“This is my fault.” Jasper shook his head. “She came to me before we married, and she was cup-shot. My own father was a tosspot, and when ‘e drank…” He trailed off as unwanted memories surged, all the beatings he had received at the hands of his father. “It wasn’t good for my ma or me. I couldn’t allow Anne and Elizabeth to suffer as I did. I told ‘er she couldn’t see them until she stopped drowning ‘erself in poison. If I’d realized she would go after you…”
“Oh, Jasper. You couldn’t have known. She’s mad.” She paused, tears gathering in her eyes and clinging to her lashes before trailing down her cheeks. “Your father beat you and your mother?”
Even after the attack, the doctor stitching her back together, the laudanum, her first tears were for him.
How humbled he was to have this woman as his wife. To have her love.
“Don’t cry for me, love.” Tenderly, he caught the tears with his thumb. “I did what I could to take the beatings for ‘er, to keep ‘im away from my brothers and sisters. And I did what I could to protect our girls. If I’d supposed for a moment that she would try to murder you…”
He shuddered, unable to complete the sentence. It was too terrible to contemplate, and the guilt he felt for having brought Octavia, albeit unwittingly, into so much evil would never fade. If he had lost her… No, he could not think of it. Could not bear to contemplate his life without this wonderful woman in it.
“She is ill,” Octavia said, her voice growing softer, her eyelids lowering. “Stay with me, Jasper. I’m so tired, and I want to sleep, but I want to feel you here.”
He laced their fingers together, then brushed a stray tendril of hair from her forehead. “Of course. I’ll not be leaving your side for the foreseeable future, minx. I love you.” The three words that had seemed so terrifying earlier in the day, which had remained daunting and unspoken, burning inside him for so long, were surprisingly easy to say. He kissed her brow, the tip of her nose, careful not to jostle her too much. Said them again. “I love you so damned much, Octavia. I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. I should’ve done. I shouldn’t have bloody well waited until now to tell you what’s been in my heart all along.”
Her smile was faint but beautiful. “I love you, too.”
Jasper stayed where he was, pressed to her side, newly grateful for her every breath.
Octavia woke to early morning light filtering in the curtains at her bedchamber window, feeling fuzzy-headed and confused.
For a moment, terror filled her as memories of what had happened returned, and she jerked in a visceral reaction to the fear. The movement sent pain shooting through her, the stitches the surgeon had painstakingly placed the night before pulling until she recalled herself and stilled.
It was over.
She was safe.
At her side, still dressed in his clothes, Jasper stirred awake, instantly alert. “What is it, love? Is something wrong?”
She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, feeling the anxiety dissipate. “Nothing is wrong.”
Everything was right.
Jasper’s words returned to her, chasing all the terrible memories. He loved her.
She’d known he did, of course. His actions had shown it. But hearing it from his lips was priceless. In the time she had known him, he had changed so much. The icy, all-powerful rogue’s walls had fallen down. He was no longer an impenetrable bastion.
“Are you in pain, darling?” he asked next. “The surgeon left some laudanum.”
She was, but she did not want more laudanum; it left her feeling so tired and strange. “I am fi
ne.”
“You look beautiful,” he said, his warm hazel gaze traveling over her.
She sincerely doubted she could. She was wearing a bloodstained chemise, there was a bandage on her neck, and her curls were likely in ten thousand little knots. But she was alive, and he made her feel as if she was the loveliest woman he had ever beheld, and that was all that mattered.
She smiled at him, allowing her eyes to make a similar tour of his disheveled form. His cravat, jacket, and waistcoat were gone, the three buttons of his shirt undone, and his hair looked as if he had run his fingers through it at least a dozen times. He was wickedly handsome, and he was hers.
“Thank you for staying with me.”
“As if I would be anywhere else,” he said.
Something occurred to her then. Another memory, coming to the fore like a splinter. A strange man coming to her aid, the fiery blast of a pistol.
She frowned. “Someone helped me last night. Who was it?”
Jasper’s jaw tensed. “Did you see the man?”