Rosa was teaching her small girls, and the Crisparkles were on a visit to Neville Landless when Jasper, having an afternoon free of piano lessons, set off for Doctors Commons.
The marriage licence was speedily purchased and his next task was to find a parish vicar sympathetic to the idea of conducting a wedding at short notice. His route from Ludgate Hill to Rosa's house in Bloomsbury would take him directly through the Inns of Court. Where a certain Neville Landless could be found.
Although it wasn't his precise intention to seek the young man out, somehow his footsteps drew him towards the little court in Lincolns Inn Helena had named as his lodging.
It was a windy autumnal day, blowing the smoke and trash of the city around the close little alleys and courtyards of the legal quarter. At least it had blown the recent fog away and he could see his hand in front of his face and breathe air as clean as London ever offered.
The improvement in visibility did not, however, prevent him from bumping into a middle-aged gentleman emerging from the door of a legal stationer's shop.
"Begging your pardon," muttered Jasper, bending to help the man pick up the sheaf of parchments he had dropped on the pavement. As their eyes met, the pair froze in position and an uncomfortable silence developed.
"Jasper," spluttered the lawyer. "I never thought to see your face again."
"Likewise, I'm sure," Jasper replied, standing up and stepping back. "Well, I must be on my way."
"A moment." Mr Grewgious – for it was he – held up a finger. "It occurs to me that you might be in possession of certain intelligence relating to a change of circumstances as regards a…mutual acquaintance."
Jasper's answer was a stony stare.
Grewgious tried a more direct approach. "What is your business in London, Mr Jasper?"
"I live here. Good day, Mr Grewgious." He tipped his hat and made to walk off again.
"Excuse me." Grewgious trotted after him. "You mean to tell me that you have left Cloisterham?"
"I don't mean to tell you anything. It is you who cross-examines me against my will."
"I feel it incumbent on me to establish that you have not come here with the intent of harassing or otherwise disturbing that certain mutual acquaintance of whom I spoke."
"It is none of your concern, Grewgious, but I have not the least idea of harassing or otherwise disturbing anybody at all. And now I really must wish you good day, for, among other business, I must speak to a clergyman with regard to arranging a wedding."
"You plan to marry?"
"Indeed I do, and with all speed."
Mr Grewgious appeared to sigh with relief, his complexion losing some of the greyness that had come over it since recognising Jasper.
Jasper knew that he should simply walk away, that Grewgious would know soon enough what was in his mind. The old hostility nagged at him, all the same, and before his good sense could prevail, he found himself reaching into his inner breast pocket for the folded piece of paper it held.
"It so happens that I am lately come from Doctors Commons," he explained, "where I have purchased the marriage licence."
He unfolded the paper and held it up for Grewgious' inspection. The wonderful transformation this effected upon the lawyer's face made him smile in twisted triumph.
"And now I really must be off," he said, taking advantage of Grewgious' momentary speechlessness to turn and stride off at much too vigorous a pace for the older man to take pursuit.
Really, he chided himself, he should have held his peace. Now Grewgious would be straight to Bloomsbury to hector Rosa. But she possessed strength of character enough to defend and stand by her decision, he was sure.
He reached the narrow covered passage that led to Neville Landless' lodgings and paused. It was entirely possible that the Crisparkles were still with him. He repaired instead to an inn across the street, from which vantage point he could observe the comings and goings in the court.
After the passing of half an hour, he saw Crisparkle emerge from the passage with Helena on his arm and turn in the direction of Bloomsbury.
He drank up the remainder of his pint pot of half-and-half and slipped into the passage, quickly locating his destination at the top of a winding stair.
The door was opened in seconds, Neville holding up an embroidered handkerchief.
"You came back for ―." He quieted abruptly. "Oh. Mr Jasper."
"May I come in?"
"Ah, that is, I cannot think why you might be here."
"No, but if you let me in, I can tell you."
Neville looked anxiously over his shoulder and then back at Jasper, his dark eyes wide and perturbed.
"Could we perhaps talk elsewhere? There is an inn…"
"What is in there that I must not see?"
"No, no, come in. I am being unduly cautious, I am sure."
As soon as Jasper was in the room, he saw what Landless had hoped he would not. Framed on a sideboard were a number of sketches. Sketches of Rosa. Rather more skilfully rendered than those his nephew had essayed all those years previously, and with passion in every charcoal stroke.
Jasper went over to them, examining each of the three minutely.
"You drew these from life?" he asked, bending over a picture of Rosa on a garden bench, her winning smile captured with exquisite sensibility.
"The first two. The third is from memory."
Jasper looked more closely at the third. Rosa was standing by a piano, a haunted expression on her face.
"It is the way she looked on the night we met," said Neville, rather unnecessarily, for Jasper had divined this and a horrible pall of guilt had settled on his spirit.
When his visitor made no attempt towards speech, Neville filled the silence once more.
"My sister has given me your news."
Jasper turned away from the pictures.
"Has she? You will, therefore, be cognisant of the utter impropriety of keeping these sketches on display?"
Neville looked at his feet. His chest, Jasper saw, was rising and falling fast. He remembered the quickness and ferocity of Landless' temper, vividly picturing the night he had had to wrest the poker from his hand before he maimed Edwin with it.
"I do not think she should marry you."
Jasper's eyes flashed and his brows shot up. Landless was a tigerish little fellow, a fraction of Jasper's stature yet possessing enough hot blood to almost compensate for it. All the same, Jasper calculated that the Ceylonese man would not best him if matters fell to fisticuffs, which they hopefully would not.
"What you think is neither here nor there, Landless," he said. "She thinks she should marry me and therefore she will. I request that you keep your opinion to yourself and that you take down these pictures of another man's wife."
"You must have coerced her."
"Take them down, Landless, or I will do it on your behalf. I will not have my wife lusted after by all and sundry."
"The way you lusted after her, sir, when she was engaged to your nephew."
"Ah, yes, my nephew. The very subject I came here to discuss."
Jasper, struggling to keep his temper, reminded himself again that Rosa was his and nothing else mattered, least of all the barbs of this insignificant pipsqueak.
"You want to discuss Mr Drood?" Landless seemed wrong-footed by this, blinking rapidly.
"That is so. May I take a seat?"
"Please."
Landless pulled up a couple of rickety spindle-backed chairs and the pair were seated.
"Did you kill him?" opened Jasper without preamble.
Landless stared, open-mouthed.
"Of course not," he spluttered. "You said yourself, you told the Mayor, it had been so long without a body you couldn't keep the case against me open."
"I said that. But I'm not sure I meant it."
"It doesn't matter whether or not you meant it. In the absence of a body, the case was closed. Years ago."
"You know the law, of course, better than I do. But I'm asking you as the boy's uncle, as his closest blood relative, not as a cross-examining counsel in a court of law. To put my mind at rest. And not just my mind, either."
"Rosa's?"
"My beloved Rosa's," he said, with emphasis.
"How have you ensnared her?"
"We are talking," snarled Jasper, "about my nephew. You left my house with him, around half past eleven on the night he disappeared. Where did you go?"
"I've been through all this hundreds of times," moaned Landless.
"Not with me. Where did you go?"
"We went to the cathedral."
"And what did you do there?"
"Nothing, really. We looked around it. Mr Drood told some ghost stories."
"Was that all you did?"
"We talked a little. He was in a strange mood, not that I knew him very well, but he seemed…uncharacteristically sombre. He said he'd been betrayed by one he loved."
"He said that? He must have meant Rosa. She broke off their engagement that day."
"I don't know. He mentioned no names. He said he'd lost a dream…or something like that. I don't remember the exact words. We talked of disappointment, of blighted expectations. I took offence at his manner, for his belittled me, as he always did, and I left him there."
"In the cathedral?"
"Yes."
"What did he say that gave offence?"
"He made mockery of my sufferings in life, as if his were in any way comparable. They were the petty irritations of a spoilt gilded boy. I left before my temper got the better of me."
"Are you sure of that? Sure you bit your tongue and left him? Sure you didn't raise your fists?"
"I went straight back to the Crisparkle house, sir. The storm was worse than ever and I did not want Mrs Crisparkle to worry."
"You left him in the cathedral?" Jasper repeated.
"Yes, I have said so."
"I suppose you didn't see anybody else about on that wild night?"
"Only a beggarwoman, sir."
"A beggarwoman?"
"Yes, loitering on the cathedral steps."
"Perhaps this woman saw him leave?"
"I cannot say."
"Describe her to me. Did she speak to you?"
"She had a shawl over her head, so her features were not distinct. She did not seem quite sober, for she was rocking back and forth and making a kind of queer moaning noise. She spoke some words, but they were not intelligible. I suppose she meant to ask for money, but she was too far gone in gin to form speech."
"Drunk, you say?"
"It would be my guess, sir."
Jasper pondered. "And you saw nobody else?"
"No, indeed, it was not a night to be out walking."
Jasper looked him up and down for a few moments.
"Why should I believe you?" he said suddenly, with such emphasis that Landless jolted in his chair.
"I am an honest man, sir."
"A lawyer," Jasper sneered.
"You may choose to disbelieve me, Mr Jasper, but I have seen how Rosa has suffered and if I could do anything to alleviate her condition, I would. I would tell her the absolute truth, whatever consequences might fall on my head, if it would give her one extra second of sleep at night."
"How romantic," said Jasper with bitter sarcasm, but he found himself swayed by the younger man's vehemence. It was a characteristic they shared, for all the differences between them. And of course, much as he disapproved of Landless' continuing worship of Rosa, he couldn't fault his taste in women.
"She deserves no less," said Landless softly.
Jasper looked up at the pictures again, at the seventeen-year-old Rosa standing by the piano. Edwin had made her cry that night. Had he loved her, after all, and been devastated by the blow of her refusal?
"Well, I shall question you no further," he said. "But I must insist that you take down those pictures. What on Earth did your sister and Crisparkle have to say about them?"
"I put them in the drawer for their visit," Neville confessed, shame-faced. "I had only just taken them out when you knocked."
"Put them away or I shall take them with me."
"No, I shall never give them up." Landless rose from his chair and rushed to the mantel, shielding the pictures like a guardsman. "They are all I have of her. And now that you have dashed my hopes, they are all I shall ever have."
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife."
"What a fine irony, Mr Jasper, that it should be you quoting this commandment."
He managed a shamefaced little grimace and put his hat back on.
"Good afternoon, Mr Landless. I have clergymen to consult."
As he put his hand on the doorhandle, Neville called after him, "Treat her well!"
He turned and nodded. "I shall, of course. Good day, sir."
He returned to Bloomsbury and spent a wearisome hour trying to convince the vicar of St George's to accommodate Rosa and himself on the coming Saturday. Eventually, he prevailed and the date was set.
By the time he arrived at the house, it was early evening, the sun having set. He was halfway up the steps, comforted by the glow of the lamps behind the shades, when the door opened and Grewgious appeared, presumably on his way out.
He did not stop to speak or even look at Jasper but hurried down and betook himself across the street, apparently eager to be well clear of the house.
Behind May's figure at the door, he heard Rosa's voice.
"Really, you must go home now, May. It is getting late and your mother will miss you."
"Thank you, ma'am, I will."
She scampered down the steps, nodding shyly at him as she passed.
Jasper entered the hallway and shut the door.
"I see you have had a visitor," he said, taking off his hat and gloves.
Rosa's head peered around the drawing room door.
"Yes, and I am vexed with you, John Jasper. Why did you have to goad him? I have spent these last two hours having to reassure the poor man that I am not the victim of some evil scheme of yours."
He cocked his head to one side and smiled.
"Are you not?" he said.
She looked over her shoulder.
"Jasper," she said nervously.
"Where are our guests?"
"They are eating out with a friend of Reverend Crisparkle's."
"And May and all the girls are gone home?"
"Yes."
"So we are alone here?"
He took a few steps forward, watching the slow stain of a blush spread over Rosa's cheeks.
"You have but one thing always in mind," she protested, backing into the drawing room.
"Oh, so you can tell what I am thinking?" He stalked after her, quickening his pace until she turned and ran to hide behind a chair.
"It is not hard," she said.
Well, she was quite wrong about that, he thought.
"Come out, Rosebud, and come to me." He crooked his finger at her.
"You are a wicked man," she said, gripping the back of the chair as if she meant to lift it and shield herself with it, like a lion tamer at the circus.
"Who is wickeder, the temptress or he who yields to her?"
"I am not a temptress!"
"Oh, but you are. Now come here, Rosebud, for I must whisper something in your ear."
She trembled behind her chair, but he could see that she was giddy, her senses heightened by excitement.
"You may come and whisper it," she said. "But you must keep your hands behind your back. And you must kneel on the chair and keep its back between us. No, on the chair."
For Jasper had taken a step to the side, as if he meant to swoop down on her from her right.
He held up his hands, then put them behind his back, humouring her. She needn't think she was getting away from him, all the same, and he imagined she knew that, in the end, she would be run to earth.
With a fiendish smile, he knelt on the chair and leaned down, placing his lips to her ear. She rocked on her feet, as if preparing for flight. If he looked down, he could see her bosom rising and falling quickly inside its covering of shot silk.
"The wedding takes place on Saturday," he whispered.
"So soon!"
"Why wait?"
Her neck tilted towards him; she obviously enjoyed the sensation of his breath falling on her skin.
"It is only three days."
"Yes, and that is why we must practise."
"Practise? Taking our vows, you mean?" Her eyes were wide, her gaze cautious but also provocative.
"No, I don't mean that. I mean…" And here he broke his unspoken promise to her, whipping an arm out from behind his back and wrapping his hand around her elbow. "Consummation," he whispered, yanking her around the side of the chair.
Before she could even form words of protest, he had her ensconced on his lap, her arms pinioned behind her back with one hand while he used the other to fiddle with her dress buttons. Anything she might have had to say about this state of affairs was effectively muted by his hungry mouth on hers.
She wriggled against him, but this only served to inflame him further and tighten his hold on her accordingly.
Once he reached the final button, he released her lips and spoke again.
"Stand up, my love," he whispered, helping her to her feet. "If you promise to behave yourself, I'll free your arms."
"Behave myself? When it is you who assails my virtue." But she was smiling coquettishly, trying to keep from breaking into a broad grin.
"My dear, I hardly think you can claim innocence." He removed her dress and petticoats. She offered no resistance at all, not even when his hand cupped her breast inside her chemise, still less when it crept between the slit of her drawers and ran over the curve of her bottom.
"Now can you?" he whispered. She was so warm to the touch and he felt the jungle steam emanating from between her thighs. Oh, she was ripe, always ripe for him.
"You have turned me into this wanton thing," she sighed.
He took off his waistcoat, unfastened his braces, let his trousers and undergarments go until he stood in only his shirt, then he sat back on the chair, pulling Rosa on top of him.
Soon enough, spreading her drawers wide open, he had her positioned atop his erect staff, his hands on her hips, hers on his shoulders, ready to lower her down.
"Oh, this is wrong," she fretted, but she made no attempt to clench or shift away when he pushed his swollen tip inside her. Instead, she tightened her gluteal muscles and swivelled her hips a little, preparing to be stretched still wider.
"Not wrong," he assured her, his lips against her ear again, one hand sliding around to her bottom and patting it gently. "Never wrong, love. Meant to be. You are built for this, and so am I."
He felt each inch of him slip inside as she strained to admit him. He reached behind her with both hands and spread her rear cheeks, easing his access, although she gasped and widened her eyes as if her modesty had been affronted.
"What is wrong?" he asked, fully sheathed now, holding her on his lap, impaled and at his mercy.
"Where you are touching me," she said, almost inaudibly. Ah, another of the tar's failings. What an unimaginative man he must have been.
"Surely you have been touched here before?" He let one sly finger burrow deeper into the crease until it abutted her tight little rosette.
"No, never!" Her mouth was a perfect circle of surprise.
"Oh dear, Rosebud, what I have in store for you…Do not fret. You shall not be forced into anything you do not want to do. But I have so much to give you…oh, dear Lord, so very much." Slightly overwhelmed, he had to shut his eyes for a moment and clear his head. "But for now, simply this."
He nudged her into a steady rocking motion, feeling her grind against him, a little chaotically at first until she was used to the angle and the rhythm and the sensation of fullness he must give her.
As their pace increased, he drove her onward with passionate kisses, placing his hands on every sensitive spot of her body. She worked hard, her inner muscles gripping him tight, building the friction between them until she was flushed and sheened with perspiration all over her skin. He pushed his finger back between her posterior cheeks and exerted a mild pressure there which she noticed but did not resist. Instead, she caught her breath and buried her face in his neck, too shy to meet his eye and admit that what he did, wicked as it was, aroused her even more.
When she clenched her fists into his shirt, yanking at it so it almost ripped, he knew she was at the gateway of her release, and he pushed that finger just that little bit further, opening her. The effect was immediate and startling; she unleashed a helpless, broken wail and kicked her legs like fury.
"Yes, my beauty," he hissed in her ear, "yes, you like that, don't you?"
She made a piteous mewl of unconvincing dissent, and then he held her even tighter and spent his seed, his release commencing just as hers began to die away.
The panting, soaking aftermath consumed them for a long while until eventually he thought that Rosa must be deliberately avoiding his eye or making any utterance.
He took her face in his hand and tilted it upwards. She tried to shy away then, when she could not, she shut her eyes.
"Rosebud," he murmured. He pressed his lips to hers, lightly and swiftly. "You make me the happiest man alive. I hope I can do likewise."
She opened her eyes then, and glanced coyly upwards.
"I do not disappoint you with my…unnatural…wantonness?"
He laughed and kissed her forehead, tasting salt.
"Heavens, no, no, no. A thousand times. You…enrapture me…with your…spirit of willingness and courage and your natural sensuality. It is clearer to me each time we couple that you are my perfect mate. If you fought me off and were prim and tight, I should know that we were ill-matched."
"It is just that…all I have learned about behaving like a lady…and then you have come and undone it all, and I am a creature of flesh and sin."
"Flesh and sin is one interpretation of it. I prefer to call it love and desire."
She smiled, still a little coy.
"I knew you would be like this," she said. "It is why I feared you so much when I was younger. I knew you had the power to enslave me completely, force me to surrender to my darker, baser nature."
"It is neither dark nor base, love. Why are you given the capacity to feel pleasure if you are never to use it?"
She subsided on to his chest once more.
"Yes," she said, as if she had weighed this thought up and found it pleasing. "Yes, I shall look upon it in that wise. But it is as well that we are marrying soon, Jasper."
"I am in agreement with you there."
A/N: Hmm, got a bit carried away there. That sex scene is more than twice the length I intended…what a pity. That Jasper is a bad, bad man.