“Stay,” she murmured, sinking further into the pillows. “Lock the door and stay.”
She closed her eyes, and after a time, the mattress dipped behind her. Jasper lay atop the coverlet at first, stiff as a saint.
Lottie endured this for perhaps ten seconds. “For heaven’s sake,” she muttered, without opening her eyes. “You are not a plank of wood. Hold me, and sleep.”
A breath of laughter warmed the back of her neck as he settled behind her, fitting himself to the curve of her body. His arm came around her waist and stopped there, light and questioning.
Lottie placed her hand over his.
Not a cage,she thought as exhaustion crept over her in slow, velvet waves. No, it was not a cage at all.
Chapter 43
It must be recorded, before we proceed any further, that Mr Jasper Deverell left Miss Charlotte Tolliver’s bedchamber by way of window. This was considerably less romantic than any heroine might imagine, involving as it did a muttered oath from the shrubbery below; yet the sight of Jasper cursing and limping across the dark lawn with his boots in one hand did much to restore Lottie’s spirits.
She escaped to the garden after breakfast, where no one was discussing the “extraordinary excitement” of the house party with ghoulish relish.
She found a stone bench at the end of a little formal garden and sat with her hands folded in her lap as she watched a blackbird stab furiously at the wet earth.
After a little while, footsteps sounded upon the path, though she did not turn. “If you are Mama,” she said, “I am resting. If you are Dr Bell, I am taking air. If you are Morleigh, I am not receiving lectures from dukes before noon. If you are Jasper, youmay approach, provided you have not brought hydrangeas and declarations of love.”
There was a pause, before she heard a familiar chuckle. “I have not. I bring only my wounded self.”
She smiled and shifted upon the bench to make room.
“How is your father today?”
“Sleeping.”
“And your mother?”
“Not sleeping.”
“Oh dear.”
“She says she shall sleep when Papa is quite recovered, which means she shall never sleep again, because she does so love theatrics.”
Jasper smiled, a dimple deepening in his cheek as he glanced at her sidelong.
Lottie sighed deeply, and felt not as though shemustsay something, but rather that she desperately wanted to. “I am feeling quite lost today, Jasper. I am realising… Well, I am realising that I love my family dreadfully.” She grimaced. “How hideous.”
“Devastating,” he agreed softly.
“I love Mama, though she is absurd and drives me to bedlam.”
“A trying attachment.”
Lottie had begun and now found that she could not stop. “And I do love Georgie, though she became a duchess, and Hetty, though she is lording her condition over us all.”
“Naturally.”
“And I love Theo and his alarming new decency, and Morleigh with his damned ducal commands, and even Benedict when he is dramatic, and Marianne, though she pretends not to care for me at all, and Nell and her blasted chicken, Clara, though they are both menaces, and Papa—” The tears came swiftly, though Lottie dashed them away at once.
“Papa,” she said again, more softly. “I love Papa. And when he said, ‘do not go far,’ I wanted to tear my own heart out for having thought of going anywhere at all.”
Jasper was silent, which was rather wise of him.
Lottie sniffed hard. “You may say something now.”
