Page 65 of Holding Onto Love

Vanessa smiled. “I suspect he can do lilies.” At that point, she stood. “Thank you both for treating me so kindly. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.” She squared her shoulders. “But I must take my leave. Should our paths cross again in the next day or so, it would be best to pretend we are not acquainted.”

Reginald started to sputter a protest, but Georgiana put her hand on his and dipped her chin, acknowledging what Vanessa had said.

“We won’t unmask you,” the lady promised. “But if a time comes when you would like to have our friendship, we would not hesitate to welcome yours.”

Chapter Nineteen

The earl’s coach was two hours outside of London before Jasper stirred. He opened his eyes, testing his aching head, then closed them quickly, but not before taking note of Hazard, slumped in the opposite corner. Hazard looked wrinkled. And mottled.

“Unbearable,” Hazard moaned. “What were we thinking not to postpone this horror until tomorrow?”

“To do all our suffering at once?”

It was what they had agreed upon late last night. Or early this morning. Now with his mouth feeling stuffed with cotton, Jasper knew the decision had been the wrong one. Even though they were expected at Chaumbers tonight, they should not have embarked on this journey. The coach was hot. The motion nauseating.

“God,” he muttered. “We are too old for this.”

“I will never,” Hazard said, “never drink with Carroll again. The man is hollow-legged.”

Jasper’s lips tried to twitch into a smile but failed.

“And no fluid of any sort from that ungodly hemisphere will ever touch my now befurred tongue again,” Hazard continued.

“Well, that promise is easy to keep. I’m fairly certain we finished it off.” American whiskey had an unpleasant taste that somehow improved the more one drank. Jasper could still smell it. The stink would never come out of his clothes. His stomach rolled threateningly.

“Clever of Carroll to refuse your invitation. Seven hours baking in a carriage…”

Jasper made no reply to this. He had invited Benjamin to Chaumbers and had been refused. Too much work yet in London. And the child to think of. Jasper hadn’t pressed, even though he thought Chaumbers a healthier environment for a two-year-old than London in late summer. But he had a regrettable memory of importuning Benjamin again, rather aggressively, last night. God. He even said—if only this were a false memory—that Olivia would be sorely disappointed if he did not come.

He hadn’t been so foxed, no, so despicably drunk, in years.

A snicker sounded from Hazard’s corner. “Was Reg really kissing Georgiana behind your back while you were courting her?”

Now it was Jasper’s turn to moan. Had he recounted all of that? Surely not all.

“So he claimed.” At least he could trust Hazard and Benjamin to keep their mouths closed. “I have no reason to doubt such a tale.”

“It is just that it is so hard to picture.”

Jasper snorted. It was an image he tried to keep out of his head. “I suspect Crispin caught them at it.”

Hazard guffawed. Then he clutched his head and groaned.

They lapsed into silence. Jasper dozed in the gut-sick way of the recently inebriated. When he awoke again, they had stopped to change horses. They eased themselves from the coach, then rocked on their heels and stomped their feet to bring back the blood. The air was sultry. The grass, for as far afield as Jasper could see, was dry and brown.

“Do you think tea?” Hazard said, gazing skeptically at the posting station.

Jasper put a hand to his middle as if that were a fair gauge. “I can attempt it.”

They wandered inside and ordered a pot from the proprietress, then sat at a corner table, away from a common-looking couple who were bickering none too quietly about their biscuits.

“Carroll said surprisingly little,” Hazard mused. “All I gathered, really, was that his so-called business partner was a charlatan. And his heart is hopelessly lost to the little imp.”

Benjamin had said almost nothing, growing stiffer and stiffer the more that he drank.

“I think he is trying to behave professionally.”

Hazard sniffed. “Ridiculous. Didn’t the two of you whore together at Oxford?”