Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector. Sophia James
here.’
‘And you don’t?’
She was petite and well formed, her hair a wild bunch of escaping curls and her irises the colour of old whisky. She also had dimples, deep ones in each cheek.
‘I am only here to meet someone, but unfortunately I cannot see him anywhere.’ As she stated this she craned her neck as though having one final look.
‘Who is it? Perhaps I would know of him?’
‘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.
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