He left without question and without a backward glance. Everyone in Jasper’s life seemed to do that. He pressed his hand to his side and gritted his teeth.
Don’t pity yourself. Only your wife ran away from you.
Quick, light steps in the hallway curved his lips into a smile. Annabel was worried about him after all.
“Jasper! Wait until you—” Claudette stuttered to a stop, her eyes widening, when she saw the state of him. “I don’t understand. Your wife said you were expecting me.”
Jasper’s disappointment doubled. Not only had Annabel misinterpreted his humor and ignored his attempts to explain, but she’d also fallen back to ton gossip over his connection to Claudette. Because a man would be expected to meet his mistress in his dressing gown.
“I am very happy to see you.” Jasper made himself smile, though sweat trickled down his spine. “But I’m sure you’re exhausted. Your room is across the hall.”
Travis hurried into the room with Kit on his heels.
“Leave us please, Claudette.” Jasper struggled to his feet. “We’ll visit—” His knees buckled without warning. “Damn.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Peter Drew has offered for me,” Rachel wailed as she opened the door.
Alarmed by the reaction, Annabel pushed her sister into the hall before sweeping her into a tight embrace. With no hands to spare, and no servants in sight, Annabel kicked the door closed as Rachel dissolved into sobs.
“Dearest, I don’t understand. Aren’t you fond of Peter?” The last time she’d visited, just the thought of dancing with Mr. Drew had sent her sister into wild blushes and giggles.
Rachel nodded, smearing tears across Annabel’s neck.
“And do you want to marry him?”
Another watery nod.
Then this was some overdone happy reaction, and Annabel was in no mood for histrionics—happy or otherwise. She lifted Rachel’s head and stepped away, prepared to lecture her on how a future countess should behave, but the grief on her sister’s face stopped her words.
Father said no? Annabel didn’t dare ask the words for fear of sending Rachel into a swoon. She didn’t need an answer anyway. “Where is he?”
“In the library,” Rebecca said as she joined them. Her red-rimmed eyes blazed with a familiar fire, but she cradled Rachel with a gentleness that put Annabel to shame. “I have her. Go.”
Annabel removed her hat to give her a full view of the room, but didn’t bother with her cloak. She wasn’t staying long, and she needed all the protection she could get—even if it was nothing more substantial than velvet.
She entered the room without knocking and found her father bent over a book, a glass of whiskey in his free hand. “How dare you.”
He didn’t even look up. “You have no right to lecture me on the choices I make for my marriageable daughter, not when you’ve left me no option.”
No option? “Your debts are paid. You have a roof over your head and food in the larder. Rachel and Rebecca are having a Season at no cost to you. How is that not an option?”
“Your husband has pots of money, but he’d rather look down his nose at me than offer a few quid to family for the chance to make a fortune.” He glared at her. “If you were a better wife, he’d look more favorably on me.”
“What gives you the impression I’m a bad wife?” Never mind that she’d spent weeks thinking the same thing.
His eyes narrowed as realization dawned. “You told him not to help me.”
“I asked him not to throw good money after bad, because you are an endless well of bad decisions.”
Purple splotches bloomed across his red face. “To think that I would live to see the day that a daughter of mine would speak to me so.”
Annabel resisted the urge to step away, to apologize. She’d done that before, when she’d discovered his ledgers. But now she wasn’t just his daughter, and she wasn’t dependent on his goodwill. “Someone should have done it a long time ago.”
“If Rachel wishes to marry, I will choose her husband.” He thumped his hand to his chest. “There are several men who are wealthier than Drew could dream of being, and they would look favorably on their new father.”
“Father.” She snorted in disgust, both at his suggestion and his whiskey-soaked breath. “They’ll be your age or better, and they’ll treat Rachel like property because that’s what you’ll make her. You’ll sell her into marriage for the price of worthless stocks and then look the other way when they take their losses out on her.” She was lucky that—or worse—hadn’t happened to her.
“You’ll give your mother tea and sisters dresses, but you won’t spare me an investment that will put me back—”
“I will give the girls a chance at a better life, which is the same as you have now. Your debts are paid. Your rents are yours again.”
“Rents are a pittance.” It was his turn to snort. “It would take years to finance an investment that would make any difference.”
This was not the father she knew. He’d spent hours tromping through the fields surveying fence lines and livestock, laughing with the farmers who depended on him. Some of her fondest memories were of him rowing across the small lake as she listened to stories from his childhood.
“When did our home, our family, stop being enough for you?” she asked. “When did it become all or nothing, and this grasping desperation?”
“You know nothing of what it takes to make a success.”
He was wrong. She’d watched Jasper since their marriage. He worked diligently at both building his reputation and protecting his family. He was honorable and kind, intelligent and patient.
He was also an arse who had just put his mistress in the room across the hall.
“I know it’s not being blind to what you’ve done to the people who loved you.” Annabel blinked away her tears. She would not cry in front of him. “It’s not drinking in a shell of a house and bemoaning the luck you made for yourself. And it isn’t selling your nineteen-year-old daughter to a man old enough to be her father.”
