heart raced so fast she thought she might have to run around the garden to calm it. He wants to marry me, to have me help him with his club.
She smoothed the front of her dress with the air of aloof uninterest Philip had taught her to assume when haggling with difficult merchants. She might have proposed first, but she wasn’t going to jump at his offer like some desperate spinster, or allow her desire to prove people like Chester Stilton wrong lead her into another mistake. ‘So you now believe we’d be good partners?’
‘Yes.’ He clutched the edge of the bench with his gloved hands and flexed his fingers over the stone. ‘When I told you my secret, you didn’t hate me for it or threaten to reveal it. Instead, you understood and wanted to help. You have no idea what that means to me.’
‘Yes, I do.’ She’d held back from telling Philip and Laura so many truths because she didn’t want them to laugh or scoff at her. Jasper wouldn’t laugh. He never had, not even when she’d blurted out how much she’d cared for him nine years ago. He could have been cruel and taunting, but instead he’d been tender and honest, saying he didn’t feel the same way. She was glad for that now. It meant he couldn’t play on her emotions as his brother had. But his honesty didn’t extend to everyone—Jasper was willing to deceive his family about who he really was and what he did for a living. He could easily deceive her, too, about the depths of his affinity for her and his reasons for changing his mind.
‘With your brother’s connections we can secure a common licence and be married by the end of the week and you could start work on the Fleet Street club at once.’ He leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. It flowed over her like a warm breeze. ‘Besides, I got a little taste of you the other day and I liked what I sampled. Marry me and there will be more of that, much more.’
A chill raced along her arm and it sparked her curiosity about the more intimate aspects of a union. The idea this could become something deeper than two friends making a bargain hovered between them. It almost made her forget about her objections. Almost. ‘Be serious.’
‘I am serious.’ Jasper didn’t sit back, but rested one elbow on his knee, remaining tantalisingly close. ‘I thought you were, too, after your outlandish proposal which, if I know your brother, got you nothing except some bother.’
‘I was serious.’ She was also scared.
‘Then why resist now?’
She took a deep breath, not wanting to be so vulnerable, but this was no time to hold back. Her entire future rested on this one proposal, and her getting it right this time. ‘I don’t want you to marry me out of some temporary convenience or because I’m an easy solution to your present problems. I don’t want to be forgotten or overlooked the moment you no longer need me and I don’t want you to conceal things from me the way you’ve concealed them from your family. I was embarrassed enough by your brother’s secret when it came out. I don’t want to be surprised by any of yours. I want you to be my friend, my true, real and forthright friend, like you used to be.’
He stared down at the ground, his mirth fading.
‘You can’t do it, can you?’ she challenged, the prickliness she’d first greeted him with returning.
‘No, I can’t talk about everything I experienced in Savannah. Surely you understand.’
She studied him and how the sun and the shadow from his hat darkened the circles under his eyes. Philip had taught her long ago to read people, but she’d never been as talented at it as he was. However, there was no mistaking the depth of Jasper’s pain, one she understood all too well. Like her, there were things he couldn’t talk about either. ‘I do.’
She glanced over her shoulder at the spire of St Bride’s Church rising up over the house and the churchyard where her parents lay.
‘The anniversary was last week, wasn’t it?’ he asked, following her gaze.
She turned back to him, her grief softening. ‘I’m surprised you remember.’
‘How could I forget?’ He had accompanied her every year to lay flowers on her parents’ graves and sat beside her in the churchyard while she’d grieved.
* * *
Jasper studied Jane, wanting to drive away the strife clouding her eyes. He’d never seen her so weak or vulnerable but, like him, their time apart had changed her. She’d been cast aside by his brother, humiliated in front of everyone, then left to linger as a spinster. He wouldn’t treat her so shabbily, but she’d asked for an openness he couldn’t bestow, all the while having no idea what she was asking for. He couldn’t tell her about Mr and Mrs Robillard and risk her recoiling from him. Nor could he embroil her in the business of the hell and make her as dirty as him.
‘Well, Jasper?’ she prodded.
He might not be able to tell her everything about the hell or his past, but he could share his current situation with her—if not the worst parts of it, then certainly the best. He could help her to enjoy life the way he intended to after so much death and find a way to make sure the darkness never touched either of them again. He took her hand and met her steady gaze. ‘I don’t want you for mere convenience. I want you because you are my closest friend. I promise I will respect you as you deserve and be as open and honest with you as I can be.’
A hope he hadn’t seen in anyone, including himself, since well before the epidemic brightened her face. It lightened some of Jasper’s strain. In her innocence, she believed all would be well. With her beside him, perhaps it would be. ‘We must speak to Philip at once so he can make arrangements. I’m sure he won’t object.’
* * *
‘I do not give my consent.’
Jane stared at her brother, dumbfounded. Laura peered back and forth between the couple and her husband, as shocked as Jane. Jasper stood casually beside her, hands crossed in front of him, hat dangling from his fingers as if their future together wasn’t at risk. It irritated her more than it comforted her, adding to her annoyance at Philip’s answer.
‘What do you mean you don’t consent?’
Philip folded his hands over the blotter. ‘I have reason to doubt the veracity of Mr Charton’s interest in you.’
‘The veracity of his interest?’ She forced herself not to shift on her feet and to face him as she would a difficult butcher trying to overcharge her for poor-quality meat. She recognised this look; it was the one he used to give her whenever she’d ask to go to the milliner’s for a new dress. He’d always suspected her of choosing something much too adult for her young years, and he’d been right. At thirteen, almost everything she’d done had been to test him, to prove to everyone she was no longer a child but a young woman capable of making her own decisions. It had taken Mrs Hale’s gentle guidance to make her realise she was not yet an adult and there was no reason to look older simply to spite the world. However, she was an adult now and she wouldn’t cave under his scrutiny.
‘He did his best to dissuade you from a union yesterday and now he wishes for your hand. I want to know why,’ Philip explained to her, not Jasper.
‘He wasn’t against it. He was merely surprised by the way I went about discussing the matter. Even you said it was ill-advised.’ Her conceding the point didn’t ease the stern set of her brother’s jaw. ‘Since he’s had some time to consider it, he’s come to realise, as I have, we’re still good friends
