She’d seen displays of power from her father, but nothing quite like what she’d just witnessed. The confrontation had seemed little more than a nuisance to Jasper and the servants manning the carriage.
The highwaymen hadn’t stood a chance.
Jasper shrugged. Strands of his light brown hair fell across his face, and he pushed them back. “It was nothing.”
“You were not afraid.” It wasn’t really a question.
“It would be foolish if I hadn’t been. The right amount of fear ensures I’m alert, prepared to act if necessary. Not enough fear and my senses are dulled; too much, and they’re overwhelmed.”
Jasper was a baron. A baron with a reputation for living as a carefree rake. He had them all fooled. Nia tried to find answers in his expression, flicking her stare from one eye to the other. Who is he? What is he hiding?
Because his very essence had unnerved those men. And on more than one occasion, he’d easily disarmed her.
There were so many things she didn’t know about him, and yet they might marry.
She touched his arm. “I was afraid for you,” she admitted. Life without him was suddenly unthinkable. Regardless, or perhaps because of the secrets he was hiding, he made the world a better place.
The air in the carriage grew heavier, and an almost feral energy passed between them. Did he feel it too? Was she imagining it?
“Being afraid for someone else is far worse than fearing for yourself.” Jasper’s jaw ticked, and Nia instinctively realized that he was referring to their little skirmish, but also something from his past. He didn’t look at her but stared down at his hands. And as they drew farther and farther from where the highwayman lay dead, Nia felt the tension leave him.
“Who else have you feared for?” she asked. He remained silent for so long that she didn’t think he was going to answer. But when she’d nearly given up on getting one, he exhaled.
“My father. Every time he found some new woman.” He shook his head. “He’d introduce her to me, and I just knew… they were using him. I knew he was going to get hurt again.”
“He wanted what he had with your mother?”
“Kept looking until the day he died. Not that he was a saint. Once his latest wife or lover showed her true colors, he went right on looking. I don’t know how he did it…”
“Did what?”
“Kept an open mind. Kept believing someone existed…”
“Were you close? When he died?”
Jasper scowled. “As I grew older, we argued. When he told me he’d moved Lavinia into Somerland Castle, I called him a foolish old man. He never had a chance to prove me wrong because the next day, he dropped dead. Apoplexy.”
Nia’s heart squeezed. Because she heard a ton of regret and guilt in his words.
“But you loved him. You wouldn’t have argued if you hadn’t loved him.” She had never dared argue with her father. She’d been too afraid of him, never afraid for him. She’d thought what she felt for her father was love—but with even a few days' distance, she was beginning to realize it had been something else.
She’d given him obedience. She’d done her best to act in a manner that would make him proud, and yet, she’d been nothing more than a chess piece for him to move around in his power games.
If he had loved her, he would have steered her in the opposite direction of the Duke of Dewberry.
If he had cared for her in the slightest.
“Did your father love you?” The question escaped before she could think it through. Because how did a person know something like that?
“Yes,” Jasper answered immediately. “I never doubted that.”
Nia mentally compared their respective fathers. Hers, as one of London’s most powerful and wealthiest lords, could have also had the love of his wife and both of his daughters. Jasper’s father had been willing to sacrifice most of his worldly goods while searching to replace Jasper’s mother in his heart. In doing that, he’d nearly alienated the son who loved him.
“Jasper?”
She touched his arm but he didn’t answer, staring out the window. Jasper had shown her a part of himself—something she doubted he shared often.
He appeared confident most of the time, so protective. But he was also vulnerable. He knew loss.
