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Rosie knows that a woman's public reputation is rarely indicative of her true nature. If she hadn't known it already, having grown up amidst the cruel gossiping of Melbourne society, the business with her father and Sidney would have been more than enough to make her understand. And yet, based on everything that she knows and has heard about the woman, even taken with the cellar of salt that these things generally require, Rosie cannot understand what Phryne Fisher sees in her ex-husband.
There is, of course, plenty that a woman could find desirable in Jack. He is handsome, and kind, and humorous, and principled. He may not be the man Rosie fell in love with - the Jack of before - but that is not to say there is something wrong with him. She sometimes even thinks that, if she hadn't known the younger Jack, she could get along quite nicely with the older one.
Yes, there is plenty for a woman to like about Jack Robinson. But that woman?
That woman is a leading member of the Adventuresses club. She flies planes and treks through deserts. That woman is the daughter of a baron. That woman likes lithe young men who flit in and out of her life without a care.
If it were Before-Jack, she could perhaps understand. Before-Jack was pretty, and charming, and eager, and Rosie had known full well that she wasn't the only woman interested in his affections. Before-Jack could have held Phryne Fisher's attentions, for a short while at least. After-Jack, who is quieter, warier, inevitably older, has somehow held them for months.
His interest in her is perfectly understandable. Even without the beauty that catches the eye of seemingly every man in Australia, she has an energy and wit that would always have enticed him. She is a patron of the arts, an incorrigible flirt, and, Rosie must begrudgingly admit and admire, a staunch advocate for those in need. Jack never stood a chance.
Miss Fisher, meanwhile, ought not to have given Jack a second look. For all that he enjoys excitement in others, he is himself a cautious, traditional sort of man. He enjoys mornings spent on his bike or out in the garden; afternoons baking in the kitchen; evenings by the fire, tearing through a book on science, or history, or the ever-reliable Shakespeare. He is steady and solid, something Rosie could appreciate even as it became overwhelming, even as it became the only thing he could seem to be, yet something she cannot imagine doing anything but rankle the capricious woman at his side.
She knows others have implied their relationship is her way of getting access to police cases, for her latest amusement of crime-solving, but Rosie always found that unlikely. If Miss Fisher wanted to sleep her way onto a case, she could pick a target with farther reach and fewer scruples than Jack Robinson. Having seen them together, she knows she was correct. Whatever Miss Fisher is doing with Jack, she’s doing it simply because she wants to. There is no ulterior motive or greater purpose. There is just Jack.
They work together, in all senses of the word and, for the life of her, Rosie cannot understand why. The only answer she can come to is that, somewhere along the line, After-Jack, that remnant of the man she loved, became something new yet again, someone she doesn’t know anymore. It’s an unexpected pain, this grief she finds lodged inside herself, to regret the loss of a man she may never meet.
And it’s a pain that is exacerbated without measure by a heavy, shrouding fear that none of the men she has loved has ever existed at all.