Chapter 33
We return now to Lottie Tolliver—who, at the precise moment our tale resumes, was descending the terrace steps with fury untempered in her veins.
She had meant to humiliate him—that utterly insufferable, maddening Mr Deverell—but instead had found herself the object of laughter before a room full of amused spectators.
The night air was cool and sweet, and most unjustly wasted upon so violent a temper, for she would have gladly set the lawns of Malverne aflame if it meant erasing the memory of that wretched scene.
The gardens stretched before her, silvered in moonlight and strewn with the remnants of gaiety. Lanterns swung from the trees like watchful eyes, and her slippers crunched against the gravel path as she stormed towards the rose garden.
“Freedom, indeed,” she muttered. “If the man thinks he can talk me into marriage with billiards and bravado, he is gravely mistaken. The audacity of it!”
She rounded the hedge in full tirade, only to be seized without warning. An arm caught about her waist and a hand covered her mouth. She was drawn back hard against a broad chest.
For a dreadful instant, she was nowhere near Lady Malverne’s garden. It was Marchmont. Surely, it was Marchmont.
“Shh,” came a low whisper at her ear.
The world narrowed to the black terror of a man deciding that her will need not matter. She struck.
Her heel came down upon his boot; her elbow drove back; and he released her at once with a muffled curse in a voice she knew too well.
She whirled and shoved both hands hard against his chest. “Jasper Deverell! Have you entirely taken leave of your senses?”
He staggered back, one hand braced upon his knee and the other clutching his earlier injury with a pitiful groan. “For the love of—stop attacking me, woman!” he managed, ducking as her fist came close to connecting with his head.
“Well perhaps,” she snapped, “you might announce yourself before pouncing upon ladies in the dark like some common ruffian!”
“I thought it would be an efficient way of gaining your attention,” he managed. “I see now that I was gravely mistaken.”
“Efficient?” she repeated, lunging again. “You assaulted me, you great idiot!”
“Gently, Miss Tolliver, I am wounded!”
“You will be mortally wounded soon!” she warned, advancing another step.
He straightened at last, wincing, and caught her wrists before she could strike again. “Forgive me,” he said, his voice low now, the humour barely restraining itself beneath his composure. “I mistook capture in the night for the most direct means of gaining your attention.”
“Well, you have my attention,” she snapped. “And it isn’t humorous in the least! Do not ever seize me in the dark!”
He looked at her oddly. “I beg your pardon. I shan’t do it again.”
“Your head will be off your shoulders if you do!” She narrowed her eyes. “What did you intend to do with my attention, now that you have it?”
“Convince you to marry me, I suppose. I suspected kidnapping may be the necessary course.”
She struggled against his hands at her wrists. “You would not be the first man to attempt it. Let me go!”
The mirth drained from his eyes, though he did not release her. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me perfectly well. Now let go of me, you brute!”
It must be said—though perhaps the reader has already suspected—that Lottie had never quite told the full story of Marchmont. Indeed, she had gone to some lengths to persuade even herself that there was no story worth telling. But now was hardly the moment for revelations
Instead, Lottie did what any reasonable woman would do—as soon as he released her, she pushed him, rather hard.
Jasper stumbled back a step, more startled than injured, and looked at her with a mixture of confusion and wounded pride. “Miss Tolliver—”
“Do not ‘Miss Tolliver’ me,” she snapped, cheeks flushed. “If you have something to say, you may do so from a civilised distance.”
He raised his hands, palms open. “Very well. You have my distance.”
Lottie felt a stray breeze catch at the loose curls at her temple, and bristled once more, for Jasper had the audacity to look amused.
“Lottie,” he said softly.
She kept her arms firmly crossed. “You will kindly refrain from such familiarity.”
“I cannot. It is the only name that suits you.”
“Then invent another!”
When she made to step around him, he lifted a hand—not touching her this time. Only when she did not move away did he brush two fingers beneath her chin, inviting her to meet his gaze. “Look at me, Lottie.”
It was a most unwise thing to do, for Jasper’s eyes were not at all the proper shade for arguing.
A sensible woman would have looked down at once—and indeed, an angry woman ought to have glared, or scolded, or at the very least remembered the speech she had been internally composing.
Unfortunately, at that moment she could not have summoned a single coherent argument if her very life depended upon it.
Jasper’s thumb remained at her chin, and his voice dropped to a maddeningly soft register. “I should not have pounced upon you unaware.”
“No,” she said tightly, though her heart had begun a most inconvenient flutter. “You should not have.”
“Nor should I have provoked you before an audience.”
Her throat tightened. “You humiliated me, before a room full of peers, no less. You think everything a jest. You tease and laugh, and I—” she broke off, pressing her lips together before she could betray more.
“You cannot charm your way out of this, Mr Deverell. I will not forgive you because you suddenly remember how to speak gently.”
“I only ask that you listen, Lottie.”
She wanted to scoff and tear her chin from his hand, but she did neither, for something in his tone and the look in his eyes made resistance far more difficult than it ought to have been. “What do you want from me?”
“Marry me,” he said softly, his thumb brushing the hollow of her throat in a touch so slight it might have been accidental—though she suspected, to her great discomposure, that it was not. “Let me save you. If you must marry, let it be me. Let it be by your own choosing.”
Lottie had the dreadful suspicion that he could feel the betraying flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb, or worse, the swallow she could not quite prevent.
“You do me a great injustice,” he continued, quieter now, “if you believe I should ever wish to cage you. I would have you marry me so that you might be free, Lottie—or as free as any woman in England may hope to be. You should have your own fortune, your own carriage, your own servants, your own time. You might travel, study, fence, read every improper book ever printed, and terrify half the Continent if it pleases you. No one should dictate your conduct.”
Lottie stared at him, her heart beating too high in her throat. “No one but you, I suppose.”
“Not even I.”
“You would forbid me nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“How very magnanimous. You would grant me every freedom imaginable for a woman, so long as I wear your ring while exercising them.”
He flinched. “You mistake me, Lottie.”
“I mistake nothing. Your talk of liberty is only another form of possession.”
“Possession?” He turned from her, dragging a hand over his mouth as if to contain words better left unsaid. The moonlight caught in his hair, silvering it, and the line of his jaw tightened. “Charlotte Tolliver, you have no liberty to lose.”
It was, of course, the worst possible moment for him to look devastatingly handsome, and Lottie, to her great irritation, was perfectly aware of it.
He turned back, his composure fraying. “Every inch of freedom you claim has been permitted you. Tell me, what future awaits you without a husband? A life beneath your father’s roof, bound by his allowance?
Your brother’s goodwill upon your father’s death?
And if Benedict dies without an heir, what then?
Will you take instruction from that ridiculous cousin—Horatio, is it?
I remember him from that foolish duel at dawn; the man could scarcely hold a pistol the right way up. ”
Lottie said nothing.
The miserable truth—though she would have bitten her tongue before admitting it—was that Mr Deverell was, in this instance, quite correct. It was intolerable. Worse, it was humiliating. She could almost hear the universe laughing at her expense.
“I would rather starve,” she said fiercely, “than live under any man’s command.”
“Then you were born in the wrong century, my dear—or the wrong world entirely. And you seem determined to torment every man unfortunate enough to inhabit it with you!”
She almost laughed, but instead lifted her chin, eyes glittering. “Then they must be pitifully easy to torment. A woman with a mind of her own should hardly cause such distress.”
“Distress?” Jasper’s voice broke slightly on the word. “You call this distress? You have turned half the county inside out, and me with it.”
Lottie sighed heavily. She was suddenly very, very tired. “Would you simply leave me alone, Jasper Deverell? Would you?”
“We have had quite a great deal of amusement together,” she said, knowing the words were cruel the moment they left her, “and I cannot think how we might possibly continue it.”
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Amusement.”
“Jasper—”
“Good God, Lottie. If it has all been naught but amusement to you, then I am a very foolish player indeed.”
“I never asked you to concern yourself with me!”
“No,” he said hoarsely, “you never ask. You command. You stride into a man’s peace, set it ablaze, and then look astonished when he cannot breathe for wanting you!”
She blinked, startled to silence by the desperation in his voice.
“Lottie.” He took a step nearer and she could feel the heat of him through the chill night air.
“Be silent now, and listen to me. I am not proud of it, but I am past pretending indifference. You have made a fool of me in every conceivable way, and still I would marry you tomorrow if you gave me half a chance.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words—and indeed, thought itself—refused to come.
He gave a short, unsteady laugh, raking a hand through his hair. “God help me,” he muttered, before dropping to one knee upon the gravel. “Lottie Tolliver, I am begging you. Marry me.”
She stared down at him, her heart hammering so wildly she could scarcely breathe. “You are absurd. Stand up at once.”
“I am undoubtedly absurd. But I am also desperate, and the ground is very cold, so if you mean to refuse me, pray do it quickly before my knees lose all feeling.”
Her lips parted, and there was a treacherous impulse within that urged her to yield.
She would gladly take pleasure from him, and give it too; she would dine beside him each night if the world allowed it, ride at his side, quarrel with him until dawn, and—had she been a man—count it an honour to be his dearest friend.
But marriage? Marriage was the one cage from which a woman could not climb down, leap out, or charm her way free.
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“No, you will not refuse me? Or no, you will not marry me?”
She drew a long breath through her nose. “I will not marry you.”
Jasper blinked once, then huffed a breath that might have been a laugh, though there was little amusement in it.
“Well,” he said, rising. “Begging was worth a try.” He dusted the gravel from his coat with a kind of injured dignity. “It seems I am poorly suited to humility. My pride takes to it as badly as my knees.”
“Then let this be the end of it,” she said, though her voice wavered on the last word. She despised it for betraying her.
“On the contrary,” he replied, straightening his coat. The smile that curved his mouth was far too calm for comfort—precisely the sort of smile that preceded catastrophe. “I have one card yet to play.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And what, pray, might that be?”
He met her gaze squarely. “My forfeit.”
Lottie went very still. The wicked man would not. “You cannot possibly mean—”
“Oh, I can,” he said easily, clasping his hands behind his back, “and I do. By the rules of our wager, Miss Tolliver, you are honour-bound to yield whatever I demand.”
She drew herself up, every inch bristling with disbelief. “And you would dare demand—?”
Jasper’s smile deepened, slow and audacious. “Your hand, madam. In marriage. It appears you must be chained to me after all.”