Chapter 36
Lottie had no intention of giving anyone the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
She was furious—not the loud, dramatic sort that comes with shouting or tears, but the cold, precise kind that makes a woman suddenly aware of how very many things in the world could be improved with a pistol.
And as for Jasper—well, she could not yet decide what she felt about Jasper.
The entire business of his so-called engagement to her required more thought than she cared to spare it before breakfast. As for Marchmont, she would think of him later too. For now, she would ride.
Movement was the only thing that kept her from breaking apart. When the world grew too small to breathe in, she found a horse and made it larger again. She needed the cold air in her lungs, the stretch and pull of muscle, the glorious certainty of speed.
Lottie stood beside her mare and tightened her gloves, and told herself that she would not look at Marchmont. Naturally, she looked directly at Marchmont.
It was obscene, the ease with which wicked men carried on.
He was speaking near the mounting-block to a group of men, one boot propped upon a stone, his crop tucked beneath his arm.
He was a cowardly villain, and she hated him more than she could rightly express.
He looked up, as though sensing her gaze, and smiled directly at her.
What game was the hateful man playing? When would he reveal his cards?
She turned away from him to her mare. “Easy, my love,” she murmured, stroking the sleek neck beneath her palm.
Behind her, she heard a familiar clearing of the throat, but she did not turn. “If you have come to ask whether I am well, Mr Deverell, I shall be obliged to disappoint you with a lie.”
Jasper drew up beside her, hat in hand. “Then I shall ask something safer. Is your horse well? May I inquire after her nerves instead, or would even that be considered intolerable interference?”
Lottie glanced at him sidelong. “I am not much in the mood for banter, Jasper. Let us get this hunt over with, and then we shall discuss what, precisely, is to be done about Marchmont.”
“As you wish,” he said, mounting his horse.
Likewise, Lottie swung into the saddle without assistance.
Across the yard, the Duke of Morleigh mounted. He looked once towards Marchmont, and the look alone ought to have cracked the fellow’s spine.
The field moved off, and before long, the hounds found scent, spurring the riders on.
Lottie felt, as she always did upon horseback, the world grow larger. A hedge came up fast, low and black against the shining field.
She rose in the stirrups. The mare gathered herself beneath her, leapt, and landed cleanly on the other side, mud flinging behind them in an indecorous spray.
“Ah!” cried someone behind her.
Jasper came over the hedge half a length behind, covered in mud and laughing despite himself. “You did that deliberately, Miss Tolliver!”
“I did nothing of the sort,” she said under her breath. “Why are men such dreadful whiners?”
They rode side by side for a stretch, his horse keeping pace with easy power.
She glanced at him then, and gave him a look.
Not pleading exactly—Lottie Tolliver did not plead—but something near enough to it that her pride smarted.
Please, the look said. Let me ride. Let me have this. Let me be free.
Whether Jasper understood or merely guessed, he fell back, and then she was off.
The field opened before her, green and gold beneath the morning sun, the hounds streaming ahead in a wild white-and-tan scatter.
Lottie rode as she had always wished to live: forward, fast, untidily, with no one’s hand upon the reins but her own.
She took the low bank near the stream with perfect judgement, cut across the rise where three gentlemen hesitated, and cleared the narrow ditch beyond.
The horse flew beneath her and Lottie laughed aloud.
She was undoubtedly the best rider in the field.
Naturally, this was precisely when Lord Marchmont chose to appear.
She saw him first near the far side of the meadow, his grey hunter angled not with the hounds, but with her.
He had kept enough distance to make his attention deniable, which was the way of all cowards clever enough to have practised villainy in secret.
No, he did not pursue her directly. He circled, cutting across the sloping ground with a lazy patience that made her skin tighten beneath her habit.
A vulture, Lottie thought. And then, because she was a Tolliver and therefore in possession of both excellent instinct and regrettable impulse, she caught his eye, and refused to look away.
Marchmont drew nearer.
“Miss Tolliver,” he called, when he came within earshot. “You ride superbly.”
She did not slow. “How disagreeable to have one’s talents noticed by a man of such poor judgement.”
He smiled. “Still sharp.”
“Still dull,” she called, and urged her mare on.
Marchmont kept pace.
It vexed her that he rode well. She would have preferred him bouncing about like a sack of meal, or being dragged sideways through a hedge by a horse. Instead, he sat his mount neatly, one hand low upon the reins, the other slipping with infuriating leisure into the breast of his coat.
Lottie saw the paper before he withdrew it fully. It was a letter, and very clearly, a threat.
Marchmont smiled—the swine—and tucked it back inside his coat before she could make out more than the cruelly familiar slant of her own hand. He rose in his stirrups and called towards the nearest riders, “There! Across the lower meadow! The fox has turned for the east cover!”
The huntsman swore, the hounds scattered and then streamed after the new cry, and a pair of young gentlemen, eager to be first in any direction at all, thundered after them.
It was a lie. Lottie knew it at once. There had been no flash of red, no true cry from the hounds, nor any movement across the meadow save Marchmont’s invention. He had not seen the fox, but he had seen an opportunity.
As the hunt swept away, Marchmont wheeled his grey sharply towards the narrow copse at the field’s edge. Then he looked back at her with a grin.
Lottie should have ridden straight to Jasper.
She should have gone to Morleigh. She should have raised a hue and cry, or turned back towards the safety of the field, or done any of the sensible things which heroines in improving novels are forever doing, usually to the great detriment of the plot. Instead, she followed.
Now, dear reader, before you fling this book aside and cry, “What folly! What madness! Has the girl learnt nothing?”—I must beg your patience.
It is true that Charlotte Tolliver had, on many occasions, behaved with all the prudence of a lit firework near a muslin curtain.
It is also true that she was not riding into that wood because she trusted Lord Marchmont.
She rode because she did not. (There is a distinction, though gentlemen and governesses alike are strangely reluctant to perceive it.) She wished to know what weapon he held—and, if possible, to take it from him.
The path narrowed at once, damp earth muffling the horses’ steps. Branches interlaced overhead, turning the morning green and cold. Somewhere far off, the horn sounded again; the hunt had swept away without them.
Marchmont rode ahead, then slowed in a small clearing where an old chalk pit dropped away beyond a fringe of bramble and dead fern. It was not a cliff, precisely, but it was steep enough to break a neck if a horse went over badly.
Lottie noted this. She also noted the grey’s agitation, the way it tossed its head and fought the bit.
There was foam upon the animal’s neck, and its ears flicked backwards again and again, as though even the poor creature objected to the company it was forced to keep.
“Your horse dislikes you,” she observed.
Marchmont turned in the saddle. “Most things do, until they are properly handled.”
A cold little silence followed.
Lottie drew her horse to a halt several paces from him, keeping the mare between herself and the worst of the drop. “Show me the letter.”
“So direct, Miss Tolliver.”
“So tedious, this pretending otherwise.”
He laughed softly and withdrew the letter, then another, and another.
There were at least four folded papers in his gloved hand, each directed in a hand that was almost hers—good enough to fool those who wished to be fooled, which was to say, nearly everyone.
“You’ve a very pretty turn of phrase, Charlotte. The scandal sheets will adore you.”
He held the letters out before him.
Lottie looked at them. Her own name seemed to stare back from the folds. She hated this man—truly, truly hated him. She swallowed down the bile in her throat. “And what do these forgeries say?”
“Oh, the usual things young ladies say when they are in love.” His eyes moved over her face with dreadful enjoyment. “Very eager and wicked things, indeed.”
Lottie ground her teeth, very much wishing she had packed her pistol. “It is easy enough to prove they are forged, Lord Marchmont,” she said tightly.
His smile only widened. “Can you prove it before they are printed?”
Her heart dropped, but she lifted her chin. She would not cower before this man. “What do you want?”
Marchmont’s expression softened into something almost tender, which was the most revolting thing he had done thus far.
“Come now, my dear. Let us not make this uglier than it must be. Your family has influence. Your brother-in-law has wealth enough to settle a small kingdom’s debts and still afford gloomy upholstery.
The duke, I imagine, would pay handsomely to keep his wife’s sister from becoming the newest entertainment in every breakfast room in London. ”
“Money, then.”
“Money, certainly. A return to Town. A softened attitude. A denial, if certain rumours of my conduct ever begin to circulate.”
“You want me to smile at you and pretend you are not the devil incarnate.”
“I want you,” he said, holding the forged letters a little higher, “to remember what happens to women who do not.”
Lottie stared at him, and for one hideous moment she was no longer upon a horse in a cold green wood, but back in that dark bed with Marchmont’s hands on her hips, his horrid breath at her neck, and the fear that made refusal feel impossible.
Marchmont saw the memory pass through her. His eyes brightened. He held the letters out before her, neat and false and damning. “Shall we be civilised, Miss Tolliver,” he asked, “or shall I make you famous?”