Chapter 34
To say Charlotte Tolliver was outraged would be a gross understatement. Such a term suggested a flash of temper soon forgotten, a word that might fit a footman dropping soup into a duchess’s lap.
Lottie’s was a fury steeped overnight, growing darker and more potent with every recollection of Mr Jasper Deverell’s infuriating grin.
How dare he. How dare he?
To use her own wager against her! To declare she must marry him, as though her own life were something to be bartered and won!
The breakfast parlour of Malverne House was, as ever, a picture of civility: sunlight spilling over polished mahogany, the scent of coffee mingling with roses from the terrace, and a perfectly respectable degree of gossip rising from the assembled guests—none of which interested Lottie in the least. She sat very straight, not so much buttering her toast as murdering it.
Lord Tolliver, seated beside his son-in-law, the Duke of Morleigh, was holding forth on a matter of profound national importance—namely, whether the gooseberry was in fact a patriotic fruit. The duke, to his credit, endured the lecture with saintly composure.
Lady Tolliver, meanwhile, surveyed her daughter with the penetrating gaze of a woman who had raised five daughters and trusted none of them for a moment. “My dear, you appear flushed,” she said at last. “Are you unwell?”
“I am perfectly fine, Mama.”
Lady Tolliver narrowed her eyes. “You are smiling too tightly and buttering far too aggressively. I should know the signs by now. Who is it, my child, and what have they done?”
“No one,” Lottie said, with alarming emphasis. “And nothing.”
Her mother gave a dignified harumph. “I cannot decide which alarms me more. Your denial, or your diction. It is far too crisp for innocence.”
“You will forgive me, Mama, if I choose not to unburden my soul over breakfast.”
“I will forgive nothing until I know what precisely I am forgiving. Your tone suggests guilt.”
“My tone,” Lottie said sweetly, “suggests profound irritation.”
Lady Tolliver produced a long-suffering sigh and turned towards Lady Malverne to discuss whether the musicians engaged for the evening were at all respectable.
Lottie turned back to her plate, stabbing viciously at a piece of kipper and lamenting that it no longer possessed a face, for it would have been most satisfying to glare at something.
She dared not look to the end of the table, though she could feel the object of her ire there—laughing far too easily, sitting far too near, and no doubt perfectly aware he was being ignored.
Jasper Deverell had no right. The very nerve of the man! And that smile—so infuriatingly lopsided and sharp—oh, it was enough to make a saint contemplate violence.
If Mr Deverell imagined she would endure such arrogance with quiet civility, he had sorely misjudged her temperament. Lottie Tolliver had never suffered in silence a day in her life, and she had no intention of beginning now.
Indeed, her thoughts were already engaged in the design of several suitable punishments, each more medieval than the last. (Drawing and quartering held the most appeal, though tarring was another fine option).
It was perhaps fortunate for Mr Deverell that fate—or something with rather less mercy—intervened at that precise moment.
For the breakfast parlour door opened, and in marched a pair of gleaming Hessian boots, a flash of polished buttons, and a grin so self-satisfied it could only belong to one man.
Lord Marchmont had returned.