She pointed her eyes toward the snowy sky. “Why, I intend to arrange them into a festive coverlet for my chambers.”
He furrowed his brow. “What…?”
“I am being facetious, Your Grace,” she said on a beleaguered sigh. Then, “Hold those. Carlisle was so good as to leave a small pile over by the base of the tree.”
Jasper studied the delicious sway of her hips as she hurried off to a nearby tree. He reminded himself to follow after her. “Who the hell is Carlisle?”
“The footman.” She didn’t break her stride, but continued moving forward. Katherine stooped down, and shoved another handful of branches into his arms.
That growingly familiar haze of red clouded his vision, at his wife’s casualness over too-handsome footman. Jasper had learned the perils of employing young footman early on. His mother had quite scandalously, unashamedly taken any number of them as lovers.
“I’ll not be made a cuckold.”
Katherine stumbled to a halt, to peer up at him. She cocked her head at an appealing little angle. “I beg your pardon? Did you just say…?” She shook her head. “I’m not even going to deign to reply to that,” she muttered from beneath her breath.
Something about her casual dismissal of his words eased the tension in his chest.
She stopped suddenly and turned around. “Here.”
“Oomph.”
She slammed another branch into his chest. “You carry these, and I shall collect this pile here,” she said, stooping down to pick up the last shorn pile of evergreen branches.
Jasper stared after his wife’s retreating frame, as she picked her way gingerly down the snowy rise. “Where are you going now?”
Katherine didn’t even break her stride as she continued down the hill. “I’m returning to the castle. I’ve much to do to prepare for the eve of Christmas.”
He sucked in a deep breath, and counted to ten.
If anyone had told him even a fortnight ago that he’d be wed to a saucy minx with a stubborn spirit, he would have laughed in their outrageous face. He had been so very determined to maintain the isolated existence he’d dwelt within for the past four years. More than that, he’d embraced the life he’d made for himself. If he didn’t accept people into his life, he could not risk being hurt as he had upon Lydia’s death.
Only now, with these stirrings of vexing annoyance, and wry amusement, he’d come to realize he missed feeling…alive.
Jasper set out down the hill. His long legged stride quickly ate up the slight progress Katherine’s much smaller legs had made.
“I told you I do not celebrate Christmas.”
“And I told you I intend to celebrate anyway, Jasper. So it would seem we are at an impasse,” she said, her gaze trained in the distance.
Her tone suggested she had little inclination of abandoning her efforts.
“My wife died three days before Christmas.”
~21~
Katherine drew to a slow halt as Jasper’s words saturated the air around them.
My wife died three days before Christmas.
Which made so very little sense, because she was Jasper’s wife. His words slammed into her with all the force of the blustery winter wind.
He spoke not of Katherine but of another; a woman who held his heart and consumed his thoughts and for whose memory was still so strong, he left white sheets draped upon the furnishings to blot out reminders of the real duchess.
Suddenly his avowal to not celebrate Christmas made sense. Katherine’s arms fell by her side, and branches tumbled with a soft thump into the thick blanket of snow. And because she really knew not what to say to fill this strange disquiet, she said. “Oh.”
Just that…oh. Not for the first time in her life, Katherine wished she possessed Anne’s effortless ability fill awkward voids of silence. Then, Katherine would know just what to say to ease her husband’s jagged hurt.
Instead, she forced herself to look up at him.
Jasper’s curiously empty stare remained fixed at a point beyond her shoulder. Her chest tightened at his suffering, more tangible than a physical wound.
Katherine might represent a formal contract, based on not even the slightest hint of affection on his part, but in the days she’d come to know Jasper, she cared about him, and could not bear the sight of his suffering.
“I am so sorry,” she said quietly.
His shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. She thought he might speak but words did not come.
Then it registered…three days before Christmas.
Her mind turned quickly.
Oh God. The day they’d left the inn had marked the anniversary of his wife’s passing. The day Katherine had lamented over her still virginal state, Jasper had been mourning the wife of his heart. She gave her head a slight, sad little shake, as so much of Jasper’s surly coldness became clearer.