For Love of the Duke(51)
“No,” Jasper snapped. “My driver has been instructed to wait. We leave immediately.”
Anne seemed to sense the desperation that bubbled to the surface, and nearly consumed Katherine. She clapped her hands and beamed at Jasper. “I have a splendid idea. What if we join you for the Christmas season and then…”
“No,” Jasper cut in. The vein that ran the length of his neck throbbed. “There will be no company.”
“I don’t understand,” Katherine whispered. She winced as the words tumbled into the quiet of the room, and the interlopers of her private despair stared on.
Jasper dusted his immaculate white gloves together. “We leave now.”
That was it. No gentle answer. No patient explanation.
Her eyes slid closed. Good God, what have I done?
When she opened them, Jasper studied her. For the briefest, slightest moment she detected a warmth in the fathomless green depths of his eyes. Only, it must have been a flicker of the fire within the hearth responsible for the slight glimmer, for she blinked, and firmly back in place was that coolly mocking expression she’d come to expect.#p#分页标题#e#
Katherine searched the room but there was no one to make him see reason. He was the all-powerful, truculent Duke of Bainbridge; so very clearly accustomed to having his every wish and desire met.
She grunted as Anne hurled herself into Katherine’s arms. She clasped Katherine tight, and stroked a soothing, reassuring circle over her back. “I’ve known since the moment he sent round a note to cancel your meeting in the park that he was for you, Katherine. I just wasn’t certain you knew it.”
Katherine drew back, startled.
Her sister must have seen the shock written on Katherine’s face, for she squeezed her shoulders. “I didn’t believe a bit of snow should have stopped your outing.”
Anne kissed her cheek. “Remember, he saved you. There is surely good inside him,” she whispered against her ear.
Yes, Katherine knew that, and yet, the idea of going off with him to his country estate, alone, shut away from her family, filled her with a stony resentment. She hugged her sister back, hard, and then made her goodbyes to Mother.
As they made their way through the house, to the foyer, and out the front doors held open by Ollie. The butler inclined his head and opened his mouth…perhaps to offer congratulatory words to the newly wedded couple? Only Jasper settled his heavy palm along the base of her back and steered her forward. She frowned up at him, but he appeared wholly unaffected by her displeasure.
They trudged through the snow-filled ground, over to the carriage. Jasper waved off the servant and handed her inside. He leapt up behind her.
The driver closed the door behind them. As the carriage lurched forward carrying Katherine off to her new home, she felt much the way Andromeda had surely felt chained to that rock in hope of salvation from a powerful avenger.
She sat pressed against the corner, and stared at Jasper. His gaze remained fixed at a point above her shoulder, his square jaw firm and unmoving. He might as well have been carved of stone for all the emotion expressed.
Husband. He is my husband.
Resolved strengthened Katherine’s spine. If he thought to intimidate her with his harsh coldness, he was to be sorely disappointed in her as a wife. She glared at him.
“You are being an absolute brute,” she snapped.
At last, he looked at her.
Jasper stared at this slip of a woman forever bound to him.
His wife.
Oh, good Christ in heaven. He’d pledged to never again wed, promised to never turn himself over to the hands of another who could inflict the mind-numbing pain he’d known upon Lydia’s death.
For the better part of the day, throughout the brief, ceremony he’d detected the faint tremor in Katherine’s hands, the panicked glitter in her brown eyes, and it had struck him that this woman would belong to him.
Until death they do part.
And then as he’d stood there, with those ominous five words flitting through his mind, he’d imagined a hellish existence in which it was no longer Lydia’s lifeless body he held, but Katherine’s. Ice climbed up his spine, and chilled him inside and out. She would not die. He’d not allow it.
“Did you hear me?” she snapped. “I said, you’re an absolute brute.”
She was perfectly correct; he was an absolute brute; a horrid beast, but he’d forgotten long ago how to interact among the living.
“My apologies,” he said, startling himself as much as her by the concession.
Her mouth fell agape.
Jasper leaned across the carriage and gently touched his fingers to her chin.