For Love of the Duke (The Heart of a Duke Book 2) (21 page)

Unlike his wedding to Katherine, which had been a hurried affair, not even worthy of the meal arranged by Cook.

Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked back the tokens of embarrassed hurt. When she’d asked Jasper to wed her, she’d not really considered anything beyond being free of Mr. Ekstrom and Mother’s horrid plans for her future. And so, she’d not really considered the possibility that she’d be met with such an icy disinterest from Jasper.

Her hair had been like spun gold.

Katherine angrily shoved a now-limp brown ringlet back behind her ear. The mocking strand fell right back into place. She hated ringlets as much as she detested ivory and white ruffles. She didn’t expect Jasper should love her. She had expected that he might feel…
something
, because he, even with his wintry treatment of her, had come to mean something to
her
.

His disinterest last evening bespoke a different tale.

Fool.

A single tear streaked a path down her cheek, and she discreetly swatted at it. She’d not further humiliate herself by turning into a watering pot in front of him.

Another blasted drop squeezed past her eyelid.

She folded her trembling hands into the fabric of her cloak, in a desperate attempt to conceal any weakness. Jasper was not a man who’d respect weakness, and surely not in the woman who was now his wife.

Or bride. She was still embarrassingly, and most assuredly, a virgin.

Oh bloody hell. The tears fell in earnest.

For the first time, Katherine appreciated that Jasper’s total disinterest spared what was left of her tattered pride.

Christ
.

She was crying.

Jasper’s heart squeezed in a clear reminder that the organ still beat.

Something about her, tucked forlorn in the corner, making a desperate attempt at concealing the crystal drops that fell down her cheeks, ravaged him.

He would trade his bloody landholdings if it would spare her pain…and yet, he didn’t know how to call forth the words to halt her grief.

Did she regret her decision to wed him?

His gut twisted in a tightly coiled knot at the thought of it. Jasper could not blame her for any regrets she carried over their marriage. He was a coldhearted, unfeeling bastard of a man. If he wasn’t, he’d know just what words to utter to ease her pain, he would take her in his arms and rub soothing circles over her back, and he would drive back her quiet tears, replacing them with joyous laughter.

Instead, he reached into his jacket, and fished out the white monogramed kerchief. He handed it over to her. “Here,” he said, his tone gruff.

Katherine didn’t take her gaze from the window, but her fingers grasped the small square, and she blew her nose noisily into it. All the while her shoulders trembled.

The sight of it threatened to turn him into the Mad Duke Society proclaimed him to be.

“What is it, Katherine?”
I should have done so much differently. I should have allowed your maid to come and attend you so you had at least that comfort. I should have allowed you to break your fast, and do so with you. I should have…

Never wed you
.

Because the man Jasper now was, the man he’d become four years ago to this day, would never be worthy of her.

Katherine shook her head. His usual loquacious, bright-eyed sprite uncharacteristically silent.

He should cease his line of questioning. Katherine did not want to speak to him. She wanted to carry on with her own private misery, but he could no sooner stop the questions than he could stop his heart from beating.

Jasper leaned over and touched his fingers to her chin. She resisted, but he gently turned her to face him.

Oh, God. Her eyes were twin pools of despair.

I did this to you.
Just as he’d known any woman to enter his life would know hurt, he’d gone ahead and wed her anyway.

“You didn’t come,” she whispered.

He stared at her and trailed unblinking eyes over her precious face.

“Last evening,” she continued. Her fingers plucked at the corners of the soiled kerchief in her hands.  Any other young lady, he expected would drop her gaze demurely to the floor. Even through her tear-filled eyes Katherine looked at him with a bold, piercing directness. “I thought mayhap you spent the evening with that…that woman.”

It took a minute for those last words to sink into his mind. He furrowed his brow. “What woman?”

Katherine swiped the back of her hand over her eyes. “At the inn. I saw the manner in which she studied you, and thought perhaps you accepted the invitation I saw there.”

Jasper sat back in his seat flummoxed. His brows snapped into a flat, angry line. “You believed I would be unfaithful to you on our wedding night?”

Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “I…I didn’t know how to otherwise explain your absence.”

He struggled to tamp down the disappointed rage, that she should believe he would be unfaithful to her…on their wedding night no less. His innocent wife was the only woman he longed to see bared before his hungry gaze as he worshipped her with his body.

The thought should terrify him more than it did. Instead, he was filled with sudden images of her creamy white thighs spread as she held her arms up to tug him down closer so he could plunge into her center.

He longed to forget the vow he’d taken and explore the wonders of her body.

As the silence stretched on, Katherine glanced back out the window.

Jasper lowered his hand onto hers, and stilled the distracted movements of her fingers as she toyed with his kerchief. “You waited for me?”

Katherine nodded.

His breath left him on a hiss as the implications of her hurt registered. She didn’t realize the terms of the contract they’d entered into.

“Katherine,” he began slowly. “When I agreed to wed you, I thought it was clear ours would be a marriage of convenience.” His mind turned over that not too long ago day. Surely he’d used those words. Only…he’d not been specific. How could he have stated those bold terms for an innocent young lady? And in not speaking those words, Katherine clearly failed to understand that he could not make her his wife in the way she expected.

Five little lines wrinkled her brow. “I don’t understand.” Hesitancy slowed those words.

“Ours will be a marriage in name only.”

She angled her head, as though trying to make sense of his words. Katherine shook her head, but remained silent.

Compelled to fill that silence, Jasper continued. “I thought I’d been clear, Katherine. I would wed you to spare you from a marriage to Bertrand Ekstrom. I cannot, will not, ever take a wife to the marriage bed. Not again.”

Her warm brown eyes were a mirror into her soul; and he detected every last emotion, from the shocked hurt, to the humiliated pain, to the biting resentment, in their depths.

“I…” she shook her head. She tried again. “I…” She closed her mouth and shook her head once more. Her gaze fell to her lap. “Oh, my…I didn’t understand. I didn’t…” Katherine held her palms up, and his kerchief fluttered to the floor. “I promised to give you children.”

He’d not disabused her of that notion, in large part because he’d believed his intentions of a marriage in name only had been clear to her. Only, at her words, Jasper imagined a sweet, plump baby girl with thick brown ringlets, and Katherine’s winsome smile.

Katherine pressed her fingers to her temples, and rubbed them in little circles.

“Katherine…” Jasper reached for her.

Katherine recoiled from him as though she found his touch repulsive. She shook her head “Don’t. Just—don’t.” His jaw hardened, and he made another attempt to take her into his arms, but she looked at him with pleading eyes. “Please.”

He did not recognize this battered and broken woman before him. In that moment he’d challenge the devil himself to a duel if it would bring back her smile. But he
was
the devil. He nodded curtly, and sat back.

The carriage ground up snow beneath its powerful wheels and he looked outside.

Four years ago he’d imagined he could never know a greater pain than the loss of Lydia. Looking at Katherine, withdrawn from him and anguished, he realized with a staggering shock, he’d been wrong—it would seem he was still capable of not only inflicting but also feeling great pain.

~19~

Jasper drummed his fingertips on his hard-muscled thigh. “We’ve arrived,” he said, his tone brusque.

Katherine shifted and peered out the carriage window into the dark. She squinted, attempting a glimpse of her new home. Regret twisted in her heart.
Home
.

In order to have a home, one required a family, and the Duke of Bainbridge had been quite clear—he had little intention of ever considering her a wife.  In the true sense of the word, that was. She’d never have children. She sucked in a breath at the heartbreak of such a grim truth. She considered Aldora and Michael’s precious little Lizzie. There would be no Lizzie with bright-eyes, or a husband to carry that nameless babe upon his shoulders, as they went on pretend journeys to make-believe places.

Pain licked at her insides.

A servant pulled the door open. Jasper leapt down in one fluid movement, his legs remarkably steady for one who’d spent nearly ten hours in the cramped confines of a carriage.

Katherine took a moment to compose herself, and then stepped down. Jasper extended a hand. She studied it, filled with a childlike urge to swat at it. But she’d not been a child for a very long time. Katherine accepted his offer of help and exited the conveyance.

She looked up at the imposing façade of the Castle Blackwood. She shivered. Cold. Dark. Expansive. With its medieval turrets it most certainly was all those things, and it perfectly suited her dismal mood.

Katherine stiffened as Jasper touched his hand to the small of her back. He adjusted his long-legged stride to match her smaller strides as they walked closer and closer to this new place in which she would spend the remainder of her days. Alone.

Odd, she’d been so concerned with thwarting her mother’s efforts between her and Mr. Ekstrom, she’d not considered the possibility that she could then enter into a loveless contract with a man who saw her as nothing more than a stranger to share his keep with.

The snow crunched under the heels of her slippers; the thin satin fabric, hopelessly ruined from her walk into the Fire and Brimstone Inn last evening. Had it really been less than a day since her world had become unraveled, like the stitches upon an embroidery frame?

From the corner of her eyes, she noted Jasper studying her feet with a black scowl.

“You should be wearing boots, Katherine.”

Her mouth flattened. “I would have, if I’d had the time to properly prepare for our travels, Your Grace.”

His jaw flexed, but he refused to rise to her baiting. Just then she hated him for such indifference.

They climbed the long stone steps, dusted in snow.

A waiting butler pulled the front doors open. The ancient servant with heavily wrinkled hands and shocking white hair greeted them. He bowed deeply when they entered. “Your Grace.” His gaze slid momentarily in Katherine’s direction, and then she might as well have been invisible for all the notice he paid her.

While Jasper spoke to the butler, Katherine rubbed her arms through the fabric of her cloak, and glanced up, up, up, the towering stone walls to the ceilings above. She imagined the ladies of the past who’d been dragged to this remote, lonely castle by the lord of the manor and forced to spend the rest of their days. Unlike Katherine, who’d come here of her own volition, with the dream of…

Something so vastly different than the contract Jasper spoke of.

“Katherine this is Wrinkleton. Wrinkleton, the new Duchess of Bainbridge.”

Wrinkleton. Well, that was a rather apt sobriquet.

“Your Grace,” he murmured.

She inclined her head in greeting. “A pleasure, Mr. Wrinkleton.”

He bowed, and dropped his eyes deferentially to the floor. “Congratulations upon your recent nuptials. If there is anything you desire, I’m at your service.”

Oh, if you could manage a smiling husband, and a gaggle of sweet babes, that would be just splendid. Oh, and a cup of warmed chocolate, for good measure.

She managed to muster a half-hearted smile and settled for, “Thank you.” She peered around at the tapestries that hung upon the stone walls, covered with crisp white linen. Katherine resisted the urge to wander over and tug those linens free. What did they conceal?

“Allow me to show you to your room, Katherine.”

Jasper’s quiet words spun her back around. He didn’t wait to see if she followed, but started up the long, winding staircase that led to the rooms that would belong to her. Forever. And ever. And ever.

Katherine issued a final thank you for the butler, and then scrambled to keep up with her husband. The great, big dunderhead.

He’d not kept the same rooms with her last evening.

She stomped up the steps.