Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector. Sophia James

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       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 СКАЧАТЬ