Chapter Eight
They’d lit the fire in the hearth as a courtesy. Jasper knew that. And, to their point, it was drafty and brisk tonight outside of Starling’s Rest.
But damned if that fire wasn’t entirely too enthusiastic for its required function.
By the second hour on the chaise, he’d removed his shoes, his socks, his jacket, cravat, waistcoat, and eventually his shirt as well, and that still wasn’t enough.
He ended up perched on the sideboard by the windows, propping them open to let in some of the sea air to alleviate the suffocating temperature, and only then was he able to start to doze off.
He tossed the blanket on the floor, threw his arms up over his head, and for a time, did find oblivion, sleeping with his mouth hanging open and a bag of ice over his bruised eye.
Then the fire started to go down, and the opposite problem began to arise.
Luckily, there was a blanket on the floor.
At one point, shortly after he’d pulled the thing over him and poked at the fire a bit to get it to perk back up, he’d caught sight of Lady Selwyn floating about the halls with a plate piled high with midnight snacks in one hand and a small, fat pig under her other arm.
In any other house, that would likely have scared the absolute piss out of him. But this was Starling’s Rest.
And he was relatively certain it wasn’t even midnight yet.
The next time he opened his eyes, it was to yet another spectral woman in the archway, hovering and staring. He did yelp. Just a little, but it was only Libba.
“Must you?!” he hissed once she’d stepped into the light.
She raised her eyebrows, tilting her head, which was turbaned in some sort of molten silver fabric, and gave an amused twist of her lips. “Evidently.”
He threw the blanket off and sat up, gesturing impatiently at the empty spot next to him. “I just saw Hattie, I think,” he told her. “She was carrying a pig.”
“Yes, she does that,” Libba said with a shrug, pulling a vibrant-pink dressing gown closer around her body and considering the seat he’d just offered her with a tightening of her lips. Her dark eyes flicked over him, lingering on his chest. “Why are you naked?”
“I’m not!” he replied, crossing his arms over his bosoms like a bathing nymph who’d just been caught. “It was hot.”
She bent at the waist, squinting at the swell of muscle under his collarbone. “You’re cut,” she observed. “Did someone have a knife?”
“‘A knife’? God, no,” he said, looking down and touching the little scrape. “One of them was wearing a cheap ring, I think. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, Jasper,” she replied, softly but firmly, looking around and choosing to sit opposite him on an armchair rather than on the offered end of the chaise. “Rhys told me what happened.”
For a moment, Jasper just stared at her. “Why’d he do that?”
She only smiled, sharp and glinting in the night.
And suddenly, he was very, very aware that they were alone together and that his clothes were mostly off.
He blinked, shifting and pulling the blanket up around his waist, his cheeks heating. Damned fire.
It didn’t help that she kept scraping her eyes over his bare torso with a leisurely quirk of her head, reaching up to toy with the one rogue curl that had escaped that slinky wrap of fabric around her head.
It was absurd and he knew it was absurd. He had seen this woman in every season of her life. In a thousand scandalous costumes and personalities, rouged and fitted and deliberately seductive. He had seen every member of this household in their nightclothes more times than he could count.
But for some reason, seeing her there, lit only by firelight in that absurd pink robe, which was perfectly modest and knotted appropriately at the waist, was distressing him something fierce.
Maybe it was the silver turban.
Perhaps it was that.
He hadn’t been lying, exactly, when he’d told her, some weeks ago, that he was half in love with every woman he met.
It was more that Jasper thought there was something to admire in most women, especially the beautiful ones.
It was simply the part of him that was a man.
And it was long how he had coped with noticing anything particularly alluring about this one.
Every fellow worth his salt had a weakness for women, didn’t he? Especially the beautiful ones? Doubly so for the ones who gave him the time of day and made willing conversation?
It was only natural.
Simply animal. It meant nothing.
All the same, he adjusted the blanket over his lap.
“Libba?” he croaked, flinging his hand out for the carafe of water some kind soul had left behind for him, on the low table between all the seating options in this room.
“Oh,” she said, blinking, but not bothering to look him in the eye. “Right. I’m not going to tell Mal. But the whole stupid farce did give me an idea.”
“You’re not?” he managed, surprised, carafe hovering over the glass it intended to bless with its bounty. “Why not?”
“Because,” she said, sighing and slumping back in the chair, stretching her legs out in front of her like a cat with a little, baiting sigh.
“It will only distress him. He knows they say those things, but he doesn’t need to be reminded.
We already know what they see when they look at us. It doesn’t bear reminding.”
“What they see when they look at you?” he repeated, heat creeping up his throat. Had he been that obvious?
“People like that,” she clarified, waving a hand. “I thank you for what you did. I wish I could punch a sod now and then, especially in defense of my brother. But I cannot, and so I am very pleased that you did. Very pleased.”
He blinked, the water falling into the glass.
He could picture it, upsettingly enough. He could see her lurching into the melee perfectly well. He could see the delight of the dockyard jack tars catching her waist as she flew into them.
He hated it.
“Why is your hair like that?” he demanded, gesturing with his glass of water, swinging it so that a bit slipped out over his fingers. “You sleep in such a fancy hat?”
She paused, her fingers half twined around that loose curl, and gave a little laugh.
If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought her cheeks flushed in the low light.
“It is more a wrap than a hat; it is just a bolt of fabric so my curls stay safe in the night. I’ve always wrapped my hair. You’ve seen it before.”
He frowned. “No. You’ve always just worn an ugly, white bonnet like every other lady.”
“I never have,” she told him, holding up a finger. “You are just forgetting.”
He leaned forward to flick her finger away. “No,” he repeated, stubborn to the last.
She laughed again. “Yes! And what about you? With that chest hair. I didn’t even think you could grow a mustache.”
He narrowed his eyes, looking down at his own bare torso and the sparse clustering of golden-red curls that amassed at the center of it. “Well,” he said, “I can.”
“Indeed, you can.” She observed the general area of his bared torso again, making his stomach drop worryingly low. “Say,” she breathed softly, “are you still wearing that cologne?”
“No!” he shouted, throwing his arms out like a barricade, his stomach still dropping, but his heart leaping right up into his throat to make up the difference. “No! I’m sure I sweated it all off due to this damned fire. Positive, in fact. What’s your idea?”
“Sweat often just modifies the scent,” she said thoughtfully, toying with that curl by her ear as she watched him. “Ruby’s concoctions don’t come off without soap and a scour. Now I’m curious.”
“Stop being curious!” he begged. “What’s yours? Your … Your concoction?”
“Oh,” said Libba, a grin curling up at the corners of her lips. “Mine is special. Only a single-scent note. Night-blooming jasmine. I’m the only one she’ll make something so simple for.”
“I thought that was your hair oil,” he said, desperate to keep her over there and distracted.
She looked surprised, those dark eyes widening a touch. “It is. As well. Do you want to hear my idea or not?”
“Yes, please, God,” he said, dropping his arms and heaving a sigh. “It must be two in the morning and you are relentless.”
“It’s about a quarter past midnight,” she replied, with a twist of her lips. “And I’m just sitting here. You’re the one who keeps shouting and flailing about.”
He released a long, sustained groan, almost musical in quality, and kicked himself to the side, draping the blanket up over his body and face, which set her off giggling in a way that he enjoyed entirely too much.
“All right, all right,” she said, hiccupping a little. “So, first and foremost, you’ve mucked everything up royally. You understand that, right? You can comprehend how and why getting your face pummeled might compromise your grand scheme?”
He tightened his lips. “Lib.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll take that as a yes.
Anyhow, Rhys’s account of your gallantry got me thinking about how Princess Xandine might actually be received in Brighton.
It would be all well and fine on the Grand Pavilion and with the summer toffs and so on, but the docks are another matter entirely, aren’t they? ”
He gave a weak, wheezing laugh from under the blanket.
“Indeed,” she agreed. “So what if we are not long affianced, or indeed not yet formally attached at all? What if we’ve only just come into one another’s acquaintance after you defended my honor on the wharf?
It solves several logistical issues, puts the onus of proposing marriage on Xandine herself, who would be besotted with her red-haired hero, and allows you to appear duty-bound rather than dangerously fickle, when your attentions do stray to Miss Templeton-Rath. ”
He paused, staring up at the knit weave of the blanket flickering against the firelight for a second and then flipped the fabric down to look at her. “And that’s why I’m bruised all to hell?”
“And that’s why you’re bruised all to hell,” she agreed. “Though it does look a bit better now, after the ice.”
“Does it?” he said, poking gingerly at his bruised cheekbone. “Feels much the same.”
“The salve will help,” she assured him. “Ruby’s more than perfume, no matter what she’d have you believe. But in this case, I think you ought to make your introductions while the injuries look the most ghastly. So, in the morning.”
“What?” he said, his fingers hovering over the bruising. “You want me to strut up and announce myself and then say, ‘Oh, don’t mind my face. I’m a hero.’”
“No, idiot,” she said, laughing. “You will feign a chance meeting, and I will rush to your side, also by chance, and provide the exposition. Should I wear that pink veil? Shame that costume isn’t done yet.”
He stared at her, blanket clutched in one hand and his face hovering under the other. Why was she so goddamn brilliant? What kind of person thought of such a thing in a matter of hours? And how?
“Well?” she prompted, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes,” he managed, clearing his throat and shaking himself out of his daze. “Yes, fine. First thing, then?”
“First thing,” she agreed, just as the grandfather clock in the hall announced the half hour. “Which means you should be asleep, Jasper. Gracious, what are you thinking, burning the midnight oil?
“What?” he demanded as she stood. “I?”
“You ought to be more responsible,” she chided, chuckling to herself as she sashayed out of the room. “You’re about to be a man wed.”
“M-Me?” he stammered, helplessly watching her go.
“Good night, my gallant hero,” she said, lilting her words in Xandine’s accent. “Sleep well.”
He frowned at the archway after she’d gone.
He was not going to sleep well.