Before he could reply—and very possibly encourage her further—she slipped her hand from his sleeve and moved a step ahead along the path with studied nonchalance.
Behind her, though she did not turn to check, she was fairly certain that Mr Deverell was smiling—and of course, that was the most dangerous part, for she was smiling too.
Chapter 5
Mr Jasper Deverell could not, for the life of him, account for his persistent interest in Miss Charlotte Tolliver, and Heaven knew he had made a very sincere effort to do so.
It was not, he assured himself, for want of diversion. As a rake of the first order, he had long been acquainted—often in the most intimate sense—with ladies of remarkable accomplishments: widows who spoke finer French than half the Foreign Office, actresses possessed of both scandalous talent and even more scandalous décolletage, and at least one baroness whose reputation alone could have kept three bishops awake at night. And yet, whenever Miss Tolliver so much as stepped into view, something in him lifted its head like a hunting hound catching scent.
He supposed it began the morning of the Tolliver-Langley duel.
Miss Tolliver had been, at the time, too young to provoke anything approaching desire in him; but even so, she had causedhim a great deal of amusement. He admired her courage—her gall, indeed. How could one not?
At six-and-ten, she had appeared at dawn upon a mist-draped field, having escaped her household in a pair of trousers—trousers!—in order to witness a duel of honour between her elder brother Benedict and his opponent, Theo, who was at that time already Jasper’s oldest and most valued friend.
In what could only be described as a moment of ungovernable spirit—or utter madness— she had seized a pistol from the case, discovered too late that it was loaded, and discharged it neatly into Theo’s side whilst her elder sister attempted to wrest the weapon from her hands.
The result had been blood, shouting, and the immediate collapse of what ought to have been a gentlemanly affair. It might have been extremely amusing, had it not been quite so dire.
Theo, of course, survived. Indeed, he had gone on—most astonishingly—to marry Miss Tolliver. The eldest one, naturally. Jasper had never been entirely certain whether to clap him on the back or have him committed to an asylum.
Jasper had stood beside Theo at the altar and spent the greater part of the wedding breakfast assuring various anxious relations that the groom would not collapse before the pudding was served. Miss Charlotte Tolliver approached him only once during the wedding festivities— taking the glass of champagne directly from his hand without asking and drinking it entirely.
“I require it more than you,” she informed him calmly, before returning the empty glass and walking away.
After that morning, Jasper had scarcely given Miss Charlotte Tolliver another thought. Until Theo—some years later—wrote to him in a state of considerable agitation regarding a scandal which might very nearly have ruined both his sister-in-law andthe Tolliver name, had he not intervened with commendable speed.
The details, as Theo relayed them, were somewhat chaotic. There had been a disappearance, a carriage in the night, an attempted elopement, and no small number of fists thrown in the process. The entire affair had been kept from the scandal sheets only through determined effort: a well-timed bribe here, the blunt authority of a duke there.
In the end it was all smoothed over, as such things often are for well-born young ladies belonging to powerful families—though Jasper had been surprised that so few consequences appeared to follow. Marchmont had not married her, which seemed the most obvious solution to the difficulty, and Miss Tolliver—astonishingly—was now embarked upon a second Season under the patronage of a duchess. (Admittedly, the duchess in question was her sister. Still, it was impressive.)
It was towards the end of the previous Season, when Miss Tolliver had already been discreetly removed to the country—banished, in effect, though no one would dare employ so vulgar a term—that Jasper had the good fortune to encounter her in person once again.
Her sudden absence from London had been explained away with talk of nerves and the dreadful toll Society could take upon a sensitive disposition. Jasper doubted Miss Tolliver possessed a sensitive disposition of any kind.
She had been permitted to attend a modest gathering held at the Tolliver country estate—a rustic, lamplit affair deemed sufficiently rural as to pose no danger of gossip.It was, of course, a grave mistake to assume Miss Tolliver would behave merely because she was surrounded by relations.
Jasper had only just returned from Scotland—Edinburgh, to be precise—where he had spent the better part of the Season in the company of a widowed countess, an Italian violinist, anda very pretty lieutenant. Before that there had been a dutiful interval at Oxford, which his father had once hoped might instil discipline. It had not.
He accepted the invitation to the Tolliver ball out of loyalty to Theo, intending only to drink, flirt a little, and be very mildly improper in the safety of the countryside. He had not expected Miss Tolliver to have grown into such a rarity of a young lady. When he first saw her dancing that evening, he very nearly forgot to breathe.
She was no longer the pistol-wielding girl in trousers who transformed a gentleman’s duel into a bloodbath and nearly cost him his best friend. She appeared instead in a pale blue muslin gown, her hair caught up with ribbon, her cheeks flushed from exertion, and proceeded within half an hour to charm one half of the gathering and scandalise the other. He had danced with her, naturally—just the once. Perhaps, later in the evening, they had wandered out to the orchard. Perhaps someone had produced a bottle of plum wine, and perhaps someone else had suggested climbing a tree.
How could he forget the sight of her—perched amongst the leaves like some mischievous woodland spirit? Moonlight slipped through the orchard leaves and caught the edge of her grin as she leant down to pass down the bottle, laughing as though she had not a single care in the world. She was wild and young and utterly ungovernable, and—God help him—she was beautiful.
He had bedded women since, of course—willing, clever, accomplished women, and his fair share of men, too—yet not even the most erotic of couplings came close to that innocent moment: the sheer absurdity of sitting in a tree and looking up to find Miss Tolliver, hair loose and slippers discarded, drinking wine like a pirate. It could only be concluded that Miss Charlotte Tolliver had, at some point that evening, bewitched him entirely.
She walked ahead of him now along the garden path, and Jasper found himself once again struck by the singular effect of her. The afternoon sun filtered through the branches above, casting light across her figure. She was entirely too comfortable in her own skin for the comfort of any gentleman inclined to sense, though Jasper had never been greatly burdened with good sense.
Thus, he followed her down the path like a man under a spell. “I must say,” he observed from behind her, “you do not appear entirely displeased to find yourself returned to Town, Miss Tolliver.”
“Displeased? I amrevived, sir. The country is very fine for galloping horses and escaping one’s family, but one cannot steal champagne, nor climb statues with nearly the same flair.”
“Good God,” he laughed. “Is that your plan for the Season? Theft and public disorder?”
“Certainly not disorder,” she said, with mock offense. “I much prefer the term ‘orchestrated chaos.’”
“And are you to orchestrate it alone?”
