Chapter 30
The chamber lay steeped in silence, broken only by the faint crackle of the dying fire and Charlotte Tolliver’s steady breathing where she drowsed against his arm. She was so warm.
Jasper drifted half in, half out of sleep, until some restless stirring made him glance towards the mantel clock. The hands, glinting in the glow of embers, showed the hour to be half-past four.
He drew a slow breath. “It is near dawn.”
She stirred and gave a little murmur of dismay. “I must retreat to my chamber before the earliest risers are about.” Her voice was still thick with sleep. “The maids will be up to stoke fires at first light, and I should hate to be caught slinking back like a thief.”
Something tightened in him, sudden and ungovernable. The words escaped before he could summon prudence. “Then do not go at all. Marry me, Charlotte.”
She started upright, clutching the sheet to her breast, colour flooding her cheeks. “Marry you?”
“Yes. Marry me.”
She stared at him for a long moment before the hurt in her face hardened into fury.
“Upon my word, no!” She flung the sheet aside and scrambled from the bed, snatching up her nightrobe with shaking hands.
“Oh, I understand now. I understand perfectly. Now comes the reckoning. Is that it? The gentleman’s conscience wakes with the dawn? ”
His blood ran cold. “No.”
“You think me ruined.”
“No!”
“You think because I came to your bed that I must now be tidied into respectability with a ring and a licence and a few noble words before breakfast?”
“God, Charlotte, no. How could you even think that of me?”
She shoved her arms into her robe and tied the sash with a vicious jerk. “Do not insult me by lying. Why else would you propose at this unholy hour? Why else but guilt? Unless, of course, it is my dowry you covet.”
For one stunned moment, he could only stare, and then he began to laugh. “Your dowry? Do you imagine I need your fortune?”
Her eyes flashed. “It would not be the first time a man attempted to make a transaction of me.”
Ah. His mouth tightened. “Marchmont.”
A flush rose in her cheek.
“This is not the same,” he said carefully.
“Is it not?” she demanded. “A proposal after I have lain with a man? After he has had what he wanted? How very familiar. How very neat.”
“I have not had what I wanted.”
Her mouth twisted. “No? Then what more would you like? My name? My obedience? You understand full well I have no desire for marriage, Jasper! I told you so before, and I shall tell you again—I will not be driven to the altar.”
“I do not drive you,” he returned, frustration roughening his tone. “I entreat you.”
“Then entreat no further. For my answer is no. I bested you, Jasper Deverell,” she pressed on, breathless with the force of her indignation.
“I claimed my forfeit, and I triumphed. You were undone, and I gloried in it. That is all. Do not cloak the aftermath in vows and noble speeches, for I will not wear the chain!”
“Lottie, will you listen—”
“No, I shall not! You are not my gaoler, nor my saviour. I owe you nothing.”
With one last blazing look, she swept from the chamber, leaving Jasper staring after her, feeling rather dumbfounded. He sank back against the pillows, dragging a hand over his face as the door closed softly behind her, which was somehow worse than a slam.
What a damned fool he was. He knew better.
Langley told him, with that insufferably knowing air, that if he wished to befriend Charlotte Tolliver, he ought simply to marry her. And like a simpleton, Jasper had taken the advice to heart, though he knew better—God help him, he knew.
Charlotte Tolliver had as much inclination for chains as a wild hawk for the falconer’s glove. And now… now he had lost her.
The loss of what, precisely, he could not be persuaded to confess. A friendship? Possibly. Yet what friendship left a man restless at her smile, or unmoored at the lightest touch of her hand? What friendship had driven him to this ruinous longing?
No—it was something far more than friendship, and infinitely more perilous. That he should admit he loved her was laughable. He would sooner wrestle with angels than own such folly aloud, even in the privacy of his own mind.
Far easier and safer to say only this: he had been fond of the game, and now he had lost it.
“Well done, Deverell,” he murmured to the empty room. “Brilliantly played.”