Page 69 of The Library of Borrowed Hearts
“What she wants?” he echoed again. He knew he sounded every bit like the oversized doddering lumberjack he appeared to be, but what else could he do? Maternal solicitude and bribery were the last two thingshe’d expected out of this meeting—ifmeetingit could be called. It was starting to feel more like an ambush.
“Yes. The Major and I were prepared to send her away and find the child a proper home, but she insisted that she’d prefer to raise her son or daughter herself. Marrying William McBride was her idea, and although I can’t say I was on board at first, it seems to be working out for the best. He’s been a brick from start to finish.”
When Jasper couldn’t find it in him to do more than goggle at this poised, soft-spoken woman, she nodded and reached for the handbag that sat next to her chair. His heart sank when he saw her extract a folded check and push it across the table at him.
“I think you’ll find that we’re prepared to be generous. Not just for your trouble, but for your discretion.”
He didn’t want to look. He tried not to pick up the slip of paper. But when she kept sitting there, smiling at him like an older, wiser, stone-cold version of Catherine, he found he had no choice.
PAY TO THE ORDER OFJASPERHOLMES, $5,000.00
Five thousand dollars.It was more money than Jasper earned in a year, more than he’d ever seen in one sitting, a veritable fortune.
He let go almost at once. The paper fluttered to the floor as if it had wings, joining the steak in its wet, congealing lump. Tsking gently, Catherine’s mother plucked it back up and wiped the stains of red around the edges.
“I really am sorry,” she said. More determined this time, she pressed the check into his hand. “I know I sound like a horrible old snob, but our daughter asked us to be generous, so we are.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said, suddenly springing to his feet, the check crushed in his fist. “Catherine wouldn’t have agreed to it. She wouldn’t do this to me.”
He saw a flash of it then—that fire that so characterized these women, the core of steel that nothing earthly could touch.
“Youmay be in the habit of lying and sneaking around, Mr. Holmes, but I can assure you that I am not.” She smiled then, and even though it was meant to be every bit as charming as her earlier attempts at friendliness, it chilled him to the bone. “In fact, she gave me a message for you—something she said you’d be sure to understand.”
“Please don’t,” Jasper croaked.
“I have to,” she returned, a little warmer this time. She fished in the front pocket of her apron until she pulled out a slip of paper. From his distance, Jasper could make out the sloping lines of Catherine’s painfully familiar hand. “It’s the only way. You don’t realize it now, but this is the best solution for everyone.”
And then she read the words Jasper knew were coming.
“‘I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven,’” she read in her soft, firm voice, “‘and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn’t have thought of it.’”
Jasper flung up a hand in entreaty. To his surprise, it worked. Catherine’s mother stopped in the middle of forming the next line, her lips parted in a perfectO.
“‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now,’” he finished for her.
She blinked. “Why, yes. So youdoknow. She said you’d recognize the line, but I wasn’t sure I believed her.”
He groaned with the sudden enormity of it. Of the irony of Catherine—hisCatherine—flinging the only words she knew would get him to back away. Of her quoting a passage fromWuthering Heightsas though a single stupid book could contain the enormity of his love for her.
And of her obvious decision not to finish the line:He shall never know how I love him; and that not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
In the book, the love between Catherine and Heathcliff wasn’tenough to overcome the pecuniary demands of the world they inhabited. In real life, it seemed, the love between Catherine and Jasper was doomed to follow along the same lines. And just like the devastating unfolding of Emily Brontë’s classic tale, his only recourse was to stand back and watch as the love of his life destroyed him, body and soul.
“You be sure to cash that check, honey,” Mrs. Martin said as she led the way to the door. She stepped over the congealing steak, but her heel squelched into the edge. “The Major will take you back now. I trust we’ll never see or hear from you again.”
And even though his heart was breaking—a thousand china plates crashing inside a wooden box, a thousand times over again—Jasper had no choice but to follow that bright bloody trail out of the house.
Catherine had spoken. She’d made her choice.
It was over.
PART THREE
24
NOODLE
It’s wrong to steal things.
