Deliberately late.
Just to vex him.
He wondered if she was wearing the red dress again and blinked at his warped reflection in the brass door knocker under his fingers. He lifted it, trying to get a better view of his face in the ring, and then dropped it after that turned out to have been a poor idea for his general sense of confidence.
Thus, he had knocked. Unintentionally.
And had no choice but to do so again.
He took a step back and ran his fingers over the narrow, healing scratches on his lips, as though checking to make sure they were staying in place and not about to spring open again just as he was presented to the family inside.
He’d been healing faster than he anticipated, thanks to that salve. The swelling was gone now and the bruises were mostly yellow.
He didn’t fancy returning to his previous state. It was a thought that made him frown and glance around the landing to ensure no cats were squatting nearby, likely with names like Damage or Scrutiny, ready to do their worst.
Alas, the only cat was the one whose yawning mouth held the door knocker. A lion. And he only existed to warp Jasper’s reflection for the joy of sparking anxiety.
He took a bracing breath, catching a whiff of that cologne Ruby had made in the process. This was the first time he’d worn it since the day he’d been given the vial. He reckoned he needed all the help he could get, though now he wondered if he smelled too much like… What was it Libba had said?Marzipan and Christmas.
He was doomed to make an ass of himself here tonight, wasn’t he?
The butler pulled the door open, just as a maid flashed by behind him, grabbing a bolt of white fur up in her arms before it could abscond into the night.
“Ah,” he said, eyeing the maid and the cat. “Good evening to you, Hubris.”
The butler paused, glancing over his shoulder at the cat and then back at Jasper, his thin mustache giving a twitch. “Mr. Townsend, I presume?” the butler asked. “I shall announce you.”
“You are a bad girl,” the maid was hissing, bouncing the cat on her hip like a toddler as she took it away. “You know that this is Brighton, not Galle. No shrews to torment out there!”
“Well, maybe a few,” Jasper answered, startling both servants. He cleared his throat apologetically. “Yes, go ahead and introduce me. My apologies, I am not accustomed to… gentility.”
“Of course, sir,” said the butler, who honestly looked like the type of chap it’d be worthwhile to get a pint with, easy and relatable and not at all stupidly rich. “Just into the hall, if you please.”
“Ah, Mr. Townsend!” came the terrifyingly brisk voice of Agatha Templeton-Rath as he turned into the reception room.
She was standing with her niece, the shorter, darker young woman from the pier, fussing over a feather that wasn’t lying properly in the younger woman’s hair. Mrs. Templeton-Rath would pat it into place, only for it to spring back up like a weed.
“We’ll just say this is the fashion back home,” Miss Rath told her aunt. “Oh, flowers!”
“Erm, yes,” said Jasper, remembering the bouquet crammed in his fist. He jutted them out, panic thrumming in his chest at having forgotten he was holding them. “Have them!”
Miss Rath blinked, clearly a little taken aback, but accepted the bouquet. “I’ll just hand these off to be put in a vase, shall I?” she said, far too kindly to not be laughing inside.
“That was kind of you,” the matriarch said once they were alone. “We’ve a lovely dinner planned with dishes from the islands that we think you will enjoy. We wanted to extend our thanks, again, for what you did.”
“I found out afterward,” he said miserably, “that cats are actually very deft swimmers.”
“Yes, well,” said the lady with a titter and a shrug. “They certainlythinkthey are. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have gone poorly without your intervention. Is Princess Xandine not with you?”
He shook his head. “No. We are still becoming acquainted. But she will arrive shortly, I am certain.”
He wasn’t certain.
And he suspected this woman knew that, because she immediately offered him a seat and a drink with exactly thesame air of sympathetic kindness that her niece had worn a few moments earlier.
He drained the drink, which he knew was probably the wrong thing to do, and then frowned down at the ice chips as the lady of the house retreated back to chambers unknown, leaving him alone with his thoughts and his drink.
Libba was going to flay him if she found out he’d given flowers to the wrong damned woman. Ayomide Rath likely had a sizable inheritance of her own, of course, but he was already juggling two women. He did not need a third.
