Chapter 15
The next morning, Lottie awoke with the dawn, though to say she had slept would be a gross overstatement.
Her dreams, such as they were, had been rather unwholesome and delicious affairs: flashes of polished steel and breathless laughter; Jasper Deverell’s gloved hands closing over hers; the slide and clash of sabres; his mouth too near her ear; his voice murmuring, Do wear something you do not mind ruining.
Lottie lay for several moments staring at the canopy above her bed.
If she beat Jasper Deverell that afternoon—if she knocked the sabre from his clever hands and had the pleasure of watching that wicked composure crack—then he would owe her another forfeit.
The thought made her roll into the pillow with a smile. Perhaps—
A knock sounded at the door.
Lottie sat up at once, cheeks hot. “Yes?”
Her maid entered. “Good morning, miss. Shall I dress you for breakfast?”
“I am afraid I have a headache,” she said faintly.
The maid paused. “A headache, miss?”
“A feminine one.”
“Ah.”
“Acute,” Lottie added, because Jasper had been quite particular on the matter.
“Shall I tell Lady Tolliver you will not come down to breakfast?”
“Yes. Tell her I am delicate.”
The maid looked at her with suspicion, and Lottie looked back.
“Very delicate,” Lottie said.
As the maid withdrew, Lottie threw back the covers and sprang from bed.
Fortunately, the household was blessedly short of interference that morning.
Her elder sisters, Hetty and Georgie, had been summoned, captured, and borne away by their mother to inspect a new modiste on Bond Street; Nell had been packed off to some unfortunate second-cousin in Richmond; and Mari was, no doubt, folded into a library window seat with a book.
For once, the house was quiet, which suited Lottie perfectly.
She dressed herself with more purpose than ceremony, choosing not what matched, but what might permit a young lady to bend, spring, lunge, and, should Providence prove generous, thoroughly humiliate a gentleman.
She selected a soft lawn shirt, a high-collared riding jacket, and an old pair of Benedict’s dark woollen breeches, altered to fit her tolerably well.
She had polished her boots the night before to a shine.
She looked utterly ridiculous, she knew, but wonderfully prepared.
For a moment, she considered painting her lips. It was not strictly necessary. Indeed, no one at Westvale House would expect cosmetics for a clandestine duel, nor did she imagine Jasper Deverell would be especially occupied with the colour of her mouth while she was pressing a sabre to his throat.
Or perhaps he would.
Lottie opened the small ivory case upon her vanity, touched her finger to the waxy red within, and smoothed it carefully across her lips. She smiled, sharp and sly, and snapped the ivory case shut.
Let Jasper Deverell underestimate her. It would make the moment all the more delicious when she swept the blade from his grasp, watched his eyebrows shoot up in startled admiration, and sliced the smirk clean off his face with her sabre.
The sabre, unfortunately, was not in her room. It was in the fortress of her father’s office.
Fortunately, Lottie had long ago discovered that every fortress had a weakness. In this instance, it was Georgie—or more precisely, the key Georgie had promised her the previous Season, when Lottie had been bribed into lending assistance to one of her sister’s matrimonial campaigns.
Ten minutes later, she stood in her father’s office, easing open the cabinet like a thief robbing an altar. There, upon its velvet lining, lay Papa’s cherished ancestral sabre, its polished hilt catching the thin morning light.
“Good morning, old friend,” Lottie whispered.
At precisely half past eleven, she crept downstairs with the stealth of a scandal-bound shadow, the ancestral sabre wrapped in an old cloak and held close against her side. The hired carriage waited discreetly two streets away, its driver instructed to keep the horses standing and his mouth shut.
However, as she passed the morning room, a rustle of paper announced one obstacle Lottie had not anticipated. She paused mid-step. Drat.
“Ah,” said a voice from behind The Times. A page turned. “Sabres. Much better than pistols. Far less noise, and one is not obliged to explain a corpse before luncheon. Carry on, my dear.”
Her father sat ensconced in his usual armchair, dressed in a velvet dressing gown of violent purple, one stockinged foot propped upon an ottoman, spectacles perched precariously halfway down his nose. He did not glance up from his newspaper.
“I… yes. Thank you, Papa.”
“Do not thank me until after the engagement.” He sniffed and adjusted his spectacles. “Have you warmed your wrist?”
“My wrist?”
“Essential. A stiff wrist is the enemy of all good sabre work. That, and excessive confidence, though in this family the latter is beyond remedy.”
“I… I shall try not to be too excessive.”
“Excellent.” He turned a page. “Mind your footwork. And do try not to stab anything irreplaceable. Windows, yes. Potted plants, certainly. But not vital organs. That tends to cause such bother.”
“I shall do my best, Papa.”
“Very good. A young lady cannot be too considerate in these matters.” He peered over the top of The Times and regarded her with a thoughtful squint. “What are you wearing?”
“Benedict’s old breeches. My riding jacket. Boots.”
“Excellent. Sensible. A trifle piratical, perhaps, but one must make allowances for sport.” He took a sip of tea. “Do not forget to make the lad cry.”
Lottie smiled. “Only if absolutely necessary.”
“No point wasting the effort if he proves easily humbled.” Papa returned to his paper, then added, almost as an afterthought, “Tell Mr Deverell I expect him for dinner. Assuming he retains sufficient use of his limbs.”
Lottie bit back a smile, before hesitating at the doorway. “You are not… surprised, Papa? Or angry?”
He lowered the paper by an inch and looked at her properly.
“My dear girl, if I wished for daughters who embroidered quietly and sighed over poetry, I should not have married your mother. You are a Tolliver. You were fencing with fire irons by six, threatening Benedict with a paper knife by nine, and scaling the garden trellis by moonlight at—what was it? Four-and-ten?”
“Three-and-ten,” she said, smiling.
“Precisely. I see no cause for alarm now.” He waved a hand vaguely. “So long as you do not scandalise the household staff. We lost a perfectly decent parlourmaid last spring when Georgiana attempted to smuggle a hedgehog into the drawing room.”
“That was Nell.”
“So it was,” he murmured, not the least bit concerned. “No matter. The maid was prone to fainting. Never a useful quality in domestic service.” He paused to sip his tea, then squinted at her over the rim of the cup. “Does your mother know?”
Lottie hesitated. “Not precisely.”
“Splendid.” He nodded in evident approval. “The dear woman’s nerves are still recovering. From what, I do not know. Existence, I suspect.”
With a sigh, Lord Tolliver folded his newspaper and rested it neatly upon his knee, regarding his daughter with sudden solemnity. “I have no doubt you shall do wonderfully. But should some terrible injustice occur, and you find yourself forced to surrender, remember this.”
Lottie tilted her head. “Yes?”
He leant forward. “Lose gracefully. Then cheat.”
Lottie laughed aloud, the sound ringing against the high ceilings of the morning room. “Noted, Papa.”
Before he could retreat behind his paper again, she stepped forward, bent swiftly, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
He blinked. “Good God. Was that an expression of affection, my dear Charlotte?”
“Do not let it go to your head, Papa.”
“Alas,” he said, with a sigh of theatrical resignation, “I fear the damage is already done. I feel quite unaccountably tender.”
With that, she gave him a final curtsey, more mischievous than proper, and turned on her heel.
Behind her, Lord Tolliver sighed contentedly and unfolded his newspaper once more, adjusting his spectacles with one hand and lifting his teacup with the other. “Crossing swords before luncheon,” he muttered with a satisfied nod. “How very Tolliver of her.”