Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Meet me by the fountain at midnight, Ce.

~Note to a neighbor, 1814

J asper gave his portmanteau a punitive kick, then sent the invitation waiting patiently on the escritoire an acid glance. The emerald hair clip atop it added a dollop of vexation, much like a cherry slapped atop a stale slice of cake.

He didn’t want to go to this goddamn affair. His gut had determined it was dangerous—and he trusted his gut above all. A countess’s reintroduction to society , the flowery script claimed .

The Duchess Society’s name for this disaster in the making.

Cece was a crafty one; he’d almost forgotten how devious. Demanding without actually demanding—and in a way he wouldn’t be able to refuse. There wasn’t a more tenacious woman in England, he knew for a fact.

She’d gone through those blasted marriage brokers, making herself a proper client.

When he’d never been able to tell Hildegard Streeter no. Rolling his shoulders with a sigh, Jasper glanced at the window and the mist-laden lane beyond his Bloomsbury terrace. The sky was a fierce shade of gray that matched his mood. Hildy was as frightening as her husband, and this judgment coming from an emissary who’d been in more terrifying situations than everyone in the Leighton Cluster combined .

With her winning smile, Streeter’s wife had requested he join the country party she was hosting. She’d even added “darling friend” at the end of the attack. Support for her business and some such blather. As many suitable men in attendance as possible, she’d claimed, when he wasn’t suitable, and they both knew it.

He didn’t miss the verbal blade held sweetly to his neck.

Jasper dragged his knuckle across a streak on the windowpane, detesting his preference for strong women, friend or lover, when weak-willed ones were so much easier to manage. Regrettably, he held Hildy in great affection for her savvy and her excellent choice in spouses. Tobias was the brightest bulb in the city for securing her as far as Jasper was concerned. When his own dreams had slipped away without him fighting hard enough to snatch them up.

He guessed he liked them both more than any couple he’d ever known.

Shite . He flipped the portmanteau’s brass lock, spilling it wide. A miserable afternoon spent packing formal blacks for a dreary party teaming with toffs, dandies, and dupes. Dejection his boon companion as he watched Cece parade around while chaps of a certain station vied for a spot on her dance card. Scoundrels like him wouldn’t be allowed within two feet of a countess, invitation or no. Jasper understood Hildy had invited him to entertain, not to actually partake . At one time, with the baron bit, he might’ve been permitted more leeway, but even then, his humble title hadn’t been enough to lay claim to a viscount’s daughter. When he’d gotten quite skillful at not fixating on the chit, here she was, in his life again.

He could make an excuse, he reasoned, buffing the toe of his neatly polished boot across a gold thread in the rug. A business emergency of some sort. A sick friend. Although all his friends would be at the damned party.

“Quit your complaining, will ye?” His valet hobbled into the chamber, a superfine coat hanging from his crooked index finger. His rheumy brown eyes took in the half-packed scene with a grimace. “Tasty food and drink for days at a duke’s. Ladies in posh gowns gushing over your sad self. Billiards and hunting and such. Games for men with time on their wee hands.” Nelson tossed the garment atop the open luggage with a huff. “The pampered life you lead, laddie, is beyond me.”

Jasper turned from the animated display on the lane outside—vendors hawking roasted nuts, meat pies, and flowers in the misty rain—a scene he wished he could disappear into. A dead baron beckoned lately, and he wasn’t up to answering the call. “You don’t know how challenging society gatherings are to bear. The simpering wives, the curious ingénues, the offers I’ll have to brush off. You recognize they enjoy a slice of the stews as a diversion. Rough handling isn’t appropriate for musicales but works well in the bedchamber.” He gave the cuff of the coat lying atop his portmanteau a twist, smoothing out a wrinkle. “It isn’t as if I won’t be slipped a note or two. Or ten. Even without a bloody title, I’m sought-after. The shadowy rumors about my past have only increased my popularity. Society likes a puzzle, don’t they?”

Nelson limped across the chamber, his stride a relic from an injury sustained during his time as a lieutenant in the Napoleonic Wars. Grabbing two cravats and a pair of buff riding trousers from the wardrobe, his lips tilted in the sardonic twist Jasper well recognized. “Why brush ‘em off? Ain’t wedded, are ye? Trip through the offerings like you was dancing through a field of daisies, I say.”

Jasper hummed without reply, reluctant to take romantic advice from a man who’d been married to the same woman for going on forty years. Nelson’s tripping through the offering days were so far in the past, they were petrified.

“ Eh , I begin to get the picture,” the valet replied in a rusty murmur, giving the trousers an awkward fold and shoving them in Jasper’s luggage. “That rowdy Willoughby gel is back in yer life. I seen the papers, you know. I don’t read fast, but I can read, thanks to you.”

“Don’t start,” Jasper growled, although he’d tolerate the intrusion from his closest confidant. The only person, aside from Cece, who knew about his former life.

An aging groom of his father’s, Nelson wasn’t anyone’s idea of a valet, making him the ideal choice for Jasper. He was hard-nosed yet kindhearted, loyal to those he loved, and the closest thing to a father that Jasper had ever had. The moment Jasper was settled in London and paid his first wage, he’d sent for Nelson and his wife. His father had begun to harass his groom about his son’s whereabouts, and the retribution to follow would have been brutal. The baron wasn’t known for a light touch in his negotiations.

Even at the tender age of nineteen, Jasper had decided he’d given up the last person he loved in letting Cece go. The remaining few in his life, he’d hold close to the end.

Following form, Nelson had hired a ragtag band of misfits for his staff. His housekeeper a light-skirt who had aged out of the position, his majordomo a dockworker with a bum leg, his lone footman a miner with troublesome lungs, his groom an orphan who was blind in one eye.

A toff’s staff they were not. Though it warmed Jasper’s heart to have a family, of sorts.

“I always liked that gel. Tough as buckskin, a might saucy, but with a fond heart,” Nelson said and rummaged through the books Jasper kept on his bedside table. With a decisive sniff, he jammed The Pickwick Papers next to the trousers, wrinkling them horribly. “Sure as the night is long, there’ll be a sovereign’s library in that palace you’re headed to, but better secure than regretful, I say. Reading helps a man sleep. I’m glad you made me see the pleasure of escaping into other worlds when the one we live in is a blimey dismal lot some days.”

“It’s not a palace. And she’s not my problem.” His tone was harsh, his temper washing over a man he claimed as a true friend, his only until the Leighton Cluster came along.

Undaunted, Nelson shrugged a bony shoulder, going after a stack of cravats this time. He folded the sleek silks with improper care, leaving Jasper to wonder how long it was going to take him to repack his portmanteau. “She was once. I remember, laddie, when you didn’t let anyone forget it. Crickey, when she hit her head on that wee stone, I thought you’d expire from her wound. A spot of blood sent you into the faints.”

Jasper flipped through the correspondence littering his escritoire to avoid citing the gaping chasm that lay between the idealistic young man’s heart and the calcified one he now owned. Dreams were dashed upon the rocks of life, and a grown man realized true love wasn’t attainable. Besides, there were attentive women and sexual adventures around every corner. If he left the random bedchamber with a heavy heart, so be it.

This wasn’t to say he was discontented. His life had entered a bountiful stage, his professional successes at an all-time high. He had engagements, professional and personal, scheduled until November and beyond. Engagements absent of a blade against his neck or a pistol discharged in his direction. Brewing whisky, shipping goods, and selling baby prams was a bloody wondrous deal. If he’d had the wherewithal as a young man, he’d have told the Crown’s commissioners to jump off Waterloo Bridge. Jasper traced the gilded edge of a missive from the Duke of Markham while debating the purpose of convincing himself of his happiness.

It seemed a great waste of time.

Done with his dreadful packing, Nelson crossed to the window and flipped the copper latch to open the pane. A gust of coal-laden air snaked into the room to tangle about Jasper’s throat. He swallowed past the tickle and a frustrating urge to cough.

“I miss the briny breezes, laddie, and them sunsets that ripped across the sky like a raging beast. Quality air might work wonders on yer lingering touch of asthma.”

Jasper missed Northumberland as well, but he wasn’t starting a conversation that invariably ended with an argument about a lost life he’d batted away like a flaming ember. His Bloomsbury home wasn’t an inherited castle, granted, but the residence sat on a lovely square that housed two members of Parliament and a rather dubious viscount, which was good enough for Jasper. “I’ll pension you and Myra to the estate, if that’s your choice, as I’ve offered five times at last count. There’s a charming dowager cottage sitting unattended but ready.”

Nelson pitched a wizened russet gaze his way. “My family has been with yours in some capacity, low as buckets most, since the reign of George two, so here me and my beloved Myra stay. Until your direction changes course.” He frowned and gave his sun-spotted balding head a scratch. “Or was it George three? I get those royal grandees confused, I do.”

Jasper didn’t care to mention the relief he felt at hearing those words, as Nelson and Myra were the only family he had. “Then we’ll table this discussion until you’re ready to withdraw. Which at some point, you’ll have to.”

Nelson retied the curtain sash, busywork as he sought to elbow his advice into the conversation. “Mayhap when you make amends with the past and find a proper wife, I’ll feel safe to. Dropping that baseborn accent and telling them rowdy friends of yours the truth would be a start.”

“I became what the situation required,” he whispered, confident this was an accurate assessment. Cowardice wasn’t a realism he was comfortable accepting.

“I admire a good performance, always have,” Nelson said with another scratch, this time beneath his armpit. “One that goes on this long gets a tinge maddening, though, don’t it?”

Indeed, it does , Jasper thought with a beaten sigh.

With this notion resting heavily on his shoulders, he set off for a deuced house party and a lost but not forgotten love.