offered yet another apology. “I am sorry for all I have put you through. I cannot think back on my behavior without feeling utterly ashamed and fully mortified. I—”
Jason pressed a single finger to her lips. Her immediate silence arose more from the overpowering sensation of his touch than from the unspoken command inherent in the gesture. If she had harbored any doubts as to the increasingly precarious state of her feelings for Jason, the impact of that simple, brief touch would have entirely convinced her. He saw her as a nuisance, and all the while, she was falling further in love with him.
“No self-recriminations,” he instructed. “You passed a difficult night, and it would be best if you were to sleep.”
She nodded but could not find her voice.
Jason grew almost instantly stiff and shifted back to his side of the carriage seat. For a moment, he’d been thoughtful and gentle and kind. Then he’d grown starchy and unapproachable again. How utterly confusing he was.
Mariposa wrapped her arms around her middle and adjusted her position until she was as comfortable as possible in the cramped confines of a mail coach. Perhaps a bit of sleep would do her good. If she were very, very lucky, she might even awaken with some idea of what she ought to do about her traitorous heart and its decision to grow attached to a gentleman who felt no such inclination toward her.
Life, at times, was exceedingly unfair.
Chapter Eighteen
Jason knew beyond a doubt that Mariposa Thornton was going to kill him. Not in the murder-him-in-his-sleep sense but in the drive-him-completely-mad sense. She could be absolutely infuriating, and yet he couldn’t think of an experience in recent memory that had proven more diverting than the hours he’d spent with her in this confounded mail coach.
He had stood in the public room of the inn that morning, waiting for the proprietor to wrap up the scones he’d purchased, seriously contemplating his own mental state. No amount of effort had convinced him that he intended to continue on with Mariposa strictly for reasons of gentlemanly obligation and basic human kindness. His reasons were far more personal.
He could not have walked away. In fact, he had begun to suspect that his inability to leave her might easily turn into a permanent inclination to remain with her. The possibility did not prove at all comfortable.
Jason glanced at Mariposa. She looked different in her sleep. Only when the oblivion of sleep washed away the weight of her responsibilities did he realize how burdened and tense she was in her waking hours.
“My Mariposa, she was so sweet when a child,” Abuela had said as Jason had helped her prepare for her trip to Lampton Park. “She would tell to me her dreams. Her dreams, they are no more. They are gone.”
How quickly he had con
demned Mariposa—at first as empty-headed and managing, then, after her deception was revealed, as lying and manipulative—only to find himself regarding her in a very different light only a few short days later. She had survived more than he would ever endure. She had lost her father, her home, and her childhood all at once. Yet she had emerged a vibrant, strong, and determined lady.
So why did he find it so blasted difficult to decide what to think about her?
“Excusez moi, monsieur.”
Jason snapped himself from his rather consuming thoughts at the sound of his fellow passenger’s voice. The man had not spoken a word prior to that moment.
“You and the young woman are quarreling, oui?” the man asked.
Falling back on the same lower-class accent he’d used the day before, Jason answered, “We are.” That simple response seemed safer than any other explanation.
“She is very beautiful,” the Frenchman said.
Jason’s hackles immediately rose. Of what interest was it to this stranger that Mariposa was beautiful? What were his intentions?
The man smiled. “Fear not, monsieur. I have no designs upon your wife.”
Jason didn’t correct him. Let the man think Mariposa was married—married to a protective husband, no less. He kept his eyes on the stranger.
“I only ask,” the man continued, “because the sorrow I saw in her face before your return touched me.”
Sorrow? Had she been upset?
“When she saw that you sat beside her, she . . . her face, it lit up.” The man opened wide the fingers on both his hands, like the spreading light of a candelabra. “She looked at you with so much joy and happiness. Then you opened your paper, turning her away, and I watched her die a little.”
The French were generally known for their overly strong imagery. Yet Jason’s conscience struck him. He had retreated into that paper because he could not decide how to reconcile the contradictions she presented him. News, however outdated, seemed safely neutral.
The still-unidentified man sighed. “My wife, she gave me that look each time we argued. I would not be ready to end our quarrel. She would see that in me, and her eyes would turn sad and dim.”
Jason had also seen a measure of unhappiness in Mariposa’s eyes. He’d been valiantly attempting to convince himself he hadn’t put it there.
“You think I should apologize?” Jason knew the answer but asked the question just the same.
“Oui.”
“What if I told you this argument was not my fault?” Mariposa, after all, was the one who had begun their association with lies and deceit. Her harebrained scheme was the reason they were stuck in a mail coach for two days.
The man chuckled knowingly. “It does not matter who is at fault. Being right is far less important than a woman’s tender heart.”
Words of wisdom if ever he’d heard any. It was precisely the sort of thing his father would have said to him. Jason ought to have at least spoken to Mariposa when he’d entered the coach instead of retreating into a stony silence. They’d exchanged a few words when he’d accidentally wakened her, but she’d been so sleepy, he doubted she would remember.
He, on the other hand, remembered that moment quite well. He’d touched his finger to her lips. Gads, he hadn’t expected the simple gesture to knock the wind out of him. For the slightest fraction of a moment he’d contemplated pulling her fully into his embrace and keeping her there for the foreseeable future. The strength of that impulse shocked him so very much that he’d needed to put immediate distance between them. Had she felt it as well? Or had he only made her uncomfortable?
“You said she was pleased to see me?” Only after blurting out the question did Jason realize how abrupt he’d been.
His companion smiled, obviously amused. “I have seldom seen a woman happier to find herself in a man’s company.”
Jason rather liked the idea.
“She seems a sweet-natured girl,” the Frenchman added.
Jason actually laughed out loud. “She is a spitfire,” he corrected.
The man’s deep chuckle joined his. “Even better.”
Mariposa shifted beside him, even opening her eyes a little. Apparently they were making too much noise.
“Now you have something for which you can apologize,” the Frenchman said. “For waking her,” he clarified.
Jason grinned. “Having a reason does make an apology easier to make.”
Mariposa straightened, though she still looked half asleep. “I cannot find my bonnet.” Her words emerged a bit slurred and slow.
Jason motioned to the missing article. “On the seat across from you, my dear.” Had he just called her “my dear”?
She looked at her bonnet and nodded, saying something in Spanish. Her words did not sound like a condemnation. Either she was still very much asleep, or she was as confused by the inadvertent pet name as he was.
“Your wife, she is a Spaniard?”
All of a sudden, Mariposa was fully awake. She stared back at the Frenchman, not with a look of surprise or wariness but one of unmistakable fear. Without taking her eyes off their companion, she slid across the seat, not stopping until she had reached Jason’s side. What could he do other than wrap his arm around her shoulders? The situation positively required it.
“Who is he?” Mariposa whispered, tipping her head up toward Jason, else her nearly silent words would not have reached his ears.
“I am sorry, sir,” Jason said. “I do not believe I know your name.”
“Jean Beauchene.”
Jason turned back to his very comfortable armful and said, “He is Jean Beauchene.”
“Are you certain?” she asked. Her voice shook, the sound making Jason aware of the fact that she was trembling.
“What is the matter?” he asked, suddenly quite concerned. “Are you unwell?”
Her terror-stricken expression took on an edge of pleading. “He is French.” She offered no explanation beyond that.
“Yes, he is.” There had to be more reason for her fear than merely his nationality.
In the next moment, he thought he understood. Though Mariposa had rather skimmed over the details, she had at least hinted during her confessional over their meager dinner the evening before that her few encounters with the French during the ongoing war had been hostile at the very least. Such experiences could easily prejudice a person.
So Jason pulled her closer. She leaned against him, burying her face in his jacket. He did not think she was crying; somehow, he had a difficult time picturing her weeping. Mariposa had ever presented herself as resilient and unbreakable. That something as innocuous as a French accent had rendered her so completely shaken spoke volumes of the terror she must have endured during the war.
His gaze fell on the Frenchman. To his credit, Jean looked concerned and empathetic.
“I would guess,” Jean said, “that she experienced some of this war firsthand.”
Jason nodded. “Far too much of it.”
He did not know how many minutes passed as he silently sat with Mariposa beside him, his arm yet wrapped around her shoulders. She continued to tremble, her grip on his jacket iron-clad. Her fear was palpable and all-encompassing. Nothing about Jean as an individual should have created such an out-of-proportion response—clearly Mariposa hadn’t even known who he was.
What, then, had brought on such immediate fear? Was she expecting to run into a Frenchman? Perhaps hoping to not run into one? Jason had a nagging suspicion Mariposa’s worry stemmed from a particular Frenchman, one she was, for whatever reason, unable to identify on sight. He could only imagine the terror that must accompany such a situation: fearing something one could not recognize and might be entirely unable to avoid.
He leaned his cheek against the top of her head, aching for her. What kind of suffering she must have known! “You are safe no
w, Mariposa,” he whispered.
“You cannot know that.” Emotion thickened her voice.
“I don’t think you need to be afraid of Jean.”
The declaration did not seem to comfort her. She continued to shiver and not, he suspected, from cold. “But he could be—” She didn’t elaborate.
“He could be whom?”
Mariposa only shook her head, still pressed to his side.
He had guessed correctly, then—she feared someone in particular. Jason truly did not believe Jean posed a threat, but he would not leave Mariposa’s side until he was certain she was not in danger.
Chapter Nineteen
Jason kept a keen eye on Jean Beauchene. Though he watched for any sign whatsoever that the man was nefarious, untrustworthy, or in any way dangerous, he found none. Mariposa must have felt some of her concerns ease as well. She slowly emerged from within the folds of Jason’s weatherworn jacket and even occasionally glanced across the coach.
As the day wore on, they all grew more companionable, though Mariposa never entirely lost her edge of wariness. Jean, they learned, had enjoyed something of a Grande Tour before the Reign of Terror forced him to flee for the relative safety of England. He had, in fact, spent some time in the very area of Spain where Mariposa had grown up.
“I do not believe I saw your estate specifically,” he said when she quietly asked him about it. “Though I did travel through Albuera and the surrounding countryside.”
“And did you not think it the most beautiful place in all of Spain?” An almost dreamy quality touched her tone.
Jean smiled paternally. “Home is always the most beautiful place one can imagine.”
She came very near to returning Jean’s smile. Jason felt a surge of relief. He did not at all like seeing her as obviously unhappy as she had been of late. Though she no longer sat within the circle of his arms, she remained close by his side. For the briefest of moments, he was tempted to take her hand. The impulse passed, however. They were not, after all, actually husband and wife. Theirs was only a tentative friendship, in fact.
A Fine Gentleman Page 13
