by Sophia James
‘Mr Jasper King. He is the owner of an engineering company that builds railways and bridges all across England.’ A slight blush covered her cheeks.
The jolt of shock as she mentioned his name came unexpectedly. Jasper was seldom surprised by anyone any more and the feeling took him aback.
‘And who are you?’
‘Miss Charlotte Fairclough. My sister Amelia and our mama and I run the Fairclough Foundation for needy women and their children in Howick Place in Westminster.’
Through the haze of the past Jasper remembered seeing a younger version of this woman huddled against an upstairs banister as he had come to pay his regards to her sister after some ball. Charlotte? She had had another name then and he sought to recollect it. As if she had read his thoughts she continued.
‘But people more often call me Lottie.’
‘I think Charlotte suits you better.’ God, what the hell had made him say that to her, such a personal and familiar declaration? But if she was startled by his words she certainly did not show it.
‘I always thought that, too. For a little while I insisted everyone use my full name but old habits soon crept back in and now hardly anyone uses it. Well, Mama does when she is cross at me, which actually is quite often, but otherwise it is Lottie. Plain and simple.’
The babble of her words was somehow comforting. After the surprise of seeing Susan Seymour and all the undercurrents there, this conversation was easy and different. He leaned back against the wall and decided to stay put for a while. What was it Miss Fairclough wanted of him, though? He could not think of any reason why she would seek him out unless it was something to do with her brother. Before he could be honest and tell her his name she had already gone off on another tangent.
‘Are you married, sir?’
‘I am not.’ He tried to keep the relief from his words.
‘But would you want to be? Married, I mean? One day?’
She was observing him as if she were a scientist and he was an undiscovered species. One which might be the answer to an age-old question. One from whom she could obtain useful information about the state of Holy Matrimony.
‘It would depend on the woman.’ He couldn’t remember in his life a more unusual conversation. Was she in the market for a groom or was it for someone else she asked?
‘But you are not averse to the idea of it?’ She blurted this out. ‘If she was the right one?’
Lord, was she proposing to him? Was this some wild joke that would be exposed in the next moment or two? Had the Fairclough family fallen down on their luck and she saw his fortune as some sort of a solution? Thoughts spun quickly, one on top of another and suddenly he’d had enough. ‘Where the hell is your brother, Miss Fairclough?’
She looked at him blankly. ‘Pardon?’
‘Silas. Why is he not here with you and seeing to your needs?’
‘You know my brother?’
Her eyes were not quite focused on him, he thought then, and wondered momentarily if she could be using some drug to alter perception. But surely not. The Faircloughs were known near and far for their godly works and charitable ways. It was his own appalling past that was colouring such thoughts.
‘I do know him. I employed him once in my engineering firm.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’ She fumbled then for the bag on the floor in front of her, a decent-sized reticule full of belongings. Finally, she extracted some spectacles. He saw they’d been broken, one arm tied on firmly with a piece of string. When she had them in place her eyes widened in shock.
‘It is you.’
‘I am afraid so.’
‘Hell.’
That sounded neither godly nor saintly and everything he believed of Miss Charlotte Fairclough was again turned upside down.
Chapter Three
Jasper King had fallen into her lap, so to speak, and if he had been handsome all those years ago as she’d observed him from her eyrie on the stairs, then now he was breathtaking. No longer a boy but a man, his edges rougher, his eyes darker, the danger that had once been only a slight hint around him now fully formed, hewn into menace. Seasoned. Weathered.
He was beautiful.
Looking around, Lottie could see that almost all the other women in the room had made the same kind of assessment, for eyes everywhere were upon him.
The fluster of her mistake and the splendour of her companion made her blush, a slow rolling redness that would be inescapable against the fairness of her skin. She wished she could have been more urbane, less ruffled. She wished the ground beneath her might have opened and simply swallowed her up, but of course it didn’t and she was forced to cope.
The cough she had been afflicted with suddenly decided at that moment to become unbridled, and one small cough turned into a minute-long hack, sweat beading her body with its growing intensity.
He passed her his own drink, a white wine that was as dry as it was strong. She swallowed the lot, praying to God that her infirmity might cease as tears of exertion ran from the corners of her eyes. Dabbing at them with her fingers, she faced him.
‘I have been ill, but...our family is swiftly running...out of both money and hope...as Silas seems to have vanished...off the very face of the earth.’ These bare bones of stated truth were given succinctly as she laid out her family’s present predicament without embroidering it. She was finding breathing difficult and was struggling to keep another coughing fit at bay. She felt too hot as well...from the blush or from a rising fever? At that particular moment she could not tell which was the culprit. She did not feel up to throwing her sister’s name into the mix, for her confused hope and dread of Jasper falling madly in love with Amelia all over again were at this moment too complex and disjointed to explain properly.
He frowned and pushed dark hair back from his face. His hands were as beautiful as the rest of him. He wore a solid ring of gold on the fourth finger of his right hand with an engraving of sorts etched into it.
‘I had a letter from your brother two months ago. Silas sounded hale and hearty.’
‘Only two months?’ The relief of his words made her feel faint all over again. ‘Then he is not dead. Millie could no longer feel his presence in the world, you see, and as a twin that was a decided worry and even Mama, who is normally so very sensible, had begun to have a haunted look in her eyes and...’ She stopped, taking in breath. ‘I cannot believe it. You are sure it was only two months ago?’
‘I am.’
‘Then why would he have not written to us to let us know where he was, how he was? He must have known our fears?’
‘He sounded busy. He sounded as if he was in the process of finalising a business scheme in Baltimore that he was sure was going to make him a fortune.’
Could it possibly be this easy? Suddenly all Lottie wanted to do was to be the bearer of such good news and send a message promptly to Mama and Millie. They would be as thrilled as she had been and as puzzled probably, too, but Silas’s whole disappearance began to make a certain sense. He’d always struggled with commitment and tying himself down. She imagined him in some far-flung uncivilised colony of the Americas, a long way from anywhere that dealt with post or a port by which mail might have been conveyed.
‘Are you well, Miss Fairclough?’ His words registered amid all her rushing conjectures and she turned back to him.
‘I am indeed, Mr King. Better, in fact, than I have been for a very long while even with the affliction of this cough that has become worse so very quickly. My brother’s disappearance has been weighing on me as if it were a large stone tied on my back, you see, and it’s like that old adage, I expect—the one that says “Worry often gives a small thing a great shadow”.’
This time he laughed out loud and a number of people turned to look at them.
‘I have never heard that before. Where is it from?’
‘It is
an ancient Swedish proverb, I think. My Nanny Beth used it.’
‘She is still alive? God, I remember her.’
‘No. She died six years ago. On earth one day and in heaven the next. Silas said it was such a fitting death for one who in life had never wanted a fuss.’
Again he laughed and the darkness in his eyes lifted. That was what was different, Lottie thought, his eyes. Last time she had seen them they had been full only of lightness.
A woman she recognised as Jasper King’s sister was then suddenly at his side and looking at her quizzically.
‘Do I know you? Your face is familiar.’
Lottie held out a hand. ‘I am from the Fairclough Foundation in Howick Place and I knew your brother briefly, once.’
‘Very briefly,’ Jasper added, ‘but our reacquaintance has been most enlightening.’
He did not sound as though he quite believed this and Lottie turned to his sister, trying to cover the awkwardness. Another woman had also joined their small group, a beautiful blonde woman with cornflower-blue eyes and a sweet smile. She looked at Jasper as if she wanted to eat him up and, sensing she was now a little in the way, Lottie smiled.
‘Well, if you will excuse me I shall go and find a drink. I have a cough.’
‘Yes, we all heard.’ The other woman’s words were not kind. ‘I very much hope that you do not spread it around just before Christmas.’
‘And I hold the very same hope.’
Without looking back at the others Lottie threaded her way through the room, making for the door. The news of her brother did not allow even the rudeness of the beautiful woman to penetrate her euphoria and all she wanted to do was to make for home and send word to Mama and Millie about this wonderful new discovery of Silas’s wellbeing.
Alive. Well. Prospering even. Their trials and tribulations would soon be at an end and Amelia would not have to marry the curate after all.
Collecting her hat and heavy cloak, she fastened both upon her person and tilted her head against the growing wind outside. At least it had stopped snowing and a return journey always seemed much quicker.
Digging her hands into her pocket, she felt the long letter that she had written. She had not thought to give it to Jasper King, but at least such an omission gave Amelia the chance to meet him properly at some point and who knew what might come from that.
A cloud made the day darken and she bit at her bottom lip. Amelia was far more beautiful than she was and after this meeting all Jasper King must have comprehended about her was oddness. He was probably laughing with his sister and the beauty right at this moment as he retold the story to the others of her gauche outbursts and of her peculiar manner.
Not her finest hour, Lottie thought with a sadness, and wished with every piece of her heart that she could have started this afternoon all over again.
* * *
She was nowhere in the room. She had gone. After looking round the front parlour and failing to find her, Jasper strode to the entrance where an elderly servant was waiting to dispense coats and hats.
‘Did Miss Fairclough leave?’
‘The young lady with the curls?’ The man waited as Jasper nodded. ‘She did indeed, sir, a good ten minutes ago now. But it seems to me that she hailed no carriage, setting out to walk instead.’ His eyes strayed to the window. ‘In this weather the young lady’s journey will be a cold one.’
Anger tightened his chest. Miss Charlotte Fairclough would walk all the way from here to Howick Place on one edge of the Irish Rookery in this weather? It was a decent distance and the journey would take her through many of the less salubrious parts of the city. Asking for his coat and hat, he put them on and walked outside, gesturing to the driver of his waiting carriage. The icy crunch of freezing snow beneath his boots worried him.
Five minutes later he found her walking down St Anne’s Street. She was coughing again, he could see that by the way she was hunched in with her body shaking. Did the younger Fairclough have no sense whatsoever? Leaning out of the window, he instructed his man to pull in just ahead of her, glad to see that she came to a standstill when he got out and was waiting patiently as he approached her.
‘Do you wish to be struck down with pneumonia, Miss Fairclough?’ He looked pointedly up at the sky. The snow had turned into sleeted rain now, driving in from the north with force.
Her head shook, the curls dripping like sodden rat tails where they fell beneath the hat she now wore.
‘I d-do n-not.’
She was shaking so hard she could barely get her words out, and the fury that he had felt when first seeing her trudging homewards doubled.
‘Get into my carriage. I shall take you home.’
She did as he ordered, sitting down primly and folding her cloak tighter in around her, though as he followed her in his damn leg gave way and he almost toppled into her lap, saving himself from doing so at the very last moment.
The talkative Miss Fairclough seemed to have disappeared altogether. This version was a far quieter one, watching him with those whisky eyes of hers in a careful and cautious manner.
‘The forecast is for heavier snow and the temperatures are plummeting. I doubt your brother would be pleased to see you traipsing in this part of London town alone and in such weather.’
The mention of Silas brought her glance to his. ‘You are right, Mr King. It was foolish.’
‘Surely someone should have accompanied you today. A maid? Your mother?’
‘My mother, Lilian, is in the country at a Christmas party of Lady Alexandra Malverly’s and my sister has journeyed with her.’
‘But you were not invited?’
The same slight blush he had noticed when talking with her before resurfaced.
‘I was sick.’
‘Which is even more of a reason to be warm indoors.’
The heat in the conveyance seemed to have aggravated her illness and he waited again for a moment until she stopped coughing, her hands winding into the material of her skirt and bunching it into tight folds. She looked like a small wet angel blown in by the winter chills, her hair all loose and her cheeks weather reddened. As he took in the curves of her body beneath the folds of her cloak, he glanced away. His right leg ached and his meeting with Susan Seymour sat firmly in his mind.
Miss Verity Chambers had broken off their engagement summarily after knowing the extent of an injury she could not abide. A note had arrived from her, the physician delivering it to his bedside along with the morphine. The shock had almost killed him.
God. He shifted his leg towards the carriage door, the altered angle helping ease the pain. He could walk again at least and the broken nerves did not jump into trauma with as much regularity as they had before.
But he was still a damaged man, inside and out—a man who could destroy Miss Charlotte Fairclough with all her joy and natural exuberance just by being who he was.
Leaning forward, he threaded his fingers together. He would drop her off at the Foundation and leave. He would also write to her brother and let him know the family circumstances for he could not believe that the honourable young man he had once known well would leave them all so very much in need. He also wondered if they would accept an interim loan in the meantime from him, but did not know quite how to phrase such an offer without it sounding like charity.
Glancing out of the window, Jasper took in a breath and tried not to be mesmerised by the scent of lavender and lemon that was not quite submerged under the heavier odour of soaking wet wool.
* * *
He was scowling again, the laughing man she had warmed to at the charity event completely swallowed up by this ill-tempered one admonishing her at every turn.
It was still a few minutes at least until they reached Howick Place and Lottie wished she might have refused this ride altogether.
The trouble was, there was something
about him that she felt a connection to, a connection that she had understood eight years before sitting at the top of the stairs and spying upon him as he had come calling upon her sister.
He limped badly. She had noticed this as he had led her into the carriage a few moments before and once she was inside she saw his hand drop to his right thigh and rest there. For support? For balance? Lottie had thought he was going to fall for a second when he had first joined her in the conveyance, but he’d recovered his equilibrium just in time to sit, heavily, eyes flaring in pain and anger as he’d looked away.
His rigid control was worrying for he was a man so unlike the memory of her gentle and loving father that for a moment she felt bewildered by her notice of him.
‘I am sorry to have been a nuisance to you, Mr King.’
She wanted to also add that he could let her out now but, in the light of the worsening weather, did not quite feel up to plodding the rest of her way home.
The tears filling her eyes surprised her. She seldom cried. Perhaps it was a mixture of relief over the knowledge of her brother’s recent letter and of the day’s convoluted happenings. Taking in a deep breath, she tried to temper her reaction and ended up with another fit of coughing.
Goodness, was she really much sicker than she thought and could she be spreading it to him even as she sat there?
When he handed over a clean white handkerchief she was surprised.
‘Nothing is ever as bad as you might think it, Miss Fairclough.’
It was monogrammed with his initials and pressed into such starched precise folds she hardly dared unravel it.
‘Thank you.’
He nodded, waiting until she had blown her nose before speaking again.
‘This weather will improve tomorrow.’
She had the distinct feeling that he was filling in the awkward gaps and giving her time to recover. He certainly had not mentioned her tears and for that Lottie was relieved. She sought to find some conversational small talk of her own.