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Chapter Seven
Hattie had rehearsed several suitable speeches to explain her sudden, uninvited appearance at his house in the middle of the morning. All of which made her visit sound like an impromptu, fleeting courtesy call while on another errand than a decisive plan. Something which sounded more matter of fact than the overwhelming desire to see him simply because she needed to. All of those casual excuses evaporated like steam the second she stepped into his study and saw how pale Jasper was while his daughter sat swaddled content in his lap.
The little girl stared at her intrigued, so she offered them both an awkward smile.
‘I just wanted to check that you were all right.’
He nodded, visibly uncomfortable, managing to still look boyish and handsome despite his grey pallor. ‘Just about.’ He offered her a weak smile, then squeezed the child in his arms. ‘Izzy, this is Lady Harriet Fitzroy. Lady Harriet, this little cherub is Isabel Marlow-Beaufort.’
The little girl hid shyly behind her doll but still stared at Hattie suspiciously with latent fear in her eyes. Hardly a surprise after all she had been through. The poor thing was probably terrified of everything right now and she was a stranger. ‘Hello, Izzy.’ She beamed at her as she edged closer. ‘My friends call me Hattie, so should you. Who’s this?’ She lightly touched the head of the doll wrapped in her arms.
Izzy arms tightened around her toy. ‘Mabel.’
‘Then I am pleased to meet you too, Mabel.’ Hattie shook the doll’s small porcelain hand as she smiled at Izzy. Up close she could see the child not only shared her father’s dark, wayward hair but also had the same piercing eyes despite hers being more hazel than his unusual shade of green. ‘And she is such a beautiful doll too. I wish I had owned a doll so lovely when I was a girl.’
Izzy turned to smile at her father. ‘He bought her for me when I was born.’
The thought of such a big, strapping man’s man like Jasper shopping for such an exquisite and obviously expensive doll to please his little girl touched her. ‘Then she really is extra special. No wonder you treasure her.’ Hattie’s eyes met his over his daughter’s head and obviously uncomfortable, he lifted the little girl from his lap.
‘Izzy, why don’t you go ask Mrs Mimms for some cake or some biscuits for the three of us?’
The child’s eyes lit up at the mention of cake and she dropped her doll as she dashed to the door eager to please him, but skidded to a stop on the threshold to smile at him shyly. ‘Would you prefer cake or biscuits...Papa?’
For some reason, that simple question seemed to completely flummox him until he shrugged and turned to Hattie in the hope she knew the answer because he plainly didn’t. With both of them now staring at her, Hattie shrugged too. ‘As a general rule I never say no to either, Izzy—but cake is always my favourite.’
‘Ask for both,’ said Jasper, standing. ‘And wait with Mrs Mimms so that you can help her carry our feast in.’
The second they were alone he winced. ‘I am so sorry about last night. My behaviour was inexcusable.’ He raked a hand through his thick hair sending it awry. ‘Contrary to what you might think, I am not accustomed to...um...such reckless hedonism nowadays...it was an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement borne out of...’ He gesticulated wildly, then noticing his hands flying about, clamped them tight behind his back to wince again. ‘There is no excuse. I am mortified.’
‘Of course there is.’ Hattie couldn’t help smiling at his embarrassment. An awkward, stuttering, blushing Jasper was not an incarnation of him she had ever seen before. ‘There is no need to apologise for being human—especially not to someone like me who knows that grief goes through many phases. Shock, anger and self-pity are always the first to manifest themselves and, because they are the least restrained emotions, usually cause us to behave in a manner which isn’t the slightest bit dignified or becoming.’
‘You have lost someone close too?’ His gaze searched hers so intently it unnerved her, as if he wanted to find her truth. ‘Someone you loved?’
‘Not in the same way but in a manner of speaking...yes.’ Hattie wasn’t usually one for baring her soul but to him, in this precise moment, honesty found its way out before she could stop it. ‘I lost myself.’ She patted her leg, shaking her head because it felt selfish to compare her accident in any way to the bereavement he had recently suffered. ‘Or at least the me that I used to be, and I initially coped with it badly.’
He sighed in understanding rather than pity, then sat in the captain’s chair behind his desk and motioned for her to do the same in one of the wingbacks in front of it. ‘I suspect you coped with more decorum than I did. Only a complete halfwit downs three-quarters of a bottle of brandy on an empty stomach then rolls up roaring drunk at the palace.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Laudanum is as potent a poison and arguably does a much better job of confusing the brain.’ Admitting that aloud was humbling. Referencing that short but hideous time at all was unsettling when it had long been brushed under the carpet by everyone, including herself. An unpleasant pile of dirt which she tried to forget lurked and which her dear family had never once mentioned, ever, since it had happened. ‘It certainly helped take me to a very dark place and turned me into someone I loathed. Thankfully, I hated myself so much I couldn’t stand it and that encouraged me to fight rather than feel sorry for myself—which was a much better use of my time.’ As that sounded like a condescending criticism of his misstep Hattie sighed.
‘I am making myself sound so noble and wise, aren’t I, but I can assure you that I spent months wallowing in self-pity before I sorted myself out. And I didn’t manage that until my father found Dr Cribbs and the good doctor tore me off a strip and reminded me that things could have been worse, so please do not be hard on yourself for yesterday. Sometimes we all need to surrender to the self-indulgent futility of the moment because if we don’t it festers.’ Now she was waxing lyrical like a wise old sage when she was ill equipped to offer him advice, and as an acquaintance had no right to. ‘But what do I know about being in love? Or losing it.’
‘Cora and I weren’t...’ He paused to sigh and rake an agitated hand through his hair. ‘Our relationship was...complicated.’ He was choosing his words carefully. Probably trying to protect her delicate sensibilities exactly like her brother. ‘In the last few years, we were...’
Hattie shook her head, brushing it all away. As her mother had speculated, Cora and he had both clearly moved on, but at least he had maintained a close relationship with his daughter. That spoke volumes about his character.
‘You owe me no explanations for your past, Jasper. I am here to help not judge. As one who is now judged constantly, I would never dream of being so condescending to another. Besides—’ she smiled and meant it ‘—I am a firm believer in the past staying there as it is redundant when only the present and future really matter.’ Her eyes wandered to the pretty doll abandoned on the floor. ‘For what it’s worth, and regardless of what the strictures of society dictate that I should think, I find it reassuringly noble that you intend to raise Izzy here with you.’ After only a month in the infirmary she now understood how hard life could be for so many children. Harder still if a parent abdicated all responsibility for them. A travesty which seemed to occur with more frequency than all decency surely demanded it should. ‘If people do not like it, they should mind their own business.’
It was his turn to smile, or half-smile as that seemed to be all he could stoically manage. ‘Is that another reason why I didn’t see my name splashed all over the papers yesterday and today when I was expecting every column to be filled with speculation about Isabel?’
‘It wasn’t my secret to tell. The least I could do was give you a short reprieve, as once the news leaks, and it will, it is bound to be horrendous for you both. The gossip will be vicious. The behaviour of some unconscionable. I want no part of that on my conscience.’
‘Thank you for giving me something else to worry about.’
‘I am simply being honest. As you slurred yourself in your inebriated haze last night, they all know where Izzy came from and not one of them is going to ever let her forget it. Or would you prefer I offered trite, empty and dishonest platitudes instead? In the short term, for the sake of your own sanity, I suggest you give Izzy and yourself time to get used to your abrupt change of circumstances before you make those circumstances public.’
He huffed as he nodded. ‘That is the conclusion I have come to, too. It wouldn’t be practical or fair to her to hide her from the world for ever, but for now, you are correct. The fewer people who know of her existence, the better. At least for the next couple of months while she finds her feet. Izzy has no idea she is a scandal and it is hardly her fault that she is.’
‘Nobody will hear of her from me and I think a couple of months is wise.’ Hattie shrugged, sheepish. ‘Although I must confess, I did mention Cora’s passing to my family.’
