Chapter 20
Escaping the Tolliver house had never required any great genius. Charlotte had been evading doors, footmen, sisters, and her mother since she was old enough to climb a trellis. The true difficulty lay not in leaving, but in returning with her hemline and alibi more or less intact.
The note arrived, as these things so often did, at the most inconvenient possible moment: just as Charlotte was endeavouring to convince Nell that no, one could not train a hen to deliver messages, no matter how many currants one tied to the envelope.
It was handed to her by Tompkins, the second footman, with all the gravity of a royal summons. “A gentleman’s rider brought this, miss. No name given. Requested it be placed in your hand directly.”
She took the envelope and unfolded it at once:
C.T.,
A carriage will be waiting at eleven o’clock this evening, on Gloucester Street, just outside the baker’s. It shall convey you to my residence.
Vingt-et-un.
Come prepared to lose.
J.D.
Lottie read it three times before setting it down.
She should not have been surprised. Cards had been the next wager, after all, and she had named it herself.
But she had expected a lively gathering: a green baize table, a ring of smirking gentlemen, brandy, cigars, laughter, an audience before whom she might defeat him splendidly.
Not Mr Deverell’s house, at night. Alone.
She felt a thrill she had no business feeling, followed by a rising tide of suspicion.
She would not allow herself to fall into that trap again.
Still, the wheels were already turning. She would not sit about like some tragic little ninny, wondering whether Jasper Deverell wanted her, or respected her, or meant anything at all by the way he looked at her.
If he wished to play, they would play. If he wished to be wicked, she would be worse.
And if Society had already decided Charlotte Tolliver was fast, reckless, and not to be trusted with her own virtue, she saw no compelling reason to move slowly.
Meeting him, however, would require leaving the house without attracting the notice of her siblings, her parents, or the staff. That required an ailment.
Sneaking out began, as such things often did in the Tolliver household, with a headache.
“Oh, heavens,” she declared that evening after supper, pressing a hand dramatically to her temple as she stood from the pianoforte. “I do believe I shall retire early. I feel quite unequal to company.”
Mari looked up from the armchair by the fire. “Is it the sort of headache that can be soothed with tea, or must we prepare the family for your imminent demise?”
“The sort that requires solitude and quiet.”
“You mean to sneak out,” Mari said under her breath as Lottie passed.
“Do you want me to bite you?”
“Just remember to return with your dignity intact this time,” Mari murmured. “And perhaps with a clean forfeit victory. That will do wonders for the headache.”
“I loathe you,” Lottie muttered, and swept from the room, already calculating which window squeaked the least when opened.
At ten minutes past ten, she was fully dressed and tucked into a modest travelling cloak. She crept down the servants’ stairs, slipped through the back corridor, and let herself out by the tradesmen’s entrance with the ease of long practice.
By the time the Tolliver household set about extinguishing the lamps, Charlotte was already en route. The carriage Jasper had promised was waiting three streets away, drawn up beside the baker’s and driven by a coachman with a dubious moustache and no interest whatsoever in conversation.
She was shown into the house by a grim butler at precisely eleven o’clock.
Jasper Deverell was already waiting, of course, leaning far too casually against the newel post of the staircase, as though receiving young ladies in secret at such an hour were a perfectly ordinary part of his evening. He looked her over with a smile that was equal parts admiration and trouble.
“Right on time.”
“I am nothing if not punctual,” she replied, unfastening her cloak. “Though I confess I had expected a table, a fire, and perhaps a few bottles of port. Are we to play cards here? With only the two of us?”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, pushing off the post and offering his arm. “Of course we are not staying in.”
“Then where are we going?”
“Bellamy’s.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Bellamy’s,” he repeated, as if she’d misheard the first time. “The gentlemen’s club.”
She laughed aloud. “Only men are permitted at Bellamy’s, sir.”
“Precisely,” he said, with his familiar lopsided grin. “Which is why, tonight, you shall not be Miss Tolliver at all. You shall be my young second cousin from the country. No one shall recognise you, and no one shall question me.”
There was a pause, in which she stared at him as though he had suggested robbing the Bank of England, halfway betwixt horror and laughter. “You are utterly mad.”
“I know,” he replied cheerfully, already turning on his heel. “Now, come. Let us go to my rooms, Mr Tolliver. We’ve a great deal to do and very little time.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Do not be so coy,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve had my hands beneath your skirts before, have I not?”
She bit her cheek and followed him upstairs with the expression of one who knew better and had decided to ignore it anyway.
In his bedchamber—after much protesting, and one particularly pointed look of warning from Lottie, despite the fact that, yes, he had indeed had his hands beneath her skirts before—she stood in her chemise with her arms folded, while Jasper paced the room, flinging garments onto a velvet sofa with all the glee of a valet gone temporarily mad.
“You shall need something rather ill-fitting, to begin with,” he muttered, rifling through a drawer.
“You are too slight in the shoulders, though with the coat left loose and the cravat high enough, no one will look twice.” He paused, holding up a linen shirt to the light, then glanced over at her.
“And it is rather fortunate,” he added, with the casual cruelty of a man trying to be helpful, “that you are not exactly… over-endowed.”
Lottie’s brows shot up. “Well. That is one way to say it.”
He turned with an expression that suggested he realised, far too late, that he had erred. “Only in the most complimentary sense,” he said quickly. “Streamlined. Lithe. Gracefully lacking.”
“Oh, do go on,” she said, folding her arms, “I am fascinated by this line of thinking. Gracefully lacking, was it?”
He cleared his throat and tried again. “Efficiently… compact?”
“Mr Deverell, choose your next words as though you value your life.”
He held up the waistcoat in surrender. “Irresistibly boyish.”
Lottie took the garment from his hands with a snort. “You are fortunate I am in the mood for a little mischief, or else I’d be strangling you with that very cravat.”
“I consider myself warned.”
She drew the shirt over her chemise. “I shall take it as a mark of our friendship that you are trusting me to become a man in your presence.”
“Frankly,” he said, grinning, “I’ve always suspected it would suit you.”
“Being a man?”
“Indeed,” he said cheerfully. “Now, moustache or no moustache?”
“I want the full effect,” she said at once. “Side-whiskers, too. I wish to look the sort of man who drinks port before noon and insults his hostess by accident.”
Jasper was already rummaging for pomade.
“Then we must give you a ridiculous name. Mr Charleston, I think. From Wiltshire. Newly come to Town with no manners, a dubious education, and terrible judgement. You must not speak though, for your voice will give you away at once. You shall be a very solemn man.”
“Is that your impression of me?”
“No, that is my impression of my new second cousin Charleston, poor soul. Sadly doomed by his own mediocrity.”
She narrowed her eyes. “And if I am not to speak, how shall I order drinks? Mime?”
“You’ll raise your hand, nod gravely, and say something very masculine, only a single word or two.”
“Such as?”
“Whisky. Dreadful weather. Damnation, if the company grows lively. Now, at the glass, if you please,” he said, producing a small tin of pomade. “Hair up. No argument.”
Lottie lowered herself before the dressing table, and Jasper came to stand behind her. In the mirror she watched his hands gather her hair at the nape, twisting and pinning it with surprising skill.
“Consider yourself fortunate I am not a barber,” he said. “I might be seized by artistic conviction and cut the whole thing off.”
“Imagine Mama’s face on the morrow.” Lottie tried not to shiver as his fingers brushed the back of her neck. “But you are rather good at this. Perhaps you have missed your true vocation.”
“Oh, no doubt,” he murmured. “I live for transformation. Now hold still. If you twitch again, you shall end up looking like a villain from one of those ghastly penny serials.”
She stifled a laugh. “Is that not the goal?”
“No, Charleston. Villains draw attention. You, my dear fellow, are to be entirely beneath notice.”
“And earnest,” she added, watching as he smoothed pomade through the parting and darkened her brows with a faint touch of soot.
“Painfully earnest.”
“And underpaid.”
“Tragically so.” He leant closer, his expression one of mock concentration. “Now, the pièce de résistance.”
Lottie turned her head, and found him nearer than she expected. His grin had softened into something boyish and conspiratorial.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “And do not move.”
She obeyed. His hand cupped her jaw, tilting her face to the light.
His thumb rested at the edge of her jaw, warm and steady, while his other hand traced the gentlest line above her upper lip.
The whole thing was absurd and the sensation ticklish, but it was strangely tender.
Lottie held her breath, quite certain that Mr Charleston of Wiltshire was a doomed man.
“There,” Jasper said quietly.
When she opened her eyes and turned back to the looking glass, she burst out laughing. “I look like a poorly paid poet!”
“You look,” Jasper said, trying and failing to keep a straight face, “like Mr Charleston, earnest and underwhelming. A young man of uncertain parentage and big boots.”
Lottie rose and gave a stiff little bow. “What ho,” she intoned gravely, pitching her voice an octave lower. “Whisky. Dreadful weather. Damnation.”
Jasper clutched the edge of the dressing table and wheezed. “God preserve us! Charleston sounds like he’s been raised by a vicar and sheepdog.”
She straightened and puffed out her chest. “I shall limit myself to proclamations and observations. Nothing too emotional. ‘By Jove!’ when the cards go poorly. ‘What larks!’ when they do not.”
“Excellent,” Jasper said, gasping through laughter. “Your voice is not entirely disastrous, provided you never string more than three words together. And if anyone addresses you directly?”
“I shall squint, nod, and mutter something about Parliament.”
“And if they press the point?”
“I shall excuse myself on account of gout.”
Jasper wiped his eyes. “You are dangerously convincing. You have spent far too much time with your father.”
“Please.” She began to pace the room, hands clasped behind her back in a fair imitation of Lord Tolliver. “I have been preparing for this role my entire life.”
She stopped before him, chin high, chest puffed, every inch the absurd little gentleman. “Mr Charleston of Wiltshire. Fond of cards, indifferent to bathing, and constitutionally incapable of remembering his mother’s birthday.”
She thrust out her arm. “Shall we, cousin?”