Page 40 of The Belle of Belgrave Square

Julia stared at the viscountess, stunned.

“He nearly killed one of his lieutenants once,” her ladyship continued with ill-concealed relish. “The bookish son of a country vicar, I understand. He’d taken bread to a dying prisoner against Blunt’s express orders. Blunt repaid the man’s kindness by flogging him almost to death.”

Julia shook her head, unwilling to believe it. “That can’t be true.”

“It is. Heatherton says by the time Sebastopol fell, the captain had developed a taste for brutality. How else do you suppose he managed to survive?”

Julia could make no reply. Her heart was beating like a smith’s hammer.

“Is that news to you as well?” Lady Heatherton laughed—a sharp, unfriendly sound. “You really know nothing about him, do you? Silly girl. Why do you imagine he’s called the Hero of the Crimea? He survived an ambush, during which he single-handedly killed an entire patrol of Russian soldiers. It was for that he earned his name. Never mind that he lost the lives of the rest of his men in the bargain.”

“It can’t be true,” Julia said again, as much to herself as to Lady Heatherton. “If it were, he wouldn’t have been welcomed into society the way he’s been. No one respectable would ever have issued him an invitation.”

“Why shouldn’t they? Everything he did was done with the goal of defeating our enemy.” Viscountess Heatherton’s lips curled into a smile. “And now he’s set his sights on you. A sweet little morsel of a bluestocking heiress. Do you know, Miss Wychwood, I rather pity you.”

Nine

Later that morning, after a brief stop at Doctors’ Commons, Jasper bounded up the steps of the Wychwood town house in Belgrave Square. It had been less than a week since he and Miss Wychwood had embarked on their tentative friendship. Just a few short days of talking to each other. Confiding in each other.

She hadn’t exactly approved of his suit. She’d only said she’d like to know him better. It wasn’t much in the way of encouragement.

But time was of the essence.

Charlie, Alfred, and Daisy awaited him in Yorkshire. Every day that passed was another spent away from them. Away from his duties on the estate. It was that which had compelled him to go to Doctors’ Commons to obtain a special license. A presumptuous act, but a necessary one given the time constraint.

Miss Wychwood was certain to understand.

Jasper hadn’t the luxury of prolonging things. The sooner he spoke to her father the better.

Though, by the looks of it, it may not be the most auspicious time to do so.

The windows of the enormous white house were covered in black fabric, and the knocker had been removed from the front door. It gave every appearance of being a home where someone had recently died.

How ill was Miss Wychwood’s father?

Jasper had been inclined to think of Sir Eustace and Lady Wychwood as a pair of eccentrics. Two bored, wealthy aristocrats who had made a life’s work out of their imagined ailments. But perhaps they truly were afflicted with some malady or other?

He rapped at the oaken door. It was opened a moment later by a balding footman in canary-yellow livery.

Jasper handed the man his card. “Tell Sir Eustace that I would have a word with him.”

The footman gave Jasper’s dour, black-clad figure an uncertain look, as if he didn’t know quite how to place him. “This is in regard to—?”

“His daughter,” Jasper said brusquely.

A knowing gleam shone in the footman’s eyes. He admitted Jasper into the hall, relieved him of his hat and gloves, and directed him to a shadowy salon where he could wait while the footman inquired if Sir Eustace was at home.

Of course he was at home. Where else would he be? It was only Lady Wychwood who was away at the moment. In Bath, or so Jasper understood, taking the waters.

He couldn’t blame her for decamping.

The house wasn’t a welcoming place. Though luxuriously appointed, it had the air of a sickroom to it—dark and overwarm. Vaguely suffocating. It was the sort of environment designed to make a healthy person feel ill at ease.

It made Jasper exceedingly uncomfortable, as much for its present oppressiveness as for the unhappy recollections it inspired from his past. He hated sickrooms. Hated the smell and the cloying heat. The knowledge that a person one cared about—that one loved—might slip away at any moment. Gone forever. Never to see again. Never to talk to.

No wonder Miss Wychwood was unhappy here. She was a bright shining spark of a girl, full of romantic daydreams. She didn’t belong in this . . . this mausoleum.

As Jasper waited in front of the carved marble fireplace, he gave an absent tug to his waistcoat, straightening an imagined wrinkle. There were none. His black three-piece suit was immaculate, his boots buffed to a high gloss, and his jaw freshly shaven.