Lottie looked around at her sisters with mounting dread. “And if I do not comply? If I have no wish to marry at all?”
Georgie’s smile turned ever so slightly terrifying. “Then I shall begin introducing you to the gentlemen from my reserve list.”
Lottie paled. “You still have lists?”
“Several,” Georgie said sweetly. “Marquesses with gout. Viscounts who spit when they speak. A baron who smells of pickled herring. All of them most eager for a sizeable dowry and a young, fertile-looking bride.”
“That is vile,” Lottie exclaimed.
“You should be thanking me. I have spared you the worst of them.”
“She is not jesting,” Hetty said, sipping her tea.
“You are all ghouls. Unrepentant, matchmaking ghouls.” Lottie glanced toward her mother. “Who is to chaperone me on this doomed excursion?”
“Not I,” said Hetty, shifting with a wince. “If I so much as breathe irregularly, Theo turns white and begins ringing for hot water and clean linens.”
“Nor me,” Georgie added. “Henry is teething, and I refuse to travel with more than one uncontrollable creature at a time.”
“Then who?” Lottie demanded.
“I have asked my husband to attend in a supervisory capacity,” Georgie said primly.
“Morleigh?You have appointed the duke as my chaperone?”
Georgie gave a delicate shrug. “He has a gift for glaring at inappropriate men. I daresay it will be quite useful.”
“Your chaperones,” Hetty confirmed serenely, “shall consist of Mama and Papa for appearance’s sake, and His Grace for actual enforcement.”
Lottie looked horrified. “His Grace does notlikeparties. Or people. Or me, most days.”
“Nonsense,” Georgie said cheerfully. “He merely prefers you at a distance, and when he is not rescuing you bodily from disaster. Besides, he has agreed. Albeit under protest. It was either accompany you or host a luncheon for the Dowager Duchess of Exmoor, and he despises her.”
“God help me,” Lottie breathed.
Morleigh, of all people. There would be no escaping the duke’s notice. With his silent disapproval and glacial stare, he would track her every movement like a bloodhound in black silk. She would not be able to so much as flirt by the hedgerows without him materialising at her elbow like the spectre of all joy extinguished.
Which meant… she was going to have to see Jasper before they left, so that he might claim his forfeit.
Chapter 25
Jasper’s long-suffering butler, Gibbons, opened the door with the expression of a man expecting a delivery of port or perhaps a corpse, but certainly not a young lady in a cloak and bonnet.
“Miss Tolliver,” he said slowly, blinking behind his spectacles. “Unchaperoned in the middle of the night. I do hope I am mistaken.”
“You are not,” said Lottie, stepping smartly across the threshold. “Please inform Mr Deverell that Mr Charleston has come to settle his account.”
Gibbons cleared his throat before inhaling and exhaling through his nose. “Very good, madam. Though I daresay I ought to summon a constable instead.”
“You may summon whom you wish, Mr Gibbons,” Lottie said, unbothered. “Though I do recommend haste. It is rather chilly, and I have climbed over two garden walls. I am damp and cross, sir.”
The butler gave her a look that could have soured milk. “This way, if you please.”
He ushered her up the stairs and down the corridor to Jasper’s rooms. She gave the butler a wink, but he did not seem pleased.
Jasper was in his half-dressed, tousled, and looking like sin distilled into a man. Papers were scattered across the desk, his ink-stained fingers still curled around a pen. He looked up, blinked in surprise, and threw the latest letter into the fire in panic. “Miss Tolliver—Charlotte—what in God’s name?”
She pulled off her gloves one finger at a time. “I am here to pay my debts.”
