Chapter 19
Charlotte Tolliver sat in the breakfast parlour with a tepid cup of tea at her elbow and a book splayed open in her lap, pretending (without success) to read the same paragraph she had already failed to absorb at least four times.
It was a novel she ordinarily saved for rainy days, full of dashing highwaymen and unruly heroines, but this morning every word had turned to paste in her mouth.
Across the room, Nell was engaged in a doomed exercise in pedagogy, attempting to teach the cat to curtsey.
The cat, being a creature of limited ambition and boundless disdain, was having none of it.
Mari, by contrast, was nestled into the window seat, immersed in a novel so large it might have been mistaken for the family Bible.
The fire crackled. The toast had gone cold on its silver rack. Outside, it began to rain harder, that persistent sort of downpour that made everything feel greyer. Inside Lottie’s head, however, it was a thunderstorm.
Jasper Deverell had asked for a dance.
He could have asked for anything. Her mouth, her hands, her knees. Instead, he had chosen to be appallingly decent, and Charlotte Tolliver, it seemed, had been fool enough to be disappointed by it.
She had left that gallery flushed and breathless, still tingling in places no respectable young lady would admit to having, let alone naming aloud.
She had been ready—truly, maddeningly ready—for him to collect his forfeit in some glorious, wicked, improper way that would have left her bruised and boneless and half-ruined.
Instead, he had offered her a dance. A dance!
And then, worse, he had bowed with perfect composure after her thinly veiled barbs and promised to send her a note. She was an idiot. A prize-winning, lace-ribbon-wearing, monogrammed-handkerchief-carrying idiot.
Nell pirouetted past with the cat cradled like a baby and asked brightly, “What did he ask for? Did you have to kiss him? Or—wait—was it nude fencing? Because if it was not, I shall be dreadfully disappointed.”
Lottie inhaled through her nose and gripped the edge of her book. “Would you kindly find someone else to torment, Nell? I am not in the mood.”
Nell harrumphed and flounced out, tripping over the hem of her gown as she went. The cat released a screech of betrayal and bolted for the corridor.
From the floor, undeterred, Nell called out, “I am hurt, Lottie! And you are showing no care whatsoever! Now, as recompense, do tell me what he asked of you. Was it scandalous? Was there disrobing? Or, heavens, was there poetry?”
Lottie shut her book with such force that it echoed off the wainscotting.
Why, in all the mad, merciless chaos of Tolliver life, had she ever told her youngest sister about the wagers?
It had been a moment of misplaced confidence born of brandy, late-night giddiness, and Nell’s plaintive wail that nothing exciting ever happens when one is the youngest. Nell, being Nell, had seized the secret like a foxhound to a roast chicken.
“He asked for nothing, Nell,” Lottie snapped. “Not a kiss, not a favour, not a whisper of impropriety. He asked me for a waltz, and that is all.”
There was a pause as Nell hoisted herself upright. “Well. That is scandalous,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “Just in a deeply disappointing way. You waltzed? Good Lord, what a waste of trousers.”
“I am not discussing this with you.”
Nell sighed and dusted off her skirts. “Very well. But when I am older and thoroughly disillusioned, likely married to some dull viscount with an unfortunate chin and a fondness for beetles, expect me to credit you when I recount how little guidance I received in the ways of seduction.”
“If you are married to a man with beetles, Nell, you have only yourself to blame. And besides, I have given you more guidance than any sensible sister ever should.”
“Yes, well, I require more practical instruction,” Nell said from the doorway, hands now on her hips. “For instance, how one might tell whether a gentleman intends to ravish you or compose a sonnet about your elbows. It is all very unclear.”
“That,” Lottie said dryly, “is the eternal question.”
Nell considered this, then gave a sage nod, as much as an undebuted girl covered in cat fur and marmalade could look sage. “Very well. I shall observe closely. If Mr Deverell sends you a poem, I shall know we are doomed.”
“He shall not,” Lottie said, too quickly.
Nell’s eyes gleamed. “Then he will ravish you.”
Lottie made a sound somewhere between a growl and a laugh, and tossed a cushion in her sister’s general direction. “Get out, Nell.”
“I go,” Nell said grandly, catching the cushion with a flourish. “But I shall return, with further questions.”
She swept from the room with all the pomp of a princess and none of the decorum. Lottie let her head drop back against the chair and stared at the ceiling.
From the window seat came the soft whuff of a page being turned. Mari did not look up, but said, in the same even tone one might use to remark upon the weather, “It is quite clear that you are in love with him.”
“I certainly am not!”
Mari did not argue. She simply inclined her head serenely, as though tucking the admission into some private ledger of facts to be reviewed and wielded at a future time of strategic inconvenience.
The parlour fell quiet again, save for the ticking of the mantel clock, the tapping of rain against the long windows, and the distant sound of Nell shouting something unintelligible at the cat.
Lottie let out a long and loud sigh.
She certainly was not in love with Jasper Deverell, as Mari had rudely suggested. That would be entirely absurd—laughable, in fact. She was annoyed, yes, perhaps even wounded, but that was a different matter altogether.
It was not, precisely, the absence of indecency that rankled her.
It was that she truly believed he desired her. Not merely as a wager, nor as a flirtation, nor as some diverting little scandal to liven up a dull Season, or even as a future wife with a sizeable dowry, but her. Charlotte Tolliver herself.
And now she did not know.
She felt the shame creep up her neck like a rash.
Perhaps Jasper Deverell—the charming rake, the heir to an earl, the man who flirted like it was his profession—was even now sharing stories at his gentleman’s club about the silly Society girl who challenged him to a duel and made him put his fingers between her thighs as payment.
Did you hear about Tolliver’s wild daughter? Gave me a set of fencing rules and begged for a scandal. I gave her a waltz instead. Poor little thing was practically panting for it.
Lottie’s mouth went dry. A hot prickle began behind her eyes, and she blinked hard. She was not crying. She would not cry.
The fury in her belly was not directed wholly at Jasper. Most of it was aimed squarely at herself, for she had done this before.
Lord Marchmont had smiled at her as though she were singular.
He had told her she was clever, bold, unlike other girls, which was the sort of nonsense one always despised until it was whispered against one’s own skin.
He had danced with her in moonlight and kissed her beneath an archway, and she had believed him, right until he had done the unthinkable.
Everyone thereafter had regarded her as one looks at a girl who has confirmed every fear ever held on her behalf. Worse, she had looked at herself differently. She had been a fool, and she had vowed never to be one again. She would be all the things they feared and nothing they could ruin.
And now here she was again, breathless over another charming, dangerous man.
All he had asked for was her hand in a dance, and that—that—was somehow the greatest indignity of all.
For what did it mean? That he was honourable? That he was indifferent? That he wanted her too much to be careless, or too little to be tempted? Had she really convinced herself, even for a moment, that she was the one besting him?
Mari looked up calmly and turned another page. “You seem unwell, Lottie. Would you prefer to lie down or kill something?”
Lottie smiled tightly. “Both.”
Mari nodded. “I shall ready the spare room and sharpen the carving knives.”
With that, she resumed reading as though her sister’s emotional crisis were simply one more predictable note in the ongoing symphony of Tolliver household affairs.
Cards was the next wager. Good. Lottie would win. That, at least, was something she could control.
What she would do with her next forfeit remained agonisingly unclear. Should she make him suffer? Make him beg? Make him prove the hunger in his eyes was real? Or should she do something far more dangerous, and ask for the truth?
For all her wagers and all her bravado, Lottie could not rid herself of the dreadful suspicion that she had been the only one foolish enough to forget it was a game.