Page 10 of Holding Onto Love

“Tell you what?”

“Why you were meeting with Mrs. Wardrip’s solicitor.” He smirked. “Are you about to be sued for breach of promise?”

Breath left Jasper’s chest as if he’d been struck. “I’d concede in a heartbeat.”

Sympathy washed across Hazard’s face. He must have expected Jasper would lash out, not crumple up in a heap.

“Collingswood refused to tell me what I wanted to know. He agreed to deliver a letter, but it won’t change anything.”

“Would you want it to?”

“The devil. No. I should leave her alone.” He drew in a deep breath. He was not going to lose any more of his self-control. “I’m worried about her. There is, of course, no widow’s jointure. And our contract was one between two young fools who were not looking ahead.”

“She wouldn’t accept a settlement from you?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Well.” Hazard unfolded his arms and stepped to select a cue from the row against the wall. “She has family, does she not? She can’t still be that estranged from them if she’s using her father’s man.”

And that, Jasper saw, was how Hazard had made the connection. The elder Mr. Collingswood represented the Culpeppers.

“Young Collingswood is not her father’s man. He is hers. Culpepper is unaware and is to remain so.”

“Is to remain so” was enough. Hazard would not gossip. Nevertheless, Hazard was still regarding him with an intensely questioning look on his face. And Jasper realized it would not take drunkenness to unburden himself.

“When I asked Vanessa to…to have a relationship with me, I told her I’d have a contract drawn up to protect her interests.” He snorted. Remembering. “I suppose I thought she’d say there was no need. That she trusted me. All the things one expects a woman to say. But she answered that my solicitor would hardly be putting her interests first, and she would have her own man speak with mine.” He saw Hazard bite back a smile. “I thought she’d resort to some pettifogger. I was shocked to my toes when she pulled out Collingswood. It seems she and Will, as she called him, have known each other since they were children. He would not say anything to her father or to his.”

Naturally, word of his daughter’s sordid affairs returned to Culpepper despite her solicitor’s discretion, but Vanessa already considered herself cut off from her family. And, apparently, so did they.

He sniffed. Collingswood was married, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t half in love with her also.

“Will Collingswood despises me.” If there had been any opportunity for a reconciliation with her family, her acceptance of Jasper’s proposition quashed it. Jasper considered that a good thing, but others might not.

Hazard began to fussily line up the billiard balls. “Yet you think he will deliver your letter?”

“He said he would, so I’m certain he will. I’m less certain she will read it. And I’m positive it will make no difference if she does.” He should have written something else. Although nothing would have been adequate.

Finley appeared at the door with a tray. “Will this do, my lord?”

Jasper beckoned and Finley brought forth the tray. Anything from Father’s cellar would do. The man had always said life was too short to drink bad liquor. He heard the tap of cue against ball and the clicking of balls connecting.

“Cognac, Haz?” His voice sounded rough. His father’s life had been far too short.

“Start pouring, Iversley. Start pouring.”

Chapter Four

The cottage Vanessa had purchased was in Cartmel, near the lake district. She chose the location for its beauty and because it was a solid three days away from London, but mainly because she would be near to Mrs. Lydia Compton, a campaign-forged friend, the most pragmatic woman she had ever known.

Lydia was a war widow twice over. Her third husband, Corporal Compton, had not died, thankfully, but lost an eye and an arm in one day’s battle, injury enough to see him sent home. And Lydia—who had taken each new young soldier’s wife under her wing and taught her how to survive come what may, how to prevent pregnancy, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, how to supplement her husband’s meager rations, cook over an open flame, clean and mend his clothes and her own, bandage his wounds, and eventually search for his body among the dead—Lydia, too, had been ready to retire from the fight. Fortunately, Corporal Compton had a brother, a bootmaker in Cartmel, who welcomed them into his household. Lydia wrote that Brother Jon had put them both to work, and she had never been happier. If Vanessa ever found herself in need…

Vanessa couldn’t see herself a bootmaker. She had not wanted to live in Cartmel, only near it. But her attorney friend found her the perfect cottage on the outskirts of the village. It was small: one story, four rooms, a bit of a garden. A twenty-minute walk would bring her to church, forty and she would be at Lydia’s door. The previous owner had died six months earlier. Vanessa suspected Will had reserved the property then, anticipating her need, but to accuse him of that would serve no purpose. It was perfect, and he knew it, and that was that.

On this unseasonably warm February day, she knelt on a split log in her garden, examining the tangled mess of brown stems and rotten vegetables that had grown as volunteers and then died on the vine. The garden had not been properly tended in a long while, though it was difficult to say how long since Vanessa had never tended a garden before. Her neighbor, Mrs. Charlotte Gowe, had given her a few pointers, peering over the fence. They were becoming friends. Charlotte was acquainted with Lydia, who corroborated Vanessa’s story, that of a war widow with just enough means to purchase a cottage and live quietly. Even now, she leaned on Henry. No one need know she was the daughter of Frederick Culpepper. No one need know she had been the mistress of a lord who was now an earl.

Vanessa turned at the scuff of boots coming up the road, an uncommon sound so far from the village center. Will Collingswood was walking toward her cottage as if her thoughts had summoned him. She stood up, fighting the urge to wring her hands. What in God’s name could bring him all the way out here?

She met him at the gate.