He bit his lip and tilted his head. “I was terribly selfish.”
Lottie turned. “Pardon?”
“Asking you to run away with me.”
“It wasmychoice, Jasper. Do not forget that.”
“Yes.” He looked out across the garden. “And I made the offer at a moment when you had suffered terror, death, blackmail, exhaustion, and the prospect of being managed by every person who ever loved you. I clothed it in liberty because I wanted it to be liberty.”
“It was.”
“In part, Charlotte.” His jaw tightened. “But it was also me wanting you somewhere no one else could claim you. Somewhere far enough that I need not share you with your family, your name, your fear, or any duty that did not include me.”
The blackbird hopped along the grass, pulled a worm from the earth with triumph, and flew away.
Lottie watched it go. “I cannot leave them.”
“No.”
“And I cannot be what they expect me to be.”
“No.”
“And I cannot quite see how those two facts are to be reconciled.”
Jasper looked down at his hands. “No.”
She turned to him, exasperated despite the ache in her chest. “You are being very agreeable, and I dislike it immensely, Jasper. I have spent my entire life refusing the future laid out for me, and now I am meant to simply accept it? Because I love you?Because I love them? What sort of hypocrite does that make me?”
Naturally, Lottie, having made a declaration of some magnitude, did not appear to notice she had done so, but Jasper Deverell certainly did notice.Because I love you.
After a moment of silence, he said, “The human sort?”
She gave him a dark look.
“I suppose I have said this before, but please humour a fool. I have spent years refusing to stand where my father wished me to be placed. I thought… well, I thought if I rejected marriage, duty, inheritance… expectation, then I should somehow remain free.”
“And were you?”
“No. I was alone, and I was very proud of myself for it.”
Lottie laughed with ire.
“But loneliness is not the reason I am in love with you, Charlotte Tolliver.” His voice roughened. “I find that I do not want freedom if it means being free of you.”
He took her hands in his. “And I would want you beside me if you were a duchess, a spinster, a man, a woman, a blackbird, or a worm in this excessively damp garden.”
“A worm?”
“Yes. I should build you a palace of the finest mud.”
“How very romantic.”
“And challenge every robin in England.”
She laughed then, properly, helplessly, and his hands tightened around hers.
“I do not ever want to be parted from you.”
