I did this to you. Just as he’d known any woman to enter his life would know hurt, he’d gone ahead and wed her anyway.
“You didn’t come,” she whispered.
He stared at her and trailed unblinking eyes over her precious face.
“Last evening,” she continued. Her fingers plucked at the corners of the soiled kerchief in her hands. Any other young lady, he expected would drop her gaze demurely to the floor. Even through her tear-filled eyes Katherine looked at him with a bold, piercing directness. “I thought mayhap you spent the evening with that…that woman.”
It took a minute for those last words to sink into his mind. He furrowed his brow. “What woman?”
Katherine swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. “At the inn. I saw the manner in which she studied you, and thought perhaps you accepted the invitation I saw there.”
Jasper sat back in his seat flummoxed. His brows snapped into a flat, angry line. “You believed I would be unfaithful to you on our wedding night?”
Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “I…I didn’t know how to otherwise explain your absence.”
He struggled to tamp down the disappointed rage, that she should believe he would be unfaithful to her…on their wedding night no less. His innocent wife was the only woman he longed to see bared before his hungry gaze as he worshipped her with his body.
The thought should terrify him more than it did. Instead, he was filled with sudden images of her creamy white thighs spread as she held her arms up to tug him down closer so he could plunge into her center.
He longed to forget the vow he’d taken and explore the wonders of her body.
As the silence stretched on, Katherine glanced back out the window.
Jasper lowered his hand onto hers, and stilled the distracted movements of her fingers as she toyed with his kerchief. “You waited for me?”
Katherine nodded.
His breath left him on a hiss as the implications of her hurt registered. She didn’t realize the terms of the contract they’d entered into.
“Katherine,” he began slowly. “When I agreed to wed you, I thought it was clear ours would be a marriage of convenience.” His mind turned over that not too long ago day. Surely he’d used those words. Only…he’d not been specific. How could he have stated those bold terms for an innocent young lady? And in not speaking those words, Katherine clearly failed to understand that he could not make her his wife in the way she expected.
Five little lines wrinkled her brow. “I don’t understand.” Hesitancy slowed those words.
“Ours will be a marriage in name only.”
She angled her head, as though trying to make sense of his words. Katherine shook her head, but remained silent.
Compelled to fill that silence, Jasper continued. “I thought I’d been clear, Katherine. I would wed you to spare you from a marriage to Bertrand Ekstrom. I cannot, will not, ever take a wife to the marriage bed. Not again.”
Her warm brown eyes were a mirror into her soul; and he detected every last emotion, from the shocked hurt, to the humiliated pain, to the biting resentment, in their depths.
“I…” she shook her head. She tried again. “I…” She closed her mouth and shook her head once more. Her gaze fell to her lap. “Oh, my…I didn’t understand. I didn’t…” Katherine held her palms up, and his kerchief fluttered to the floor. “I promised to give you children.”
He’d not disabused her of that notion, in large part because he’d believed his intentions of a marriage in name only had been clear to her. Only, at her words, Jasper imagined a sweet, plump baby girl with thick brown ringlets, and Katherine’s winsome smile.
Katherine pressed her fingers to her temples, and rubbed them in little circles.
“Katherine…” Jasper reached for her.
Katherine recoiled from him as though she found his touch repulsive. She shook her head “Don’t. Just—don’t.” His jaw hardened, and he made another attempt to take her into his arms, but she looked at him with pleading eyes. “Please.”
He did not recognize this battered and broken woman before him. In that moment he’d challenge the devil himself to a duel if it would bring back her smile. But he was the devil. He nodded curtly, and sat back.
The carriage ground up snow beneath its powerful wheels and he looked outside.
Four years ago he’d imagined he could never know a greater pain than the loss of Lydia. Looking at Katherine, withdrawn from him and anguished, he realized with a staggering shock, he’d been wrong—it would seem he was still capable of not only inflicting but also feeling great pain.