Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

O ctavia folded herself into a chair between Anne and Elizabeth in the nursery, the abecedarium she had acquired in hand. She had never taught a child to read before, and she was not altogether certain she would succeed. However, she was willing to try. Jasper's daughters had very quickly won over her heart, and she wished for them to live prosperous lives in the future. Learning to read and write and becoming educated was an important requirement in all such endeavors.

"What do you suppose I have here?" she asked the girls, hoping to intrigue them in what was sure to be a boring subject.

Why spend all day learning one's letters, when one could wander about The Sinner's Palace, finding all their aunts' clean stockings and tying them in knots? It had not taken Octavia long to discover the twins' impish sides. Poor Pen and Lily had been most displeased when they discovered what the girls had done.

"A book," Anne said.

"Ain't a secret," Elizabeth added with an indelicate snort. "We can see it in your ‘ands."

So much for her attempts at intrigue.

"Of course it is a book," she agreed, careful to keep her tone bright and laden with cheer. "Elizabeth, do try to make certain to pronounce your words fully, as we discussed. The letter h is an aspiration. Also, it truly does wonders to keep in mind one's manners."

The poor dears had precious little experience with the latter, she knew. Their mother had often locked them in a room while she had seen to her gentlemen callers, according to the twins. They had invented games and their own language to entertain themselves. Octavia hated what they must have endured, and she was heartily glad the woman had surrendered them to Jasper. Neither Elizabeth nor Anne spoke of their mother with fondness, which was quite troubling for children their age and also telling of the relationship they must have shared with her.

"Sorry, my lady," Elizabeth said, her brow furrowing. "I's trying my best."

"Of course you are." Octavia gave the girl an encouraging smile and chose not to correct her questionable grammar just then. Plenty of time for more lessons of that variety later. For now, it was time to teach them their letters. "This is not just any book, my dears. This is called an abecedarium."

"An abby what?" Anne asked.

"An abecedarium, or a book of letters," she explained, before opening the volume to a page prominently featuring the letters A and B. "It is filled with lovely engravings and rhymes, all to help you learn the alphabet, that you may then learn how to read."

Elizabeth crossed her small arms and fixed Octavia with a mulish look. "Don't like rhymes much."

Perhaps she ought to have expected her charges to be reluctant. Somehow, Octavia had not. Instead, she had been thinking of the raptures which had delighted her when she had been capable of reading books and transporting herself to other worlds. How many times had she lost herself within the pages of an entrancing story? Too many to count.

"Do you know what rhymes are, my dear?" she asked Elizabeth gently.

"Reckon it ain't anything we can eat."

"Not inside a book, silly," Anne said.

"I'm wearing the bands, I am," Elizabeth grumbled.

Octavia supposed that meant Elizabeth was hungry. Correcting their penchant for using cant would take some time. A lot of it.

"First, we shall read through the abecedarium together," she said, "and then, we shall see if the chef has any seed cakes to spare. What say you?"

"Why can't we ‘ave seedcakes first?" Elizabeth queried, apparently unimpressed by Octavia's attempt at encouraging their scholarly endeavors with a reward.

"Because first we must learn our letters." Octavia decided it would be best to commence, lest Elizabeth distract her all day with more questions. "And now, we shall read. A said to B come here to me . Look at how the young lads in the engraving are spelling out the letters with their fingers. Do you see?" The boys in the engraving were each showing how to represent the letters using their fingers alone. Octavia made the same gestures, first showing Anne and Elizabeth an A and then a B. "Try it with me now, girls."

While she had been concerned Elizabeth, who was clearly the least enthused with the notion of spending time learning the alphabet, would object, Octavia was pleasantly surprised when both girls arranged their hands as shown in the engravings.

"Excellent work, my dears." She could not contain her smile as she turned to the next page. " And we will go and call on C ," she read. "Do try to make a C with me now."

The three of them used their thumbs and forefingers to represent the C, and a rush of emotion so strong and fierce hit Octavia that for a moment, she was breathless. Not just pride at the manner in which these girls were willing to try learning, but love, too.

She loved these girls as if they were her own. And in fact, since she had married their father, they were her own, weren't they?

Emotion rising in her throat, she turned to the next page where D was featured. Without being prompted, Anne and Elizabeth held their hands together to form the letter D, saying it aloud.

"Very good," she managed.

Working together, they made it through the alphabet, the girls growing more enthusiastic with each passing page. It did not take them long to find their way to Z.

" And thus, when all together met ," she read, " in what is called the alphabet, we, like so many pretty toys, will please good little girls and boys; till by our means, they shall with speed, both elegantly spell and read. "

As the rhyme concluded, Anne and Elizabeth clapped. But their applause was joined by another. Octavia's head snapped up to find Jasper leaning a hip against the doorjamb of the nursery. He was dressed simply and without fanfare, yet he exuded such confidence and power that he could easily outshine any gentleman in a drawing room. The smile curving his lips enhanced the effect, of course. As did that hazel gaze of his, burning with warmth.

"What a lovely rhyme," he said softly.

She felt his praise all the way to her toes. Not because of the words. She knew his applause was not for the abecedarium, clever and engaging though it was. Rather, it was meant for her. He appreciated her. And she, in turn, appreciated him.

"Thank you," she told him, smiling back at him.

"Papa," Elizabeth exclaimed, her girlish voice sparkling with excitement, "Mama is teaching us in an abbysudsarium ."

Although she had taken great care to enunciate the word, Elizabeth had still managed to butcher it quite mightily. But Octavia did not mind. Jasper's daughter had just referred to her as Mama . Her heart felt as if it would burst through her stays and gown and flit about the nursery.

Jasper pushed away from the door and strode toward them. "I've no notion what the devil you just said, my girl, but I'm pleased you're working with Mama to learn your letters."

"Do you mind if we was to call you Mama now that you and Papa are in the parson's mousetrap?" Anne asked shyly, drawing Octavia's attention from their father.

She smiled past the swift rush of emotion even as she wondered where in heaven's name the girl had heard the phrase parson's mousetrap . "I would be honored to be your mama, girls."

And she meant those words. More than she ever could have imagined. She had always loved children but had never supposed to have any of her own. Her niece and nephews had filled her heart, but there was room for more. A space just for Anne and Elizabeth.

And maybe for their father as well.

Jasper reached her side and settled himself in another of the child-sized chairs outfitting the room. Watching him fold his large body into the tiny piece of furniture was comical indeed. She could not contain her smile. But it was not merely humor that had her lips curving. It was that he was here. She had not seen him in the nursery before. He spent much of his days and nights absorbed in the running of the gaming hell.

"Do you dare to laugh at me, Mrs. Sutton?" he demanded with mock outrage.

When he grinned like that, he looked younger. Less weighed down by the many responsibilities of his world. She liked how carefree he appeared, how joyful.

"I would never laugh at you," she promised, unable to quell her smile. "But the sight of such a big man on such a small chair is worthy of comment, perhaps."

"Careful you don't break our chairs, Papa," Anne said solemnly.

"If I do, I'll buy you another." He gave his daughter's dark head an affectionate pat. "I've come to spend the rest of the afternoon with the three of you. If I don't sit here, where shall I go?"

He wanted to spend time with the girls? And her, outside of the bedchamber? This was most definitely a new side of him. Over the last few days, their lives had settled into one of comfortable routine. No more unexpected visits from ladybirds. Hugh ceased refusing her entrée to Jasper's office. She spent her days with Anne and Elizabeth and her nights with her husband. But today marked the first time he had ventured to the nursery on his own.

Was it her imagination, or was Jasper softening?

"Truly?" Elizabeth asked. "You're staying the afternoon?"

He cast a glance in Octavia's direction, his gaze searching. "If I'm not too much distraction."

Him? Distraction?

Always.

"Of course you shan't be," she lied, doing her best not to look at his lips and hands or think about all the clever pleasures they could give her.

"Perfect," he purred.

She felt that lone word in her core.

Octavia swallowed. "Did you have anything planned?"

His grin faded, making it apparent he did not. "What activities did your father engage in with you, when you were a child?"

She thought. And thought. And thought.

"None."

"Ah," was all he said.

"Mama told us we could ‘ave seed cakes if we went through the entire abbsysarium ," Elizabeth offered helpfully, her evisceration of the word even more pronounced now.

Octavia bit her lip to stifle a smile. "Indeed I did. Perhaps you would care to join us?"

Jasper's easy grin returned. "I'm bloody famished. Plummy idea."

Oh dear. She had quite a road ahead of her when it came to teaching the girls manners. First, she would have to begin with their father.

She rose, placing the small leather-bound volume on a low table for later use. "Come then, and let us see what delicacies we may find."

"I've one in mind," Jasper said, giving her a pointed stare. "But it ain't seed cakes."

She knew precisely what it was.

Her.

"What is it?" Anne asked innocently.

Jasper gave Octavia a heated look that was enough to make her heart trip over itself. "Pudding."

Pudding indeed.

She was suffused in warmth, from head to toe, and the ache in her belly that seemed to present itself whenever he was near returned with a vengeance. When Jasper Sutton chose to be charming, the man was utterly irresistible.

But he was still a scoundrel at heart.

Was he not?

The hour was despicably late by even the standards of the fashionable peers who gambled away their dwindling family coffers every night. Indeed, there was only a small handful of dedicated lords yet about the tables, desperate to regain their luck and their fortunes both. Fortunately, Lord Beaumont had been caught cheating and had not dared to make a return.

Jasper made a quick tour of the public rooms, making certain wine was being replenished swiftly and there were no signs of belligerence from the patrons, some who had spent the equivalent of a working man's day within the carefully shrouded windows of The Sinner's Palace. One could never be too careful. Polite society, when on the edge of its own hallowed territory and fortified by spirits, could often be less than polite.

On those occasions, he always attempted to calm the irate patron and see him nicely escorted to the door. Very rarely, a man—usually deep in his cups and light in the purse—attempted to cause trouble. That was when the guards or his brothers Rafe, Hart, and Wolf stepped in. Once, removing a drunken second son of a duke had required all his brothers and three of his men. It had not been a proud day for The Sinner's Palace, but fortunately, the young lord had risen the next day in shame and had not attempted to ruin the good name of the Sutton establishment.

The quality certainly cared a whole hell of a lot about what everyone else thought about them. Reputation was paramount, almost a religion in itself, a secondary god they worshiped and praised. That was where a businessman and lords and ladies were not so different. Both required their reputations to remain intact to continue carrying on as they wished.

He had taken that choice away from Octavia. He had threatened her reputation such that she'd had no choice but to marry him to protect what mattered most to her. Not herself, but her family.

Selfish arsehole.

Jasper performed a final turn about the public rooms. He was growing weary. And though he preferred to oversee the hell with an iron rule, his wife was awaiting him. He ought to go to bed. Just a few more tasks to busy himself with before he retired.

He retreated into the private quarters, intent upon seeking out his office, thoughts still whirling and heavy. He settled in at his desk to consult some expenses Lily, who was a dab hand at arithmetic and tallied all their accounts, had left for him.

Somehow, in the course of spending a generous portion of his day with his wife and daughters, Jasper had made an astounding realization. A realization he was still unwilling to admit aloud, but one he could own to himself only now, when he sat alone in his office, nothing and no one to distract him. Nothing but the quiet of his own thoughts.

Once, his life had been nothing but The Sinner's Palace and his determination to make his family's gaming hell the best known, the most exclusive, and the most lucrative. Now, his life contained so much more. He had a family of his own. A wife who was gentle and giving and caring and beautiful, who had devoted herself to his children with the same single-minded persistence he had shown The Sinner's Palace. Twin daughters who were so damn much like him he knew he ought to fret over their futures. Heaven help their husbands one day.

A knock sounded at his door then, disrupting his ruminations. Before he could bid the person enter, the door opened, and his brother Rafe sauntered over the threshold, curls looking as if a ladybird had recently run her fingers through them, his cravat comically askew, coat and trousers quite rumpled.

"I did not tell you to enter," he pointed out, pinning Rafe with his sternest older-brother stare.

"I knocked," Rafe drawled, unconcerned, as he tossed the portal closed with a loud report.

Jasper winced. "Need you be so bloody noisy? I've children and a wife abed upstairs."

His brother's brows shot up. "It's a gaming hell, Jasper."

Yes, it was. And for some reason, the reminder was rather like a splinter in one's foot. Painful and in need of removal. He may have been born in the seediest stews of the East End, but Jasper was no fool. Octavia and the girls should not be living in the private chambers of a gaming hell. They ought to be in a fine home.

"It's their ‘ome as well," he said, only realizing he had lost his damned h too late. "For now."

"For now?" Rafe threw himself into the chair opposite Jasper with an undeniable lack of grace. "You fleeing to the other half of London now? I never thought I'd see the day."

He stiffened. "I'm not fleeing, and I never said I'd be going anywhere."

His children and wife, however… They deserved far better than the life he could provide them here at The Sinner's Palace. He thought then of Octavia's outrage at Anne and Elizabeth learning how to curse from himself and his men and winced. He had not been prepared for the burden of being a father, it was true. But he wanted to learn. He wanted to be better. To give his daughters all the chances he had been denied and all the opportunities they deserved. To do far more than his bastard of a father had ever done for him.

"Jackey?" Rafe asked, apparently in search of a new vice now that he had just quit the other.

"I don't have gin," Jasper told him.

His brother blinked. "You always have gin."

"Not any longer, I don't." Octavia had asked him what would happen if Anne and Elizabeth were to find their way into his stores.

The question had made him go cold. She didn't know, of course, about his own rearing. But he'd been grateful he'd decided to sleep alone that night when the dream had returned, more forceful and painful than ever.

"Where are you keeping it?" Rafe asked. "This is about Lady Octavia, ain't it?"

It was, and it wasn't. Not even Rafe knew the complete story of what had happened when they had been young. Jasper had done everything in his power to protect the rest of his siblings from their father's wrath.

"I don't need it," he said simply, and that was also true.

True, and he was proud of it. There had been a time when he had refused to touch a drop of the poison. But then, he had taken on the responsibility of all his siblings. It had not been easy, keeping them all fed and dry and safe. Father had left them the waterworks, but they'd needed to use all the revenue to build The Sinner's Palace. With so much weight on his shoulders, Jasper had returned to that old familiar poison for comfort. Octavia and his daughters had shown him there was far more to life than drowning himself in drink.

"If you don't need it, then may I humbly suggest you bequeath it to me?" Rafe asked, shaking Jasper from the heaviness of his memories and thoughts.

"You don't look as if you need it either," he said. "Where were you this evening? Madame Laurent's?"

"The Garden of Flora." Rafe grinned unrepentantly. "Christ, what a paradise."

Jasper did not want to know. He was familiar with the name of one of London's newer houses of the flesh, but he was not a patron. Nor would he ever be. Where once he would have been intrigued, would have even sought out the den of vice for some elusive pleasure like observation, the very notion of any other woman's hands on his body made his cock shrivel.

There was only one woman he wanted, just as he had told Octavia.

"A dubious paradise filled with goddesses eager to assuage your every whim for the right price," he said grimly.

It was not that he looked down upon the women who earned their keep by catering to the voracious needs of their patrons. Rather, it was that he understood they were driven by the same desperation he had been. It was an uneven exchange by any standard, but far more for the females. He had only had to give his soul for The Sinner's Palace. The ladies had to give their bodies, night after night.

"Nothing dubious about what I saw tonight," Rafe said. "They've viewing rooms, and?—"

"Did you seek me out at this time of the evening to tell me about your latest debauchery?" he interrupted, not wanting to hear more.

"No." Rafe blinked, almost as if he had emerged from a spell. "Bit in my cups. Apologies and all that. I wanted to tell you I swear I saw Loge tonight."

Jasper stilled. Everything within him seemed to freeze.

"Our brother Logan is dead. You know it as well as I do."

"What if ‘e ain't?" Rafe asked, hope in his voice.

"You don't believe Loge's alive," he countered. "If you truly thought you'd seen ‘im, you would've said so before now."

"You were questioning me like a charley." Rafe shook his head, blond curls—entirely the opposite of angelic on him— swaying. "What else was I to say? But I swear to you, Jasper, it was him. I'd recognize that auburn nest anywhere."

Their brother Logan and their sister Pen had been the only Suttons to inherit their father's reddish-brown locks. All the rest of them had their mother's dark hair. Except Rafe and Lily, who somehow had inherited golden hair. A complex lot, the sinful Sutton family.

Perhaps not all of them shared the same father. Jasper had suspected on more than one occasion. But it hardly mattered. They were family. Loyal to each other. Which was why Logan's disappearance had been such a brutal blow. They'd had another brother none of them discussed much, Terrance, who had died as a babe. Never forgotten, but seldom spoken of, for the sadness such memories brought.

Jasper drummed his fingers atop the desk, disliking Rafe's insistence. He was already twisted up like bedclothes inside. Whispers of Logan resurfacing, like a ghost from the past, made him feel ill.

"Did you see the cove's face, Rafe?" he asked, trying to remain calm.

"The side was all," his brother answered, shifting in his chair as if his arse was not finding enough comfort.

It was true that Jasper had required the chairs in his office to be rigid. The thought of anyone lingering too long opposite him was unsettling. Unwelcome. A sore arse meant a hasty retreat. But Rafe was foxed. A man could ignore all manner of discourtesies when he was soused.

"You didn't see enough to determine whether or not it was Loge," he said firmly. "You were at a pleasure house, likely deep in your cups. You could've seen Prinny himself and mistaken him for Loge."

Rafe chortled. "No chance of that."

Fair enough. There was precious little resemblance between their brother and the Prince Regent. But that was beside the matter altogether. Jasper had been attempting to make a point.

"You didn't see Loge," he pressed, needing to believe those words for reasons he did not dare examine. "Our brother is gone to Rothisbones. Dead. You know it as well as I. Thinking you saw him ain't the same as seeing him."

Rafe's shoulders slumped. "Suppose you ain't wrong. I wanted it to be him. To just up and be gone…it ain't right."

Jasper wholeheartedly echoed that sentiment. From the moment their brother had simply vanished to now, he had vacillated wildly between the belief Logan had been taken captive and the sure knowledge he'd been murdered like so many poor, sotted coves. Likely dumped into the Thames, never to be seen again.

"It ain't right," he repeated Rafe's worse. "I agree. We shall miss our brother forever."

"Fuck," his younger brother swore, heaving a heavy sigh of disappointment. "Don't know what I supposed."

"I know what you supposed," Jasper said, knowing a pang of sympathy for Rafe's plight. "You wanted to believe he ain't gone. I want the same damned thing. But the truth is…Loge's gone, Rafe. The badgers took ‘im. We can't bring our brother back."

Badgers were thieves who robbed near waterways, villains who had no qualms about tossing the bodies of the men they'd stuck with their knives into the waters, letting them bleed out and drown. The thought of that, of Logan suffering, sent a shudder straight through Jasper. On any other day, he would have reached for his gin.

Not today.

Not any longer.

"Apologies for making you think…of him," Rafe said haltingly. "I'll take the public rooms until they're cleared at dawn. You should get some rest."

Jasper nodded, even wearier and more weighed down now than he had been upon initially entering his office. "Thank you. I think I'll seek my bed."