Chapter 4
As readers well know, Lady Malverne’s garden party marked the unofficial beginning of the London Season, and it did so with all the requisite fanfare: a quartet tucked beneath the south terrace, liveried footmen bearing trays of chilled punch, and enough embroidered parasols to shade the entire Peerage.
The lawns were in their prime, green as emerald, freshly rolled and dotted with marquees strung with ribbons.
Lottie stood at the edge of the gathering with her fan half-open, surveying the crowd with mild amusement.
She could scarcely believe that she had once thought Society would be dreadfully dull. Oh, how mistaken she had been! The Season was glorious, a riot of schemes and possibilities. One only needed to know where to look for the mischief, and Charlotte Tolliver always knew where to look.
“Do smile,” Georgie murmured beside her, adjusting her gloves. “You are not here to terrify the eligible gentlemen.”
“I most certainly am,” Lottie replied, scanning the crowd. “They ought to be alarmed. I am far too charming to be safe.”
“If you were any more pleased with yourself,” came Theo’s voice as he joined them, hands clasped neatly behind his back, “you should float off the lawn like a balloon on a breeze.”
“Hetty is attending today?” Lottie asked with a raised brow.
“Heavens, no,” he replied. “She is eight months along, in full command of her drawing room, her servants, and my every waking moment. I was dispatched with a list of instructions which I have already, to my peril, disregarded.”
“She shall know,” Georgie observed mildly.
“She always knows,” said Theo. He turned his gaze upon Lottie. “You are to keep your gloves on, Charlotte, remain in plain view, and refrain from discussing duels, trousers, or theology.”
“And what if my theology is correct?”
“I am not here to debate the nature of Providence,” Theo said dryly, though his eyes gleamed with amusement. “I am here to avert catastrophe.”
“You were once tolerable company, you know.”
“I was once unmarried and unburdened by a household teeming with Tolliver women.”
Lottie grinned. “I can imagine worse fates.”
He gave a long-suffering sigh. “Perhaps—but marrying one Tolliver and inheriting four more as sisters-in-law has robbed me of what little amusement I once possessed. It is rather like residing in a particularly fashionable lunatic asylum.”
“How flattering,” Georgie said dryly, without looking at him.
“Present company excepted, of course,” Theo added, straightening his cuffs. “You are every inch the duchess now.”
Behind them, the Duke of Morleigh stood with the expression of a man who would clearly prefer to be inspecting drainage improvements upon one of his estates.
His presence here, Lottie knew very well, was not owed to pleasure.
He had come for Georgie—lending weight to her authority as Lottie’s sponsor—and had not spoken a single word since their arrival.
That, Lottie suspected, was entirely deliberate.
Between them, Morleigh and Langley had removed her from London last Season with the efficiency of men disposing of refuse from a stable yard. Now they stood here again, solemn as magistrates presiding over the return of a repeat offender.
At last, the duke cast a glance at Lottie. “Let us hope your sister’s reign survives your entrance to the Season.”
Lottie fluttered her fan lazily, though the smile she gave was all sharp edges. “How unkind, Your Grace. I should loathe to disappoint. Now tell me—will your cousin, Lord Gainsford, be in attendance today?”
Theo coughed into his glove, and Georgie went perfectly still.
The duke’s mouth thinned. “He is abroad.”
“Such a pity,” Lottie said, with an innocence so artful she knew it bordered upon criminal. “We shared the most spirited conversation last Season. And the claret was divine.”
Georgie’s fan snapped shut. “Indeed. I remember it perfectly well—particularly the moment we discovered you both in the folly, without a chaperone, and in possession of two empty bottles.”
Lottie tilted her head in recollection. “Three, actually.”
Lady Tolliver appeared at that moment in a flurry of lavender silk and maternal agitation, fanning herself with great urgency.
“Oh, my darlings!” she cried. “You must circulate at once! Smile. Keep your shoulders back. Speak distinctly, Charlotte, and under no circumstances are you to climb anything.”
Trailing behind her came Lord Tolliver, who had paused beside a hedge trimmed into the shape of a swan.
He regarded it with great seriousness, raising his quizzing glass.
“A fine attempt, though why gardeners persist in shaping such an ordinary fowl is beyond me. A hippocampus would lend the composition considerably more grandeur. Mythological symbolism is terribly neglected in modern horticulture.”
“Papa,” Georgie said with extraordinary restraint, “pray do not lecture the gardeners today.”
“Am I not to speak to anyone at all?” he asked, crestfallen. “I came prepared to discuss my latest essay on Greco-Roman garden allegory—your mama firmly instructed that I may not.”
“Come, Papa. Mama,” Georgie said with a diplomat’s patience. “We must make our proper introductions.”
With that, the Tolliver party began to move: Georgie and the duke at the front; Lady Tolliver murmuring blessings and instructions in equal measure; Lord Tolliver wandering slightly off course in pursuit of a cleverly shaped yew; and Theo, trailing behind Lottie like a weary guard.
As they strolled towards the central lawn, Lottie’s attention snagged quite against her will, upon a figure beneath the rose arch.
A gentleman she remembered well stood there, at his ease with one shoulder resting against the trellis.
Mr Jasper Deverell appeared entirely untroubled by the expectations of Society, the sunlight catching pleasantly in his tousled brown hair. He was laughing with a debutante, holding his punch glass with the kind of careless swagger that came naturally to men accustomed to admiration.
Which, Lottie reflected, was hardly surprising. Mr Deverell was very handsome, very wealthy, and the heir to an earldom—and entirely too aware of all three. Even as the girl chattered on, he lifted one brow in that infamous fashion of his, and the poor creature nearly swooned.
Lottie huffed softly and looked away, only to look back half a second later.
His gaze had already found her. His smile flashed white in the sunlight—not the dazzling sort he bestowed upon wide-eyed girls, but a slower thing, more crooked and altogether more dangerous. He passed his punch glass to a footman without so much as a nod of thanks and began across the lawn.
The debutante blinked at the abrupt dismissal, but Deverell was already striding away across the sunlit green, long-limbed and loose-hipped, his eyes trained upon Lottie with a lazy confidence that made her fingers twitch for a sword.
When he reached them, however, he behaved exactly as a gentleman must. He bowed first to the duke. “Morleigh. What a marvel to see you at a gathering so populated. Tell me—was it duty, or were you blackmailed?” He winked.
The duke inclined his head. “An unholy combination of the two.”
Deverell turned next to Georgie, offering a graceful bow and precisely enough charm to be forgiven his impertinence. “Your Grace. You are, as ever, a vision. Duchesshood appears to suit you exceedingly well.”
“Careful,” Georgie replied coolly, “I am very nearly fond of you, Mr Deverell. I should hate to regret it.”
Unperturbed, he turned to Theo, offering an easy grin—and here, readers might be reminded that Deverell and Langley had been the best of friends since boyhood. “Langley. Still alive, I see.”
“Against all odds,” Theo replied. “Though being appointed guardian to that”—he inclined his head towards Lottie—“may yet finish me.”
“You have my sympathies,” Jasper said gravely. “You always did take on more than was strictly reasonable.”
Then, with perfect composure and not the slightest hint of haste, he inclined his head towards Lord Tolliver, who remained absorbed with the swan-shaped hedges, and then bowed neatly to the viscountess. “Lady Tolliver. A pleasure, as always. The beauty of these gardens is second only to your own.”
Lady Tolliver fanned herself. “Oh! Mr Deverell, how gallant of you. You always did possess such a gift for expression.”
“I speak only as I find, madam.”
Only then did he allow his attention to settle upon Lottie. He grinned once more—slowly this time, his dimples appearing with an innocence that would have suited a cherub better.
Lottie did not move, keeping her spine perfectly straight and fan half-raised in what she hoped conveyed the picture of disinterest. It was, naturally, a fiction, though one she had cultivated with practice.
Mr Jasper Deverell was, quite objectively, the most deplorable rake of her acquaintance—perhaps second only to Lord Marchmont, though even that was debatable.
He was irreverent, shameless, and possessed of far too much wit for the comfort of any sensible person.
The sort of gentleman who left a young lady breathless and laughing, and only later wondering how on earth she had come to be perched in a tree beside him, drinking stolen wine from the bottle.
Lottie had always found that sort of situation remarkably difficult to resist.
“Miss Tolliver,” he said, with mock surprise, bowing deeply. “How unexpected. I was under the impression that Society had taken the wise precaution of barring your return.”
Lottie lowered her lashes and snapped open her fan. “How disappointed you must be.”
“On the contrary,” he replied easily. “I find myself delightfully unprepared, which—where you are concerned—seems only fair.”
Behind her, Georgie released a breath that sounded suspiciously like a warning.
Theo muttered, low enough for only the duke to hear, “Here begins the ruin of us all.”
Lottie smiled, all bright danger and charm dipped in honey. “Shall we take a turn, Mr Deverell?”
He offered his arm at once. “With pleasure.”
She placed her hand upon his sleeve with regal composure and allowed him to guide her towards the gravel path.
As they set off, she cast a brief glance over her shoulder at her chaperones, and suppressed a smile.
They could not stop her—after all, they were at a garden party, in full view of the company, and she was doing nothing whatsoever that could be called improper.
A young lady might take a turn about the grounds with a gentleman as often as she pleased. How extremely satisfying.
They had scarcely gone ten paces before Lottie glanced sideways at Mr Deverell. “You appear remarkably cheerful for a man who was just informed of my return.”
“I am an optimist.”
“You are a menace.”
“Both may be true.”
She considered him, her fan tapping lightly against her palm. She supposed the best way to treat a man like Deverell was to take him down a notch. “You are pride incarnate, Mr Deverell. Pride in boots, pride in breeches—pride with an absolutely ridiculous cravat.”
He looked faintly pleased to her chagrin. “Ridiculous? This cravat required three mirrors and the silent despair of my valet.”
She raised an eyebrow and glanced at him sidelong as they strolled. “Then your valet has my deepest sympathy, sir.”
He chuckled. “I choose to take that as admiration, inelegantly expressed.”
“I assure you it was neither.”
He smiled. “Well, I do find it saves time,” he said easily, “to treat insult as praise.”
The man was a quick wit, and Lottie was quite enjoying the banter. “You possess a remarkable talent for delusion.”
“Thank you. I consider it one of my more charming qualities.”
She tilted her head. “Oh, do you keep a list, Mr Deverell?”
“But of course. Would you care to hear it?”
“Send it to me by post.”
He brightened. “I shall.”
“I will add it directly to the fire.”
He laughed genuinely, before turning them down a narrower gravel path bordered with hawthorn and pale primroses, still well within sight of the lawn and its scattered guests. Their pace had slowed without comment, and Lottie made no effort to quicken it.
It was not that she fancied the man. It was simply that most men bored her exceedingly, and Mr Deverell, by contrast, intrigued her—and that was a temptation she had never found easy to resist.
She thought, fleetingly and in a rare moment of good sense, of Lord Marchmont, who had once seemed equally irresistible. She had learnt her lesson, of course. She really ought to exercise more caution.
Instead, she leant a fraction nearer and said lightly, “You know, Mr Deverell, if we linger much longer, someone will begin to take notice.”
He glanced down at her with unmistakable amusement. “I should hope so. I believe the ton began talking the moment I bowed to you.”
She bit back a laugh. “Well, I do so hate to disappoint Society.”
Before he could reply—and very possibly encourage her further—she slipped her hand from his sleeve and moved a step ahead along the path with studied nonchalance.
Behind her, though she did not turn to check, she was fairly certain that Mr Deverell was smiling—and of course, that was the most dangerous part, for she was smiling too.