Lottie let out a long and loud sigh.
She certainly wasnotin love with Jasper Deverell, as Mari had rudely suggested. That would be entirely absurd—laughable, in fact. She was annoyed, yes, perhaps even wounded, but that was a different matter altogether.
It was not, precisely, the absence of indecency that rankled her.
It was that she truly believed he desired her. Not merely as a wager, nor as a flirtation, nor as some diverting little scandal to liven up a dull Season, or even as a future wife with a sizeable dowry, but her. Charlotte Tolliver herself.
And now she did not know.
She felt the shame creep up her neck like a rash. Perhaps Jasper Deverell—the charming rake, the heir to an earl, the man who flirted like it was his profession—was even now sharing stories at his gentleman’s club about the silly Society girl who challenged him to a duel and made him put his fingers between her thighs as payment.
Did you hear about Tolliver’s wild daughter? Gave me a set of fencing rules and begged for a scandal. I gave her a waltz instead. Poor little thing was practically panting for it.
Lottie’s mouth went dry. A hot prickle began behind her eyes, and she blinked hard. She was not crying. She would not cry.
The fury in her belly was not directed wholly at Jasper. Most of it was aimed squarely at herself, for she had done this before.
Lord Marchmont had smiled at her as though she were singular. He had told her she was clever, bold, unlike other girls, which was the sort of nonsense one always despised until it was whispered against one’s own skin. He had danced with her in moonlight and kissed her beneath an archway, and she had believed him, right until he had done the unthinkable.
Everyone thereafter had regarded her as one looks at a girl who has confirmed every fear ever held on her behalf. Worse, she had looked at herself differently. She had been a fool, and she had vowed never to be one again. She would be all the things they feared and nothing they could ruin.
And now here she was again, breathless over another charming, dangerous man.
All he had asked for was her hand in a dance, and that—that—was somehow the greatest indignity of all.
For what did it mean? That he was honourable? That he was indifferent? That he wanted her too much to be careless, or too little to be tempted? Had she really convinced herself, even for a moment, that she was the one bestinghim?
Mari looked up calmly and turned another page. “You seem unwell, Lottie. Would you prefer to lie down or kill something?”
Lottie smiled tightly. “Both.”
Mari nodded. “I shall ready the spare room and sharpen the carving knives.”
With that, she resumed reading as though her sister’s emotional crisis were simply one more predictable note in the ongoing symphony of Tolliver household affairs.
Cards was the next wager. Good. Lottie would win. That, at least, was something she could control.
What she would do with her next forfeit remained agonisingly unclear. Should she make him suffer? Make him beg? Make him prove the hunger in his eyes was real? Or should she do something far more dangerous, and ask for the truth?
For all her wagers and all her bravado, Lottie could not rid herself of the dreadful suspicion that she had been the only one foolish enough to forget it was a game.
Chapter 20
Escaping the Tolliver house had never required any great genius. Charlotte had been evading doors, footmen, sisters, and her mother since she was old enough to climb a trellis. The true difficulty lay not in leaving, but in returning with her hemline and alibi more or less intact.
The note arrived, as these things so often did, at the most inconvenient possible moment: just as Charlotte was endeavouring to convince Nell that no, one could not train a hen to deliver messages, no matter how many currants one tied to the envelope.
It was handed to her by Tompkins, the second footman, with all the gravity of a royal summons. “A gentleman’s rider brought this, miss. No name given. Requested it be placed in your hand directly.”
She took the envelope and unfolded it at once:
C.T.,
A carriage will be waiting at eleven o’clock this evening, on Gloucester Street, just outside the baker’s. It shall convey you to my residence.
Vingt-et-un.
Come prepared to lose.
