The Gentleman's Bride Search (17 page)

His clasp of her right hand tugged her one way, but the letter she held in her left pulled her even harder in the other direction. “Forgive me, Mr. Chase. I cannot marry you.”

Chapter Fifteen

“W
hat did you say?” Jasper demanded, gazing up at Evangeline.

If this was her idea of a jest, it was a poor one. But no twitch of her lips or twinkle in her deep brown eyes betrayed even a hint of levity.

Perhaps his ears were playing tricks on him. Or perhaps this was all a bad dream.

“Must you make me repeat it?” Evangeline wrenched her fingers from his grasp. Only then did he realize how cold they were. “It was hard enough to say the first time. I cannot marry you. I wish I could, but it is not possible!”

She had the gall to sound vexed with him? Jasper had never felt like such a fool as he did now, kneeling before the woman who had spurned his proposal after he’d given her his heart.

That organ, so tender and vulnerable, felt as if she had kicked him in the chest with a copper-toed boot. He wondered how it managed to keep on beating, but somehow it did.

He staggered to his feet. “How can you refuse me? Last night you told me you care for me. You let me kiss you. A lady has no business letting a man kiss her that way unless she is willing to marry him.”

Evangeline drew herself up, spine stiff, chin tilted at a defiant angle. “Are you questioning my virtue? I assure you I have never permitted any other man to kiss me as you did last night. Nor do I mean to ever again. That was a grave lapse in judgment, which I very much regret.”

Her voice broke on that last word, as if it might not be true. Jasper hoped it was not, for the thought of her repenting that wondrous moment between them was more than he could bear.

Much as his injured pride urged him to lash out at her, he took a deep breath and moderated his tone. “Was all that a lie last night? Do you care nothing for me? Then why did you make me believe you do?”

Her vibrant features twisted into an expression of wretched misery that tore at his injured heart. “It was not a lie. I do care for you, though I wish I did not. It only makes what I must do more difficult.”

Her words tormented Jasper with a sliver of hope. “What must you do?”

“Have you forgotten?” Her wounded gaze reproached him as she held up a sheet of paper he had not noticed in her hand. “My school. This letter is from my friend Marian Radcliffe. She says they cannot wait any longer. If I cannot undertake the project immediately, they will be forced to find someone else.”

Was that all? Relief almost took Jasper’s knees out from under him. “Then let them find someone else, by all means! It is a worthy project and I will gladly contribute toward it, but there is no need for
you
to sacrifice your happiness and mine for the sake of a little charity school.”

Her full, generous lips compressed into a thin, stubborn line. “Would you not be willing to sacrifice our happiness for the sake of your sooty old cotton mill? These past years, you have not hesitated to sacrifice your family life for it.”

“That is not a fair comparison and you know it!” Jasper stabbed the air with his forefinger to emphasize his words. “New Hope is more than just another cotton mill. It is the means to a better life and some kind of dignity for every person I employ and their families.”

Evangeline crossed her arms in front of her like a shield against him. “That is exactly what my school would provide for the orphans I would teach and care for. Working men have a great many more opportunities to better their lives than those poor girls do.”

Much as he wanted to deny it, Jasper could not. The thought of his own dear daughters, friendless and penniless, shook him to the depths of his soul. But so did the prospect of his family’s future without Evangeline. “New Hope Mills is a kind of beacon I pray others may follow until this country’s industry is run on Christian principles.”

Evangeline refused to back down, which Jasper supposed should not surprise him. It was one of the things he admired most about her, much as it tried his patience at times. “Do you not think that having a charity school operated on true Christian principles might inspire others to do likewise?”

“Perhaps,” he conceded. “I admit it is important work. But must you give up your own happiness and mine and the children’s? Surely there is someone else who could do it just as well—a woman who has no opportunity or no wish to marry and raise a family.”

He could tell that arrow had found its mark. Evangeline’s stance of stiff defiance softened. Her squared shoulders slumped a little and her countenance betrayed some uncertainty. Yet she still refused to surrender.

“Knowing what you do of my character and my past, do you honestly believe there is any woman better suited than I for this task?”

Something about the way she asked the question made Jasper wonder if she hoped he could suggest someone else who might fill that role. He wished with all his heart that he was able to, but he could not lie about something so important, least of all to her.

So he stubbornly refused to say anything.

Evangeline unfolded the letter from her friend. Her gaze ranged back and forth over the lines of small precise writing. “According to Marian, there was an epidemic of typhus at the Pendergast School last winter. Several girls died. There has been an investigation of some sort and the place may be closed.”

“Good riddance to it,” Jasper growled. After the way Evangeline and her friends had been treated at that miserable excuse for a school, he would have liked to tear it down stone by stone with his bare hands. “Surely it is good news that the place could be closed.”

“Don’t you see?” She shook the letter at him. “It is more vital than ever to prepare a place for those children who will have nowhere to go.”

A vast sigh gusted out of Evangeline, which seemed to deflate her entirely. She sank back onto the chair where she had often read bedtime stories to his children and cuddled them when they were ill. “If I had not thought so much about your convenience and your children’s feelings and my own selfish reluctance to leave Amberwood, the new school might have been built by now. And those girls would not have died cold and hungry and neglected, as I know they must have been.”

“Are you trying to say those deaths were your fault?” Jasper demanded. “Or mine? And that we must be punished for it?”

“I can only speak for myself,” Evangeline replied softly. Why did her sorrowful tone burden him with more guilt than any amount of sharp recrimination? “I do feel I must share responsibility with the staff and trustees of the Pendergast School. I do not blame you. I should have insisted on leaving here long ago.”

“You are not to blame!” Jasper fell to his knees beside her chair. “You were trying to do your best for my children. You did everything in your power to make me stop dragging my feet so you could go—even organizing this daft house party to find me a wife. But it did not turn out the way you expected, did it?”

“Not by half.” Evangeline made a brave attempt at a smile, which affected him more than tears would have done. “I promise you, I am not trying to punish anyone, Jasper, least of all your children. But I cannot bear to have any more deaths or misery on my conscience. You and your children have each other. It may not be easy at first, but I know you can manage without me. I cannot say the same about the girls who need the care a new school could provide.”

Much as the philanthropist of New Hope Mills sympathized with her mission, the father of her five young pupils and the man who had come to care for her could not let Evangeline go without a fight. “It may not be easy? A fine piece of understatement that is! Do you remember what it was like for the children and me after Susan died?”

She nodded. “Better than you do, perhaps. I remember answering Matthew’s endless questions about Heaven and why his mother could not have taken him along if it was such a lovely place. I remember how Emma cried at night after the others had gone to sleep and would not let me comfort her. I remember Alfie acting the f-fool trying to make the rest of us smile.”

Evangeline was right. He did not remember the aftermath of Susan’s death in the acute, aching detail she did. He had run away to Manchester to drown the pain of his loss in his work, leaving her to comfort his children and knit his fractured family back together. How could they bear to lose her?

“My leaving will not be like that,” Evangeline continued. The distracted manner in which she folded and unfolded her friend’s letter suggested she was less certain than she tried to sound. “I will write to the children and visit when I am able if you will permit me.”

“Of course,” he muttered gruffly. “I will not forbid it, just to make you stay.”

Agreeing to letters and visits troubled him, though, for it suggested he was giving up on trying to change her mind.

Evangeline seemed to take it that way. “I am certain it will be for the best. A marriage between us would never have worked out.”

Jasper shook his head vigorously. “I refuse to believe that. We are better matched than Susan and I, much as I loved her. You understand the importance of my work. You would support me in it and not try to distract me from it.”

Wasn’t that what he was trying to do to her? his conscience demanded.

She gave a bitter laugh. “If you think I would have sat patiently at Amberwood, being mother and father to your children so you could devote even more time to New Hope Mills, you are mistaken indeed. As your wife, I would have insisted you take the family with you to Manchester and let us share in your work.”

Was she only saying that to soften the blow of losing her? Jasper wanted to believe it, but he sensed Evangeline was perfectly sincere. “You know why that would not be possible. We have been all over it before.”

“So we have and quite heatedly if you will recall. That is also why we would do better not to wed. You want a wife who would agree with you all the time and I could not.”

“Why? Am I so unreasonable?”

“In most respects, no. But my feelings for you cannot blind me to the fact that you are not always right. We would either be bound to argue, which you could not abide, or I would have to suppress my true nature, which I could not bear.”

He hated the thought of them always rowing like his parents, and yet the notion of a spiritless Evangeline who accepted his every edict without question disturbed him even more. “Is there nothing I can do that will persuade you to stay and marry me?”

“Would you promise to take the children and me to Manchester once we were married?” she asked. “If you could, then perhaps...”

All the reasons he could not consider such a thing flooded Jasper’s mind, challenging his past decisions, questioning his love for his children and stirring his indignation.

He sprang to his feet. “You don’t mean that! You are only demanding the impossible to shift the responsibility for your going onto me.”

“Am I?” She seemed to weigh his charge impartially, only to reject it. “I do not believe so. What I am trying to do is make you understand how difficult this is for me and how I wish I could find some other way. But I must do as I believe the Lord is guiding me and so must you.”

Against her arguments he might conceivably prevail. But how could he stand against Evangeline and the Almighty?

* * *

When Jasper turned and stalked away, it seemed to Evangeline that he was taking all the light, color, music and flavor out of her life with him. Her heart pounded against her ribs as if it wanted to batter its way out of her chest and follow him.

While they had argued about whether she could give up her plans and destiny to marry him, she had been able to resist. But the moment he stopped opposing her, she began to have second thoughts. Had she meant what she said about reconsidering her answer if Jasper promised to relocate the family to Manchester? Or had she only been trying to avoid responsibility for a decision that would hurt the people she cared for most in the world? She now realized that would be no easier to escape than her responsibility for those lonely little graves in the churchyard near the Pendergast School.

Was she truly turning her back on Jasper and the children for the noble, selfless reasons she had given him or because she was afraid, as he had accused her of being? Did she fear committing her heart to them for fear of losing them as she had her parents? Yet, knowing the pain of such loss, how could she walk out of their lives?

Duty sternly reminded her that she could not sit there all day and mull over a problem that might well be insoluble. Drawing a shaky breath and contriving a smile, she rose and headed off to the garden, stuffing Marian’s letter in her pocket as she went. Considering how it weighed on her, that flimsy sheet of paper might have been a sack of bricks.

In her earlier foolish euphoria, her young pupils had felt especially dear to her. Now, as she faced the immediate prospect of leaving them, they all seemed dearer still. Even their little faults, which had sometimes annoyed her, took on a strange appeal.

Hard as she tried, she could not fool them. They sensed something was wrong. Matthew was clearly making an effort not to pester Evangeline with too many questions. Emma offered her a nosegay of flowers picked from the garden, while Alfie turned an impressive series of cartwheels. The younger children just stayed close and smiled up at Evangeline whenever they managed to catch her eye.

Their efforts to cheer her up had quite the opposite effect. How could she leave them and their dear father for a group of young strangers? Some of the orphan girls in need of care might be like her and her friends at that age, while others might be worse off, without a circle of love and loyalty to sustain them. But some might be like the bullying “great girls” she recalled with such distaste from her school days. They would require a kind but very firm hand to keep them in line and show them the error of their ways. Were they worth abandoning her chance to be a mother to these five precious young ones and wife to a fine man?

Hope and fear, resolution and doubts swirled and tumbled in Evangeline’s mind as she fetched the children in from the garden and gave them something to eat.

They were just finishing when Abigail Brookes appeared at the nursery door. “Miss Webster asks if the children might come down to practice their concert pieces.”