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‘I am trying to protect you, Hattie.’
‘If I had wanted protecting, Jasper, I wouldn’t have given you my heart, thrown all caution to the wind and handed myself to you on a plate.’
‘You bastard!’ Freddie flew through the door and a split second later Jasper was rammed up against the wall. ‘You lying bastard!’
While every instinct told him to fight back, pragmatism warned him not to. ‘It’s not what you think, Freddie.’
‘She offered herself to you on a plate!’ His head cracked against the plaster as Freddie shook him. ‘You filthy, lying, despicable bastard!’ Another shake. Another painful thud to his cranium. ‘You’ve ruined my sister!’
‘Not completely.’
The next shove was so violent it knocked all the wind out of Jasper’s lungs, and he gulped for air as Hattie dragged her brother off. ‘Stop it!’ With impressive strength Hattie then grabbed Freddie’s shoulders and shook him. ‘Stop interfering in my life!’
Freddie shrugged off her hands and lunged again, but this time Jasper held him back while her brother snarled in his face, ‘I’ll stop when that lying bastard does what’s right and marries you!’
Sheer frustration made Jasper shout back, ‘If I have to!’
This wasn’t how Jasper wanted it to happen. Not at all part of his plan to do things properly. To give her all the choice. A plan which he hoped could still be salvaged if he could calm both furious Fitzroys down along with himself. ‘But...’
Behind her brother Hattie baulked as if she had been slapped.
‘But, Jasper?’ She steeled her chin despite her bottom lip trembling. ‘But?’ The pain in her lovely eyes was more visceral than he had ever seen it. ‘I should have known there would be a but.’ And with that she dashed from the room.
If I have to.
If I have to!
If ever a proposal was so lacklustre and damning?
With tears streaming down her cheeks, Hattie stumbled down the hallway unseeing. She fumbled with the lock until the door gave way and staggered down the steps to the pavement beyond.
‘Are you all right, miss?’ The stranger’s touch brought the world into sharp, overwhelming focus.
Broad daylight.
Russell Square. Unusually busy with people, most of whom had stopped to gawp at her. In a panic, she scanned for the best route to escape it all and her gaze instantly latched on to Freddie’s horse, Hades. Always the most fearsome in the Fitzroy stable and famously cantankerous. The big, brooding brown stallion stared back at her, daring her to give him some wind and she shook her head, daunted. Afraid. Even when she could ride she had never dared ride him when even Freddie struggled.
‘Miss...’ The stranger touched her shoulder again, his deep voice kind and concerned. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Then another elbowed his way close.
‘Lady Harriet Fitzroy?’ She blinked at him in confusion, wondering why he had a notebook and a pencil poised. ‘Henry Fellows—from the Bugle.’ A wave of queasiness swamped her as she realised she had exited through the wrong door and stupidly flung herself straight into the vipers’ pit in her hurry to get away. ‘Can I ask what you are doing here, my lady?’
Several more men shuffled forward, alert and clearly here to dig in the dirt. ‘Give the lady some space!’ Her good Samaritan corralled them back. ‘Can’t you see she is distressed?’
‘Hattie, wait!’ Jasper’s shout from the steps galvanised her into doing the unthinkable.
As he ran towards her, jostling past the gathering crowd, she turned to the stranger, taking in his height and burly workman’s arms. ‘Can you lift me on to this horse?’ Riding a horse suddenly seemed less daunting than what she would have to face if she stayed here.
Humiliation.
Shame.
Pity.
The stranger nodded and her feet immediately flew from the floor. A moment later, she flung her good leg over her brother’s saddle, kicked the horse into a gallop and raced away.
