But the minute they’d returned to Flaxstone he’d reverted to type. People didn’t really change—she knew that. And trying to make someone into something they weren’t never ended well. She’d learnt that with Tyler. Or maybe he’d learnt it from her—the very hard way.
Jasper was what he was: a spoilt only child who went through women as she went through chocolate, and who hadn’t ever learned to think about anybody but himself.
‘I want to explain exactly what was going on in my father’s study earlier,’ Jasper said as the river came into view.
‘Besides you being a Grade-A tosser?’ Tori asked cheerfully. He shot her a glare, and she added, ‘If you want to change my mind about that, you really should have started with an apology.’
Jasper sighed. He looked exhausted, she realised suddenly. Probably at least partly because she’d kept him up half the night with her nightmares.
Maybe she owed him a little bit of an apology too. But not unless he said sorry first.
‘I apologise,’ Jasper said stiffly. He seemed nothing like the joking, carefree guy she’d known when she’d first started at Flaxstone, or the irritating, sarcastic one he’d been since his return. And he definitely wasn’t the relaxed, smiling man who’d built snowmen and paper chains with kids at the Moorside. Was she missing something? What exactly was going on here? ‘I shouldn’t have dismissed your ideas in front of my father like that.’
‘So why did you?’ Tori asked, feeling an echo of the hurt she’d felt back in the office. But the look of pain that flashed across Jasper’s face was far more intense. And intriguing. ‘Did you honestly not agree with me?’
‘It wasn’t that exactly...although I still think Stonebury is better suited as a family home.’
‘Except that’s not what we’re in business for,’ Tori pointed out.
‘No.’ Jasper sighed again, then glanced back over his shoulder as a burst of laughter cut through the air. Over the crest of the rolling hill behind them appeared a group of tourists, being led by Felix, presumably through to the Christmas market taking place around the old stable yard for the whole week before Christmas. The event was well signposted, but every year some visitors arrived at the wrong entrance and got promptly lost. It was obviously Felix’s turn to round them up and get them where they needed to be that afternoon.
Jasper grabbed her arm and led her further away, down to the edge of the river, as if he was afraid of being overheard. And remembering his behaviour in the kitchen, Tori realised he was afraid of just that.
What on earth was he about to tell her? What could make Viscount Darlton look that vulnerable?
The river was frozen, icy white and solid. A robin hopped across the frozen surface, searching for food. With the backdrop of the naked trees and the winter white sky, it looked for all the world like a scene from a Christmas card.
But Tori was too tense now to appreciate the beauty.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, when it became clear that Jasper wasn’t about to talk without prompting.
He stopped beside a bench, looking out over the river to the woods beyond. Brushing a thin layer of powdery snow from the surface, he motioned for her to sit down, then sat beside her, close enough that his gloved hand lay beside hers.
‘It’s about my father,’ he said slowly.
Tori rolled her eyes. ‘I’d guessed that much. Is he ill? Is there anything I can do?’
‘He’s not...that’s not what’s going on.’ Jasper took a deep breath, and swallowed so hard she saw his throat bob. Still staring out at the wintry scene ahead of them, he spoke so seriously, so deliberately that even Tori didn’t dare interrupt.
‘Five years ago I discovered that my father has another son, by a woman other than my mother. That son is Felix, and now the earl wants to make that knowledge public to the world.’
Tori blinked at him, and wished with all her heart that Henry had sent them off with a decent bottle of something highly alcoholic, too.
It looked as if they were going to need it.
* * *
Jasper wished he could say that telling Tori his family secret lightened the load he felt on his shoulders, but if anything hearing it out loud only made it feel more real. An inescapable hurricane about to rip his family and life apart because his father hadn’t been able to keep it in his pants and had a misguided belief about the ‘right thing’ to do.
Tori stared at him. He stared back, waiting to see which way she was going to jump.
He realised, a little belatedly, that he was putting an awful lot of trust in his beliefs about Tori Edwards. If she wasn’t the sort of person he thought she was, then telling her even this much could bring about all the outcomes he’d come home to try and avoid.
He watched the emotions and thoughts flickering behind her eyes, and decided he was comfortable with the risk.
She wouldn’t run to the papers. He was pretty much certain of that. Not only would it be detrimental to her own career—because he couldn’t imagine the scandal was going to do a huge amount for Flaxstone Enterprises, either—but she wasn’t that sort of person.
Exactly when he’d come to know Tori well enough to be sure of that...well, he could pinpoint it quite precisely, as it happened. It was last night, when she’d fallen apart in his arms, then put herself back together again.
‘That’s why you left,’ she said finally. ‘I always wondered.’
‘I couldn’t stay.’ Jasper looked back out at the tiny robin, scratching the ice for food. ‘I just... I didn’t know how to deal with it. With any of it. My father, Felix, all the lies... I needed to be somewhere where I didn’t care if people were lying or telling the truth. I needed to not care for a while.’ Because he’d cared so damn much while he was at Flaxstone. All the conflicting emotions he’d experienced on finding out the truth had threatened to burn him up from the inside out, otherwise. ‘Felix never told you?’
Tori shook her head. ‘I had no idea. How did you find out?’ He sensed it wasn’t the question she wanted to ask, which only made him more nervous about what that would turn out to be. He had no doubt that she’d get around to it eventually.
‘I came across a copy of my father’s updated will on his desk one day. Talking about his two sons and heirs. The earl was away and I couldn’t even talk to him about it until the next day.’
‘That was the night you came to me,’ Tori said, putting it together far quicker than he’d expected. ‘I knew there was something different about you that night.’
Jasper looked down at his hands. ‘I felt like a different person that night.’
‘I liked the man I saw that night.’ She pressed her gloved hand over his, and he gripped it tightly, grateful for the small show of c
omfort. ‘So, the next day you confronted your father for a full confession?’
‘Yeah. Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’
Tori shrugged. ‘Some people would prefer to pretend they’d never seen that paper, that they never knew the truth. Or save it for a later time when they could use the information.’
Jasper stared at her. He couldn’t imagine doing anything other than seeking out the truth at that point. Secrets were bad enough. Why live with them longer than necessary or, worse, add another layer of deception to the whole situation? ‘Would you have?’
‘Probably not.’ She gave him a wan smile. ‘I just...sometimes the truth can be the worst thing to hear, you know?’
‘I know,’ he replied darkly. He remembered all too well that feeling, hoping against all the evidence that it would prove to be a mistake, that his father still had just the one child, only to find out that the truth was far worse than he’d even imagined.
His half-sibling wasn’t some random stranger, conceived and born before his father had met his mother, or even through some awful affair since.
He was his best friend, the boy he’d grown up with. Felix.
‘How did Felix take the news?’ Tori asked, as if she’d read his mind. Or maybe his thoughts were just that clear on his face. He didn’t hide things well—he knew that much about himself.
Unlike his half-brother.
‘Turns out it wasn’t quite the surprise for him that it had been for me.’
‘He already knew?’ Tori, at least, sounded suitably stunned at that revelation. ‘When you asked if he’d told me, I assumed you meant since you left. But he knew before?’
Jasper nodded. ‘I... I went to him first, of course.’ It had been so natural. They’d been each other’s confidant since they were small boys together. Felix had been there for him through every argument with his father, every incident at school, and Jasper had supported him too, against jibes from school mates about Felix being a scholarship boy—a scholarship funded, Jasper realised now, by their father—all the way to Felix’s mother’s death when they were seventeen, and the grief and torment that had followed. Felix knew all his secrets and he knew Felix’s—or so he’d thought.