He shifted slightly in his chair.
He desired Miss Tolliver. That, at least, was straightforward. Anyone in possession of sight and the smallest inclination towards feeling would have done the same; there was nothing singular in that.
She was handsome, certainly; lively in a manner that animated every room she entered.
But desire did not intrude upon a man’s thoughts while sitting reading beside one’s sister, nor render one absurdly conscious of a lady’s absence, nor compel one to recall—against one’s will—the precise inflection of her voice when she implored him to kiss her. No, it could not be desire alone.
Was it, then, her indifference to marriage? He turned the notion over with great seriousness. For in that, she differed from every other young gentlewoman of his acquaintance. However artfully disguised or prettily denied, the desire for the security of a husband’s name and fortune was always present, whether openly or otherwise. It coloured every interaction and lent a certain predictability to even the most spirited among them. Miss Charlotte Tolliver… did not. Or, if she did, she concealed it so perfectly as to render the question irrelevant. Yes—that must be it. A lady who did not seek to entrap him was, by all rational accounts, the very height of desirability.
Jasper set his glass aside with rather more care than was necessary.
“Well,” said Penelope, who he realised had been watching him attentively. “I should very much like to meet her.”
“I should not like you to meet her,” he returned at once. “She would be a terrible influence.”
“Oh, she must be very interesting indeed! Do tell me more, brother.”
Jasper huffed a quiet laugh and dragged a hand through his hair, his composure slipping just enough to betray him. “She is… troublesome.”
“Ah.” Penelope nodded. “Like the women in my pamphlets?”
“No.” He laughed. “Not at all. Not like one of your radicals. Like a… a… Well, I confess, I do not know.”
Penelope sighed, as though she were an elderly lady, and came to sit beside him. “Does she wish to marry you?”
Jasper blinked. “Good God, no.”
Penelope tilted her head. “You sound almost offended.”
“I am not offended,” he said. “I am—“
He stopped.
“What?” she pressed.
He frowned faintly. “Surprised, perhaps.”
“Because she does not wish to secure your fortune and your name?” Penelope asked, with a certain dry emphasis.
“Because she does not appear to wish to secureanything,“ he said. “At least, not in the usual way.”
“I believe I understand now.”
“Do you? Pray enlighten me, sister, for I find myself entirely at a loss.”
Penelope folded her hands in her lap, looking for all the world like a child about to deliver a most serious lecture. “It is perfectly simple. She does not behave as though she requires anything from you, and so you cannot decide what or who you are meant to be in her presence.”
Jasper stilled. “That is nonsense,” he said, though without much force.
“Is it? You always know precisely what everyone wishes you to be, and so you become just enough of it.”
He frowned. “I do no such thing.”
“You do,” she said. “Only you do it so well that no one notices. Not even you.”
Before Jasper could examine this most unwelcome piece of wisdom from the mouth of a babe, the door opened, and their mother, Lady Bellston, entered. She paused upon the threshold, her gaze moving at once between her son and daughter.
“Penelope,” she said with reproach, “you are overtiring yourself.”
