AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Twelve
Asubdued Freddie guarded Hattie himself at the Countess of Nantwich’s ball that night, and that had been a painful experience because she was nowhere near ready to forgive him for ruining her friendship with Jasper, and her outrage did not make for good conversation. She also spent the entire evening watching the door in the hope Jasper had had a change of heart and might walk through it. He didn’t, of course, exactly as he had promised, so she had worried about him incessantly as a result.
Tomorrow he travelled alone to Cookham to close up Cora’s house and collect her effects, and while he had been all matter of fact and stoic about it as he had told her his intentions in the one quiet interlude that they had had without Izzy, she could tell he was dreading it.
Of course he was. She couldn’t imagine how hard it would be to face all that alone, when he had once loved her deeply and they would always share a child.
The thought had so consumed her that she had awoken this morning and decided she would defy both his wishes and Freddie’s by seeing him alone once more whether he wanted her to or not. To that end she got the carriage to drop her off at the infirmary early and smuggled herself through the servants’ entrance at the back of his house at the unfashionable hour of nine.
Mrs Mimms was surprised to see her but could not hide her relief either, and showed Hattie to his study without announcing her first. His door was open, which meant she saw him sat at his desk lost in thought as he stared out of the window, looking every inch a man with the weight of the world on his back. He snapped around as he heard their approach and the dark shadows etched under his narrowed green eyes were all the confirmation Hattie needed to know she had done the right thing.
‘Spare me your silly lecture on propriety, for I am not leaving no matter what you have to say on the matter, and if you try to remove me by force, you should know that I have a legendary right hook as my brother’s misshapen nose will testify.’ She rested her fists on her hips rather than shake them at him. ‘Friends do not desert one another in their hour of need, Jasper Beaufort, and that is that. Friends are there beside you no matter what. No. Matter. What.’ In case he did try to manhandle her out, she sat in the wingback and stared him down.
‘And that door swings both ways. I am the only shoulder you can lean on at the moment because I am the only person outside of this house who knows about Izzy. And without you, I had to suffer a half an hour with Lord Boredom last night, which is how I know to my cost that his foul habit of spraying spit whenever he talks is worse than ever. It was so bad I had to bathe after midnight because I didn’t want to sleep with his abundant secretions on my skin!’
After an eternity he gave up glaring and sighed, smiling. ‘It is good to see you.’
‘And that is my cue to go fetch some tea.’ Mrs Mimms backed out of the door, closing it as she went.
‘How are things with you today?’
‘Me—as well as can be expected after a late night at my club followed by around two hours of sleep. Izzy—not so well.’ He leant back in the chair like a man at his wits’ end. ‘She is sleeping now, utterly exhausted, bless her, after another night filled with bad dreams. She doesn’t understand that her mother has gone. Doesn’t understand the concept of heaven even slightly. Thinks that a person can return from it, as if Cora has gone on a jaunt somewhere rather than to meet her maker. I just don’t know what to do to help her to understand.’
‘I suppose it must be confusing for a four-year-old.’ Hattie knew that Jasper had been told that a neighbour had taken Izzy in when her mother’s fever had worsened while another had tended to Cora who had died that same night. Those two kind women had been trying to protect her from the ordeal. ‘I presume she did not attend the funeral.’ In the normal course of things, children, especially younger children, were spared the ordeal of the graveside. It was customary still for some to even exclude the womenfolk from funerals, but she couldn’t imagine being denied the right to say goodbye as Izzy had. No wonder the child was confused. ‘To her one minute her mama was there and the next she was gone.’
When he nodded, something struck her. ‘The purpose of a funeral is to say a final goodbye. Izzy hasn’t had that so perhaps you should give her the opportunity and take her with you tomorrow.’
‘You think I should take her with me to visit the graveside?’ His handsome face contorted with distaste. ‘How do I explain a grave when she has been told repeatedly that her mother went to heaven?’ He pointed to the sky.
‘You are right.’ Hattie wished she knew the answer. ‘Perhaps there is some other way she can say goodbye. A gentler way which would help her understand—but what could I possibly know?’ She had no right to lecture him. No relevant experience from which to offer him sound advice. ‘I haven’t known her since birth, and I am not a parent.’
He exhaled slowly, his eyes searching Hattie’s as if weighing her up, the indecision in them still there when he scrunched them closed. ‘Can I entrust you with a secret that you can never tell another living soul ever—no matter what?’
‘Of course you can.’
‘Do you swear it?’ His eyes opened and locked with hers so intently it made her uneasy because the message in them was clear. Whatever he was about to confess was momentous.
‘On my life, Jasper.’ Because the moment seemed to need it, she reached across the blotter to grip both his hands. ‘You can trust me with anything.’
His fingers curled tight around hers as he whispered, ‘I am not a parent either. Izzy isn’t mine.’
Whatever her whirring mind had thought he might say, that certainly wasn’t it. ‘What?’ she stuttered, flabbergasted. ‘But she is the image of you.’
He tugged one hand away to reach into a desk drawer, then placed a small oval enamel on the desk between them. ‘She is the image of Cora.’
Hattie blinked at the tiny portrait. At the intense hazel gaze and dark curls. The contours of the face. The angle of the nose. The colouring. It was like looking at Isabel as an adult. ‘But I do not understand. Cora was your mistress. Everyone knows that.’
‘Everyone thinks that...but she and I never...’ He raked a hand through his own dark hair as if searching for a polite way to explain and when he failed, shrugged. ‘We were never lovers.’
Uncle Jasper!A slip she had put down to the peculiarities of their situation, all linked to his daughter’s illegitimacy. Yet now, the odd expression Jasper got whenever the little girl remembered to call him ‘Papa’ had to be re-evaluated.
‘But...you loved her. You told me so at the Queen’s ball.’
‘Of course I loved her. She was my friend. My oldest friend.’ His smile was wistful. ‘We grew up together. Cora’s father was the stable master at the Battlesbridge estate, so we knew each other practically from birth. As things were always fraught between me and my objectional sire, I tried to spend as little time as possible in the house when he was in it. I used to escape to the stables when I was home, bothering her father who always had more time for me than my own. As the years went on, Mr Marlow struggled to cope with the workload.’ That memory furrowed his brow.
‘He had bad rheumatism, not that my father would have had any sympathy because he couldn’t afford to pension anyone off, so Cora and I worked together to hide his condition. Knowing her father would be dismissed and replaced if my tight-fisted sire got wind of his increasing infirmity, by the time I was seventeen Cora and I did more and more of his job, but...’
Jasper blew out a breath. ‘I was young and selfish. I grabbed the chance to go to Oxford with both hands to get away from Battlesbridge and am ashamed to say that once I got there, I enjoyed having too much of a high old time that I neglected to check on them quite as often as I should have. Cora and I exchanged letters in the first few months—her more than me because her father was ailing and she was worried sick—and then they suddenly stopped.
