From anyone else, he could have tolerated well-bred disgust. It was a frequent enough reaction to his appearance. But he couldn’t accept it from her.
“Blast it,” he muttered under his breath. “This shouldn’t be so complicated.”
“It isn’t.” Ridgeway reached for his coat and tugged it on. “You require an heiress with no family or connections—no one to ask questions about you or to come snooping to Yorkshire. The only heiress who fits the bill is Julia Wychwood. If not her, then you may as well let the bailiffs take your estate.”
Jasper ran a hand through his hair in frustration. The bailiffs. Bloody hell. It wasn’t going to come to that, was it? Not after everything he’d already risked to forge a new life for himself.
Ridgeway laughed. “The look on your face. One would think you were too high-minded to follow through with it.”
An image of Miss Wychwood materialized in Jasper’s mind, her sapphire blue eyes shining vividly from behind her black net riding veil.
I believe I owe you an apology.
She’d taken him completely off of his guard. Had puzzled and disarmed him.
Was she really who she appeared to be? A sickly wallflower heiress, ripe for the plucking?
He was beginning to have his doubts. “I might be.”
“Bah,” Ridgeway scoffed. “That’s not the man my brother wrote to me about during the war. The cruel, ruthless, bloodthirsty Captain Blunt who had all of his men shivering in their boots. Surely, you remember him?”
“Only too well,” Jasper said grimly.
“Do you? Because it sometimes seems to me that you’re not that man at all.”
Jasper’s gaze jerked to Ridgeway’s face. There seemed to be no ulterior meaning in his words. No hint of a threat. “I may well have been ruthless,” he replied, “but never with women. And never outside times of war.”
“My dear fellow, this is a war,” Ridgeway said. “It’s the London season.”
Two
Julia sat immobile on the silk damask–cushioned bench in front of her carved walnut dressing table as her lady’s maid, Mary, put the final touches on her evening coiffure. It was a pretty enough style—a cascade of tightly pinned rolls at the back, secured with dozens of hairpins and several spritzes of liquid bandoline.
Julia hardly noticed it.
She turned the page of the small blue clothbound volume of Lady Audley’s Secret on her lap, her attention fully engaged by author Mrs. Braddon’s lavish prose. Never mind that she’d read the story countless times before.
“Miss Lucy Graham was blessed with that magic power of fascination, by which a woman can charm with a word or intoxicate with a smile,” Julia read aloud. It was one of her favorite lines in the entire book. “Can you imagine, Mary?”
“She was a murderess, she was.” Mary placed a spray of spring roses into Julia’s hair. “Nothing to admire about that.”
“Yes, but . . .” Julia met her maid’s eyes in the gilt-framed trifold looking glass that stood atop the dressing table. “Can you imagine what it must be like to be so attractive? So fascinating to everyone you meet?”
“Trouble is what it would be, miss, and no two ways about it. A woman has enough to contend with without having magic powers of fascination.” Mary smoothed a stray hair back from Julia’s temple. “And I don’t see what you’ve got to worry over. There’s no one who sees you who wouldn’t admit to your beauty.”
“Even beautiful women can be thought unattractive. If there’s something in their character people take a dislike to—an unbecoming shyness or awkwardness—it doesn’t matter how fine their appearance. But to be like Lady Audley . . .”
“You read too many of them sensation novels. It ain’t real life, you know.”
Julia’s mouth quirked. She wasn’t offended by the impertinent observation. Unlike the other servants in the house, Mary had the privilege of tenure. A plain woman in her middle forties, she’d been hired as a lady’s maid three years ago when Julia embarked on her first season. Since then, Mary had seen her at her best—and at her worst. She knew all Julia’s little foibles.
“Gentlemen don’t like girls what read books,” Mary continued, sinking the final bit of greenery into Julia’s coiffure. “And you want to find yourself a husband this season, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’d be surprised if one of them society gents don’t propose, now you’ve come into your bloom.” Mary stepped back with an encouraging smile. “Just look at yourself.”
Julia gave her reflection a dutiful glance. Her black hair was drawn back from her face, lending focus to the contours of her cheeks and jaw, and to her wide mouth and similarly wide-set gaze. Her eyes were very blue in the candlelight, and her skin seemed translucently pale. Luminous, one might even call it.
And there was so much of it exposed.
The low neckline of her mazarine shot silk evening dress left little to the imagination, baring her throat, shoulders, and the rounded swell of her bosom.
Mama wouldn’t approve of it.
But Mama wasn’t here. She was still recuperating in Bath. And Papa may as well have been with her for all he emerged from his rooms.
“Well?” Mary prompted.
“It’s lovely.” Julia rose from her seat. Her flounced silk skirts rustled over her crinoline. “I shall need a shawl.”
While Mary darted off to find one, Julia collected her gloves and her silk-fringed reticule. Opening the drawstring closure, she dropped her novel inside. A society musicale was no place for reading. But it never hurt to be prepared.
* * *
Jasper descended the stairs after Ridgeway, both of them dressed in evening black accented by light-colored silk waistcoats and cravats. The gasolier in the hall was turned up, casting a diffuse ring of light over the checkered tiles.
Skipforth emerged from the shadows. “A letter for you, Captain Blunt.”
Ridgeway gave his butler a look of irritation. “The post? At this time of night?”
“A boy just brought it round from the Cavendish Hotel.” Skipforth handed the missive to Jasper as he stepped down into the hall. “It appears to have been misdirected.”
Jasper examined the letter. The address on the envelope had been penned in a child’s unartful scrawl. It was at once recognizable.
Charlie.
Jasper had told him to write if there was any difficulty. And with Charlie, there was always difficulty.