For Love of the Duke(59)

Yes, Katherine would venture that his first wedding had been met with great celebration and laughter and a wondrous feast.#p#分页标题#e#

Unlike his wedding to Katherine, which had been a hurried affair, not even worthy of the meal arranged by Cook.

Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked back the tokens of embarrassed hurt. When she’d asked Jasper to wed her, she’d not really considered anything beyond being free of Mr. Ekstrom and Mother’s horrid plans for her future. And so, she’d not really considered the possibility that she’d be met with such an icy disinterest from Jasper.

Her hair had been like spun gold.

Katherine angrily shoved a now-limp brown ringlet back behind her ear. The mocking strand fell right back into place. She hated ringlets as much as she detested ivory and white ruffles. She didn’t expect Jasper should love her. She had expected that he might feel…something, because he, even with his wintry treatment of her, had come to mean something to her.

His disinterest last evening bespoke a different tale.

Fool.

A single tear streaked a path down her cheek, and she discreetly swatted at it. She’d not further humiliate herself by turning into a watering pot in front of him.

Another blasted drop squeezed past her eyelid.

She folded her trembling hands into the fabric of her cloak, in a desperate attempt to conceal any weakness. Jasper was not a man who’d respect weakness, and surely not in the woman who was now his wife.

Or bride. She was still embarrassingly, and most assuredly, a virgin.

Oh bloody hell. The tears fell in earnest.

For the first time, Katherine appreciated that Jasper’s total disinterest spared what was left of her tattered pride.



Christ.

She was crying.

Jasper’s heart squeezed in a clear reminder that the organ still beat.

Something about her, tucked forlorn in the corner, making a desperate attempt at concealing the crystal drops that fell down her cheeks, ravaged him.

He would trade his bloody landholdings if it would spare her pain…and yet, he didn’t know how to call forth the words to halt her grief.

Did she regret her decision to wed him?

His gut twisted in a tightly coiled knot at the thought of it. Jasper could not blame her for any regrets she carried over their marriage. He was a coldhearted, unfeeling bastard of a man. If he wasn’t, he’d know just what words to utter to ease her pain, he would take her in his arms and rub soothing circles over her back, and he would drive back her quiet tears, replacing them with joyous laughter.

Instead, he reached into his jacket, and fished out the white monogramed kerchief. He handed it over to her. “Here,” he said, his tone gruff.

Katherine didn’t take her gaze from the window, but her fingers grasped the small square, and she blew her nose noisily into it. All the while her shoulders trembled.

The sight of it threatened to turn him into the Mad Duke Society proclaimed him to be.

“What is it, Katherine?” I should have done so much differently. I should have allowed your maid to come and attend you so you had at least that comfort. I should have allowed you to break your fast, and do so with you. I should have…

Never wed you.

Because the man Jasper now was, the man he’d become four years ago to this day, would never be worthy of her.

Katherine shook her head. His usual loquacious, bright-eyed sprite uncharacteristically silent.

He should cease his line of questioning. Katherine did not want to speak to him. She wanted to carry on with her own private misery, but he could no sooner stop the questions than he could stop his heart from beating.

Jasper leaned over and touched his fingers to her chin. She resisted, but he gently turned her to face him.#p#分页标题#e#

Oh, God. Her eyes were twin pools of despair.

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?”