For Love of the Duke(47)

Katherine’s lips parted ever so slightly, and then she seemed to remember herself, and snapped them closed.

“Would you care to hear the details, Katherine?” he taunted.



Katherine’s heart froze. She reminded herself to breathe.

I loved my wife.

Of course he had. Jasper’s retreat from Society, and the private manner in which he lived his life alluded to a love for the woman who’d been his wife. But there had been no details, nothing more than suppositions—until now. The knowing somehow made the agony of his indifference all the more painful.

Did she care for the details? Why she’d rather have the lashes upon her lids plucked one at a time than hear of his love for the paragon of a woman who’d been his wife. It was selfish and wrong…but she could no more stop the ugly sentiments than she could stop from breathing.

Instead she said, “Yes, Jasper. Tell me the details.” Because I’m a glutton for pain and suffering.

“Her name was Lydia and she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen; her hair was the color of spun gold, and her eyes like the deepest, clearest blue seas.” He wandered back to the window, his carriage proudly erect and unmoving.#p#分页标题#e#

As he stared down into the streets below, silent and unspeaking, her heart spasmed. The image he so poetically painted of his wife, nay, Lydia—was one of a woman who’d inspired romantic words from this now cold, unfeeling Jasper. Lydia, the grand beauty, and surely a diamond of the first water. Not like Katherine with her silly brown ringlets and dull brown eyes, who would never inspire any grand sentiments in a gentleman.

She sank into the nearest seat, an overstuffed King Louis chair.

Jasper glanced over his shoulder and ran a disinterested stare over her still form. “I courted her. I fell in love with her. The kind of love those foolish poets write of.”

Oh God, why did her heart crack in the manner it did? She swallowed past a swell of emotion in her throat.

He carried on. There was no need for questions or prodding on her part. Jasper had retreated to that place inside himself he’d dwelt since she’d first met him at the Frost Fair.

“She loved London, and I, once upon a lifetime ago, also loved London. I was so very comfortable, there.”

Something else she’d not known of him. She’d believed his absence from London these years had been because he’d detested the overcrowded, dirty, gossip-driven glittery world. No, his self-imposed exile had been motivated of his love for Lydia.

Katherine gripped the corners of her seat. It would appear they had even less in common than she’d ever believed.

Jasper gave his head the slightest shake. “The day I learned Lydia was with child, I insisted we retreat to my holdings in the country. And those eight months were the happiest of my life.”

Oh, God surely he could detect the loud cracking of her heart. Why? Why would the blasted organ splinter apart if she weren’t in love with him? She could not love him. Not this…stranger who still mourned his dead, paragon of a wife.

Jasper went on. “It was a Sunday when she felt a tightening pain. I insisted she rest. I sent round for a doctor but continued to carry on with the estates business while she suffered in the solitary confines of her own chambers.” His face contorted in such unguarded grief, Katherine dropped her gaze. “That is the kind of man you’d wed.”

“What happened?” Did that whisper belong to her?

His fiery gaze flew to hers. “Would you care for the details, Katherine?”

She shook her head quickly. “N…”

“The doctor summoned me.”

His eyes took on a faraway look of a man who’d come close to the fiery pits of hell and had been forever scorched by its flames. “Would you hear how she screamed for three long days, until her voice went hoarse and then silent from the bloody shouts of terror and agony that ravaged her throat?”

Katherine again shook her head. “No…” She cried, and surged to her feet, filled with an image of him beside his wife as she fought to birth their child.

“Or would you have me tell you of how with her last gasping breath she gave life to a small, blue babe?”

A muscle ticked in the corner of his eye, and his hard visage blurred before her. She dashed a hand across her eyes, realizing she cried for the agony he’d known, for the loss of his love, and for the tiny babe. Katherine angrily swiped at the mementos of despair; Jasper would not welcome her pity.

As she expected, his gaze momentarily fell to her tear-stained cheeks, and when he looked back at her, a stiff, macabre grin turned his lips.