Chapter 35
There are moments in a man’s life when words fail him entirely, and for Jasper Deverell, this was such a moment.
He had thought himself a man of charm, and quite equal to any conversation—but no wit, however sharp, could touch what Miss Charlotte Tolliver had just laid bare.
It had silenced and sobered him utterly, and he found himself almost grateful that she had swept past them into the rose gardens with her head held high, leaving the two of them to flounder most inelegantly in the debris of their own reflections.
He had always considered her defiance a sort of glorious, reckless sport—a battle of wits between equals. It had not occurred to him until this moment that perhaps she broke Society’s rules only because they had first contrived to break her.
The Duke of Morleigh stood before him, a monument of pride and mortification, his hands clasped behind his back and his expression as fixed as if he were carved from stone. The silence between them stretched uncomfortably.
Jasper cleared his throat. “Well. That went rather poorly.”
The duke turned to him with the look of a man who might, at any moment, decide to commit murder. “Deverell, if you have any intention of making light of what has just transpired—“
“None whatsoever,” Jasper said quickly. “I find myself wholly bereft of humour. A distressing development, I assure you.” He paused, then added more soberly, “You may glare at me all you wish, Your Grace, but it will not change the fact that you have done very poorly by her, indeed.”
The duke’s head snapped up. “You forget yourself, sir.”
“On the contrary,” Jasper replied evenly, though his heart was hammering an unhelpfully rapid tattoo, “I am only just beginning to remember what sort of man I ought to be.”
The duke simply stared at him for a long moment, and Jasper thought fleetingly that Morleigh must have been a terrifying presence in the cavalry—one of those men whose authority needed no announcement and whose fury alone could scatter a regiment.
Still, Jasper held his ground, for he was no coward, though certainly a fool.
The duke broke first, running a hand over his face. “God help me,” he muttered. “I have made a damnable mess of it.”
Jasper blinked, before snorting a laugh. It was not the confession he had expected of the man. “You are not the only one.”
The duke sighed heavily and, to Jasper’s astonishment, moved to sit upon the step beside him.
“I have no siblings, Deverell,” he said after a moment. “Certainly, no sisters. No notion of how to manage such tempests.” He gestured helplessly towards the rose garden where Lottie had vanished.
Jasper arched a brow. “Do you not have a Tolliver for a wife, Your Grace?”
“Yes,” he said dryly, “but a wife may be managed in quite a different fashion.”
Jasper barked a laugh before he could help himself.
The duke’s answering smile was brief and grim before it faded into a look of hard reflection. “Marchmont,” he said darkly, his gaze fixed on the gravel as though picturing the man’s face there. “The bastard ought to be shot. Or horsewhipped. Perhaps both.”
“I fear you will not mend this matter by summoning magistrates or threatening duels,” Jasper said, then, after a beat, added under his breath, “though I would pay handsomely to see either.”
“And what would you have us do, Deverell? Allow the scoundrel to wander about unscathed, taunting Charlotte, and setting every idle tongue to wagging?”
“By no means,” Jasper replied carefully, wondering even as he spoke whether he was treading on very dangerous ground indeed. “But neither would I have us decide for her. It seems every gentleman alive has assumed the part of guardian; is it not time we trusted Miss Tolliver to be her own arbiter?”
For a moment, Morleigh regarded him with that sharp, assessing look that had surely terrified many a junior officer. Then, to Jasper’s astonishment and secret relief, he inclined his head in reluctant accord.
“A fair point,” the duke admitted, in a voice that had lost some of its earlier hardness. “Though I confess I foresee great difficulty in restraining myself from putting a bullet into that man’s shoulder during the hunt.”
“Perhaps his horse shall throw him,” Jasper suggested with a dry smile. “It would save both gunpowder and a great deal of scandal.”
“If only Providence were so obliging,” said the duke. “Still—your counsel has merit. I shall not thrust the law upon Charlotte, nor parade her as a spectacle of pity. She must be allowed to choose how she will answer this affront, as any man might.”
Jasper nodded, and then hesitated, for there was another, less reputable matter he could not, in conscience, leave unspoken. “There is… the business of Miss Tolliver’s supposed engagement to me.”
Morleigh’s brows rose. “Supposed? Speak plainly, Deverell.”
He sighed heavily, kicking a piece of gravel at his foot. “Last night, I knelt; I begged; I made a fool of myself, and still, she refused. In my infinite wisdom, I chose to remind Miss Tolliver of a wager she lost. I claimed my forfeit as her hand in marriage.”
He half-expected the duke to rise in anger. Instead, he simply sighed. “Good God, Deverell. Was there no other form of idiocy available to you that day?”
“None that promised such spectacular consequences. I am no better than Marchmont. I am a hypocrite, and, God forgive me, a tyrant in my own right. The motive changes little; I have wronged her all the same.”
Morleigh regarded him a moment, then gave a short, reluctant huff. “It is a rare day when I hear a gentleman accuse himself with such self-loathing.”
“Self-knowledge,” Jasper replied bleakly, “is a punishment all its own.”
“Well, then. You know what you must do.”
“No. I have no bloody clue what I should do.”
The duke sighed, looking perilously close to rolling his eyes.