Page 54 of Holding Onto Love

“Oh, my word.” She turned her head. Mortified. But she laughed too. Of course, he had noticed her staring.

“Vanessa.”

“No, don’t talk to me.”

“Look at me.”

“No.” She laughed, putting her hands over her eyes. “I don’t think I will ever look at you again.”

“Ha!” He shifted his chair to draw closer. “Just a peek. I’ll loosen my neckcloth.”

“Jasper!”

He pulled her hands away. He was smiling, but gently, and his eyes were more worried than playful. “I need to talk to you. Seriously. About tonight.”

“You want me to wear the pearls,” she guessed. “To celebrate.” But she knew, even as she teased him, that it was not that.

“I want you to do something difficult. Hear me out. Before you say no.”

Her own laughter faded. More difficult than what they had been doing? “Go on.”

He leaned his elbows on the table. His forehead creased. “I may have underestimated Hilyer. His wrath. I’ve been wracking my brains for where to hide you.”

“Hide me! Jasper, how ridiculous. You can’t think he will come here.”

“I don’t know.” He settled back. “He will be…insulted. I’ve never purposely insulted anyone before. He may react badly.”

“May react badly?” She scoffed. “I thought that was the point.” She’d thought it foolish. Now he was realizing it when it was probably too late to turn back. “He isn’t going to come here. What are you picturing? That he will snatch me out of your home and carry me off to his lair? Or maybe tie me up and hold a pistol to my head until you return so he can taunt you?”

“Of course not.” He said it sheepishly, as though he had been considering things equally outlandish.

“That doesn’t happen in real life, Jasper. You aren’t pirates or highwaymen. He’s an old goat and you are a snob. All you are going to do is snub him. Grandly, yes. Theatrically. You will humiliate him so badly he will run off to the country, tail between his legs. But that is all.”

Jasper had a very strange look on his face. As though he were listening to her but thinking of something else.

“My fear,” she said, “if there is anything to fear, it is that he will call you out.”

“He is too cowardly.”

“Maybe he has heard how you shoot.” She meant to say it lightly. But did not.

Jasper scowled. “You needn’t concern yourself—”

“I needn’t? But you may? You’re the one who wants to hide me somewhere.”

“If it will set your mind at ease, I’ve already considered the possibility that he will call me out.” His face fell into something resembling a pout. “If he challenges me, I will have the choice of weapons. You may rest assured I will not choose guns.” He attempted a wry smile. And almost pulled it off. “I thought swords.”

“Are you skilled?”

“I was when I was twelve.” Then his smile became real. “But surely I can prance about and jab better than Hilyer.”

He saw, too, the absurdity of it all. The only thing that made this plan credible was that Hilyer was roundly despised. While the Taverstons were universally admired. Hilyer would be as much an outcast as…as she was. And that had to be enough for her. For Henry. Dead in a gully in Spain. For the baby, too tiny to live, born dead—left in a shallow grave under a bush.

A storm of anger shook her. Mocking the marquess at a party was not enough. And her father. Where was Frederick Culpepper’s comeuppance?

“Vanessa,” he said, all humor falling away. “I want you to spend the night at Grosvenor Square.”

His parents’ house? Absolutely not. They would turn her away at the door. She would be more humiliated than Hilyer.