Page 17 of To Follow her Heart

The door closed and Jasper let out the breath he’d been holding as Miss Connolly made a choked sound. Harriet flung back the curtains and hurried out, enfolding her friend in her arms.

“Oh, Kitty,” she said as Miss Connolly dissolved into shuddering sobs. “Oh, dearest, whatever have you done?”

Jasper turned away to give them a little privacy and went to pour some drinks. When he looked back Miss Connolly had composed herself a little and he could only admire her fortitude.

“Here,” he said, handing her the glass. “It will help.”

Miss Connolly accepted it from him and took a sip before looking up at him with tear stained eyes.

“I don’t know why you did it, my lord, but I’ll never be able to thank you. My parents will be horrified when they discover what I’ve done. They… they would never support me.”

Jasper smiled, feeling a little uneasy. He could feel Harriet’s scrutiny, feel her confusion as to why he’d acted as he had.

“Are you sure you want to go through with it, Kitty?” she asked, her voice full of concern. “There will be such a dreadful scandal, and even if you win… would you want to marry a man who was forced—”

“He loves her,” Jasper broke in, the words rather harder than he’d intended.

Harriet frowned at him, her scepticism quite obvious. “You can’t possibly—”

“I know what a man in love looks like,” he said, interrupting her and wishing he hadn’t sounded so bitter. “Derby has some hold over him.”

“You know this?” Harriet pressed, a surge of irritation in her voice that Jasper well recognised.

“Yes!” Jasper snapped, finding his own impatience rising at it always did when she acted as if he was a dumb brute. “I do. I saw the despair in his eyes, Harry, and he could not deny Miss Connolly’s words, he could not say it wasn’t true.”

“It is true,” Miss Connolly said. “Though he’s right, we were only children, but… but I saw it too, Harriet. He doesn’t love Lady Frances. He’s trapped. If I thought for one moment his feelings for me were dead and gone….”

Her voice broke and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“I think you’d best take Miss Connolly to her room, Harry,” Jasper said. He felt exhausted. “She must get some rest before she decides for certain what she wishes to do. I will support you, Miss Connolly, whatever you decide.”

Harriet looked at him with confusion in her eyes. “Very well,” she said, still staring at him as though he were a puzzle.

Not for the first time, he sensed some war going on in her mind, that incredible brain of hers forcing itself to consider his actions and make sense of them. Jasper wished her luck as he didn’t have a clue; all he knew was that he had a tendency to act like a lunatic when she was around.

“I’m not yet sure if it was for the best, my lord,” she said, sounding troubled. “But I do realise you stood up for Kitty when you didn’t have to. Mr Derby is a foul tyrant and no one else would have done it, so… thank you. I shan’t forget your kindness.”

Jasper looked back at her, at a face he knew as well as his own. She wasn’t especially beautiful—most would say she was merely passably pretty—but most people didn’t know her. Most people would think her eyes were brown, but they weren’t. Her eyes were a rich bronze, flecked with gold and green, and they could see right through him and find him wanting in every particular.

He nodded and watched as Harriet escorted her friend from the room.

Chapter 5

My dear friend,

It appears I am going to provide more gossip than you could ever have believed. I’m so frightened I’m numb with it. Oh, Bonnie, what have I done?

―Excerpt of a letter from Miss Kitty Connolly to Miss Bonnie Campbell.

The early hours of the morning, 21st August 1814, Holbrooke House, Sussex.

Matilda listened, open-mouthed as Harriet explained everything that had happened.

When the two young women had failed to return after dinner, she’d been anxious and had gone looking for them to no avail, until she’d seen Harriet escorting a white-faced Kitty back to her room.

Now they sat on Kitty’s bed, the three of them huddled together.

“I can’t believe it,” Matilda said for the third time. “To see him again after all this time, and in such a manner. It’s like something from Mrs Radcliffe.”