Then, through the grey fog that dulled the edges of her mind, she had felt Emmeline move—just a flutter in her womb. And she had become her anchor. Her purpose.
From that moment on, everything else fell away. The betrayal. The heartbreak. The past.
There was only Emmeline.
A soft clink drew her from her reverie—her mother placing a steaming cup of tea beside her. Abigail murmured a quiet thank you but didn't reach for it. Her eyes returned to Jasper.
He looked older. Tired. And yet still familiar in a way that made something bruised and buried inside her ache.
She remembered how she'd once known him only as her friend Charlotte's brother, and her older brother's best friend. But at her coming out ball, something had shifted. She had looked at him and seen her forever—and believed she saw the same reflected in his eyes.
Especially after he had proposed. Especially when he had married her.
But she had been mistaken.
When she looked at him now, she didn't think she saw that man anymore.
She said nothing.
Jasper cleared his throat after receiving her nod to go ahead.
He told her everything. Some of it she already knew, but he insisted she deserved to hear it from him directly—that she deserved the full truth.
Jasper began with how Charlotte had stayed behind in London with friends from seminary school after the season ended, while he and Abigail had retired to the country to prepare for their engagement party and wedding. At the same time, Philip had traveled to Bromwell House to be near his fiancée, Sophia, and her father, the Earl of Blackwell.
Charlotte had returned to the country in time for the engagement party. However the day after the party, she came to Jasper, claiming she and Philip had been intimate during her time in London. That Philip loved her, had promised to breakoff his engagement to Sophia, and wanted to marry her instead. That she was currently pregnant with Philip's child.
Jasper had been stunned. Confused.
He went immediately to their father Nathaniel, and to Philip.
Philip, baffled, denied everything. He insisted he hadn't seen Charlotte at all during her time in London—certainly not privately. He declared his love for Sophia and his complete devotion to their future together. He reminded Jasper of Charlotte's temperament—how she could twist words, how she used people to suit her needs.
Jasper had believed him. At first.
He told Charlotte that Philip denied it all—that he believed Philip—and reminded her she would have another Season to find the man who was truly meant for her.
But the day before Jasper's wedding, Charlotte collapsed in sobs, screaming in pain and cried that she was bleeding. She claimed to have lost the baby. She said it was Philip's rejection—and Jasper's betrayal—that caused her such distress. She no longer wished to live.
Jasper confronted Philip again. And though Philip continued to deny everything, all Jasper could see was his sister's devastation. Her wild eyes. Her trembling hands. Her cries of anguish for the child she said she'd lost.
Philip had remained unmoved. Cold. Detached.
And that—more than anything—was the wound Jasper could not reconcile.
"I wanted him to suffer for what I thought he did to her," Jasper said, voice cracking. "He refused to be accountable, so I made you pay the price instead."
She remembered those days only in fragments now—like glimpses through a shattered mirror. She hadn't understood his sudden change. How the man who had once claimed to love her so deeply could turn on her so completely.
She had thought he'd come back.
He hadn't.
Jasper's voice broke the silence again.
"By the following spring, I visited Charlotte again," he said. "And the truth came out. She confessed her lie: she had never been pregnant. She had tried to manipulate Philip into marrying her because she believed she was entitled to him. That it was her right.
"I wanted to return to you so many times," Jasper whispered, "but I kept imagining our parents' disappointed faces if I dared to love the sister of the man I believed had destroyed their daughter."
