Chapter 15
L ady Evelyn arrived for tea in a sweep of silk and floral powder that Frankie could smell all the way in the corridor where she stood peering around the corner. If she had to estimate, she would say Lady Evelyn’s purple silk gown cost more than she would make in an entire year. Frankie glanced down at her own dark-green dress of plain cotton, the neckline so high it made her chin itch. It wasn’t that she enjoyed wearing such ugly gowns, but her station required it.
“What are we looking at?” Jasper asked at her ear.
Frankie clapped a hand over her mouth before she could shriek and give away her position. She turned to find Jasper standing entirely too close and gazing at her with entirely too much heat.
She pinched her arm before taking a step back. She was imagining desire where none existed. “Miss Cecelia has invited Lady Evelyn to tea.”
Jasper tore his gaze from her, catching sight of Lady Evelyn’s skirt before she entered the sitting room. “Why?”
“Perhaps she enjoys Lady Evelyn’s company.”
“Does anyone?”
“You—you do not?”
“No.” Those dark eyes returned to her face and roved over her cheekbones and down the front of her gown. “She is snide and conceited and dull.”
“Is that all?” Frankie muttered under her breath. Unfortunately, Jasper heard her.
“No, that is not all. She also cannot count cards.” Jasper lifted his hand and with one finger slid the bridge of Frankie’s spectacles back up her nose.
Frankie blinked, disproportionately affected by the simple gesture. Her throat clamped and she reached over to her arm and pinched herself again. Before she could regain her senses, Cecelia howled down the hallway.
“UNCLE JAAAAAAAAASPER!”
Jasper sighed and went to step past Frankie, but paused. “Why do you keep pinching yourself?”
Frankie had opened her mouth to warn him about Cecelia’s plan, but at being caught pinching herself in his presence she panicked and exclaimed, “I have lessons to prepare!” She hitched up her skirts and made a beeline for the library—which indeed had its doors wide-open—and began to pace.
The library was stunning, with tall peaked windows and shelves upon shelves of books organized in the most interesting fashion, with little tabs of numbers pasted on the spines. Frankie had never seen anything like it, and yet it did not take her more than a few minutes of perusing to discover that it was an incredibly clever system.
Jasper had decorated the room for comfort and coziness rather than to function as a showpiece, and it therefore hosted a variety of overstuffed furniture perfect for curling up with a book, an unlit limestone fireplace, and a most interesting woven carpet that depicted various scenes from Greek mythology. Not, not various scenes, Frankie realized as she bent to look closer: various gods. Hermes, the Greek god of gambling, who could outwit almost anyone; Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of prosperity; Thoth, an Egyptian god with the head of a bird and the body of a man; Macuilxochitl, an Aztec god of excess; Fortuna, the Roman goddess of luck; Nezha, the Chinese god of fortune; and several others that she did not recognize from her patchwork studies. The rug must have been custom-made for Jasper; a literal tapestry of gods and goddesses across religions and cultures that supported luck, prosperity, and gambling.
Frankie adored it.
If Cecelia succeeded in pairing Jasper with Lady Evelyn, would the lady appreciate the rug? Or would she roll it up and have the servants store it away?
Frankie resumed pacing in front of the cold fireplace. The scents of wax and polish mingled with the fresh daisies one of the servants had placed in a vase on a round rosewood table at the center of the room, and Frankie wished she were in the library to read a delicious new tome on the study of mathematics rather than worry over Cecelia’s plan. She’d lost her chance to warn Jasper in private. Should she intrude on the gathering despite the impropriety of it?
Her heels rang on the hardwood as she paced and gnawed on her lip. At last she stopped. With her mind made up, she strode to the library door.