“A month, perhaps?” The truth was, she didn’t know. However long it took to fall out of love with her husband and regain her equilibrium, so she might live with him again without falling into despair. “I can’t say for certain, but I will come back, Jasper. I promise it.”
For a moment, it looked as if he would argue. He opened his mouth, but he said nothing, merely shook his head, then dropped her hands and stepped away from her, his arms falling stiffly to his sides. “If this is truly what you want, Prue, then I won’t keep you here.”
“It is what I want. For now, at least.” As for the future, their future, who could say? Time would tell, as it always did, but until then, the years before them were shrouded in a deep, impenetrable fog, like a boat lost at sea.
“Very well. Norris will take you. I’ll have a word with Keating and instruct him to see the carriage readied. You’ll take Sarah with you?”
“If I may, yes.”
“Of course.”
For an instant they stood there staring at each other, as though each of them were waiting for the other to speak, a thousand unsaid words swelling between them, but there was nothing left to say, was there? So, Prue turned for the door, but before she could open it, he stopped her.
“Prue?”
She paused at the door but didn’t look back. “Yes?”
“I . . . I’ll miss you.”
Oh, that was . . . she wasn’t ready for it. Tears flooded her eyes, and there was nothing left then but to flee the study before he saw them. She rushed into the corridor, and from there into the entryway, hardly aware of where she was going, other thanaway—away from him and that little break in his voice when he’d spoken.
She stumbled up the stairs, aware of Keating’s troubled gaze on her back. All she wanted was to get to her bedchamber, where she might fall across the bed and let the tears she’d been holding back since last night have their way with her.
But when she reached Jasper’s bedchamber door, she paused.
No one was inside. Jasper hadn’t followed her from the study, and she’d seen his valet, Loftus, passing through the entryway on his way to the kitchens when she’d come down the stairs earlier.
Before she left, there was one thing she wanted, and . . . oh, God, it was so foolish, and in the end, it was sure to break whatever was left of her heart, but she couldn’t stop herself.
She glanced around her, but there was no one about, and with one quick turn of the knob she was inside Jasper’s bedchamber.
Strange, but she hadn’t ever been in here before. The one time they’d made love, he’d come to her.
Or perhaps not so strange, given what she now knew about Lady Archer.
She took a few hesitant steps inside, looking around her as she went. It was a luxurious room, as befit a duke, with a thick, sumptuous blue and green carpet on the floor and draperies in a heavy, darker green silk.
She ventured a few steps farther, smothering a gasp when she peeked around an open doorway into an inner chamber and caught sight of his bed. It was enormous, the four carved posts supporting a massive wooden canopy with matching carvings, the entire thing drowning in swathes of green and blue figured silk.
She quickly backed out again. She hadn’t sneaked in here to gape at Jasper’s bed. Indeed, it would have been better if she’d never seen it at all.
She’d come for something else.
There it was, near two tall windows, between a large mirror and a cabinet with a lavish, blue-and-gold porcelain washing basin with a matching ewer on top.
Jasper’s dressing table.
She tiptoed across the room like the worst sort of thief and paused in front of it. The usual things were scattered across the top—a hairbrush and comb, a hand mirror, and a few shaving things laid carefully atop a piece of blue velvet cloth to dry, but she gave them only a cursory glance, her gaze caught on a cut glass flask with a silver stopper.
She reached for it, removed the stopper, and brought it to her nose.
Orange blossom and amber flooded her senses, and she squeezed her eyes closed so she might drown in it, letting her memory take her back to the moment when she’d first inhaled it, the morning of her second day in London, when she’d sneaked back into the study after Jasper left so she might sniff his pillow.
So silly of her, to have done such a thing, but even more so to have done it without recognizing at once that a lady who wished to know how a gentleman smelled must have more than a passing interest in that gentleman.
She’d been lying to herself from the very start.
But even that was not quite as silly as what she was doingnow.
