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Adults always lie.
‘Yes. A great deal. Enough that I regretted my decision for months afterwards.’ Was this the right way to get him to agree to the same? Hattie had no idea, but she was determined to be the one adult he could rely on. The one who always told the truth, no matter how difficult it might be for him to hear. ‘Doctor Cribbs had to break the bone in two places to straighten my leg again. I had to wear tight splints for three months afterwards with no guarantees that his intervention would work. Then it took a lot of hard work and exercise and many more months to get to where I am now. Having the bone rebroken wasn’t an easy option but as you can see...’ she stood and did a little lopsided jig which shocked him almost as much as her apology had ‘...I don’t need either crutches or wheels to get around nowadays.’
He was silent for several seconds, staring out of the window with the look of a boy with a thousand questions and the most pressing was whether or not he could trust her. She left him to ponder it, understanding that if she pushed too far too soon, he would only lash out in fear and close her down. Eventually, he turned to her, his expression still suspicious.
‘Who died?’ The change of subject was abrupt, but that he was curious about her enough to want to test her excuse was a breakthrough.
‘Her name was Cora Marlow. She was a little girl called Izzy’s mother. Izzy is only four, so she is still very confused and frightened by it all. So frightened she’s been having nightmares.’ Even the cynical Jim could not hide the flash of sympathy—or perhaps empathy—which played across his features. ‘I was going to take you to meet her and her...father—’ the truth of Jasper’s paternity wasn’t hers to tell ‘—to see if the pair of us could take her mind off her fears for a little while we feed the ducks.’
Hattie was already sitting on a bench near the pond when he and Izzy arrived at noon. Beside her was a boy with a mop of sandy hair sat in a wheeled chair who glared at him warily as Jasper waved a cheery hello. Only his companion waved back, and the sight of Hattie smiling instantly buoyed his mood but did nothing to alleviate the strange butterflies which had inhabited his stomach since last night.
He wanted to blame those on the continued impropriety and risk associated with yet another clandestine meeting with his friend’s baby sister, and while that indeed played on his mind and niggled his conscience, he had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to his nerves than that.
Hattie was getting under his skin.
Or to be more specific, she had already got under it and despite knowing that another meeting, and one in the great outdoors no less, was playing with fire here he still was. Prepared to get burned.
Thank goodness she had been right about this little park in an unfinished corner of Bloomsbury being secluded. There wasn’t another soul in it and, if he forgot how selfish he was being in meeting her and tried to be a bit noble, he genuinely did not want Hattie to get burned too. It probably spoke volumes that he himself thought this was worth the risk. A tiny part of him, a part Jasper was thoroughly ashamed of, thought being caught in a compromising situation with her might not be a bad thing. At least if they were caught and propriety dictated he had to do the decent thing, he could stop pretending he wasn’t interested in her in a way he had absolutely no right to be.
‘Hattie!’ Izzy rushed towards her and was enveloped in a hug. ‘We brought cake for us and bread for the ducks.’ She slanted a glance at the boy who was pretending not to notice the affection. ‘Is this Jim?’
‘It is Jim.’ Hattie wrapped her arm around his shoulder and Jasper watched the boy instinctively stiffen. ‘Jim Bradley, this is Isabel...’ She realised her mistake and shot Jasper a panicked look.
‘Isabel Marlow-Beaufort.’ To cover the awkward moment and show the boy some respect, Jasper stuck out his hand. ‘And I am Jasper Beaufort.’ If Jim struggled to trust, tossing around airs and graces wouldn’t help him. ‘I am very pleased to meet you, Jim. Hattie has told me all about you.’
The boy took his proffered hand and shook it but said nothing, all the while sizing him up as if the cut of his coat alone was the only measure of the man who wore it.
While Jasper knew how to bide his time, Izzy didn’t and stared at the wheeled chair with interest. ‘Do you have to sit in that because you cannot walk?’ She looked to Hattie for reassurance. ‘Because Hattie said that you can’t.’
‘I can walk.’ The boy set his stubborn jaw. ‘If I wanted to. But I don’t.’
Well, that set the tone nicely, or so Jim no doubt hoped, but Jasper hadn’t built a business based on hospitality without learning how to charm the most difficult to please.
‘If you tell me that you managed to push that chair and this strapping young man in it all the way from Covent Garden, Hattie, I shall be impressed.’ Deflection was the answer here, Jasper would wager—deflection, humour and a large dollop of selective deafness. ‘How is it possible that a wonky wallflower can haul a heavy load almost a mile and yet cannot dance a step?’ He shot her a saucy look daring her to react in kind and she didn’t disappoint.
‘I can dance. If I wanted to. But I don’t. At least with you at any rate.’ She folded her arms. A motion which did wonders for her bosom, which in turn played havoc with his good intentions. ‘A wonky wallflower I may be, but I still have standards.’ She nudged Jim as an aside and whispered at volume out of the side of her mouth, ‘Don’t you dare mention that I got a porter from the infirmary to push you or that I bribed him to leave us here and not come to collect us for an hour.’
‘An hour!’ Jasper dropped the wicker basket he had brought with him and sat beside it on the grass as an excuse to stop contemplating her bosom. ‘Then we had best get cracking if we are going to eat all this food and feed the hundredweight of bread Izzy insisted on bringing to the ducks.’ As he unpacked things, he purposely thrust the muslin-wrapped fruitcake at Hattie and the plates at Jim, so the boy had to be convivial and hand them around. ‘Now, who wants some lemonade?’
