A Fine Gentleman

by Sarah M. Eden

  Jason’s gaze returned to Mariposa. Her coloring was still a touch alarming, and her focus was decidedly elsewhere. He meant to give her a moment to collect herself, to reach some level of calm.

  “I spent a few days at Lampton House last week,” he told Philip. “I suppose I needed a little of the comfort of home myself.”

  They both continually glanced in Mariposa’s direction, though they had, by unspoken agreement, decided not to press her.

  “Do you remember when we would play hide-and-seek at the Park and, inevitably, one of us would become ridiculously lost on that absurdly vast estate?” Philip asked. “There was nothing so comforting as the sight of that house after being upended.”

  Jason nodded. “I do remember, though I confess I’d not thought in those terms for many years now.”

  Philip laid a hand on his shoulder. “I think it is time you came home again. You have not spent more than a few days at a time at the Park since Father died. Ten years is too long to mourn that deeply.”

  Jason looked at his brother. How long had Philip known the reason for Jason’s avoidance of his childhood home? Jason himself had only recently come to understand. “I think I will,” Jason answered, nodding decisively.

  Philip embraced him, honestly, sincerely embraced him. “It will be good to have you truly home again.”

  For perhaps the first time in a decade, Jason saw the brother he had once so idolized.

  Philip stepped back a bit. “I believe I will go sit awhile with Sorrel.” At the doorway, he turned back. “Oh, and I believe Cook has prepared her creamy potato soup to have with dinner. It’s excellent.” He slipped from the room.

  “Those poor potatoes,” a faint voice said, pulling Jason’s eyes away from his brother and to Mariposa’s face.

  Relief nearly pulled a sigh from him. She looked a little better. Her expression was the tiniest bit less burdened.

  Following her lead, Jason adopted a lighter tone. “It could be worse. It could be turnips.”

  “True.” She offered a shaky smile. Pain remained in the depths of her eyes.

  He sat beside her, touching her cheek with his hand. “I am so sorry you didn’t find your family, Mariposa.”

  She did not immediately respond but seemed to be fighting against her own reaction to that disappointment. After a moment’s struggle, a forced calm spread over her. How often had she been required to push aside her emotions, to clamp them down so she could move forward?

  “To know they are safe from Bélanger, that is a relief.”

  And yet it wasn’t the same as having them near or even knowing what had become of them. “What will you do now?” he asked.

  She hesitated, her face creased in thought. She sat up a little straighter. “I will tell Abuela that Bélanger is no longer a threat. And”—she squared her shoulders and stiffened her posture—“I will keep looking. So long as my family is lost, I must continue to search for them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Even in the summer, the air in Scotland held a bite. Mariposa pulled her borrowed cloak more tightly around her shoulders. She likely felt the chill more than others, being accustomed to the warmer weather of the Continent.

  After a nearly sleepless night, she needed a brisk walk to clear her mind. Her tears had dried in the dark hours of night but now threatened to spill over at any moment. Too much had happened and in far too quick a succession. She had found an aunt but not the rest of her family. The man she’d watched over her shoulder for these past months was dead. She knew not where to look nor how to explain her mother and brother’s disappearance. She felt so very lost.

  She stopped at the edge of a small sparkling brook not far from Philip’s cottage. With a sigh, she leaned against the sturdy trunk of a tree and watched the water as it flowed over rocks and around bends in its journey farther downstream.

  With her eyes closed, she could perfectly picture her younger brother. She had raised Santiago from the time he was six, being the only member of her family emotionally capable of doing so. She remembered him as he’d been then, so young, so trusting, and yet his beloved eyes so often filled with worry. How precious he was to her, a constant reminder of why she could not stop struggling to survive. He deserved a better life than one spent foraging for scraps and cowering in near-constant fear. She wanted so much more for him.

  “Where could they be?” Mariposa whispered. She had concentrated so hard on locating her Thornton relatives that she had never stopped to truly ponder the possibility that Mamá and Santiago might not be with their relations. Mariposa slid to the ground, sitting with her back against the tree trunk, her knees bent, and her folded arms resting across them. She laid her head against her arms.

  She had failed them. She had allowed her family to be separated with no means of reuniting them. A shaky breath preceded a sudden return of tears. She could not remember the last time she had cried as much as she had the past twenty-four hours.

  Rather than fight the emotion, Mariposa simply let the tears fall. Her lungs heaved as she sobbed. Years of frustration and struggle and heartache surfaced. She was sinking, drowning in agony and loneliness. Since her father’s death, she’d pushed herself relentlessly, but the exhaustion that had always lingered under the surface suddenly caught up with her.

  She heard a slight rustling beside her but didn’t look up. A hand rested lightly on her arm. She knew without even looking that it was Jason. With a gentleness that would have surprised her only weeks before, he eased her away from the tree enough to put an arm around her.

  “I promised him, Jason.” Sobs broke the words. “I promised Santiago I would always be with him, that he would not ever be forgotten. But I cannot find him. What if he is alone and afraid? He is only a little boy.”

  Jason did not offer empty words of reassurance but simply held her. Somehow he must have realized that was precisely what she needed most, to know she was not alone, that someone knew her agony and cared that she was suffering. “Tell me about him,” he said.

  The quiet invitation proved a lifeline. “Santiago is tall for his age,” she said through sniffles and dripping tears. “Mamá says he has more of the Spaniard in him than I do. She says I take after my father and that is why I am so short.”

  Jason leaned his head against hers. “Shortness is an English trait, is it?”

  “According to my mother. My father was shorter than she is. I take after him in more ways than being ridiculously tiny.” Speaking of something other than her loss and sorrow helped calm her heart.

  “In England, we have a term for ladies who are graceful, beautiful, and alluring, who also happen to be ‘ridiculously tiny.’” He adjusted his position a little, settling her more comfortably in his arms.

  Mariposa pressed her palms together and rested them against his chest, laying her head atop them. She could not recall ever feeling as safe as she did with him. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the rare moment of peace. “Is this term the English have coined a flattering one?”

  “Indeed. The term is ‘Pocket Venus,’ and I assure you it is a high compliment.”

  She allowed her head to grow heavy against him as exhaustion took over. For more than six months, nay, for four years, she had struggled to rest, let alone sleep. Fear-fueled insomnia had been her constant companion. Why was it, then, that she could relax so entirely in Jason’s embrace despite the crushing blows life had dealt her these past hours?

  “How tall do you think Santiago is now?” she wondered aloud. “I think he may be nearly as tall as I am.”

  “That is not such a feat, my dear.” A smile rang in his tone and added a tenderness to the endearment that warmed her heart. “But, yes, he is likely approaching your height and is a bit gangly and awkward, as growing boys often are.”

  “Were you gangly and awkward?” She smiled at the thought.

  “Painful
ly so.”

  She felt him chuckle. Jason Jonquil presented such a pristine and perfect image to the world, a gentleman whose life was planned and executed down to the last detail. She’d seen such a different side of him these past days.

  “I wish I could have met your father,” she said. “Stanley spoke so fondly of him. He sounded wonderful.”

  “He was.” Jason stroked her hair, the steady rhythm of it lulling her further into quiet relaxation. How she needed the restful moment. “I have never known a better gentleman or a better father. Every good thing I have done in my life I owe to his influence.”

  “Do you ever wonder, Jason, if your father would be proud of you?” she asked. “I think often of my papá and what he would think of the person I have become. I worry that he would be ashamed of me.” The last few words shuddered out of her, even as tears sprang to her eyes once more.

  “I know only a small portion of who you are and what you have accomplished, Mariposa,” Jason said, his words slow and quiet. “But I can say with complete confidence that your father would be inordinately proud of all that you are.”

  “I want to believe that,” she whispered. “If only he were here to tell me.”

  Jason’s arm settled low around her, holding her comfortably close. “I have thought that of my own father many times and asked myself that same question.”

  Jason wondered if his father would be proud of him? How could he possibly doubt that? “Stanley spoke often of the good you have done,” she said. “The many things I learned of your generosity are the reason I sought you out. You are a talented barrister, yes, but it was the goodness he spoke of that gave me confidence. Your papá would be so very proud of that.”

  “Where have you been these past years, Mari, when I have needed someone to tell me I was good enough?”

  Mari. He’d spoken the shortened name like a Spaniard, with a soft a and a gentle r.

  She smiled for the first time all day. “I very much like the way you called me Mari. I like having a pet name.”

  He adjusted a little, shifting his back against the tree. “Wait until you meet Caroline, Layton’s daughter. She has a pet name for everyone. And I do mean everyone.”

  He held her in his arms, not rushing her or pressing her for conversation. Mariposa did not know how much time passed as they sat thus. The tension in her body dissipated. Her tears dried at last.

  “I am falling asleep,” she whispered. He likely had no idea how significant that was.

  “Perhaps we should walk back to the house so you can sleep on a warm bed instead of the damp ground,” Jason said.

  “It would not be the first time.”

  He helped her to her feet. “Those days and that life are behind you now.” He guided her, his arm securely tucked around her waist. She let her head fall against him as they walked.

  “I still do not have my family,” she said. “They are still lost to me.”

  “We have neither of us given up. We will keep searching.”

  Jason kept his arm about her all the way back to the house. Pain still resonated in the hollowest parts of her broken heart, but his support eased some of that ache. She could still believe her family would be found so long as he would help her look for them. He would stay with her, just as he’d promised so many times. And at last, at long last, she wouldn’t be so alone.

  At the doorway to her bedchamber, Jason laid a chaste kiss on her forehead. “Sleep well,” he instructed gently.

  Mariposa managed a nod before proceeding wearily to her bed, where she dropped fully clothed onto her mattress and fell deeply asleep.

  o

  Jason walked away from Mariposa’s door, his mind and heart heavy. He had certainly seen women upset, crying, distraught. That happened in matters of the law. Never before, however, had a woman’s suffering shaken him to his very core.

  “He is just a little boy,” Mariposa had cried, desperation breaking her voice. “I promised him.”

  Her brother’s fate would eat away at her the rest of her life if she did not discover what had become of him. Jason wished he knew how to take that burden from her, but he was helpless. He had no better idea of where to look than she did. Yet how could he possibly stand idly by and watch her drown in such agony?

  Surely there was some clue, some possibility they’d overlooked. Jason had ample experience unraveling complicated and seemingly impossible situations. Somehow he would make things right for her. He would.

  “You realize,” Philip said almost the moment Jason entered the drawing room, “you may very well have compromised Miss Thornton’s reputation beyond repair by traveling all this way with her unchaperoned.”

  “We traveled as a lower-class married couple,” Jason said. He had taken pains to protect Mariposa’s good name. He did not mean to cause her greater difficulties than she already faced. “We gave false names and only disembarked at two stops. I took stock of the assembled crowd both times and saw not a single familiar face.”

  “Suppose by some twist of fate your flight becomes known?” Philip pressed. “What then?”

  “Are you asking my intentions toward Miss Thornton?”

  Philip laughed and shrugged. “Quite presumptuous, aren’t I?”

  “I would, of course, marry her if her good name were compromised,” Jason said.

  “And if it is not?”

  “I think I would marry her anyway,” Jason heard himself confess. His surprise at his own words must have shown. “Good heavens.”

  Philip chuckled. “Sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?”

  Jason nodded. Marry Mariposa? He’d thought to help her, to ease her suffering. But marry her? When had he come to that conclusion?

  “I was top-over-tail in love with Sorrel before I even realized I liked her,” Philip said, shaking his head amusedly. “She was probably far more perceptive.”

  Jason smiled at his brother. “I like Sorrel.”

  “And I like Mariposa,” Philip said. “More than that, I like Mariposa’s influence on you.”

  “She makes me want to be a better person, to look beyond myself,” Jason answered, echoing Philip’s words of the previous day.

  “I have a feeling, brother”—Philip gave Jason a thump on the back as they made their way to chairs near a low-burning fire—“our wives are going to be good friends and terrifyingly efficient coconspirators.”

  “Do not be too precipitous,” Jason warned. “I haven’t so much as asked the lady. Lud, I didn’t even know I was going to ask her until a moment ago.”

  “Then take some advice from your older, wiser sibling,” Philip said with an air of feigned, overblown self-importance that Jason was finally able to find humorous. “Give her a chance to recover from her current despondency before posing the all-important question. Nothing destroys a well-versed offer of one’s hand like a fit of hysterics.”

  Jason nodded. There was a great deal of wisdom in that. “I suppose I ought to ask someone’s permission, though I don’t know who. Mariposa is, for all intents and purposes, the head of her family.” A thought occurred to him that made him chuckle. “Perhaps I should ask Stanley. He’s the one who started all of this.”

  Philip didn’t laugh along as Jason had expected. In an extremely somber tone, Philip asked, “Has Stanley written to you lately?”

  “He hasn’t,” Jason answered, caught by the strain in Philip’s voice.

  “He has not sent word to me either. More worrisome still, Mater has not heard from him.”

  “Stanley hasn’t written to Mater?” Jason was shocked. He couldn’t imagine any of his brothers, least of all Stanley, who had always been very attentive to their mother’s needs, neglecting to write to her when so far from home.

  “He has not sent so much as a single word since being recalled to his regiment,” Philip said.

  “That is very
unlike him,” Jason said. Things Mariposa had said flashed through his mind. He hates being a soldier. He has spent half a decade surrounded by death, and it is destroying his soul. “Mariposa is concerned about him.”

  Philip looked Jason in the eye, his gaze unwavering and heavy. “I am more than concerned,” Philip said. “I am deeply worried.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mariposa felt terribly conspicuous in red. Unmarried ladies simply never wore such a deep, exotic color. Sorrel, however, had insisted that she borrow a gown to wear to dinner that evening. After three days of donning her most weatherworn and plain dress in the name of blending in, Mariposa had been rather easy to convince.

  Though the dress was decidedly too long, it fit nicely otherwise. The wine color proved flattering. Perhaps if she ever married and were granted the privilege of wearing such colors in public, Mariposa would acquire a dress very much like this one.

  Her cheeks likely darkened to match her gown when she stepped into the drawing room. Philip nodded in what appeared to be approval. Jason’s expression, however, proved the most disconcerting. Something akin to disbelief mingled with shock on his face. Did she look so horrible? Or had she simply been so unappealing up until that moment that a flattering gown and the ministrations of Sorrel’s maid had rendered a shockingly enormous difference? Neither possibility was pleasant.

  Sorrel entered behind her. “Quit gawking, Jason, and walk the poor lady in to dinner.”

  Jason made his way directly to Mariposa’s side. She hadn’t felt so uncomfortable in his presence since the day she’d stepped into his office to confess her many lies.