Chapter Twenty-Eight
Libba heard the arguing before the door opened again and turned her head to see not only Jasper, for whom she was bracing, but Lem, attempting to shake the other man off his large, ebony bicep.
“Off!” Lem said, likely for the third or fourth time. “Be easy!”
“You cannot. Not right now!” Jasper was insisting, wild-eyed. “They will see you.”
Libba sighed and stepped forward, pushing her hands between the two men and spreading her arms in increments until they were divided.
Malcolm, presumably thinking he was the one who would have to be pulled, bodily, off Jasper today, was blinking at the scene in bemused shock.
“What,” she managed, gritting her teeth, “the hell?”
“Templeton-Raths,” Jasper said shrilly. “With Harcourt. Lem going to Harcourt!”
She blinked at Jasper, and then at Lem. “You’ve an appointment today?”
“Indeed,” said Lem, leaning casually against the doorframe.
“He’s Harcourt’s son!” Jasper announced, startling both Libba and Malcolm.
“What?” Mal managed to say, giving an incredulous laugh. “He is certainly not.”
Lem shrugged. “The barrister has decided that he will claim me because your family cannot. He is a bachelor with no children, so he thought it the perfect solution. I would have told you sooner, but you have been …” He paused, glancing at Jasper. “Occupied.”
Libba, for a brief moment, was too stunned to speak. She stared at her friend. At her lover. She craned around to look at her brother, and they did the whole sequence again.
“What?!” she finally managed to exclaim, throwing her arms out, hands-up, as though God might drop a scroll into them with a simplification in ink.
“It is much simpler than the other ways,” Lem said. “He came yesterday evening to tell me and asked me to review the papers. We are to go together to get a date with a magistrate today. I must be there.”
“You cannot!” Jasper said again.
Lem paused, narrowing his eyes. “I must.”
“Lem, they can’t see you,” Libba said reasonably. “You can get a date with the magistrate any other day, can’t you?”
“I have long waited,” Lem said, frowning. “I do not wish to continue waiting.”
That silenced her, her mouth going dry.
He was right.
He’d allowed her to reschedule appointments with Harcourt. He’d let her put off the dinner with Ulysses Lennox. He’d dressed up and played a foreign bodyguard in a stranger’s home.
She had no right to ask this of him.
“This is going to cause a scandal,” Malcolm said softly. “The whole of Brighton will hear of it, whether he goes today or a week from now.”
She turned to look at her brother, desperation in her eyes. “Harcourt has no family to speak of,” she said. “It is not as though Lem is displacing an heir.”
“Look at him,” Malcolm said gently. “And look at Harcourt. Imagine you work for the local newspaper office at this time of year. In Brighton. When no one is about and nothing much is happening.”
She felt what was left of hope in her lungs escape, a wisp of warm breath she hadn’t meant to exhale.
“Maybe they will be gone by the time he gets there,” Jasper said, evidently still inflated with a few straggling tendrils of delusion.
“Jasper,” she said, her voice gone fatigued. “They are going to find out. They will find out today by chance encounter or next week by gossip rag or the week after that when they attend the play. They are going to find out.”
He looked stunned, frozen in place, the color splotchy in his cheeks. The gold of his irises flared and flickered as he seemingly tried to find a route of escape, a means of a solution.
She walked forward and took his hand into hers, waiting for him to realize as she had.
There was no escape.
“There is one gambit left,” she said softly. “You feign ignorance and allow them to think that Lem and I were scamming you, rather than the three of us scamming them. You will save your ambitions that way.”
He stared down at her, mouth falling open. “I wouldn’t do that,” he breathed, squeezing her hand and tugging her closer. “I would never do that.”
“Jasper,” Malcolm said, his voice still even and sympathetic from the desk. “I don’t see that you have another choice.”
“I won’t do that!” Jasper said again, his brows drawing together, his head snapping up. “Who knows what they would do in retribution? I won’t leave Libba alone in the water with sharks swarming. The only reason she was even there is because of me.”
“Yes,” Malcolm agreed, raising an eyebrow. “And we do need to discuss that. Among … erm … other things.”
“Be reasonable,” Libba said, stroking the back of Jasper’s hands with her thumbs. “They could force your removal from East India’s roster. You could lose so much more than I could. They can’t do much to my theater. Actors are already disgraced.”
He shook his head, his hair wobbling, and squeezed her fingers tighter. “No,” he ground out. “Let them.”
Libba gave a distressed little sigh, glancing over her shoulder for Malcolm’s help, but he was staring in a way that looked worryingly like approval. She frowned at him, turning back.
Her ribs were being battered by the nerves, fluttering like wooden fans against the bones.
“Jasper, you’ve made a name for yourself here,” she said.
“You worked your way from cargo to factor and there is still so much more to do, room to climb. I am nothing here. I am nobody. You must let me do this.”
Lem was still hovering in the doorway.
It seemed, despite his clear expression of intent to go claim his new self, he would not leave without their blessing. His eyes were on Jasper’s and Libba’s hands, his brows high with surprise.
“Mr. Townsend,” Lem said, “she is right. We have weathered worse than accusations of fraud. Liberty and I have been to jail together more than once. It is really no matter.”
Libba grimaced, hearing her brother shift and slap his hand onto the desk behind her.
“‘Jail’?!” he hissed.
“Not now, Malcolm,” she snapped. “Jasper, I could be ruined here and still have stages in other cities. Scandal might as well be accolade in my work. It is not the same for you.”
He frowned at her, blinking for the first time since his declaration of refusal. “‘Other cities’?” he said. “You said you would stay.”
“I can stay,” she said quickly. “I can go. I can do what is necessary to not ruin your life, my love.”
He was still frowning, his eyes searching her face.
“I will go tell them myself,” he decided, after a moment. “I owe that much, after all this. No waiting for the hammer to fall.”
“Is that wise?” Malcolm said, frowning. “How the Devil do you tell someone you did that, anyhow?”
Jasper glanced up and gave a sigh and a shrug. “You just spit the truth out, I suppose. God knows I should do that more often. I should have done it with you, Mal.”
“With me?” Mal repeated, giving a dry laugh. “I don’t think you can compare—”
“I’m in love with your sister,” Jasper said, frowning. “You are my best mate. I should have told you before. I’ve been in love with her for a long time, I think.”
There was a long, yawning beat of dead air. Everyone in the room was still, as if momentarily suspended, just above the ground.
Malcolm took a slow, steady breath through his nose, his nostrils flaring as his eyes flickered shut, his head shaking. “Jasper,” he said finally, his breath blowing out around the word, “then you court her. You marry her. You do not do whatever the hell this is!”
Jasper gave a weak, wobbling half-smile. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
“And you,” Mal said, his eyes flicking back open and focusing on Libba. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
She grimaced, the clock giving an ominous chime on the hour from farther down the street. “Then perhaps don’t say anything at all?”
“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” he replied, giving a dry chuckle. “I don’t think so.”
“Liberty,” Lem said, softly enough to be polite but firmly enough to be heard. “I really must go.”
She sighed and nodded, pushing her fingers into her temples. “Yes, all right,” she said. “But we’re coming with you.”
“We are?” Mal repeated, his voice rising in pitch.
She was already moving to grab her coat from the hook on the far wall. “We are,” she confirmed. “Get up and get moving. Today is Lemuel Harcourt’s birthday.”