Chapter 24
Jasper Deverell was not in the habit of writing long letters to young ladies, and certainly not ones that required multiple drafts and precisely the right balance of wit, sincerity, and damage control.
He stood half-dressed, glaring at the third crumpled page that now lay beside the fireplace.
He sat down, then stood again, and poured himself another brandy.
My dear Miss Tolliver,
It has come to my attention that the events of last night may have slightly…
No. Absolutely not. “Slightly” was the language of cowards. He crumpled and tossed the draft.
Miss Tolliver,
Forgive the informality of this letter, but I find myself unequal to the usual posturing. What passed between us at Bellamy’s was, in the eyes of Society, madness. In my eyes, it was rather glorious.
You were daring. Brilliant. You somehow managed to make a moustache appear rakish. I shall never forgive you for stealing my heart so thoroughly.
That said, I must be very plain: your family is understandably displeased. Langley has threatened exile. And I—
He paused.
Then, in a moment of rare honesty, he added:
You are, quite possibly, the most marvellous disaster I have ever invited into my life. And if I have any hope of surviving you, I must ask a question I never imagined myself asking:
Would you do me the great honour of allowing me to call upon you formally? Not as a friend, nor as an opponent, but as a man who wishes to offer you more than a wager.
He paused again and stared at the page, and then, at the bottom, he added:
If the answer is no, you need only send back this letter unanswered. I will not speak of it again. But if the answer is perhaps… or if you would like to see me squirm in person, as I rightly deserve, then I shall await your reply with more hope than I ought to have.
He signed it swiftly, before he could lose his nerve.
Yours, in earnest confusion and rising affection,
J. Deverell
He sanded the page, sealed it with the family crest, then stared at the letter for a full minute before throwing it into the fire alongside his other failed drafts.
It was mid-morning at Tolliver House, and the drawing room was already a wreck.
Hetty, luminous despite being eight months pregnant and deeply cross about it, had claimed the best chair, and was fanning herself dramatically with a folded periodical.
Georgiana, with her infant son tucked under one arm, had installed herself upon the settee, all satin and smugness.
Marianne sat curled by the window with a book she had surprisingly not opened once, her expression droll and expectant.
Even Nell had joined, cradling her chicken as Georgie cradled her baby.
In the middle of it all sat Lottie, drinking lukewarm tea and being judged with far more affection than she found at all tolerable.
“Well,” Hetty said at last, adjusting the cushion behind her lower back, “we have been informed.”
Lottie gave her an arch look over the rim of her teacup. “I rather assumed as much. You did not cross all of Mayfair on a Thursday morning merely to admire my embroidery.”
“I would not cross the hall to admire your embroidery,” Hetty replied sweetly. “No, Theo left a note before he left this morning. A long one. I believe he did not wish to tell me in person, likely for fear of inducing an early labour. I skimmed it, of course.”
“I annotated it,” Georgiana said cheerfully, bouncing the baby on her knee. “For the family archive.”
Lottie stared. “You are maintaining an archive now?”
Georgie gave a modest smile. “Only of our scandals. I have arranged them chronologically. There are appendices, naturally.”
“Is there a volume just for Lottie?” Mari chimed in.
“Oh, there shall be,” said Georgie.
Hetty waved a dismissive hand. “In any case, there is no need to repeat our husbands’ lectures. It seems between them, they have thoroughly scolded you, and quite frankly—”
“—we have all discovered that scolding you never accomplishes anything,“ Georgie finished. “You tend to do exactly as you please, whether we approve or not.”
“Indeed.” Hetty shifted, groaning softly as she attempted to rearrange her spine. “And there is no use involving Mama in this small indiscretion. So let us proceed to the useful portion of the morning. Tell us, Lottie—do you feel… free with Mr Deverell?”
Lottie blinked. “Do I… what?”
“Free,” Georgie echoed, her tone gentler. “Unrestrained. Most like yourself, perhaps?”
“I…” Lottie hesitated, glancing around at all four of her sisters, each watching her with varying degrees of curiosity, amusement, and condescension. “Yes. I suppose I do.”
“Hmm,” said Hetty, settling back with great satisfaction, hands resting atop her rounded belly. “Interesting.”
Georgie turned to her and raised one perfectly arched brow. Hetty returned the look. It lasted less than a second, but it was far too familiar not to be noticed.
“Do not think I cannot see the glances you are exchanging,” Lottie said sharply. “If you are implying that I am in love with Mr Deverell, I most certainly am not.”
“They duelled naked,” Nell chimed in brightly from the chaise, where she was now upside down with the chicken in the air.
“We absolutely did not!” Lottie snapped.
Nell grinned. “I was only checking. It would explain quite a lot.”
“I despise all of you.”
“You do not,” Mari said gently, not even glancing up. “And for the record, everyone can see it. Everyone but you, that is.”
Before Lottie could produce a suitably outraged rebuttal, the drawing room doors burst open with their usual lack of ceremony and in swept Lady Tolliver in a flurry of lilac muslin, pearls, and delightfully unfiltered maternal joy.
“ “My girls!” Lady Tolliver cried, clasping her hands dramatically to her chest. “What a picture you all make! So much beauty, so much brilliance.”
Her eyes landed on the infant in Georgie’s lap and she gasped. “Oh, my darling boy! Is he not the most divine creature on God’s earth? And we shall have another very soon!” She clapped her hands together. “A house full of babies! What could be more joyful?”
“An estate full of liquor?” Lottie muttered, wishing for another drink to dull the ache in her forehead.
Lady Tolliver chose not to hear her, or perhaps, wisely, pretended as much.
“And you, dearest Lottie,” she said, gliding across the room, “must accept that marriage is inevitable. It shall come, whether you like it or not—and truly, you could do far worse than Mr Deverell. Oh yes, darling, I know everything. There is little in this house that escapes your Mama. I do not even mind that he is a dreadful rake.”
“Mama,” Lottie groaned.
“Reformed rakes make the very best husbands,” Hetty declared airily, sipping her tea. “Theo was an utter disgrace before I took him in hand.”
“I rather think it was Theo who tamed you, Hetty,” Georgie said, raising a brow.
Hetty waved her off with regal indifference. “That is quite beside the point.”
“Reformed rakes,” Mari said dryly, “make the best husbands in the same way that floods make excellent landscape architects. It all looks dramatic after, but at what cost?”
Lottie made a strangled sound and buried her face in her hands.
Georgie, clearly enjoying herself far too much, bounced the baby again and said, “Mr Deverell’s father, the Earl of Bellston, is nearing seventy, spends half the year abroad for his lungs—or in the company of a Scottish countess, depending upon which footman one chooses to believe—and possesses a very handsome estate in Kent.
Did you know that, Lottie? Jasper is heir to the title, the principal estate, the London house, a dower house large enough to require its own parish, and an income sufficient to keep six mistresses, though naturally we shall encourage economy and hope he limits himself to one wife. ”
Lottie groaned again. “What more could any woman ask of holy matrimony? Never mind that Mr Deverell is vain, irreverent, fond of wagers, entirely too handsome for anyone’s good, incapable of silence, morally slippery, and once set his waistcoat alight merely to escape a dinner engagement!”
Nell gasped. “Did he truly?”
“No,” Lottie admitted. “But I should not be surprised in the least.”
“Ah,” said Hetty with a slow smile, “but you did not say you did not wish to marry him. You merely offered a rather passionate and unusually detailed list of reasons why you ought not to. Which, in my experience, is rather more telling.”
“I should like to leave this family immediately,” Lottie said, muffled behind her hands. “Where does one apply for replacement siblings?”
“We are quite irreplaceable,” said Georgie, patting her hand with far too much sympathy to be sincere. “Much like Mr Deverell, it seems.”
Lady Tolliver beamed at the prospect of impending matrimony. “Your sister is always correct when it comes to such matters, my dear. How else do you imagine she managed to ensnare a duke?”
“Quite by accident,” Lottie murmured under her breath.
“But nevertheless,” Lady Tolliver pressed on, heedless, “one must strike whilst the Season is still fresh. It needn’t be next week, of course, but truly, Mr Deverell is a very fine match. Now Georgiana, do stop hoarding that child and hand little Henry to his grandmama. You are being quite a hog.”
Georgie sighed. “Very well, Mama. Try not to let him chew on your necklace again.”
Lady Tolliver took the child into her arms. “Oh, look at him! His dear little fingers! And his darling ears! I do believe he has your father’s brow and my cheekbones. Such a cherub! I could gaze upon him forever.”
“Yes, Mama,” Hetty said, dry as a winter biscuit. “And you often do.”
Georgie was not to be diverted. She turned back to Lottie, her expression all quiet command. “Now, listen to me carefully. Hetty and I have come to an agreement.”
“Oh, splendid,” Lottie muttered. “That always bodes well.”
Georgie continued as though she had not heard. “Lady Malverne’s annual house party is confirmed for next week. The invitations have been issued and the weather promises to be fair.”
Lottie raised a brow. “That would be the same party at which I disappeared into the rose garden with Gainsford and drank a bottle of claret, was it not?”
“The real scandal, as I recall, was the duke and I,“ Georgie said primly. “Which ended in marriage and was therefore entirely respectable.”
“The point,” said Hetty, in her best eldest-sister voice, “is that you shall attend. You shall wear something flattering but not provocative, and you shall dance no fewer than three times with eligible gentlemen, and you shall not vanish into any shrubbery.”
“And you shall,” Georgie added, “either secure a proposal from Mr Deverell or attract one from another suitable gentleman. It matters not which. What does matter is that by the end of this Season, you shall be betrothed.”
“There is no longer any choice,” Hetty said firmly. “The family can tolerate only so many near-scandals before someone ends up memorialised in the Gazette.”
Lottie looked around at her sisters with mounting dread. “And if I do not comply? If I have no wish to marry at all?”
Georgie’s smile turned ever so slightly terrifying. “Then I shall begin introducing you to the gentlemen from my reserve list.”
Lottie paled. “You still have lists?”
“Several,” Georgie said sweetly. “Marquesses with gout. Viscounts who spit when they speak. A baron who smells of pickled herring. All of them most eager for a sizeable dowry and a young, fertile-looking bride.”
“That is vile,” Lottie exclaimed.
“You should be thanking me. I have spared you the worst of them.”
“She is not jesting,” Hetty said, sipping her tea.
“You are all ghouls. Unrepentant, matchmaking ghouls.” Lottie glanced toward her mother. “Who is to chaperone me on this doomed excursion?”
“Not I,” said Hetty, shifting with a wince. “If I so much as breathe irregularly, Theo turns white and begins ringing for hot water and clean linens.”
“Nor me,” Georgie added. “Henry is teething, and I refuse to travel with more than one uncontrollable creature at a time.”
“Then who?” Lottie demanded.
“I have asked my husband to attend in a supervisory capacity,” Georgie said primly.
“Morleigh? You have appointed the duke as my chaperone?”
Georgie gave a delicate shrug. “He has a gift for glaring at inappropriate men. I daresay it will be quite useful.”
“Your chaperones,” Hetty confirmed serenely, “shall consist of Mama and Papa for appearance’s sake, and His Grace for actual enforcement.”
Lottie looked horrified. “His Grace does not like parties. Or people. Or me, most days.”
“Nonsense,” Georgie said cheerfully. “He merely prefers you at a distance, and when he is not rescuing you bodily from disaster. Besides, he has agreed. Albeit under protest. It was either accompany you or host a luncheon for the Dowager Duchess of Exmoor, and he despises her.”
“God help me,” Lottie breathed.
Morleigh, of all people. There would be no escaping the duke’s notice.
With his silent disapproval and glacial stare, he would track her every movement like a bloodhound in black silk.
She would not be able to so much as flirt by the hedgerows without him materialising at her elbow like the spectre of all joy extinguished.
Which meant… she was going to have to see Jasper before they left, so that he might claim his forfeit.