wavering on his feet. ‘He can tell you I’m right. He can confirm everything I’ve told you.’
It was then Jasper noticed the deathly still in the room. The secret he’d feared coming out for so long had been revealed. The evidence was in the faces of his family as they stared at him, especially his father. The disappointment bending his shoulders cut Jasper like a sabre. His mother stared at the rug under her feet, as stunned as the rest of the family by what she’d heard. Everything great and wonderful they’d believed about their son had crumbled and there was nothing Jasper could say or do to defend himself or build back what Chester had torn down.
‘He runs a gambling hell in a warehouse near the Thames, enriching himself by ruining honest men, teasing and tempting them with the promise of riches while he plucks them dry,’ Chester sneered.
Jasper’s father’s men, led by Jacob, pushed past him and Giles as they hustled into the room. Chester writhed against them as they grabbed him by the arms, his voice growing higher and more frantic when they dragged him toward the door. ‘If you don’t believe me, ask his little wife why her husband isn’t warming her bed at night. She’ll tell you I’m right.’
Jasper turned to discover Jane beside him, her humiliation as palpable as his father’s. She didn’t come close to him as she had in the study or slip her hand in his and offer her silent support. Instead she moved away and he didn’t fault her for it. All she’d ever asked for was his care and friendship, and all he’d done was heap her with scorn and shame and drag her down with him in his family’s eyes.
‘Get him out of here,’ his father commanded his men.
They pulled Chester to the door, bringing him close to Jasper.
‘I told you I’d ruin you,’ Chester spat out while he continued to fight the men, his feet dragging over the wood when they pulled him into the hallway. Chester’s curses faded down the stairs and outside as the men dragged him away. Silence engulfed the room. Not even the coals dared to crackle as Chester’s revelation continued to echo off the walls.
‘Is it true?’ A purple rage tinted his father’s face as he fixed on Jasper.
The time for lies was over. It was time for the truth. Deep down in the places he hid from everyone except himself he was glad. ‘It is.’
His sisters gasped along with their mother. Only Milton seemed to be enjoying the spectacle, grinning like a covetous player watching the Hazard wheel spin. Jasper ignored him and examined the rest of the family, some of whom, like Lily and Giles, avoided his gaze. Whatever esteem they’d held for him and everything they’d thought or imagined about him had been destroyed, just like he’d torn himself down in Jane’s eyes.
‘Did you know about this?’ his father flung at Jane.
‘I did.’
Jasper stepped between his father and Jane, trying to shield her from his mistakes the way he’d failed to do before. ‘I made her promise not to tell you. I’m to blame for everything, not her.’
His father’s fury whipped back to Jasper. ‘How could you? How could you live in this house and deceive us like you did? We loved you, took care of you and all the while you were sneaking behind our backs to betray every value we hold dear.’
Jasper closed his eyes, hearing his uncle’s accusations in his father’s, except here he deserved them. All the things his father and Jane blamed him for doing, he’d done. He opened his eyes and faced him, ready to confess to everything, even if it destroyed for good their love and concern for him. He refused to hide his real self any longer. ‘I didn’t come home and do it. I did it in Savannah, too. This is what Uncle Patrick taught me, not the cotton trade. How to lure men into his gambling house and use their weaknesses to enrich myself. He hid it from you and taught me to do it, too.’
His father’s jaw slackened and for the first time ever he seemed at a loss for words. His siblings exchanged surprised looks, but his mother’s fallen face as she stared at the rug hit Jasper the hardest. Like her son, everything she’d believed about her favourite brother was being ruined. He didn’t want to tear his family apart or cause any of them more hurt than he’d already inflicted, but he was done with lying. This was who he was and this was his past, and they must finally see it.
‘If we’d known what we were truly sending you to, we never would have done it,’ his mother offered in a soft voice, struggling like the others to take in the news.
‘I don’t blame you or Uncle Patrick. I blame myself. I could have written to you and come home when he told me his secret, but I didn’t. I chose my path in Savannah and I chose it here.’ He turned to Jane who nervously spun the bracelet on her arm, as uncertain now as she’d been the morning he’d almost broken their engagement. ‘If I could go back and change it all I would. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I only wanted to ensure those I love, especially you, were secure in a way that I wasn’t at the end in Savannah and I did it the only way I knew how.’
Jane’s fingers stilled on the bracelet, but she said nothing. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to reveal his heart to her, but she had to know he loved her. He always had. Maybe it would help her not to regret so many things the way he did. If he could undo it all he would, but it was no longer possible.
Jasper shifted on his feet, eager to leave. He couldn’t stay here, not with everyone staring at him as though he were some ugly thing masquerading as a husband and son. He’d violated the beliefs they held sacred and passed himself off as an imposter. It was time for him to go.
* * *
Jane stared at the empty doorway to the sitting room, avoiding the accusing and censorious looks of the Charton family. She couldn’t face them, especially Milton and the sneer he tossed at her or the disappointment in Mr Charton’s eyes. After all their years as friends of her family, everything they’d done for her, she’d rewarded their affection by betraying their trust. She deserved every bit of the shame covering her. Except it wasn’t only her own actions garnering their condemnation, but Jasper’s, too, and he was no longer here, having left her to face his family alone. He had said he loved her before he’d gone, but it didn’t matter if he wasn’t willing to remain beside her. Once again someone she loved had left her and she wasn’t sure he would ever return.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, she held her head high and walked slowly out of the room. Tears blurred her vision and she hung on tight to the banister to stop from tripping down the stairs. In less than an hour her world had fallen to pieces and she was more alone than the morning the nurse had shooed her from her mother’s sickroom.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the entry hall, wiping her eyes in an attempt to pull herself together in front of Alton, who waited beside the open door. The tears wouldn’t stop and no matter how tall she stood, the old butler she used to accept peppermints from continued to watch her with a mixture of pity and disapproval, and it tore at her.
Outside, she wrapped her arms around her against the chill, unwilling to go back inside for her wrap. She approached the carriage with slow steps, hesitant to go home and sit alone while all of her and Jasper’s mistakes haunted her. She was tired of being alone and wouldn’t do it any more. There was only one place she could go, to the one person who’d never walked away from her, even when she’d done her best to push him away.
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