“I really must be getting home,” Emily said simultaneously.
“Please, Rog?”
Roger looked at Emily. “Shall we humor him?” he asked her.
“Please, Emmy?”
She hesitated. “On condition that I hear not one whisper about a stomach pain for the next week,” she said, smiling at him.
Jasper marched ahead of them on the long walk to his favorite confectioner’s on Milsom Street. They said scarce a word to each other, he noticed, except to make foolish comments on the weather and even more foolish comments on the houses and carriages they passed on the way. Silly pair.
He took mercy on them during tea, telling them between bites of the three cakes he wheedled out of Roger all the hair-raising scrapes he had got into at school.
“I’m surprised you have ever had a chance to get into trouble at school, Jas,” Roger said. “I thought you were always too sickly to attend.”
“Naw,” the boy said. “I’m there all term when Papa is home. I’d have to have the pox before Papa would let me stay away.”
“Your papa has just gone up in my esteem,” Roger said dryly.
But conversation was no longer labored and stilted. Roger told a few stories of his own from university days, and Emily talked about her brothers and sisters and their escapades—and some of her own.
“It must be great to be part of a large family,” Jasper said wistfully.
“Yes, it must,” Roger said at the same moment as Emily said, “Yes, it is.”
“You have a crumb on your chin, Em,” Jasper said.
He watched her turn scarlet as she brushed ineffectually at the wrong side of her chin. And he watched with even greater interest as Roger took his napkin and brushed the crumb away for her. Poor Emmy, he thought. If there were a brighter color than scarlet, she would be it.
Roger insisted on walking all the way back uphill to the Circus with them, though Emily protested that there was no need for him to do so. His eyes followed her as she ran lightly up the stairs when they were inside the house, and he turned to Jasper and drew a folded sheet of paper from an inner pocket.
“Would you care to make a delivery for me, Jasper?” he asked. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
“A sovereign?” Jasper said.
“Half.”
“It’s one of those stupid valentines, I suppose,” Jasper said. “The stationers are probably doing a roaring trade these days.”
“It’s a valentine,” Roger said, “for Mrs. Langtree. You know where she lives?”
“On Great Pulteney Street,” Jasper said.
“On no account must you say who sent it,” Roger said. “And ask if you are to wait for an answer. Will you do it?”
“I suppose,” Jasper said, taking the paper in one hand and holding out the other, palm-up. “Payment in advance, though.”
“Fair enough,” Roger said, digging into a pocket and coming out with half a sovereign. “Today or tomorrow at the latest?”
“Trust me,” Jasper said.
Five minutes later, after Roger had gone and he was safely snug behind the aspidistra plant, Jasper was delighted to find that the paper was not sealed but only folded over four times. Dear Rog. He had obviously forgotten what it was like to be twelve years old. Jasper unfolded the paper.
“My fair Golden Rose,” he read. Great Jupiter, but any self-respecting schoolboy could be excused for wanting to vomit.
My fair golden rose,
You must know how I admire you, how affected I was by your beauty at the Pump Room yesterday morning, and how dazzled by your loveliness at the Upper Rooms last evening. You must know why I can think of you only as my golden rose, though the word “my” is doubtless presumptuous. Will you be my valentine at next week’s ball? Is it too much to expect—to hope—that you will single me out from all others?
