Chapter 39
Death, when it occurs at a fashionable gathering, is terribly inconvenient and tiresome.
Horses must be called, hounds recalled, gentlemen and constables consulted, ladies removed and servants dispatched, carriages and physicians summoned, and someone of consequence must decide what, precisely, is to be done with the body.
In the matter of Lord Marchmont, the someone of consequence was, naturally, the Duke of Morleigh.
His Grace gave his account of the events with such grave authority that even those inclined towards speculation found themselves abruptly deprived of courage.
Lord Marchmont, it was said, had ridden hard upon treacherous ground, had lost control of a heated horse near the old chalk pit, and had fallen, which was not altogether far from the truth.
Mr Deverell had arrived moments later. Miss Tolliver, who had been thrown when her own mare bolted, was much shaken by the event.
The Duke of Morleigh had witnessed enough to confirm the whole affair as a tragic accident.
By late afternoon, Lottie sat in the bedchamber allotted to her, still in her muddied riding habit. The garment was ruined, with one sleeve torn near the wrist, and her maid, Millie, had attempted three times to coax her from it.
After a little while, the maid made another brave attempt. “Shall I fetch hot water, miss?”
“Yes. And tea, please.”
Millie withdrew, and Jasper Deverell slipped inside the room moments later.
“Good heavens,” whispered Lottie. “What are you doing here?”
“Coming to see you.”
Lottie made to scold him, but she did not quite have the energy for it.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
How foolishly simple the question was. How dreadful. How entirely impossible.
Lottie stood and closed the door, before turning the key in the lock. She sighed heavily. “I am doing as well as may be expected of a young lady who has been blackmailed, thrown from a horse, witnessed a death, and lied to several relations and constables in the span of four hours.”
Jasper frowned. “You were not thrown from your horse, were you?”
She raised a brow. “That is the official account, is it not?”
“Ah,” he said, moving to sit upon her bed. “I suppose it is.”
Lottie moved to sit beside him. “I was only thinking just now that Lord Marchmont did always enjoy making himself the centre of attention. I suppose he has at last achieved it permanently.”
She looked to Jasper, but he was frowning.
“What is it?” she asked.
He bit his cheek. “I have been given an ultimatum, Charlotte, and it is time I told you of it.”
“By whom?”
“Langley. Morleigh.” He sighed. “The terms were very simple. I am to marry you, or never see you again.”
Lottie stilled. There were many excellent remarks available to her. Several were sharp, a few profane, one or two quite magnificent. Instead, what came out was, “Oh.”
Jasper’s brows rose faintly. “Oh?”
“Oh. Because I am far too tired to find a response. What have you decided? Shall you cage me, then, so that I might be your tame pet?”
He looked terribly pained. “No. No, I cannot. You could never be a bird in a cage, Charlotte. I have realised that now. You are a falcon, born to take to the skies.”
She laughed sadly. Would that she were a falcon. Falcons had wings and talons, and no mothers writing lists of suitable husbands.
She stared at Jasper, noting that his face had lost every trace of teasing now. This was not Jasper the rake, nor Jasper the dandy, nor Jasper of the wicked smile and clever forfeit.
“I have come to offer you a choice,” he said.
She waited.
“America.”
Lottie stared at him, and then laughed softly. “I beg your pardon?”
“America,” he repeated. “Or somewhere beyond it. Somewhere far away enough that no one gives a damn who you are or who your parents are.”
“You are mad. Truly mad.”
“Yes. Come away with me, Charlotte.”
“To America?”
“To America.”
“Unmarried?”
“If you wish it. I do not care for the form, Charlotte. I care for the choice being yours.”
She looked at him as though he had spoken in Greek. “You do not care whether I marry you?”
“No. Be my friend, my companion. A lover. A fellow fugitive. Whatever name you choose. I have money enough. Connections enough. A mother who will faint, a father who will disinherit me for at least a fortnight before remembering he likes heirs, and a sister who will write us pamphlets on liberty from her sickbed.”
“Jasper.”
“Say no and I shall leave this room at once.”
Lottie studied him closely. She had known Jasper reckless, flirtatious, vain, clever, wounded, and absurd by turns—but this was something else entirely. A man did not offer America lightly… or perhaps he did, if he was the sort of man who wanted escape as badly as she did. Was this love, then?
“Why America?” she asked instead.
“Because it is far. Because a man may reinvent himself far more easily across the oceans.”
“And what shall you reinvent yourself as?”
The question seemed to find him unguarded. “I suppose… a man who does not spend his life lying by omission.”
Jasper looked away towards the window. The late afternoon light lay grey upon his face, sharpening the line of his cheek and making him look almost tired.
No—not almost. He was very tired indeed, as though the effort of being Jasper Deverell had become, for once, too heavy to wear attractively.
“There is something you ought to know,” he said.
“About America?”
“About me.”
She waited, wondering what on earth his horrid secret might be.
“I have had lovers,” he said.
“I assumed as much.”
“Not only women, Charlotte.”
Lottie was not surprised in the least, but she kept her silence, for she felt he had much more to say.
“I have desired men,” he continued. “Loved, perhaps, though not in the manner poets would make noble. Wanted, certainly. Enough that if the wrong person knew of it, my name, my future, perhaps even my life, might be made rather less secure than it presently appears.”
At her silence, he gave a small, bitter smile. “You see? I know something of cages.”
Lottie reached out to take his hand, feeling rather foolish.
All this time, she had envied his freedom, for he was male and noble and wealthy, and every door was not only opened but built for him. And perhaps freer than she, but not entirely. No one was ever entirely free.
“Oh, Jasper.”
His fingers tightened around hers at once, as though he had expected many things from her—wit, shock, curiosity, perhaps even disgust—but not tenderness. “You do not mind?”
She almost laughed. “Mind? That you have a heart capable of wandering into inconvenient places? Of wanting and loving more than this world allows? I should be the world’s most astonishing hypocrite.”
She looked down at their joined hands. His were larger, warmer, beautifully made, and faintly marked from the morning’s mud and bridle leather. Hands that had touched her wickedly, and hands now placed, quite without performance, inside her keeping.
“You do care for me, then?” she asked, and hated how small the question sounded. “A friend, you said? A companion?”
His expression changed. “Charlotte.”
She lifted her chin. “Well?”
“I care for you terribly.”
Oh. Lottie forgot, for one suspended moment, how to breathe.
“The ultimatum,” he continued, “was the cruellest thing I have heard in my life.”
“That you must marry me?”
“No.” His voice sharpened. “That I might never see you again. Marriage I could imagine, too easily, perhaps. But never seeing you again? No, there my imagination failed me entirely.”
Lottie’s mouth felt quite dry at this admission.
All her life, she had understood wanting as something dangerous.
Men wanted and took. Families wanted and arranged.
Society wanted and judged. Even love, when ladies spoke of it in shining tones, so often seemed merely another set of hands reaching for the lock.
But Jasper’s wanting did not feel like a lock.
It felt like a window thrown open to the breeze. A dreadful, high, impossible window, certainly—one from which a girl might break her neck if she leapt foolishly—but beyond it there was air.
“And so,” he said, with an unsteady little grin that was very nearly Jasper again and not quite, “I have arrived at the only solution that does not make me despise myself. The choice must be yours. If you wish to marry me, marry me. If you wish only to flee, flee. If you wish to take my money and abandon me in Philadelphia after three weeks, I shall object bitterly but provide recommendations for lodging.”
A laugh broke from her before she could stop it. Then, to her horror, tears followed. She turned away at once. “Do not look at me.”
“I am not.”
“You are.” She wiped beneath one eye with the heel of her hand. “Oh, I do not know what I want.”
He waited, which was just so, for if he had pressed her or pleaded, she might have snapped.
“I thought I did. I thought I wanted no one to touch my life. No husband, no keeper, no duke arranging matters in a voice like a court order. I thought I wanted to be left entirely alone.”
“And now?”
She looked back at him. “Now I am not certain I should like it.”
No, Lottie truly did not know what she wanted, and whether running away to America was romantic or madness, or both—but she knew she did not wish to wake tomorrow and find that her life had been decided in some breakfast room by men who loved her, men who pitied her, men who meant well, and men who therefore never doubted their right to do it.
And she knew, too, that she did not wish Jasper Deverell to disappear from her life because everyone else had decided he must.
She stood. “When do we leave?”
Jasper’s countenance changed, not triumphantly—thank God, not triumphantly—but as though the words had struck him. “Tonight, if you wish.”
“Tonight?”
“There is a packet leaving from Portsmouth within the week. We could be there before anyone knew where to look. Or not Portsmouth. Or not America. Say Paris, and I shall arrange Paris. Say the devil’s own doorstep, and I shall send ahead for rooms.”
She gave a watery laugh. “Rooms at the devil’s doorstep feels quite accurate. We shall leave tonight, for if I sleep, I shall wake up sensible. What must I bring?”
Jasper bit his cheek. “As little as you can bear. A travelling dress. Money, if you have it. Anything you cannot leave behind.”
Lottie felt the full weight of their plan settle heavily in her chest. “And you? What is the plan?”
“I shall arrange horses first. A chaise after that, if I can manage it without half the county taking note. We leave after midnight, when the house is quiet.”
Lottie nodded quickly. She would not admit, even to herself, that she was frightened.
“Jasper,” she said.
“Yes?”
“If we go, I do not belong to you.”
“No.”
“And you do not belong to me.”
His mouth curved faintly. “A pity. I should have made a stunning decorative possession.”
She looked at him with intent and held out her hand. “No cages.”
He looked at it for a heartbeat, then took it, as a man making an agreement with his equal. “No cages.”