Which they proceeded to do-in a rather deafening silence punctuated by small bursts of bright, stilted conversation.
“This,” Miss Katherine Huxtable said when they arrived back at the gates, loosening her hold on his arm and including the others close behind them in her remarks, “has been a lovely afternoon, has it not? Thank you very much indeed, Miss Wrayburn and Lord Montford, for accompanying us.”
She and her brother and sister were going one way and he and Charlotte were going the other, so they all took their leave of one another with a flurry of cheerful farewells, just as if that damnably melodramatic interruption had not occurred.
And how many people had witnessed the scene? Not that he cared the snap of his fingers what the gossips might say about him. But there was Charlotte to think about. Good Lord, what the devil had her aunt been thinking of, exposing her thus to the public gaze and censure? She could not possibly have waited until tomorrow morning to read him a scold in the privacy of her own drawing room?
“Jasper,” Charlotte said, her small hand tucked beneath his arm, “what will Aunt Prunella say tomorrow? What will she do?”
“Let me worry about that,” he said, patting her hand. “Or not.”
“But you know what Papa said in his will,” she said, her voice thin and high-pitched with misery.
Her father had stated that she must be brought up and housed until her marriage by his sister, her aunt, if her mother should die and there were ever any question of neglect or impropriety in the way Baron Montford handled her upbringing.
“Your papa also appointed three guardians,” he said, “and fortunately Clarence is only one of them.”
“But if Great-Uncle Seth were to take his side,” she said, “then Aunt Prunella would take me away and there would be nothing you could do about it. Oh, I wish now I had stayed at Cedarhurst.”
“Great-Uncle Seth is too lazy to move out of his own shadow,” he told her. “He has never made any secret of the fact that he resented being named guardian by his own nephew-especially when that nephew had the effrontery to predecease him. I am sorry, Char. I ought not to talk about your papa in that careless way. But you need not worry about Great-Uncle Seth.”
“But I do,” she said. “He has only to say the word-” She did not complete the thought.
“It won’t happen,” he said, guiding her across the road and skirting about a pile of manure that the crossing sweep had not yet cleared. “I promise. I’ll go and call upon your great-uncle in person if I must, though he won’t like it above half.”
“Will you?” she said. “Do you think-”
“Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” he suggested, patting her hand. “Do you like the Huxtables?”
“Oh, exceedingly.” She brightened immediately, and then she turned a laughing face his way. “You like Miss Katherine Huxtable.”
He looked at her sharply.
“I like them both,” he said. “They are Merton’s sisters, and they are genteel and charming, not to mention beautiful.”
“But I think you like Miss Katherine Huxtable,” she said with an impish smile from beneath the brim of her bonnet. “You scarcely took your eyes off her while we were walking back through the park.”
“We were conversing,” he said. “It is polite to look at the person with whom you are having a conversation. Did Miss Daniels never teach you that?”
But she only laughed.
“And I think,” she said, “she likes you, Jasper.”
“Never tell me,” he said, recoiling in feigned horror, “that she was looking at me too while we talked. How very brazen of her.”
“It was the way she was looking,” she told him. “But I daresay all ladies like you. Are you going to marry one of these days?”
“One of these very future days, perhaps,” he said. “Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But not in the foreseeable future.”
“Not even,” she asked him, “if you were to fall in love?”
“I would marry immediately if not sooner were that to happen,” he said. “I would be so startled I would not know what else to do. As startled as I would be if I were to hear that hell had frozen over.”
“I wish,” she said with a sigh, “you were not such a dreadful cynic, Jasper.”
“And what do you think of Merton?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“He is exceedingly handsome and amiable,” she said. “He looks like a god. I daresay everyone is in love with him.”
“Including you, Char?” he asked.
“Oh, no,” she assured him. “I would not be so foolish. It would be like pining for the sun. I shall look for someone altogether more… possible with whom to fall in love. But not yet. I want to be at least twenty before I marry.”
“Elderly, in fact.” He grinned fondly at her. He had not realized how practical she was, how unsure of herself, how underestimating of her own charms. There was no reason in the world why the daughter of a wealthy baronet, sister of a baron, could not aspire to the hand of an earl.
But definitely not yet.
“Perhaps,” he said, “love will take you by surprise one of these days.”
“I hope so,” she said, smiling brightly at him. “When I am old enough to be quite sure that love is what it is. And I hope it happens to you too, Jasper. Falling in love, I mean.”
“Thank you,” he said, patting her hand again. “But let me see, is it a blessing or a curse you are bestowing?”
She laughed.
“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, gazing up eagerly into his face. “A wonderful idea. Miss Daniels says we should try to add a few more names to the guest list for my house party. I think we ought to invite Miss Katherine Huxtable, Jasper. Oh, and Miss Huxtable too. After all, you will need some congenial company as well as I will.”
“And since I am an elder and those two ladies are elders too,” he said, “we can congenially entertain one another? About a crackling fire to keep our aged bones warm in July, perhaps?”
“Miss Katherine Huxtable was twenty when her brother succeeded to the title,” she said. “She mentioned it when we were walking to the Serpentine. And that was three years ago. She is not so very old, Jasper, though it is surprising that she is not already married. Especially when she is so beautiful. Perhaps she has been waiting for someone special. I admire her for that.”
“Char,” he said, looking sidelong at her, “you are not matchmaking by any chance, are you? I warn you it is an impossibility.”
“Is it?” She gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look.
He had, in fact, just got exactly what he wanted without having to try very hard at all. Katherine Huxtable still had to accept the invitation, of course.
“Then I will have to play this game too,” he said with a sigh. “If the Misses Huxtable are to be invited, Char, then it would be quite ill-mannered not to invite Merton too.”
She turned her head sharply to face front again until the poke of her bonnet hid her flushed cheeks.
“Oh, would it?” she said. “But I daresay he has far more interesting things to do.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “Let’s find out, shall we?”
And to the devil with the fact that perhaps she really ought not even to be acquainted with Merton yet. What strange gothic notions some people had. Good Lord, Aunt Prunella and her ilk would probably have young girls locked in a high tower with their spinning wheels if they had their way.
9
JASPER’S visit to Lady Forester and Clarence the following morning proceeded much as he had expected. He was very careful to time his arrival so that he was knocking on their door at precisely four minutes after nine, and they kept him waiting in the visitors’ parlor for fifteen minutes.