Chapter Three #2
For once, the clean, fresh air did not revive her.
But anger was better than collapsing into tears of despair, so she whipped it up as she strode through the garden to the footpath that was the shortcut back to Harwich.
If she cried now, it would be from sheer fury with everyone from her father to Durward who had witnessed not only her own humiliation but Mansel’s.
She wanted to scream out loud. No one would hear her.
She only refrained because she was afraid that if she began, she would never stop.
And it was just as well she didn’t give in, for after a quarter of an hour or so, she heard the soft thud of approaching hooves and the faint clatter of a vehicle.
Frowning, she moved off the path to let it pass.
It didn’t. It slowed and drew to a halt beside her. Fury mixed now with definite fear as she continued to walk on without even glancing at the vehicle. There was no one to hear, let alone help her on this lonely path. She would do him some damage, but it was not a fight she could win.
“You keep a spanking pace, Miss Jasper, but won’t you let me take you up?”
It was the voice rather than the lightly spoken words that halted her. She turned her head, blinking rapidly. Two very fine grey horses, harnessed to a smart curricle, driven by the elegant Mr. Durward.
“Thank you, no,” she said bitterly. “I have had enough of gentlemen for one day.”
“I thought you might, but I am also sure you’ll feel better for a quick conversation with me. I can be a perfect gentleman when I choose.”
She eyed him with hostility, wishing he were not quite so handsome. “And when precisely do you choose?”
“When I’m driving for one. The horses are quite headstrong.” He transferred the ribbons to one hand and reached down to her. “Please?”
It might have been the please. Or the memory of his previous good turn. It was not his fault that Sir Hugh would not leave her alone. In fact, he had made it possible for her to escape without assaulting the—
She blinked and accepted his hand to climb up beside him. He set the horses immediately into motion.
She said, “You should have taken the road. It is better for vehicles. This path is often impassably muddy.”
“I took a chance since it has been dry the last couple of days, and I suspected you would come this way.”
She spared him a disdainful glance, just in case he was influenced by Sir Hugh’s opinion of her. “What is that to you?”
“Only that I have something for you.” He rummaged in his coat pocket. “From Mansel.”
With a triumphant flourish, he held up a shilling. When she only stared at it, he dropped it into her lap, and she closed her fingers around it before it slid off.
“Really?” she said doubtfully.
“It comes with an apology.”
She couldn’t help it. She snorted, and he laughed. It was an infectious sound, deep and musical and dangerously beguiling.
“I don’t believe you,” she said stiffly.
“I’m not surprised. But I did extract the shilling without having to threaten, and I convinced him the apology would make for an easier life in his own home and out of it. All the same, if I were you, I would find alternative employment.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?” she said with ferocious sarcasm, then wished she hadn’t.
Her face flamed with shame. “Thank you,” she added with difficulty and slipped the coin into her dress pocket, covering it with her thin handkerchief to be sure it wouldn’t fall out.
Twisting her hands together in her lap, she drew in a sharp breath.
“I hope you do not think Sir Hugh’s behaviour is caused by anything I have ever said or done.
I have never encouraged his attentions. In fact, I have no idea what set him off. ”
“His own sense of entitlement,” Mr. Durward said cheerfully. “No doubt augmented by your current circumstances, if you’ll pardon my mentioning it.”
“You do not know my circumstances,” she said grandly.
“I can guess. You are chained to Harwich by your father’s dependence and limited by his reputation in your possibilities of local employment.”
In a nutshell. “He wasn’t always like this,” she said defensively. “He just needs time to get back on his feet. My mother’s death threw him off course a little.”
“I’m sorry. When did she die?”
“Four and a half years ago.”
“When he was still a respected ship’s captain?”
“He was,” Carina said defiantly. “And he will be again.”
“Not while he refuses to shift for himself.”
Indignantly, she began, “He goes every day to the harbour—”
“Too late to catch most of the work, though it gives him opportunity to meet some drinking companions.”
She glared at him, furious that he was right and that he dared say the words to her. But he met her gaze without flinching.
“You make it too easy for him. You look after him, forgive him, earn the coin that he should, and waste your life.”
There were so many angry retorts she could have made to that, and yet what burst out was, “I have no choice!”
He raised one eyebrow.
She blinked furiously. “I haven’t. He’s my father and I can’t let him drown. I don’t want to let him drown.”
He was silent a moment, his reckless eyes not laughing or mocking. “Give him an ultimatum. He must stop drinking and work, or you will leave. And if he won’t do it, leave.”
She stared at him. “And go where? Pick one of my rich and kind relatives?”
“From which I gather you don’t have any.” He was scowling now. “Before I sail, I’ll write to inquire of my sister and a few friends. I’m sure whatever you do for Lady Mansel would be more lucrative in London. You are educated and ladylike. Just don’t tell them to bugger off.”
She didn’t mean to, but a sudden laugh burst between her shaky lips. It won her a dazzling smile.
“I apologise for my language,” she said. “I was angry and I had to get him home before he fell over. I thought it was the quickest way to be rid of you.”
“And you assumed I was like Hugh Mansel?”
She nodded, dragging her gaze free.
“I am,” he said unexpectedly. “Except that I take hints better. I wouldn’t have noticed your difficulty if you weren’t so beautiful.”
She sighed. “Just when I was beginning to like you.”
“A lady should always accept a compliment.”
“Even though it’s worthless when a gentleman feels obliged to give it. Society’s rules are ridiculous and pointless.”
“I have often said so.”
She regarded him once more. The recklessness was back in his smile. “As an excuse to ignore them?” she suggested.
“Generally.”
“Because men get away with flouting the rules, where women do not. Especially rich young, over-indulged noblemen. That is what you are, isn’t it?”
His eyebrows flew up. “Straight for the jugular! Mercy, Miss Jasper.”
She tilted her chin, refusing to be cowed and yet aware she didn’t want to quarrel with him. “You are not Mr. Durward, are you? You are Lord Durward, who is fleeing the consequences of a duel. And yet the Mansels are desperate to profit from the slightest association with you.”
“Are they?” He sounded startled, although his hands remained steady on the reins, guiding his horses around the worst of a large rut in the road, and along the right-hand fork in the path that led to the town. “I don’t know what profit they imagine there will be, unless they seek notoriety.”
“Oh, her letters will be filled for months with how you found the time to call upon them on your way to exile.” She shook her head. “And now I am the one who sounds waspish. Do you ever find yourself hating everyone?”
“Not really,” he said. “I am subject to tempers, but then I’m just as likely to love my enemy again. I don’t have the staying power for concentrated hatred.”
“Did you hate the man you killed?”
Something changed in his eyes, something unutterably bleak and hopeless that chilled her blood. And then it was gone, like a cloud in a sunny sky. “He is not dead, though he’s likely to be. And no, I never hated him, though he has every reason to hate me.”
She searched his face. “Why did you do it?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know. Because I’m a fool. He shouldn’t have to pay for that. And it seems I can’t.”
She opened her mouth to probe further, more in sympathy than in judgement, for she sensed some deep, terrible regret in him. She didn’t understand it, and wanted instinctively to help, but the intensity of that darkness frightened her into silence.
After a moment, she said instead, “What will you do in Portugal?”
“Take ship somewhere else, I suppose. What will you do here?”
She sighed. “Go on as I am. Your advice may be sound—I don’t know. But I cannot leave my father in this state.”
He seemed to hesitate, but at least the blackness seemed to have gone from his eyes, leaving them concerned as he gazed at her. “Mansel is serious in his pursuit of you. Too many people know about it for him to give up. Your refusal, your virtue, is nothing to him beside that.”
“You can’t know this.”
“I heard him in the taproom, and I asked around. I believe he set those ruffians on you the other night. He was supposed to rescue you and earn your undying gratitude. He hadn’t bargained on me being there to steal his glory. Neither had his pet thugs.”
“But that’s ridiculous! He cannot care that much! I am simply there.”
“I daresay your refusal piqued his interest into obsession. Some men are like that. And you are very beautiful.”
She waved that aside impatiently. “Are you like that?” she demanded, more to shoot down his argument than anything else.
“I can be obsessive,” he admitted. “But I take my rejections like a gentleman.”
“I don’t suppose you get many.”
“Ah well, women like a wicked man.”
“No, they don’t,” she retorted. “Or I’d be madly in love with Sir Hugh Mansel.”
He laughed, and this time she allowed herself to smile in response. He took her breath away. And it came to her that he, not Mansel, was the true danger to her.
Almost in desperation, she changed the subject, asking about his family.
He spoke amusingly, with warmth and humour, of an older sister, Bethany, and a younger brother at school, and from there the conversation moved onto other things—plays and books, war and politics, and the plight of the poor.
He was surprisingly knowledgeable in all these subjects, and yet he never tried to lecture or force his opinion on her. Instead, he actually listened to her.
She was curiously disappointed as they drove into Harwich. She asked him to let her down at the market, where he halted the horses, and came round to hand her down.
He bowed over her hand with perfect courtesy and released her. “I count myself fortunate to have met you, Miss Jasper. My sister is Mrs. Baldeston, should you receive a letter from her. My compliments to your father. Goodbye.”
They were in a public place, full of people of all kinds, many of whom knew her. She should not gaze at him as he leapt back up to his curricle seat, all lean, agile grace, so she smiled and turned away, feeling dazed and stupidly happy, even while regret echoed around her head.
I’ll never see him again. I’ll never see him again.