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All things considered, being her friend in public while not quite being her lover in private wasn’t working out so well in either theory or in practice. And Hattie’s complete ruination, like his other impending scandal, was as good as inevitable now that the Bugle knew too much, unless something changed drastically to prevent it.
‘I insist you demand a retraction! Hire a lawyer and sue them for libel because it isn’t fair that Hattie’s good name gets dragged through the mud with yours day in and day out.’ Freddie stood and wagged his finger. ‘And I’ve asked this before and was talked out of it because you seemed to make her happy, but this time I mean it.’ He snatched up the paper and waved it like a sword as he stalked to the door. ‘From this point forward, stay away from my sister! Both of my sisters!’ He pulled it open but could not resist one final barb before he left.
‘And if I find out that you have been stringing Hattie along, Jasper, toying with her affections and giving her false hope after everything she has been through, I swear to God I will strangle you with my bare hands, disembowel you and feed your entrails to my dogs!’
The door slammed and Jasper slumped back in his chair as those words hit home. The last thing he would ever do was string along the woman he adored, but he could see how to others it might seem that he was. Worse, he could see that she might think it too. She was certainly becoming more frustrated by his constant demand that they wait.
That he was only doing so for her sake did nothing to wipe the hurt from her expression whenever he kept her at arm’s length when they visited the little duck pond she adored so much, or she wheeled Jim into his lessons. Or when she begged him not to stop and he tore his lips away during one of the short trysts he allowed himself thrice weekly to avoid outright ruining her.
Blowing hot and cold exactly as she had said.
What a fool he was! In doing the right thing, it was clear he was making them both miserable. And now he was making her family miserable too.
‘Has he gone, Papa?’ The question from behind made him jump. The sight of Izzy’s little eye blinking at him warily from a crack in the other door made him uncomfortable. Her next question rubbed more salt into an already gaping wound. ‘Can I stop hiding now?’
‘Of course, poppet.’ That she felt the need to hide at all when he was supposed to be doing right by her too was criminal.
Instead of announcing Izzy as his daughter to the world as he had promised Cora, and waiting for the inevitable dust to settle as he had promised Hattie, or leaving his sister the hell alone as he had promised Freddie, he was instead skulking around waiting for the axe to fall and hoping that it wouldn’t.
Because he wanted to have his cake and eat it. Didn’t want what they had to come to an end. Because he knew his scandal might tear them apart and he wanted her more than he wanted to do the right things he was supposed to.
He lifted his little girl into his lap and cuddled her close. ‘I think it’s time we both stopped hiding.’ Which was the right thing for everyone—except him. ‘I think it’s time to grab life by the lapels and give it a good shake.’
Because if you loved someone, you had to let them go, no matter how terrified you were to do it. If they came back, and he prayed to God that Hattie would do just that once the gossipmongers moved on elsewhere—then they were always yours. If they didn’t...
Well, Jasper would climb that mountain a step at a time when he came to it. But at least he would climb it secure in the knowledge that he finally was doing the right thing by the three women in his life and his best friend, and could therefore climb the damn mountain without being weighed down by guilt.
