“Normally, I would say that was undeniably the truth. However, I had heard whispers of your being unable to afford a horse at Tattersall’s.”
His jaw dropped.Such rubbish belonged in the dust-bin!Someone had started a vicious rumor and slandered his good name. He would rip them limb from limb.
“From whom did you hear such a thing?” he demanded, feeling as if his cravat were suddenly tied too tightly.
Lady Daphne was known to gossip. If she thought this to be a juicy tidbit — true or not — the rumor would be everywhere. It was probably already too late.
The lady merely pursed her lips. “Thewhois unimportant, and I shall say nothing more. But my bracelet would have fetched a pretty penny.”
“I promise you,” Jasper ground out, trying to unclench his teeth, “I didn’t need a pretty penny, nor a bloody pretty pound!”
Although Lady Daphne nodded, he wasn’t certain she’d accepted his vehement assertion. Then she spared Miss Sudbury a withering glance.
“You are a foolish girl to come up here with him.”
Jasper waited. He’d never seen Julia Sudbury behave submissively to anyone. To his amazement, his blonde bandit looked sheepish and compliant.
“Yes, my lady,” she said quietly.
“I think it best if you both leave my home,” Lady Daphne added.
Jasper had never been thrown out of anywhere in his life.
“Come now, don’t be like that. No harm was done.”
“Her ladyship is correct,” Miss Sudbury began. “We should go.”
“No,” Jasper said, more forcefully than he meant to. “I know how rumors begin. If someone noticed our absence from the ballroom, and then also sees us both leave at the same time, your name will be dragged through the mud before morning.”
He offered Lady Daphne a beseeching look.
“You both should have thought of that,” she snapped.
“My lady,” he began, stepping closer to her, until he could practically peer down her décolletage. Gazing into her eyes, he implored her. “Would you punish us for a mere kiss? One that never actually happened?”
They engaged in a silent battle. He wondered if she would take a night with him as payment to be silent and let this go as if it never happened. To hint at that, he dropped his glance to the exposed tops of her breasts, then back to her eyes, seeing her pupils dilate.
“Just a kiss,” he added on a whisper, as if they were the ones who would share it.
After a moment in which she raised a delicate eyebrow at him and then a confounded glance toward Miss Sudbury, Lady Daphne did the unexpected. She laughed at him.
“Please, Marshfield. Don’t try to turn your charms upon me. I think of you like a brother.” She guffawed with hilarity and, to his consternation, clutched her stomach.
While relieved at her levity, Jasper was also insulted. He was most definitelynother brother. Moreover, he thought he had a chance with every woman, and a good one at that. It was galling to realize such wasn’t the case, despite having no real interest in her.
Eventually, their hostess gathered herself.
“For the gift of that delightfully uplifting hilarity, I’ll let you both stay for the remainder of the evening. Marshfield, you go downstairs first. I’ll escort Miss Sudbury back into the ballroomafterI give her a stern talking to about staying away from the likes of you.”
“But—” he began.
“But me no buts,” Lady Daphne insisted. “Or you’ll be tossed out.”
He closed his mouth. The damage had, at least, been mitigated, and Miss Sudbury wouldn’t end up in Newgate, not that evening at any rate.
With a nod to the ladies, he departed.
The notion that people were talking about him didn’t bother him in the least. As a libertine, he was used to his name in the paper asLord M__or theE__ of M__, usually with the words “behaved dreadfully” somewhere close by. However, to his knowledge, no one had ever besmirched his family’s fortune. He wasn’t prone to profligacy, nor to wasteful extravagance or uncontrollable gambling. His finances were as sound as ever.
