Page 105 of Holding Onto Love

She curled her lip. “Oh, exactly like them. Young and innocent. Then what? Where will we live?”

“Chaumbers. And Grosvenor Square while Parliament is in session.”

“Am I to come to London with you?”

“Of course.” He squeezed her hand. She slipped it away.

“Am I to play hostess to your friends in Society? Do you imagine their wives will attend my soirees? Will they invite me to their balls?”

“Some will.”

“No. They won’t.”

“Vanessa, you had friends in Society before. Why do you think they will not welcome you again? Don’t falter now—”

“Where will your mother be?”

“The dower house at Chaumbers. She will be welcome, of course, at Grosvenor Square when she comes to London.”

“I am to welcome her?”

“Would you not?”

“Would she come?”

Jasper scraped back his chair to lean forward, elbows on knees. “This is when I would have brought in Olivia. Vanessa, do you think I abducted her? My mother knows she’s here. Meeting you.”

“She knows you intended to propose marriage to me?” Vanessa looked stunned.

He nodded. Waited.

“And what was her reaction?” He heard the skepticism in her voice.

“She said that I should do the right thing.”

He hesitated to use his mother’s pain to his advantage. Yet it was something he felt Vanessa should know. He sat up straight again.

“Just before my father died, I learned something…terrible. I had always believed my family to be close. To be blessed beyond measure.”

“It is.”

“My parents seemed to me to be loving. They certainly created a loving home for us. They were always courteous to one another.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “But my father had a mistress before he married my mother and kept her throughout most of their years together. I have a half-brother Reg’s age.”

Vanessa’s eyes went wide, and she put her hand on his leg. “I’m so sorry. What a difficult thing to discover. And at such a troubled time.” She frowned, turning away, and removing her hand. “I can hardly believe it. He was so upright. So…”

“So false? So hypocritical? So cruel to my mother?”

“She knew?”

He nodded. “I don’t know when or how she found out. Maybe she knew all along. She doesn’t discuss it, naturally.”

“No wonder she doesn’t like me.”

“It isn’t personal. She doesn’t want pity. She said she did not. She was a countess and that was important to her. She cared for my father, and he was good to her—her words. In the eyes of the ton, he was better than most. And she says she would not have traded the family we have for anything in the world.”

“But he didn’t love her.”

Jasper shrugged. He could not, even now, believe his father had been cold to his mother. But he said, “Not enough. And not in the way that I love you. I can’t…I can’t emulate him. I admire him in so many other ways, but I won’t marry another woman when I feel this way about you. I was a fool to think I could. Thank God Reg and Georgiana found one another. I would have made her miserable.”