Page 30 of Holding Onto Love

But then Reginald spoke.

“On the contrary, Your Grace. Were we to allow them charge of weightier manners, we should not find ourselves floundering in half so many quandaries.”

Jasper would have laughed, but he was ninety percent certain his brother was not joking. He raised his estimate to one hundred percent when he caught a glimpse of Georgiana’s expression. Love and awe. The beauty there made his eyes sting.

Or maybe it was something else: the realization that a fortunate man might be granted one opportunity in a lifetime to be loved in such a way. And he had squandered his chance.

Ah, God, Vanessa. How sorry he was.

Chapter Ten

Vanessa knew she had to take this day by day. She must trust herself to make decisions as they came. Any mistakes would have to be lived with or corrected. This was all simple: she should not make it hard.

Her money was low. Not her assets, her coin.

She scrutinized the contents of her jewelry case, now spread across her narrow bed. And discovered she was not the coolly detached assessor of gemstones that she claimed to be. She remembered each gift. Each occasion. Each non-occasion. Jasper had not thrown presents at her as an easy way to buy affection or evade apology. He’d chosen special things for special moments. Oh!—her pearl necklace. Her eyes moistened. She couldn’t part with any of this.

What a fool she was being! She could not afford sentiment. She had to let go.

She should have sold it all before leaving London, and given the money to Will to invest in some sort of trust. It surprised her that he hadn’t thought to suggest it, but she could not blame Will. Not when she’d made such a point to him of her independence.

She picked up a bracelet studded with sapphires. Everything was real. Jasper did not believe in paste. One could not sell jewelry, not this type of jewelry, in Cartmel. Either it would brand her at once as a retired courtesan, or people would suspect she had been a lady’s maid who absconded with the family jewels.

This was not an unsolvable problem. She needed only to write to Will and he would come fetch whatever she needed to sell. Yet she hated to inconvenience him so dreadfully. Perhaps she might write to Mr. Taverston. Crispin said Reginald could be counted upon. But what an embarrassing request to make. And what would Lady Georgiana think?

Vanessa had never met the woman, this erstwhile rival for Jasper’s affection, but Crispin admired her. What a futile thing, to wish for the good opinion of a lady whom she had never met and would never meet.

Besides, contacting Reginald would be tantamount to contacting Jasper.

She didn’t have time for this, she thought impatiently. Charlotte Gowe would be here any moment.

Vanessa and her neighbor had developed a Monday morning ritual. Charlotte would send her two little boys to the fields with her husband, tuck her baby girl into a basket, and bring her down the road. She also brought two cups, drizzled at the bottom with honey from the hives her husband kept. Vanessa supplied the boiled water and the tea. It was her near-empty tea caddy, in fact, that had alerted her to the dwindling of her funds.

Imagine, the Earl of Iversley’s mistress unable to afford tea. But she wasn’t that, anymore. She was a woman with finite resources. If she wanted funds, she would have to do without some of her jewels.

Vanessa took another glance out the window to see Charlotte walking toward the house. Her cotton frock had all the color washed out of it, but her round face was pink with the heat. She swung the basket to and fro gently. Sweet Kate would be sleeping by the time she arrived. That’s what they called her. Sweet Kate. Never Katie or Kitty or Kate. Always Sweet Kate, as if she had been christened so.

Vanessa dug her nails into her palms. Another emotion she would not allow herself to feel, not even to name. Of course, she and Jasper never had any children. And she and Henry…had no children either. No living children.

Charlotte came up the walk, careful not to bump the basket against her legs. Vanessa shut the door to her bedroom, then opened the front door before her friend knocked.

“Come in! The water’s boiling.”

Charlotte handed her two copper cups. “I can’t stay long. Petey’s got the trots. Dan took him but says if he’s not better, he’ll send him home. I figure I’ve time for just a quick cup.”

“Oh, poor Petey! Does he hurt?”

“That boy never hurts. We wouldn’t have known he was sick except—” She made a sniffing sound and wrinkled her nose. “You know.”

Little Dan was six. Petey five. Sweet Kate would be a year old come August. Vanessa clenched her hands around the cups. Then she set them on the table. “I’ll fetch the pot.”

The teapot was a chipped old clay thing that had come with the house. Vanessa suspected the previous occupant had brewed up some earthy concoction from local herbs rather than actual tea by the lingering odor of it. The first few times she’d used it, she yearned for the delicate Wedgewood teapot left behind in Bleeker Street, then resigned herself with the thought that at least it wasn’t the gaudy, gilded pot that her mother had used.

But then once, watching Charlotte sigh over the honey-sweetened tea, with a wistful smile on her face and the words—“Aren’t we just like the Queen, now?”—Vanessa decided the pot wasn’t the important thing. In fact, she wondered if the Wedgewood wasn’t gaudy too, just in a different way.

Vanessa returned to the table, poured, and then sat in the chair she would drag in from the parlor whenever Charlotte came to call. She could picture the look on Jasper’s face were he to see her like this. A mixture of consternation and amusement.

Oh, good Lord. Enough of Jasper. Looking at his gifts had put her in a mood.