Page 43 of Adeline

“Very good, my lord.” The servant clapped his hands, and the line of staff dispensed, all except Delilah, the butler’s wife. “I will send for the man straight away.”

“Thank you, Conover.” Jasper followed Delilah as she headed toward the stairs.

“My lord?” Conover called.

Jasper halted and faced the servant.

“We are ever so happy you are here.”

“As am I, Conover, as am I.” He continued after Delilah—up the stairs, down a hallway, left turn, and down another corridor to stand before another set of double doors. This pair did not open to reveal a friendly face from his past.

“We kept the room nice, as well as the entire house, my lord.” Delilah paused, her hand on the latch as if debating her next move. “It is just as your parents left it. We were not given any other instructions.”

When Jasper nodded, the housekeeper opened the door, and he faced a nearly full-size portrait of his parents. In the pose, his father stood behind where his mother was positioned in a chair, with a tiny boy seated on the floor beside her.

The child didn’t look familiar at all, though he knew the boy to be him at about age four; however, the man and woman were exactly as Jasper remembered, though his father’s jawline and nose were a bit more severe than he recalled. His mother’s neck more swanlike than his memories held, and her hair far darker than Jasper’s was now.

Other than those trivial discrepancies, they were as Jasper envisioned them. The couple he’d nearly perished trying to save from the fire. The parents who’d called him farther and farther into the fire where they’d been trapped under a fallen rafter as the blaze consumed the stable.

Jasper knew, with certainty, he never would have been able to save them. He’d been too young and small, the rafter too heavy for him to lift without assistance, and the fire’s flames far too hot for anyone to sustain enough breath to pull the couple free.

Why did he remember the sound of their voices urging him forward, farther into the burning building? It was the nightmare that woke him night after night for more years than Jasper wanted to count. He’d prayed it was a false memory—a boy’s guilt materializing in his dreams—but he clearly recalled his father shouting at him to save them, that if Jasper only hurried, they would all three be rescued.

But Jasper had not been strong enough, had not had the strength to make it far into the stables before his lungs filled with black smoke and his mind grew hazy and slow. His body had followed suit, and he’d lost consciousness only ten feet into the stables. A servant had pulled him from the fire as the flames licked at his neck, arm, and leg—scorching his skin.

He should have been abed, as should his parents, but instead they were searching the house and stables for Jasper. He’d selected the hidden room under the main stairs that night for his reading hour. He hadn’t been the cause of the fire, yet that did nothing to diminish his guilt at the outcome of it all. It was not his candle that started the first but he was the reason his family perished—they would not have been anywhere close to the stables if Jasper hadn’t been found on many a night sleeping in the rafters.

“Can I have a meal brought up, my lord?”

When Jasper brought his stare to the housekeeper, he noted that she kept her eyes trained on the floor at her feet, as if attempting to give Jasper a moment of privacy, yet suspecting he also needed someone there to pull him from the past to his present.

He cleared his throat and blinked several times to dispel the tears that’d clouded his vision. “I think I shall await word from the tailor in the study.”

If his voice cracked as he spoke, she did not react to it.

“Very well, Lord Ailesbury.” She pulled the door shut and gestured with her arm back toward the stairs. “I will show you the way.”

He held back, allowing her to lead the way. It gave him several more moments to compose himself. Never had he thought the mere image of his parents would bring back so many long-buried memories—or emotions he didn’t remember having.

Perhaps sending his regrets to Lord and Lady Melton and returning to Faversham Abbey would be the best choice for Jasper.

With any hope, Adeline would not even notice his absence. And with time, Jasper would bury the memory of her, just as he had his parents.

Chapter 17

“What in the bloody hell is going on?” Alistair demanded the moment Adeline slipped back into the room. “Who is that man, and what was he doing accompanying you back to London?”

“Jasper—Lord Ailesbury—was only doing what any man of worth would do when a lady is in peril.”

Her brother snorted and dropped back into his chair.

“My love—“

“Do not my love me, Theo,” Alistair barked. “I cannot have you taking her side on this. You are not fourteen-year-old girls at boarding school any longer. This could very well ruin her reputation.”

Theo flinched at Alistair’s harsh tone, and her brother immediately shrank back in his chair. If there was one constant in her life since her father’s passing, it was Theo’s and Alistair’s love and dedication to one another. At first, it had galled her to see them so close, her brother taking over a place in Theo’s life that had been Adeline’s for so many years.

“There is no harm done as yet,” Theo sighed, easing into her chair before Alistair’s desk. “No one saw her arrive in his company, and if they did, Poppy was with her.”