Unperturbed, Lottie settled back into her seat and turned her attention to the racecourse. “Not another word, Langley. The horses are nearly ready, and you have already quite ruined the suspense.”
Chapter 8
“Jasper! You are not paying attention to me in the least!”
Jasper started at his younger sister’s voice and lowered the book he had not been reading. “My dear Pen,” he said, with a tone that might have persuaded a less perceptive audience, “I assure you, I am all attention.”
“You are not,” Penelope returned at once, narrowing her bright eyes at him. She was only ten, but fiercer and more intelligent than any other child he knew.Precocious,their mother called her. “You have not turned one page in five minutes, and when I spoke just now, you agreed with me without knowing what I had said.”
“That is not, I think, a failing,” he replied mildly. “You are very often correct.”
She huffed at that, unimpressed. “I said that Parliament is composed almost entirely of men who would faint dead away if asked to consider a woman as their intellectual equal.”
“A bold claim, my dear.”
”Atrueone.”
“Undoubtedly.”
She stared at him. “You see? You are not listening.”
“On the contrary. I am listening with the greatest care, Penelope. I merely find myself in no position to dispute you.”
Penelope set aside her papers. “You are thinking of something else,” she declared. “Somethinginteresting.”
Jasper leant back in his chair, stretching his long legs before the hearth. It was raining outside, and it was slightly less boring at Deverell House with his sister and parents than it was alone at his bachelor’s lodgings. Hecouldgo to a gentleman’s club, he supposed, but he did not much feel like it. “My thoughts, I assure you, are exceedingly dull.”
“They are not,” she said flatly. “You look as though… as though you have swallowed a secret and cannot decide whether it pleases or disgusts you.”
He laughed. “A most poetic description, Pen. You have a gift with words.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” he replied, far too easily.
Penelope folded her arms. “Then why do you keep frowning at nothing in particular, and then smiling as though you have done something very wicked indeed?”
Jasper’s smile faltered, before returning twice as wide. It was just like Pen to see right through him.
“If you will not confess, I shall deduce. It is a lady.”
Jasper put down his book and took a slow sip of brandy. “Is it?”
“Of course it is,” she said, settling back with satisfaction, “I hope she is disagreeable.”
“Do you?” he asked, amused.
“Certainly. It would serve you perfectly right.”
“For what crime?”
“For thinking yourself so very difficult to affect,” she said. “Sometimes I think I will be the only young lady you will ever love. It is tiresome. I do so want a sister.”
Jasper laughed again, though the sound held less ease than before. Hedidthink of himself as difficult to affect. His romantic attachments had always been of the lightest, most agreeable kind: easily formed, easily relinquished, and never of sufficient consequence to trouble his peace. He moved through the world with a ready charm and an open curiosity, inclined towards pleasure where he found it, and seldom inclined to deny himself when it presented.
There was no shortage of company. Women, certainly—bright, clever, rich, poor, ardent, indifferent—it made little difference, so long as they amused him. Men, too, when the inclination struck, and occasionally those who did not sit comfortably within either distinction, whose appeal lay precisely in that ambiguity. He enjoyed the variety of humanity, the endless novelty of character and desire. It pleased him to admire and to indulge, and to love, but never to beinlove. He had never, in all his varied acquaintance, mistaken desire or affection for anything so perilous. Indeed, he would have said himself quite immune to it.
Until—
