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Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Iswear, this is the final straw!’ Freddie paced his study while Jasper scanned the newspaper his friend had just slapped on his desk. ‘I’ve tried to be reasonable. Tried to honour the bargain we apparently made for Hattie’s sake.’ He paused only long enough to glare. ‘But now this has gone too far!’
The Bugle was a tawdry rag, if not the tawdriest, and famously the most salacious and inaccurate, but even so, Freddie had a point. This was a damning article.
Not for him so much, of course, as he had years of form when it came to being a scandal and they expected nothing less, but society always most harshly judged the woman. In the month since he had first ravished her, after every ball they met at, there had been an increasing amount of speculation regarding the exact nature of his relationship with Lady Harriet Fitzroy.
It had been made worse by the unfortunate and published sighting of them in broad daylight in Covent Garden on the morning of Jim’s operation, which meant that Jasper now also had to subject himself to a twice-weekly lecture from her increasingly suspicious brother who refused to believe they were just friends when the press clearly didn’t.
Most of the articles were tame innuendo, suggesting but not outright declaring any firm suspicions. Whenever the gossip became too rife, Jasper worked doubly hard to cast the theories into doubt. Usually by openly flirting and then dancing with another woman before he disappeared early to head to his club. But in this one, they had painted Hattie very much the victim, while also turning her into everything she would hate. A pathetic, foolish, fragile creature who was so happy to receive the scraps from any man’s table that she was prepared to turn a blind eye to almost anything.
The Hattie of this article was an object of pity, and worse, one who deserved it.
It broke his heart for him to imagine Hattie reading this hurtful rot even if it was all a pack of lies. The headline alone was vicious. Jasper did not have to read far past The Wandering Eyes beside the Limping Lady to get the full gist of the story which had sent Freddie into a rage.
According to their ‘sources’ the Bugle had concocted a convoluted scenario in which Jasper was stringing Hattie along as a ruse to get closer to her prettier sister Annie, who was the real object of his affections. While the ‘imperfect’ and ‘universally pitied’ sister gazed upon him in ‘undisguised love and adoration’, he apparently gazed longingly at the dance floor at the other Fitzroy and bided his time. Last night, again according to ‘three respected witnesses’, the opportune moment had finally presented itself and he was apparently seen ‘in a tryst’ with the object of his secret affections on Lady Warburton’s terrace at precisely five minutes past midnight.
‘Has she seen it?’
‘Yes.’ Freddie dropped heavily into a chair. ‘And of course she laughed it away, because that is what she does, but for a moment there was genuine hurt in her eyes.’
Hurt which Jasper knew only too well as in the last month, he had also unintentionally put more of that there than he was comfortable with. Enough that the guilt was eating away at him. He hadn’t slept a wink tossing and turning about their argument last night, although technically it wasn’t an argument and more cross words.
Only the words had been hers and she had been cross. And undeniably wounded when she had accused him of blowing hot and cold because he was different by day from how he was by night. Then, for the briefest few seconds, her lovely blue eyes had been filled with pain before she had stalked off after leaving him on Lady Warburton’s lawn with one final flea in his ear.
A flea he was struggling to dislodge. ‘I am starting to think that all your seemingly sensible and selfless justifications about protecting my welfare are more for your benefit, Jasper, than they are mine!’ She had said this down her nose with squared, proud shoulders. ‘That it is you who is uncertain—or perhaps ashamed—of me!’
That she questioned his certainty was one thing, when he had never been more certain of anything in his life as he was about his feelings for Hattie. But that she thought for one second that he was ashamed of her...
That was not only unpalatable food for thought, it had also been a bitter pill to swallow. Because after a great deal of soul-searching as he had stared listlessly at his bedchamber ceiling until the sun rose, he could see why she might think that. She was wrong of course, because he loved her with all of his heart and wanted her by his side and in his bed more than life itself, but he had never expressly said so.
He had always held back from admitting the truth in case his feelings made her feel beholden towards him and she used them as an excuse to lash herself stoically to his side and to hell with the dire consequences to herself.
If they had a future together—and he was adamant about this—then it would happen because they both wanted it and not because she had been forced, coerced or herded towards it by society’s expectations or his selfish needs or his impending scandal.
‘Both my mother and my father have also seen it and they are fuming at the allegations.’ Freddie tapped the newspaper between them on the desk. ‘I hope, for your sake, that there is no truth in this?’
‘What do you think?’ Frankly, Jasper did not know quite where to start with the inaccuracies that had been printed, but because there was more than a grain of truth to parts of the article, had to choose his words wisely. ‘Not only have I never ogled or coveted Annie, we only chatted briefly last night so heaven only knows how they came to this nonsensical diatribe.’ The very thought was laughable, so he choked out a chuckle and hoped it sounded convincing.
Although he had danced a waltz with the other Fitzroy sister two nights previously to put the gossips off the scent, stupidly thinking that if he was seen with Annie it gave credence to the argument that his relationship with her twin was because he was a good friend of the family.
‘Do I need to remind you that you stood sentry duty opposite me for most of the night as usual, Freddie? And you and I were playing cards together long after midnight. Where you cheated and rinsed me out of five guineas!’ He pushed the newspaper away in dismissal. ‘I think I would remember an illicit tryst with Annie on the terrace at the same time.’ That at least was all true.
Jasper had, however, and much to his continued shame and chagrin, enjoyed a tryst on Lady Warburton’s terrace a little before midnight. Except, as had become the norm in the last four weeks when his need for her overpowered all of his noble intentions, it had been Hattie who had been with him. Hattie whom he had lured on to that terrace with the precise intention of having his wicked way with her.
The constant need to do that was sending him insane.
The thrice-weekly five minutes he allowed his inner sinner loose certainly weren’t helping him control his urges where she was concerned. If anything, those heated, fevered clandestine mini-ravishings over Hattie’s clothes were exacerbating the problem of his inappropriate, out-of-control, unsated lust for her. That he only dared allow them during the rigid confines of a public entertainment, where her brother watched them like a hawk, also made them dangerous.
The shocking truth about last night which Freddie had every right to want to castrate him for, was that he and Hattie had almost been discovered in flagrante on Lady Warburton’s terrace. A scandal barely averted thanks to Freddie’s beguiling sister’s quick thinking and a convenient raised bed filled with roses which she dragged him behind. If it had been down to him, Jasper had been so consumed with her and the ticking clock on his self-imposed time limit that he wouldn’t have noticed a military marching band go past unless they stomped their hobnails all over him.
Afterwards, when she had said that she thought it was daft that they kept pretending nothing was going on when everyone suspected it, and he had responded with his usual cautionary reminder that he would not consider openly courting her until the dust of his impending scandal had settled, it had caused a tiff. So Jasper had stayed on and played cards at the ball, rather than head to his club before the ball finished as usual, so that he could pour oil on troubled waters once she had calmed down. Except by the time the game was finished Hattie had gone.
And now this.
It was near impossible to look his friend in the eye and lie again about his relationship with Hattie only hours after filling his hands with her luscious, sensitive breasts, and not feel guilty.
All the lies heaped on lies were getting out of control and the crushing guilt from all quarters was killing him. Guilt for the lies. Guilt for the rot printed in the gossip columns. Guilt for the shocking liberties he kept taking with Hattie’s delectable body and the intense guilt for his inability to put what was morally right and fair over what his heart wanted and his body craved.
