Chapter Twelve
By the time Jasper had washed, dried, and put himself into an ensemble made up entirely of his own clothing, he had found himself in a bit of a pickle.
Did he take the borrowed, soiled items he’d plunged into the Channel and through the breakfast leavings of a cat to a laundress, without a word to their owners, in an attempt to return them unscathed in full, good faith of owning up to his error?
Or, did he take them straight to Monica, who might be the only person in Brighton who could restore them to their former state of perfection, and risk looking like a lazy, entitled bastard?
It was a question with no answer, and so he did the only thing that fell right in the middle of those two options: he took them to Monica’s mother.
The Widow Thresher had a laundry near his own parents’ house in Barrel End, a thriving affair with half a dozen laundresses and a scaffolding network of drying pegs and lines that always smelled like flowers and cotton, even in the coldest days of winter.
She might tell her daughter, but then, at least, Jasper would have attempted to fix the thing on his own, with coin from his very pocket.
“Jasper Townsend, what on earth did you do to this waistcoat?” Mrs. Thresher demanded, holding the thing with a delicate pinch of her two fingers, the full length of her arm away from her face. “It smells like fish guts.”
“It is fish guts,” he told her, sighing. “You could compete with Ruby at next summer’s showcase, where she identifies the smells in the blindfold.”
That suggestion had both softened her and somehow irritated her too, and she’d shooed him away, pink-faced and giggling and also cursing his name as she called for someone to bring her a cold soak, vinegar, and her horsehair brush.
“Wool soaked in saltwater,” she’d lamented. “And in such a vibrant dye. Two bottles of vinegar, if you please!”
Which, of course, only hastened his departure.
He might have imagined it, but he thought, just outside the door, he’d heard her pause and say, “Did my daughter make this? Did that scamp do this to one of my daughter’s creations?!”
Surely not.
No, that was his guilt talking.
And pushing his gait into a canter all the way up to Starling’s Rest.
He needed to find Libba immediately and … he didn’t know. Apologize? Shout at her? Cry at her feet?
He didn’t know.
What he did know was that this morning had gone horribly wrong several times, that most of the ways they’d gone wrong had been his fault, and that Liberty Lennox was likely spitting mad.
He wondered if she was still wearing that red dress.
He frowned.
He wondered if she was still wide-eyed and batting her lashes like a vapid ninny, practicing her Xandine feints in his absence. Or if perhaps she was just pacing a ditch into the floorboards of Starling’s Rest, her hands in claws, as she muttered over the happenings of the early hours.
It turned out neither was true.
He found her seated in the parlor, opposite Hattie Selwyn, with a parcel between the two of them full of purchases from Miss Persephone’s Oddities and Curiosities. She was back in her normal clothing and appeared calm as you please.
Both women looked up at him in surprise as he walked in, though Hattie did give a little gasp and cover her mouth.
“Is it that bad?” he asked her, frowning.
She nodded, fingers still glued to her lips.
One could always count on Hattie to tell you true.
“There’s more salve on the mantel,” Libba said without looking up from the box in her lap. “Be liberal with it, especially on your lip.”
“Yes, madam,” he replied tartly, but he turned to obey anyhow.
“Oh!” Hattie exclaimed, reaching out to accept another small tin from Libba’s cache. “Sour drops! I haven’t had these since I visited Iberia! The lime ones are the best.”
“I like the grapefruit,” Libba replied. “Honestly, I thought you’d be most excited over the cashews.”
“My palate changes by the minute,” Hattie said seriously, her hand drifting to her belly. “Or the baby’s does, anyway.”
“Horrifying,” Libba commented mildly. “So you aren’t cross with me?”
“Oh, no, I am,” said Hattie, popping a little, green sweet into her mouth and sighing like it had just relieved a decade of pain. “It just doesn’t matter very much in the face of sugar and acid.”
She opened her eyes, her teeth crunching down on the little candy, and focused them on Jasper, who was dabbing the salve on his lip, watching this all with a wary fascination. Her eyes were wide and guileless and she blinked them, taking in his new scratches over the puffy bruises.
“I am cross with you too, Mr. Townsend,” she said softly. “You ought to know that.”
“Me?!” he said, immediately wincing at the way it stretched his sliced lip. “What did I do?”
At that, Libba finally set her box aside and, ever so slowly, turned to stare at him.
It was both women observing him with wide-eyed incredulity that brought him up to speed, his cheeks heating again. “Oh,” he said. “Right.”
“Hm,” said Hattie, giving him a once-over with those unsettling eyes, the color of freshly polished bronze. “I will help you, anyhow. It sounds like this morning made a fine mess of things.”
He winced and nodded, dragging up another fingerful of salve for the hatch mark on his throat. “Well, at least I’ll have a few days to heal before we try again.”
Libba blinked. “Yes,” she said grudgingly.
“I suppose that is true. I am just vexed that I didn’t account for further injury.
However, you did behave heroically in an organic fashion that we could not have planned for even if we had tried, so that is something.
And clearly, it was in a manner important to the woman you wish to woo. ”
“It was?” he said, salve-glossed finger hovering over his cuts. “How so?”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “The cats, you fool. She obviously loves the cats. And you saved them from drowning.”
“Cats can swim,” Hattie said serenely, fishing through a clicking collision of hard candies with a single finger on the hunt for another one to her liking. “It does not sound like you gave them a chance to.”
“It’s the wet dock,” he said defensively, his eyes falling curiously to that tin of sweets despite himself. “It’s very deep. Might I have one of—?”
“No,” Hattie sang, plucking out her treasure. “Candies are for good children.”
“‘Candies’?” came Rhys’s voice, pulling him in from the halls like some sort of magic word. He was grinning, hand already outstretched for one of the treats, when he stopped short, his eyes falling on the telltale blue-and-white-striped parcel with a gasp of outrage. “Libba! You didn’t!”
Libba, oddly, flushed a little. “No, I didn’t betray our bargain,” she said quickly. “I swear I didn’t. Twenty quid would’ve bought much more than this, anyway. I only wanted to get some treats for Hattie that they don’t have in the market. It wasn’t to spite you. Honest.”
“From her,” Rhys repeated, retracting his hand like he no longer trusted the sweets weren’t poisoned. “My own sister, giving custom to my worst enemy. It hurts the heart.”
“I’m not your sister,” she replied flatly.
He gasped again, gripping his throat. “Oh! The wounds never cease.”
And then he flounced back out, muttering to himself while the remaining three watched him go, impassive and without comment.
“Well,” said Hattie after a moment, “I require a nap. And I suppose the two of you need some privacy to converse. I will take the parcel, if you please.”
“Yes, of course,” said Libba immediately, far more agreeable than Jasper was accustomed to seeing her. She pulled out a single tube-shaped item for herself and handed over the whole kit to Hattie, who tucked it under her arm, smiled softly, and floated off toward her slumber.
“What’s that?” Jasper asked, after the baroness had gone and it was clear Libba didn’t intend to speak first.
“Hm? Oh,” she said, glancing down at the item in her hands. “An hourglass. For seven minutes.”
“Naturally,” he replied with a sigh. “May I sit?”
She threw him an impatient, flat-mouthed look, which made him nod and find his way to an overstuffed armchair. He deliberately avoided the chaise. He’d spent quite enough time on that thing for the time being. He slumped into the embrace of the stuffing and released a little sound of relief.
“I brought the shirt and waistcoat to be laundered,” he told her. “Maybe don’t mention their current state to Elias and Errol for now?”
“I wouldn’t,” she returned, frowning. “Is that all you have to say? I thought your mind would be firmly elsewhere right now.”
“Oh?” He was surprised. “Whereabouts?”
Libba rolled her eyes, turning the hourglass upside down and clicking it onto the table next to her. The sand in it was black. Volcanic. “What did you think of her?” she said impatiently. “The heiress?”
He paused, that fishhook giving another tug at his ribs. “I don’t know,” he said, giving a jerky shrug. “She was fine? She looked like a woman.”
“‘She looked,’” Libba repeated, enunciating each consonant slowly, “‘like a woman’? Is that all it takes for you?”
He screwed up his features, ignoring the rapid-fire sparking of pain that erupted along his jaw and cheekbone. “She likes cats,” he added. “And she has brown hair. What do you want me to say? We didn’t have a chance to converse.”
“No, you didn’t, did you?” she replied, though she sounded spiky about it rather than like she actually agreed. “What would you have said, given you’d had a moment?”
“I don’t know!” he snapped. “I would have introduced myself, I suppose. Asked about the cats, I think. Wasn’t I supposed to be fixated on you, Xandine?”
“No!” she hissed. “No, you were not. And even if you were, you failed at that too. You were fixated on fish heads, Jasper. Fish heads!”
“I got us an invitation to dinner, didn’t I?” He pointed out. “I did my bit! Everything is fine. Moving along nicely. They know my name now.”
“Oh, well, then I suppose it was a success,” she said, sarcasm in full bloom. “What am I grousing about?”
“God only knows,” he returned, annoyance flaring in him despite the insistent tug of hook around his ribs. “Do you think I wanted to get mauled by a she-cat? Do you think I fancied a dip in cold water? What happened happened.”
“Yes, on that, we can agree.” She crossed her arms, giving her head a little shake. “What happened happened.”
“And why were you acting like a doe-eyed ninny, since we’re on the subject?” he added, certain the cut on his lip was bleeding again now. “Xandine was never so … so docile. Why the change?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” she returned.
“I can’t rightly be the pub princess in this scenario, can I?
That would be wholly incorrect in tone. I need to be someone whom an upstanding young man would defend and potentially agree to marry.
A properly bred, properly behaved young woman.
Much like your heiress is probably expected to be! ”
“Well, I hate it!” he snapped back, loudly enough that she startled.
He clamped his lips shut, listening to the odd echo of his own words as she blinked at him in genuine surprise.
“I would never marry a woman like that,” he added, self-conscious now.
He reached up to rub a hand over his hair, still damp from his bath and a little textured from the ocean water.
“I don’t want to give that family the impression that’s what I’m after or, God forbid, encourage my actual future wife to act that way.
You have to put some of the fire back into her. ”
“Oho, I ‘have to’?” she returned, flashing her teeth at him.
“I thought you were in love with every woman, Jasper Townsend. Now, suddenly, you have preferences? How do you know Miss Templeton-Rath isn’t docile and sweet herself?
What if she is, all on her own, without trying to imitate an imaginary princess? Then what?”
“The woman who threw fish heads on a dock while introducing herself?” he asked, raising his brows. “She seemed docile to you?”
“She seemed many things to me beyond simply a woman, cat-loving, and brunette!” Libba answered. “It sounds like you noticed more than you said as well. I cannot continue in this endeavor if you will not be honest with me, Jasper.”
“I am being honest with you,” he told her through his teeth. “I can’t pretend to even feign interest in that Xandine. She has to be more like … She has … Libba, just fix her!”
She watched him, the smile melting off her lips until the corners sagged. “More like what, Jasper?”
He pressed his lips together, his color rising. He averted his eyes, turning his face away from her so that she was speaking to his wounds rather than to him.
“More like me?” she suggested quietly, something stirring in her chest like disturbed gravel, furious and warm. “Is that what you were going to say?”
His jaw ticked, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment. “Just fix her,” he said again, stubborn and firm. “Like I said. Put some of the fire back.”
For a moment, she just stared at him. She wasn’t sure if it was offense or disbelief or a paralyzing dose of annoyance, but she could only stare.
“You want fire?” she finally managed to bite off, snatching up the hourglass just a few grains short of its seven minutes completing and stuffing it into her pocket as she rose to her feet. “I will give you fire. And you will remember through every burn that you asked for it.”
“Now, hold on,” he said, turning to watch her as she stepped around his chair.
“Patch up your lips again, Jasper Townsend,” she said without looking at him, walking straight and upright out of the room. “They’re bleeding.”
Jasper did taste blood, bitter and hot, but he imagined that had very little to do with his wounds.