Page 59 of To Wager with Love

I accept your apology. I regret to inform you, however, that I have no notion of how to deal with such inappropriate feelings. I strongly suggest that we endeavour to avoid each other at all costs.

I feel it is for the best.

Regards,

de Beauvoir.

― Letter from Mr Inigo de Beauvoir to Miss Minerva Butler.

8th September 1814. Holbrooke House, Sussex.

Harriet didn’t know what she’d expected when she walked into the large workroom, but it wasn’t what she saw.

The room was neatly swept and tidy, and it was clear there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. Harriet looked around, enjoying the sweet, rather dusty scent of wood until her gaze landed on a shelf crammed with carved objects. With her heart in her mouth she reached for one, hardly daring to touch it, as it was so very delicate.

It was a carved horse, its proud neck arched, and its mane caught in the moment after it had tossed its head. He had captured every sinew and muscle in the fine grained wood, and with such precision.

“You… You did this, Jasper?”

She turned to him, feeling her throat ache with emotion.

He nodded, watching her intently.

“I… I don’t know what to say.” She looked along the shelves, at carvings of dogs and cats and cows, mice and birds. She set the horse down and reached for another, a tiny dormouse curled into a wooden nest. “You’re an artist, Jasper,” she said, smoothing a finger over the tiny creature, captured in perfect detail. Her voice was thick, and her eyes so full of tears he was blurred and out of focus when she looked back at him.

“Would you like to see what I made you?” he asked, and she nodded dumbly, too overwhelmed to speak as she set the little dormouse back on the shelf.

Jasper took her hand and led her to a sturdy workbench in the middle of the room. There was something large and oblong covered with a cloth on top of it, and as she drew closer Jasper reached for it and then hesitated.

“When I said it’s your wedding present, I only mean it’s one of your presents. I’ll give you jewellery, too, of course, but… I made this for your trousseau,” he said, and then tugged the cover away.

Harriet gasped, her hand moving to cover her mouth.

“Oh, my,” she said, the words breathed more than spoken. “Oh, my.”

She moved closer, unable to believe the detail, the care, the time that must have been lavished on this, for her.

“May I touch it?” she asked.

Jasper laughed and nodded. “Of course, it’s yours.”

Harriet ran her hand over the carving on the lid. A girl sat beneath an apple tree, reading a book. She blinked hard to clear the moisture in her eyes and a tear over spilled. All around the outside of the chest there were more books carved into the wood, life size, standing side by side or stacked in piles, or open with a few of the pages fanned open. She read some of the titles, Plato’s Republic was there, Homer’s Iliad, David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, and novels such as Gulliver’s Travels. How hard it must have been for him to carve the writing. That he’d not only done this, against all the odds, but that he’d noticed what she was reading and gone to such trouble when his own difficulties made it so challenging for him to enjoy such things….

She could hardly take it in, emotion surging inside her like a rising tide.

“It’s walnut,” he said as Harriet struggled for breath. “Do you remember the big tree that got blown down in the storm? Down by the lake.”

Harriet nodded. They’d loved that tree and had climbed in and picnicked beneath it. It had been like losing an old friend when she’d heard that a freak summer storm had torn it up by the roots. She could think of no finer use for the wood than this… with all the love and care that had been so lavished upon it. Her heart swelled until she thought it might burst. How could he have spent so long feeling as worthless as he clearly did when he was capable of such extraordinary things? She understood why he’d not shared his work publicly; it was not at all the thing for an earl to work with his hands, but that he’d not shared them with his family, his friends. It was only now that she truly understood him, that she realised how fragile his pride was, how much shame he’d endured, and how he’d believed he had only his looks to rely on.

“When… When did you do this, Jasper?”

She looked back at him, unable to hide the tears which were falling freely now.

He shrugged, smoothing his hand along the top of the marriage chest. “I began it when I came back from Russia,” he admitted. “I’ve been working on it ever since. Not constantly,” he added with a wry smile. “But during the times I dared hoped I might win you back. I never gave up hoping that I could change your mind about me.”

Harriet made a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob and threw herself into his arms. “I love it, Jasper. I love it so much. More than anything else in the world, and I love you.”

He kissed her then and Harriet sank into his embrace, knowing that she truly was loved. As strange and impossible as it was to believe that this beautiful, astonishing man loved her, she knew now that he did, and she’d not doubt him again.