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Hattie laughed as she waved them all a cheery goodbye and slipped out of the servants’ door at precisely the same moment Lady Boreham stepped into the drawing room, and at the exact same time as the disapproving Duchess of Warminster’s voice could be heard at the front door.
St Martin’s Lane was blocked at its junction with Long Acre, and by the sounds of the raised voices up ahead and the line of stationary carriages both in front and behind his, it was likely to remain so for quite some time. Jasper, the Earl of Beaufort suspected that it would be quicker to walk the short distance which remained to Covent Garden rather than sit in his carriage and waste more time twiddling his thumbs waiting. After two solid days on the road, he was sick of the sight of these confining four walls, and sicker still of sitting down. Not for the first time, he lamented taking the blasted Battlesbridge carriage in the first place when he knew it would have been faster on horseback and he wished he had ignored his mother’s pleas over the dangers of travelling all that way alone as he usually did. However, because he had once again failed to rebuild the bridges between him and his estranged father despite a long month of trying, he had caved in and agreed to the mind-numbing safety of the Duke’s much slower carriage for the sake of a quiet life.
One whole wasted month! His longest annual visit home yet in seven years and, typically, a pointless waste of his time. It made no difference that without Jasper’s ever-increasing financial contributions the estate would have long ago gone bankrupt, his ailing but still resolutely curmudgeonly sire would still never forgive him for bringing the ancient and noble house of Battlesbridge into disrepute. Although how making a generous living from owning a gentlemen’s club was more disreputable than mouldering away in a debtor’s prison was beyond Jasper. However, for some inexplicable reason, the more successful The Reprobates’ Club became, the more the Duke took issue with it. Which was ironic when one considered that without it, by now, there would likely be no food on his father’s table and an exceedingly leaky roof over his stubborn old head.
Yet, despite much biting of his tongue and more diplomacy than he had believed himself capable of, Jasper still managed to leave under a cloud. Instead of building bridges in the two extra weeks his poor mother had begged him to remain for, the only thing he had achieved was widening the chasm between him and his father further. Bitter experience had already told him it would be pointless.
As always, he should have listened to his head and come home sooner. It would have saved him the effort of having his offers to help with the management of the estate thrown back in his face and hearing the tired old diatribe that the only way Jasper would get his greedy hands on any of the Battlesbridge lands or accounts was when he prised them out of the Duke’s cold dead fingers.
As if Jasper needed the money! Nowadays, thanks to a lot of hard work and his canny talent for business, he was positively swimming in the stuff—but to the Duke he would always be a useless wastrel who had quit Oxford to start a shameful gaming hell where he could sin with impunity. It made no difference that The Reprobates’ was an honest and above board establishment which fell well shy of despicable, that Jasper worked, not sinned, there for at least eight solid hours every single day and that if he hadn’t quit university to start the business in the first place, then his ungrateful father would be living under a bridge.
More annoyed with his father’s entrenched short-sightedness than the stationary carriage, Jasper lowered the window as a disgruntled pie seller marched past muttering under his breath. ‘What’s happened?’
‘A drover’s cart has lost its load and there are broken barrels of bleedin’ ale everywhere.’
An answer which confirmed all Jasper’s worst suspicions. If he didn’t walk, he’d be trapped here for goodness knew how long, so he grabbed the door handle and alighted.
‘As soon as you can turn around, take my luggage to the house.’ Covent Garden was only ever meant to be a brief stop while he checked everything was as all right at The Reprobates’ Club as his business partner had assured him in his letters. Then he fully intended to wend his weary way home to his fancy new house in Russell Square and the hot bath he had been fantasising about for hours.
‘Let my housekeeper know that I shan’t be long. I will walk back.’
The coachman nodded and then briskly forgot about him to assess the road behind trying to decide the best route out of the chaos, clearly relieved to have escaped the chore. Jasper couldn’t blame him. After his torturous and volatile extended stay at the ancestral estate, he craved the ordered peace of home.
Jasper watched his father’s carriage set off and decided to let all his anger go back to Battlesbridge with it. He took a few moments to scan the road ahead of himself, before setting off, wondering if it might make more sense to cut through New Street and the back alleys to shave off a few minutes if the most direct route turned out to be impassable to pedestrians too. He had barely marched thirty feet when a feminine voice stopped him in his tracks.
‘Jasper?’ He hadn’t noticed the Avondale crest when he had passed the carriage, so the sight of one of his best friend’s baby sisters smiling at him through the open window came as a surprise. More surprising was that, for some inexplicable reason, the smile he could never remember noticing before today, suddenly took his breath away.
