He leant nearer as the figure turned them from her mother’s view, his breath grazing the edge of her ear. “You will develop a headache. A feminine one. Acute and requiring immediate solitude.”
“How fragile of me.”
“Utterly. One scarcely knows how you remain upright.”
She glanced up at him, her cheeks flushed from motion and something far less respectable. The music began its final ascent, strings climbing towards the last flourish.
Jasper guided her into the closing turn with exquisite precision, and when the waltz ended, he held her one fraction too long, his hand pressed firm at the small of her back. “Do wear something,” he murmured at her ear, “you do not mind ruining.”
He bowed and withdrew into the crowd, leaving Lottie standing beneath Lady Culpepper’s chandeliers in her hideous green gown, her pulse misbehaving and her mother’s gaze boring into her.
Chapter 15
The next morning, Lottie awoke with the dawn, though to say she had slept would be a gross overstatement. Her dreams, such as they were, had been rather unwholesome and delicious affairs: flashes of polished steel and breathless laughter; Jasper Deverell’s gloved hands closing over hers; the slide and clash of sabres; his mouth too near her ear; his voice murmuring,Do wear something you do not mind ruining.
Lottie lay for several moments staring at the canopy above her bed. If she beat Jasper Deverell that afternoon—if she knocked the sabre from his clever hands and had the pleasure of watching that wicked composure crack—then he would owe her another forfeit. The thought made her roll into the pillow with a smile. Perhaps—
A knock sounded at the door.
Lottie sat up at once, cheeks hot. “Yes?”
Her maid entered. “Good morning, miss. Shall I dress you for breakfast?”
“I am afraid I have a headache,” she said faintly.
The maid paused. “A headache, miss?”
“A feminine one.”
“Ah.”
“Acute,” Lottie added, because Jasper had been quite particular on the matter.
“Shall I tell Lady Tolliver you will not come down to breakfast?”
“Yes. Tell her I am delicate.”
The maid looked at her with suspicion, and Lottie looked back.
“Very delicate,” Lottie said.
As the maid withdrew, Lottie threw back the covers and sprang from bed.
Fortunately, the household was blessedly short of interference that morning. Her elder sisters, Hetty and Georgie, had been summoned, captured, and borne away by their mother to inspect a new modiste on Bond Street; Nell had been packed off to some unfortunate second-cousin in Richmond; and Mari was, no doubt, folded into a library window seat with a book.
For once, the house was quiet, which suited Lottie perfectly.
She dressed herself with more purpose than ceremony, choosing not what matched, but what might permit a young lady to bend, spring, lunge, and, should Providence prove generous, thoroughly humiliate a gentleman. She selected a soft lawn shirt, a high-collared riding jacket, and an old pair of Benedict’s dark woollen breeches, altered to fit her tolerably well. She had polished her boots the night before to a shine.She looked utterly ridiculous, she knew, but wonderfully prepared.
For a moment, she considered painting her lips. It was not strictly necessary. Indeed, no one at Westvale House would expect cosmetics for a clandestine duel, nor did she imagine Jasper Deverell would be especially occupied with the colour of her mouth while she was pressing a sabre to his throat.
Or perhaps he would.
Lottie opened the small ivory case upon her vanity, touched her finger to the waxy red within, and smoothed it carefully across her lips. She smiled, sharp and sly, and snapped the ivory case shut.
Let Jasper Deverell underestimate her. It would make the moment all the more delicious when she swept the blade from his grasp, watched his eyebrows shoot up in startled admiration, and sliced the smirk clean off his face with her sabre.
The sabre, unfortunately, was not in her room. It was in the fortress of her father’s office.
