by Sophia James
She rose on her tiptoes and simply kissed him.
In gratitude and relief and in bewilderment and admiration.
And he kissed her back, with a hard want that singed her insides and took the sense from her head. Pressing in, she felt her world shift, from before to after, from then to now, and she knew that every point in her life going forward would be referenced from this moment, from this feeling.
He was not gentle or half-hearted. His mouth seared across her own, asking her to open to him and his tongue came in to taste as he pulled her around, one hand on her cheek and the other in her hair. Vigorous, potent and strong.
The clapping and shouting brought them back, the acrobats in a vertical line on each other’s shoulders from the floor to the ceiling, the bright silk of their clothing flashing with colour.
A carousel, a merry-go-round, the successive flurry of sequence and activity counterbalanced against the stillness in their alcove. He was breathing heavily and so was she, caught in the moment, struggling for logic.
Jasper regained sense before she did, pulling away and straightening his neck tie. Tonight he wore a plain gold band on his forefinger with a single diamond which glinted in the light.
There were no words for what they had done.
It was a mistake.
I am sorry.
Can we find a more private place and do it all again?
She almost smiled at her last thought but didn’t, the graveness of the longing they had exposed so very momentous. How did one retreat from this? Or go on?
For Harriet’s sake she needed him to help her, but already in his eyes she could discern a distance, the more familiar reserve reasserting itself, detachment following close on its heels.
He is disappointed. In me.
She knew the truth of such a realisation and stepped back. This help he offered was simply out of duty to an old friend’s sister and although the male in him had risen to the kiss she’d planted upon him she could tell he wanted nothing more to follow.
‘We will find Harriet, I know it.’ Her words were given impersonally as sense reached out with wisdom. ‘And let us hope soon.’
* * *
Lord, he could barely believe what had just happened and in the middle of a crowded ballroom behind the very straggliest of ornamental trees. If the acrobats had not been performing their tricks, what scandal could have resulted? He doubted the return of sanity would have been so easy without the blaze of applause. He doubted he could have stopped, too, his frenzy peaking in a rush as she’d opened her mouth and welcomed him in.
He swiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket and turned away, from those lips and those eyes and the truth of dread he saw on her beautiful face. If his own heartbeat thundered like a runaway train, then Miss Charlotte Fairclough looked nothing but composed, her mind back again on the more important rescue of Miss Harriet White.
She walked in front of him into the crowd, her head tilted to watch the last antics of the performers now entangled in some impossibly difficult contortion. When the play had finished and a woman dipped into her bucket and threw red flowers into the crowd Charlotte caught one, holding it before her in quiet admiration.
Impossibly beautiful. Undeniably original.
He cursed these thoughts and looked away.
Not again. Not ever again for him, for Charlotte Fairclough deserved so very much more. He needed to find Miss White and he needed to find her fast and then he would depart for the north. He had a job that would take him away from London for a number of months and at this moment that looked to be a good thing.
He saw Nigel Payne making his way over to him and smiled, feeling the muscles in his jaw grate together as he did so. Sometimes late at night when his leg ached unbearably he cursed the man’s stupidity for placing himself in such a dangerous position, right beneath the carriage as they were trying to fashion a coupling pin.
‘You look to be enjoying yourself, Jasper?’
His body tensed. Had Nigel seen him kiss Charlotte Fairclough?
‘The dance,’ the other continued as a way of explaining. ‘I am glad to see your leg so much better.’
Relief surged over irritation. Charlotte had walked over to talk with his sister so that he had a moment alone. Perhaps this was a good opportunity to learn a little more of the Viscount.
‘Harcourt seems to me like a man who enjoys women?’
Payne smiled. ‘Indeed, he does. He has a different escort every week and this week’s catch, Caroline, was rather fetching with the mark at her chin. But I did hear that she had been sent back.’
‘Back?’
‘To wherever he procures them from. The girl was young. Too young, I thought, but then without the buffer of a good family and wealth her choices must be limited.’
Jasper decided to be honest.
‘Caroline’s real name is Harriet White and we think she was taken from Horseferry Road and a good job that the Fairclough Foundation had obtained for her.’
Comprehension filled Nigel’s eyes. ‘Which explains why you are here with Miss Fairclough. I wondered at your interest in attending this ball as you have not graced many of these social occasions in years. The thing is, I can’t see Harcourt being unlawful, though if Lord Milner were involved in the transaction that would be entirely possible for I have met him a few times and I have never liked him. If I hear anything more though, I will send you word.’
‘Who is Lord Milner?’
‘A man Harcourt sees often. A man who Eloise and her mother have no time for when he comes calling. A man who does not care much for the laws and niceties of society. I should not like to cross him for I think he could be dangerous.’
And in that second Jasper remembered why he had leapt to Nigel’s rescue all those years before. He was a good man and he meant well.
Tonight had been a fruitful one with the collection of clues. He had a place to start looking and the name of a man he had not considered before. He also knew that Harriet White now went under the new name of Caroline which must aid them in their search for her.
Their search. He frowned. He still had the problem of Miss Charlotte Fairclough and her presence at his side after the kiss was difficult, but he was thirty-three and long past the age of such vacuous drama. Swallowing his pride, he went to join her and his sister to one side of the room.
* * *
Lottie felt him there before she saw him, a shiver running down her spine as she turned. She needed to say something to him, about the kiss, about her sister, about anything that would make his withdrawal from her less personal. But he spoke before she did.
‘Nigel Payne said that Harriet was here with Harcourt, though she goes under the name of Caroline now.’
He was all business and for that she was grateful.
‘Was she happy? Did she say she was hurt in any way?’
‘All I know is that she has been sent back. I also have the name of a man who might be involved in all this and a direction. If she was taken from the laundry, then perhaps it is to there that she will be returned and if not we can hope it will be to somewhere close by. Let us hope she has the sense to run.’
Meghan was now speaking to another woman she seemed to know so Lottie used this time left to her wisely.
‘I realise that my kiss made you feel uncomfortable, Mr King, and of course I should not have ever done such a foolish thing because I hope that you will meet my sister Amelia at some point again and feel what you once did for her and she for you. Such a connection you both once enjoyed is valuable and unusual and wonderful and if you would only think about it I am sure that—’
He stopped her tumbling flustered words simply by holding up one hand.
‘Despite what you think, Miss Fairclough, I have no feelings like the ones you speak of whatsoever for your sister and I never did. I also certainly do not pl
an to marry anyone any time soon.’
He could not have put his indifference more plainly and the awful realisation that she had betrayed both Millie and herself in her ill-thought-out words and actions dawned upon her.
It was a disaster. Mr King’s honesty, Harriet’s complicity and her own stupidity in imagining things could be so completely and utterly different.
Her clothes hung on her, marking her as the impostor she was, and those all around her felt foreign. This was not her place and these were not her people.
Amelia might not need to make any marriage whatsoever if her brother’s plans of a fortune were realised and she wondered why on earth she had said anything to Jasper King at all.
She knew the answer, of course. She had tried to deflect the absurdity of her own interest in him given his hurtful indifference, a pitiful fact that was both nonsensical and selfish of her. Well, at least now she had a definitive answer about exactly where he stood on the subject of marriage.
He was not interested. In her or her sister.
The glory of being here dimmed completely and she was glad when Jasper excused himself from their company and went off to talk with some friends.
* * *
Three hours later, after one of the longest nights in her life, she was back at home and Claire, her maid who had been brought back earlier, was full of questions and curiosity.
‘Did you have a wonderful time? You looked so beautiful, Miss Lottie, and I imagine Mr King must have been impressed when he saw you so changed.’
‘He was, but my cough has worsened after all the exertion and now I just want to lie down and be in bed.’
She coughed as if to underline her point and Claire fussed about her, finding camphor and a lemon drink and another warmer blanket for her bed.
When her maid finally left Lottie pushed back the covers and stood, glad to be by herself, glad for the silence and the darkness and the many hours until the morrow.
She would have to see Mr King again, of course, because she could not simply abandon Harriet, but...
One finger ran across the upper line of her lip in the way his had as the kiss ended, the tingling wonder of it echoing softly. She was twenty-two and this had been her very first kiss. Clandestine, scandalous and surprising in the way that it had stirred up her emotions so that desire snaked through her and settled in her stomach and lower.
This is what the stories spoke of and what her mother and father must once have known. This is what she had dreamed of even before she had perceived the power that it held, the intensity, the authority, the fire.
Her hand ran across her stomach, the answering tremors of knowledge there as well, and then they fell lower.
‘Jasper.’
His name spilled out into the empty silence.
* * *
He walked the dark corridors of his town house, trying to iron out the ache in his leg. The dance had worsened the pain with the intricate steps and he felt exhausted. And sad.
The night had started well and finished badly. By the time they had all piled into the carriage to make their way home all he knew was a distance, the kiss from the early evening like an illusion.
Why the hell would Charlotte Fairclough have kissed him like that if she was only interested in finding a husband for her sister?
Nothing made sense, but then with her it very rarely had. He could tell Meghan had suspected something had changed between them, but did not want to ask, and for that he was grateful. He’d arrived home irritated, exasperated and vexed.
Women flummoxed him. He liked them for small, short spaces of time, but then they always wanted more. Or less in Charlotte’s case. He dreaded meeting her tomorrow. God, he had known Miss Fairclough for only a matter of days and already she was taking over his thoughts.
His thigh gave way and he grabbed at the wall, holding himself up until the cramps passed. If his leg was no better by the morning, would he even be able to venture into the Irish Rookery and be of any use, a damaged adversary grasping on to what was left of his health by the skin of his teeth?
If Harcourt was foolish, then this Lord Milner sounded much worse and that was not giving any thought to the sycophants and hangers-on who would likely surround a man inveigled in a criminal underworld.
Once he might have dealt with all of this easily and that was the rub. He looked out of the window into the darkness of the night, the rain falling again and a similar dreary forecast for tomorrow. He hoped that they might ask Wilkes at the laundry some further questions and that Harriet White might have turned up again all by herself, realising the danger and foolhardiness of her actions.
The letter from Silas Fairclough was also a puzzle. He wondered why her brother had not written to his family for months in order to make sure that the three women were safe and well catered for. He could not believe Silas would have just left them in such a way.
When he slipped again he made his way to his bedchamber, dismissing his valet and reaching into the wardrobe for his old and familiar stick. The dimpled silver handle fitted into his hand like a glove, the mahogany of the wood still well polished. He would use this at home in his own company, but nowhere outside the walls of his house. He remembered the sound of it on the wooden floor from before, each click stabbing into his self-worth.
You have become a tortured cripple by your injury. I cannot be married to you because of this. I am sorry, Jasper. It would just be too hard and I am still so very young.
Verity’s letter had been sent in the middle of his self-induced pity. Perhaps on reflection she had been sensible to distance herself, given he was well into the laudanum and probably not easy company any more to boot.
Still, the words hurt, try as he might to not let them. His first love. A woman he imagined he might spend his life with and be the one to bear his children. There was some intrinsic failure in such a breakdown, some systemic collapse that had been hard to recover from.
He no longer loved Verity, he knew that. In fact, he doubted if he even liked her, but to see her tonight looking desperate and needy punched him in the stomach with the disappointment of it all. And then to be thrown off into the arms of her sister by Charlotte just moments after she had kissed him had sealed his fury.
He pulled a book from the small shelf at the side of his bed and sat down.
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile by James Bruce.
Charlotte had said she read adventure stories about far-off places, too.
He shook her image away.
She had smelt of softness and lavender and some undetermined sweetness that he had breathed in with alacrity.
‘God.’
It was the kiss. It stuck to him like the glue of some desperate need. It hounded his senses and brought him back to the moment when she had opened her mouth and simply let him in, all innocence and purity. He couldn’t remember ever kissing anyone like that before, with such a craving that both surroundings and sense had simply evaporated.
‘Please God, help me,’ he said, but then could not quite work out what it was that he implored.
Peace. Sanity. Independence. A mix of grace and faith as well. To find Harriet White. To leave Charlotte Fairclough with no notion of these thoughts he was besieged with. To appear honourable and useful and strong.
He smiled. Mostly that. The walking stick hacked pieces of his certainty away and he wanted it back. He wished he could have started again with Miss Charlotte Fairclough and done everything differently.
But that wasn’t quite being honest with himself because then she might not have kissed him and, truly, if all else came to nothing then at least he had that to remember her by.
Sitting against the pillows heaped at his back, he settled himself and opened his book. To be the first European to discover the source of the Blue Nile sounded impossibly exotic and for a Scottish man to travel in North Afri
ca and Ethiopia all those years before without any map or direction was a wonder.
He deliberated on the thought of Charlotte reading this account of bravery and wondered at her own reading history. Silas Fairclough had always struggled with the thought of tying himself down and had been an adventurer at heart and so perhaps it was a family trait, this constant search for something else.
The quiet all around him descended as the clock in the corner of the room chimed out the hour of four. In the book James Bruce was finally on his way, sailing in a small vessel under a fair wind from Port Mahon around the cape of Ras el Hamra and landing at Bona, a considerable town two miles distant from the ancient ruins of Hippo Regius.
Shutting his eyes, he breathed in the image of the words. Foreign. Different. As far from his life here as he could possibly imagine.
His father’s sickness and neediness had kept him in Liverpool for years and then the injury to his leg had sealed his fate. He was thirty-three and the books of adventures he read were a sad reminder of all that his life had not been. He had never travelled away from England once despite all the best intentions of doing so.
As he rubbed at his aching thigh he knew he could not now chance a journey to such far-off and exotic places. No, he was stuck here in his own bad health just as certainly as his father had been.
Pouring himself a brandy, he drank down the lot.
Chapter Eight
The banging at the door made her start and she looked at the clock in the kitchen.
Eight thirty.
Rosa O’Brian rushed through a moment later, her face full of wonder.
‘I seen her, Miss Lottie. Harriet. I seen her with me own eyes, bundled from a carriage at the top of Old Pye Street. Just half an hour ago, it were, and although she looked straight at me she gave no sign of recognition.’
Such information had Lottie standing and calling for her coat and hat. ‘We will find a hackney and go there immediately. I have a contact in the One Tun pub, a Mr Twigg, and we shall take Frank Wilkes from the laundry with us as extra security.’
