Katherine angled her head. Her heart slowed and then picked up a too-quick rhythm in her chest. “What is that, Jasper?” she whispered.
The servant knocked. “Not now.” Jasper’s booming command bounced off the walls of the carriage. He returned his attention to Katherine. “You terrified me, Katherine. From the moment your hand touched mine as I pulled you from the Thames, our lives became inextricably intertwined in ways I fought.” Jasper sucked in a deep breath, as though he’d run a great distance. “I could not allow myself to believe I cared for you, because I could not bear the thought of losing you.”
As he’d lost Lydia.
And then Katherine had gone and left Jasper, too. Oh God, how had she left him? Even as it had been an attempt to protect herself, she’d wrought this great hurt upon him.
“Jasper,” she said brokenly. “I should have never left you.” She should have stayed and fought for him, even if it had been a ghost she’d been left to battle for Jasper’s heart.
He must have seen something in her eyes for he reached across the carriage and cupped her cheek in his hand, angling her face toward his. “You thought me incapable of loving you because of Lydia, but…” He closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them, her heart twisted at the raw emotion there. “But the truth is, Katherine, you had my heart since the moment your water-drenched ringlets broke the surface of the Thames.” He leaned across the seat and rested his brow against hers. “I saved you that day, Katherine. But the truth,” he shook his head gently back and forth, “the truth is you saved me.” His words washed over her, and emotion clogged her throat. “You made me to feel and dream and love again.”
Tears filled her eyes, until his dear face blurred before her. She blinked back the blasted droplets.
Then his words registered.
Love.
Another knock sounded on the carriage door.
“For the love of God, I said not now, man,” Jasper barked. He looked back at Katherine. “With my unwillingness to let you into my life and love you as you deserve to be loved, I drove you away. I’m asking you to forget Stanhope. Forget the gowns of vibrant shades. Forget this. Forget all of this, and come back to me. Please. I love you, Katherine.”
The faint muscle at the corner of his eye twitched, the one indication of how very much that speech had cost Jasper.
Love for him coursed through her, potent and powerful.
“Katherine…”
She leaned across the carriage seat and kissed him. Her lips found his in an achingly sweet meeting of two lovers who’d at last found each other. Katherine pulled away. She placed a kiss at the corner of his eye, where that muscle throbbed.
“Without you, none of this means anything, Jasper. Not the gowns. The mindless amusements.”
“And Stanhope?” he asked, his voice gruff.
She shook her head. “Has always been and will only ever be, a friend, Jasper.” She touched two fingers to his mouth. “You are all I want. All I need. I will give up everything I have, all I am for you. I love you."
His throat bobbed up and down. “And you’ll never again leave me.”
Katherine knew he spoke of more than the mere parting of the now. She ran her finger over his lip. “And I will never again leave you,” she pledged.
“Oh, Katherine,” he whispered and gently pulled her onto his lap, folding his arms about her.
And there, in the confines of the carriage, as Jasper took her in his arms, Katherine realized how very wrong her sister Aldora and her friends had been.
Katherine didn’t need the heart of a duke.
She only needed the heart of this duke.