For Love of the Duke(79)

The image of the smiling, loving-eyed Jasper flitted across her mind. She didn’t even need to glance back at the portrait; it would be forever etched in her mind. How very different than the vitriol that fairly dripped from the blacks of his eyes as he studied her.

Katherine ticked her chin up a notch. “I know, Jasper. I took the coverings down.”

“Why?”

Why, indeed?

She didn’t really have a suitable answer for him…or herself. Jasper preferred his life cloaked quite literally and figuratively in the shroud of the past. He’d wed her, but remained committed to their maintaining a coolly polite union    . Unbidden, her gaze drifted to the point beyond her shoulder, to the 8th Duke of Bainbridge with his sneering lips, and flinty eyes and wondered if this was to be her future.

Only…

Her eyes drifted downward to the somber, young Jasper, remembering there would be no young boys or girls, somber or smiling.

“I’d not live in a museum, Jasper,” she said at last. Katherine gestured to the portraits carefully hung throughout the room. “You order the servants to cover tapestries and paintings. You lock off doors and have sheets draped across the entrance.” She shook her head, willing him to see. “This is no way to live, Jasper. You lived, whether you would have traded places with Lydia. You lived, and she…”

“Don’t,” he barked.

“Died,” she forced herself to continue.

An icy cool to rival the brewing snowstorm outside the thick windowpanes emanated from her husband’s stiffly held frame.

Realizing the aching directness of that one word, she held a hand out to him. “You lived,” she said again. And I, too, am alive. “So live, Jasper.” Katherine finished lamely. She wished she possessed the words of the great poets because then mayhap she could drag her husband back from the shadow of despair.

Jasper lowered his brow. “Tell me, what would you have me live for, Katherine?” She would have to be as deaf as an ancient dowager not to detect the slight mocking edge to that question.

“I’d have you live for you,” she replied, angling her head back ever so slightly to directly meet his gaze. Jasper’s happiness could never be inextricably intertwined with her own, the way it had been with his first wife.

The Jasper memorialized in the painting beckoned and she turned to face him. “I want you to be like that, Jasper.” Her softly spoken words filled the portrait room.

His entire body jerked as if he’d been struck. He shook his head. Once. Twice, and then again. “I can never again be that man, Katherine. The sooner you realize as much, the sooner we can carry on living our own lives.”

Part of her heart chipped off and dissolved within her chest. That was all he imagined for them—an existence where they carried on their separate existences.

Katherine gave a jerky nod. “If you’ll excuse me? I’ll leave you to your own affairs.” Before she did something utterly foolish, such as throw herself into his arms and humble herself with the words of love that hovered on her lips, she dipped a curtsy, and walked out with her head held high.





~25~



Katherine sat at the window-seat which overlooked the back expanse of Castle Blackwood. The rolling hills, covered in a thick, undisturbed blanket of snow reminded her of the days she’d been a girl racing, and rolling down the snow-covered hills of Hertfordshire in those very rare times when they were graced with snow.

“You squeezing me, Kat.”

Katherine loosened her hold upon Lizzie and placed a kiss upon her cheek. “I’m so sorry, dear Lizzie.” She rustled her chin atop her crown of soft curls. “You’re just so impossibly sweet, I’d gobble you up like Cook’s plum pudding at Christmas.” She smothered the small girl’s cheeks with kisses until the little girl gasped for breath.

Katherine relented, and with a smile shifted her attention back to the outside grounds.

“May I join you?”

She glanced back and smiled. “Of course, Aldora.”

Her sister walked over. She hovered at the edge of the window seat. From above her wire-rimmed spectacles, Aldora arched an inquisitive brow. “Do you intend to stare out the window all day? Or will you at last speak to me of what happened?”

Truth be told, Katherine would vastly prefer the whole staring out of the window business to the inevitable discussion her sister wished to have. With Lizzie in her arms, Katherine turned and set the small girl on her feet.

Lizzie toddled over and settled at her mother’s feet. Aldora leaned down and handed a small doll with golden curls and a long, flowing floral-patterned gown to Lizzie. The little girl proceeded to dance the doll about the floor.