Georgie’s fan snapped shut. “Indeed. I remember it perfectly well—particularly the moment we discovered you both in the folly, without a chaperone, and in possession of two empty bottles.”
Lottie tilted her head in recollection. “Three, actually.”
Lady Tolliver appeared at that moment in a flurry of lavender silk and maternal agitation, fanning herself with great urgency. “Oh, my darlings!” she cried. “You must circulate at once! Smile. Keep your shoulders back. Speak distinctly, Charlotte, and under no circumstances are you to climb anything.”
Trailing behind her came Lord Tolliver, who had paused beside a hedge trimmed into the shape of a swan. He regarded it with great seriousness, raising his quizzing glass. “A fine attempt, though why gardeners persist in shaping such an ordinary fowl is beyond me. A hippocampus wouldlend the composition considerably more grandeur. Mythological symbolism is terribly neglected in modern horticulture.”
“Papa,” Georgie said with extraordinary restraint, “pray do not lecture the gardeners today.”
“Am I not to speak to anyone at all?” he asked, crestfallen. “I came prepared to discuss my latest essay on Greco-Roman garden allegory—your mama firmly instructed that I may not.”
“Come, Papa. Mama,” Georgie said with a diplomat’s patience. “We must make our proper introductions.”
With that, the Tolliver party began to move: Georgie and the duke at the front; Lady Tolliver murmuring blessings and instructions in equal measure; Lord Tolliver wandering slightly off course in pursuit of a cleverly shaped yew; and Theo, trailing behind Lottie like a weary guard.
As they strolled towards the central lawn, Lottie’s attention snagged quite against her will, upon a figure beneath the rose arch.
A gentleman she remembered well stood there, at his ease with one shoulder resting against the trellis.
Mr Jasper Deverell appeared entirely untroubled by the expectations of Society, the sunlight catching pleasantly in his tousled brown hair. He was laughing with a debutante, holding his punch glass with the kind of careless swagger that came naturally to men accustomed to admiration.
Which, Lottie reflected, was hardly surprising. Mr Deverell was very handsome, very wealthy, and the heir to an earldom—and entirely too aware of all three. Even as the girl chattered on, he lifted one brow in that infamous fashion of his, and the poor creature nearly swooned.
Lottie huffed softly and looked away, only to look back half a second later.
His gaze had already found her. His smile flashed white in the sunlight—not the dazzling sort he bestowed upon wide-eyedgirls, but a slower thing, more crooked and altogether more dangerous. He passed his punch glass to a footman without so much as a nod of thanks and began across the lawn.
The debutante blinked at the abrupt dismissal, but Deverell was already striding away across the sunlit green, long-limbed and loose-hipped, his eyes trained upon Lottie with a lazy confidence that made her fingers twitch for a sword.
When he reached them, however, he behaved exactly as a gentleman must. He bowed first to the duke. “Morleigh. What a marvel to see you at a gathering so populated. Tell me—was it duty, or were you blackmailed?” He winked.
The duke inclined his head. “An unholy combination of the two.”
Deverell turned next to Georgie, offering a graceful bow and precisely enough charm to be forgiven his impertinence.“Your Grace. You are, as ever, a vision. Duchesshood appears to suit you exceedingly well.”
“Careful,” Georgie replied coolly, “I am very nearly fond of you, Mr Deverell. I should hate to regret it.”
Unperturbed, he turned to Theo, offering an easy grin—and here, readers might be reminded that Deverell and Langley had been the best of friends since boyhood. “Langley. Still alive, I see.”
“Against all odds,” Theo replied. “Though being appointed guardian to that”—he inclined his head towards Lottie—“may yet finish me.”
“You have my sympathies,” Jasper said gravely. “You always did take on more than was strictly reasonable.”
Then, with perfect composure and not the slightest hint of haste, he inclined his head towards Lord Tolliver, who remained absorbed with the swan-shaped hedges, and then bowed neatly to the viscountess. “Lady Tolliver. A pleasure, as always. The beauty of these gardens is second only to your own.”
Lady Tolliver fanned herself. “Oh! Mr Deverell, how gallant of you. You always did possess such a gift for expression.”
“I speak only as I find, madam.”
Only then did he allow his attention to settle upon Lottie. He grinned once more—slowly this time, his dimples appearing with an innocence that would have suited a cherub better.
Lottie did not move, keeping her spine perfectly straight and fan half-raised in what she hoped conveyed the picture of disinterest. It was, naturally, a fiction, though one she had cultivated with practice.
Mr Jasper Deverell was, quite objectively, the most deplorable rake of her acquaintance—perhaps second only to Lord Marchmont, though even that was debatable. He was irreverent, shameless, and possessed of far too much wit for the comfort of any sensible person. The sort of gentleman who left a young lady breathless and laughing, and only later wondering how on earth she had come to be perched in a tree beside him, drinking stolen wine from the bottle. Lottie had always found that sort of situation remarkably difficult to resist.
“Miss Tolliver,” he said, with mock surprise, bowing deeply. “How unexpected. I was under the impression that Society had taken the wise precaution of barring your return.”
Lottie lowered her lashes and snapped open her fan. “How disappointed you must be.”
