Chapter 43
It must be recorded, before we proceed any further, that Mr Jasper Deverell left Miss Charlotte Tolliver’s bedchamber by way of window.
This was considerably less romantic than any heroine might imagine, involving as it did a muttered oath from the shrubbery below; yet the sight of Jasper cursing and limping across the dark lawn with his boots in one hand did much to restore Lottie’s spirits.
She escaped to the garden after breakfast, where no one was discussing the “extraordinary excitement” of the house party with ghoulish relish.
She found a stone bench at the end of a little formal garden and sat with her hands folded in her lap as she watched a blackbird stab furiously at the wet earth.
After a little while, footsteps sounded upon the path, though she did not turn.
“If you are Mama,” she said, “I am resting. If you are Dr Bell, I am taking air. If you are Morleigh, I am not receiving lectures from dukes before noon. If you are Jasper, you may approach, provided you have not brought hydrangeas and declarations of love.”
There was a pause, before she heard a familiar chuckle. “I have not. I bring only my wounded self.”
She smiled and shifted upon the bench to make room.
“How is your father today?”
“Sleeping.”
“And your mother?”
“Not sleeping.”
“Oh dear.”
“She says she shall sleep when Papa is quite recovered, which means she shall never sleep again, because she does so love theatrics.”
Jasper smiled, a dimple deepening in his cheek as he glanced at her sidelong.
Lottie sighed deeply, and felt not as though she must say something, but rather that she desperately wanted to. “I am feeling quite lost today, Jasper. I am realising… Well, I am realising that I love my family dreadfully.” She grimaced. “How hideous.”
“Devastating,” he agreed softly.
“I love Mama, though she is absurd and drives me to bedlam.”
“A trying attachment.”
Lottie had begun and now found that she could not stop. “And I do love Georgie, though she became a duchess, and Hetty, though she is lording her condition over us all.”
“Naturally.”
“And I love Theo and his alarming new decency, and Morleigh with his damned ducal commands, and even Benedict when he is dramatic, and Marianne, though she pretends not to care for me at all, and Nell and her blasted chicken, Clara, though they are both menaces, and Papa—” The tears came swiftly, though Lottie dashed them away at once.
“Papa,” she said again, more softly. “I love Papa. And when he said, ‘do not go far,’ I wanted to tear my own heart out for having thought of going anywhere at all.”
Jasper was silent, which was rather wise of him.
Lottie sniffed hard. “You may say something now.”
He bit his lip and tilted his head. “I was terribly selfish.”
Lottie turned. “Pardon?”
“Asking you to run away with me.”
“It was my choice, Jasper. Do not forget that.”
“Yes.” He looked out across the garden. “And I made the offer at a moment when you had suffered terror, death, blackmail, exhaustion, and the prospect of being managed by every person who ever loved you. I clothed it in liberty because I wanted it to be liberty.”
“It was.”
“In part, Charlotte.” His jaw tightened. “But it was also me wanting you somewhere no one else could claim you. Somewhere far enough that I need not share you with your family, your name, your fear, or any duty that did not include me.”
The blackbird hopped along the grass, pulled a worm from the earth with triumph, and flew away.
Lottie watched it go. “I cannot leave them.”
“No.”
“And I cannot be what they expect me to be.”
“No.”
“And I cannot quite see how those two facts are to be reconciled.”
Jasper looked down at his hands. “No.”
She turned to him, exasperated despite the ache in her chest. “You are being very agreeable, and I dislike it immensely, Jasper. I have spent my entire life refusing the future laid out for me, and now I am meant to simply accept it? Because I love you? Because I love them? What sort of hypocrite does that make me?”
Naturally, Lottie, having made a declaration of some magnitude, did not appear to notice she had done so, but Jasper Deverell certainly did notice. Because I love you.
After a moment of silence, he said, “The human sort?”
She gave him a dark look.
“I suppose I have said this before, but please humour a fool. I have spent years refusing to stand where my father wished me to be placed. I thought… well, I thought if I rejected marriage, duty, inheritance… expectation, then I should somehow remain free.”
“And were you?”
“No. I was alone, and I was very proud of myself for it.”
Lottie laughed with ire.
“But loneliness is not the reason I am in love with you, Charlotte Tolliver.” His voice roughened. “I find that I do not want freedom if it means being free of you.”
He took her hands in his. “And I would want you beside me if you were a duchess, a spinster, a man, a woman, a blackbird, or a worm in this excessively damp garden.”
“A worm?”
“Yes. I should build you a palace of the finest mud.”
“How very romantic.”
“And challenge every robin in England.”
She laughed then, properly, helplessly, and his hands tightened around hers.
“I do not ever want to be parted from you.”
She was silent at his declaration, but as Miss Charlotte Tolliver was, at that moment, discovering several alarming things about her own heart, I shall not presume to tell you what she thought.
Jasper swallowed. “I am not offering you a smaller life, Lottie. I am offering you a larger one. A life with your family still in it. With quarrels and voyages and ridiculous chickens. With your mama weeping into handkerchiefs and your sisters driving us both to bedlam. With Morleigh issuing commands, and both of us ignoring them with the deepest respect.”
Her mouth trembled, though still, I shall not deign to tell the reader her inner thoughts.
“A life,” he went on, “in which you need not be tamed in order to be cherished. I do not want some docile little wife who sits prettily at the dining table and agrees with me on all matters. I do not want your obedience, or your surrender. I do not want you beneath me.”
Lottie’s brows rose and Jasper paused.
“Well,” he said, with a flash of wickedness, “not in any permanent philosophical sense. But I digress—I am utterly serious. Marry me and let us make a life large enough for all our wildness. I am asking to be your accomplice, your refuge, your equal partner in every blessed and disgraceful thing. I want you beside me, Charlotte. Never behind me. Never made less.”
“Jasper—”
“And if you desire freedom, then have freedom. If you want voyages, we shall go. If you want to stay, we shall stay, God damn it! If you want mischief, I shall provide alibis. If you want other lovers—”
“Jasper Deverell, would you shut your infernal mouth and kiss me already?”