For Love of the Duke(93)
Oh, God, I did. I did want to wed you Katherine. It is everything that came after the marriage I feared.
He struggled for the words that at one time in his youth he would have been able to call up. He would have known the pretty, flowery compliments, the gentle praise to keep her at his side. Only the four years he’d spent in hell had robbed him of his ability to do so.
Jasper sat back in his seat.
Katherine carried on in a rush. “I can never repay you for what you’ve done.” A wistful smile played about her lips, so he was forced to wonder at the secrets contained within the fragile expression of mirth. “Thank you.”
She would thank him? Thank him as though he’d helped her across a puddle, or held a parasol above her head, shielding her from the sun?
Pain twisted and turned inside him. “What if I say I do not want you to leave?”
Katherine flinched at the harshly spoken question, and he knew in that moment she would turn, walk out the door, and out of his life. Oh God, if my heart is dead, what is this sharp, jagged ache tearing at the organ?
“Come, Jasper. This is your home, and I’m merely an interloper here.”
You are no interloper. You are my wife.
Tell her you bloody fool. Tell her before she leaves.
He opened his mouth.
She angled her head, as if awaiting the unspoken words he could not dredge forth. Katherine gave her head a sad little shake.
Jasper surged to his feet so quickly, his winged back chair tipped backwards. “Where will you go?”
Katherine glanced momentarily at the fallen chair. Then back to him. Her shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I imagined I might make my home in your townhouse in London.” A pretty pink color filled her cheeks. “That is, if you’d permit me to make my home there. I’d rather not return to my mother’s…”
“It is yours,” he said hoarsely, coming out from behind his desk. It is all yours, Katherine.
“Thank you.”
He stopped in front of her. So formal. So very polite. How could they be so stoically calm with talk of her walking from the room, and out of his life?
“Is there anything else you require?” Jasper’s distant question may as well have belonged to a stranger.
She shook her head. “No, Jasper.” Katherine studied her hands a moment, and then crossed the small distance between them. She leaned up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
He closed his eyes in an attempt to forever hold onto the scent of honeysuckle and lemon that clung to her. “I…I…” Love you. Tell me you love me, Katherine, even as undeserving as I am. “Be happy, Jasper,” she whispered, and then stepped away from him.
She dropped a curtsy and walked out of his office. Out of his life.
Jasper’s gaze fixed on the door. His throat moved up and down.
How could he ever be happy again when with her, she’d taken his every last remaining reason for dwelling on this earth?
He wandered over to the front of his office and pulled back the thick brocade curtains covering the windowpanes. He peered down at the snow-covered drive as footmen hurried back and forth with trunks and valises belonging to Katherine’s family.#p#分页标题#e#
He stood there, fixed to the spot, waiting for the moment Katherine stepped into that carriage.
He waited so long he convinced himself that he’d imagined the whole, hellish exchange.
Then she appeared. The green muslin cloak a bright flash of color in a stark, white horizon. He’d come to know her so well, he could detect her body’s every nuance. She stiffened, as though she knew he studied her. Her chin ticked up a notch, and then she drew her hood up, and stole from him the vision of her lush brown ringlets and warm brown eyes.
Jasper rested his forehead alongside the wall and shook it slowly back and forth.
Do not leave.
Please do not leave.
The quiet of the cool winter’s day magnified all sound and he detected the moment the carriage door opened and closed.
Jasper’s eyes snapped open and he scrambled back to the edge of the window in time to see the footman hand her up into the carriage.
He devoured the delicate span of her back, the bold tilt of her neck, and cherished his every last glimpse of her, until the door closed, and Michael Knightly’s black lacquer carriage rocked forward.
Jasper pressed his brow against the glass panes and peered after the slow-moving conveyance until it dissolved into nothing more than a faint mark in the horizon.
Once again, left—alone.
The walls he’d constructed around his heart, the ones Katherine had rattled from the moment he’d pulled her from the Thames fell firmly back into place, surrounding the wounded organ that beat within his chest. He embraced the hurt, fueled the bitter resentment tearing through him.