Constance peeled herself from his side with evident apprehension. After weeks and weeks of suppressing his doubts and avoiding a decision, it arrived in an unfettered rush.
“I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you,” he began, “but this needs to end.”
She held still a moment, staring at him in disbelief. Then, in horror. She shot backward along the seat, away from him entirely. “You…you no longer wish to court me?”
Christ. He was a sodding bastard.
“I care for you, Constance, and I thought our courtship was what I wanted, but…”
“How long have you known you would not propose?”
No longer stunned, she now appeared furious. As she had every right to be. And when he swallowed the honest answer to her question—for some time now—Jasper knew he was low and vile, and everything he despised in certain types of men. A type he’d never considered himself to be. Shame consumed him.
He didn’t reply, but no doubt Constance heard the answer in his silence. She sat tall, her body rigid, as she faced forward through the cab’s open front.
“What we have isn’t enough on which to base a marriage,” he said. He owed her some semblance of an explanation, at least.
She pursed her lips, still staring ahead. “Is it because ofher?”
The carriage wheels lurched and fell, jostling them. Without needing to think, Jasper knew to whom Constance referred. Nonetheless, he bit his tongue, refusing to acknowledge it.
Constance twisted suddenly to spear him with a hateful glare. “Is it because of your preciousLeo?” She spat the name with unabashed animosity. She’d never uttered Leonora’s nickname before, and without so many words, she made it clear that she disapproved of Jasper’s use of it. And that she suspected he felt more for Leo than he claimed.
“Tell me you aren’t throwing me over for a bizarre woman who works in a deadhouse!”
He was indisputably at fault for disappointing Constance, for possibly even breaking her heart—though he couldn’t quite convince himself she felt as deeply as that for him. But her outburst kindled his temper.
“She has nothing to do with my decision to end things.”
“Spare me your lies. I’m not a fool,” she snapped. “Although perhaps I have been. I wanted to believe you only felt obliged to tolerate her because of your father.”
She scoffed as the hansom pulled alongside the pavement outside her boardinghouse. She gathered her wrap closer around her shoulders. “Oliver warned me.”
Jasper peered at her, dismayed. “Warned you about what?”
“That you would never be free of her. That you didn’t truly wish to be.”
The driver stepped down to open the cab door.Free of Leo?As if she had some hold on him, or he was under some spell of hers.
“Leave Leonora out of this,” he rasped.
The door opened, and Constance poised herself to leap down. Glancing over her shoulder at him, she hissed, “I’m only grateful I won’t ever have to hear about her again.”
She continued to her boardinghouse door without a second backward glance. Jasper scrubbed his jaw and, aware the cabbie was waiting for a new destination, directed, “Scotland Yard.”
He’d go where he ought to have gone in the first place. The Rising Sun would still be busy, and there would be some coppers there he could have a pint with. He could make a start at forgetting the last few hours and easing the knot in his gut. It hadn’t formed because he’d just ended things with Constance. It was her comments about Leo that bothered him. She’d made it sound as though he rattled off at the mouth all the time abouther. It wasn’t so. In fact, over the past two months, he hadn’t spoken her name at all. He’d thought of her though. Perhaps too much.
Jasper yearned to justtalkto Leo. He’d happily endure an interrogation from her about his deception for the chance to explain himself. She hadn’t asked him a single question about his past, and knowing her mind, she must have dozens of them. Jasper wanted to have it out with her, and afterward, if she still despised him, then so be it.
The cabbie dropped him off outside Number 4 Whitehall Place, between the front façade of Scotland Yard headquarters and the Rising Sun public house. As he’d hoped, the tavern was a lively spot, with gasoliers inside spilling their warm, yellow light through the windows lining the street. Inside, he wasn’t surprised not to see Lewis, who would be at home with his wife and their two young sons by now. But he spotted PC Warnock and DS LaChance seated at a table near a window. Unlike Tomlin, LaChance did not imagine a rivalry between the larger CID and the Special Irish Branch and would often socialize with constables from the other departments. Warnock and LaChance hailed Jasper to join them.
He hadn’t taken four strides in their direction when a rumbling shook the floorboards. Then, an explosion and a bright ball of flame lit the darkened street outside. Glass blew inward as the windows of the tavern shattered. Jasper hit the floor, arms up over his head to shield himself from the gust of the blast and the cutting shards.
An uproar of voices immediately followed the blast, and Jasper got to his feet and joined the surge of men as they hurried into the street. Flames burned in a field of debris scattered before them, and one corner of the wall at Scotland Yard headquarters lay in a pile of rubble.
Another bomb had detonated.
Chapter Five
