Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector

‘Oh, it was not the tragedy you might think it,’ Susan Seymour returned, her voice low and husky. ‘As soon as she was married I think she wished she wasn’t. She was always so eminently sensible, but her love affair with Alworthy dissipated all that in a moment and was something I could never understand. Personally, I do not think she can now, either.’

The shocking truth of that statement left him marooned, as did Susan Seymour’s hand resting on his arm. The wine quickly drunk was also doing its bit to make him feel dislocated and all he hoped for was that his sister might come looking for him and interrupt.

‘It was her mistake to say goodbye to you, of course, and God knows why she did so?’ She let that question slide as he failed to answer. ‘Verity has not been happy since, so I can only surmise that being young has its pitfalls and they were ones she just could not have possibly predicted.’ This was said with intensity as her fingers squeezed his arm. Her eyes were full of question.

Jasper refused to be drawn into explanation. ‘Well, now we are all older and much wiser. Thank God.’

‘Older, perhaps, but you’ve created quite a stir here today. I have been hearing your name right across the room.’

‘My sister is one of the sponsors—’ he said, but Susan Seymour interrupted him, eyes alive in interest.

‘I do not think it is your sister the women are interested in. You have built up King Enterprises to be a powerful and well-known company, your influence in all areas of business a common topic of people’s conversation. It is you they wish to know better, Jasper, a man they admire.’

The use of his Christian name and such overt flirtation had him stepping back. ‘When you do see Mrs Alworthy, please tell her that I send my regards, but I am not planning on staying in London for long.’

‘Then that is a shame and I know she will be sorry for it. As will I.’

With a forced smile Jasper took his leave and walked towards the large windows on one side of the room. Here at least there was space to breathe, for the conversation with Susan Seymour had shocked him.

‘God, help me.’ The words escaped unbidden as he stopped and a woman he had failed to see sitting beside him glanced up and stood.

‘My thoughts exactly, but you at least look like you fit in 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.

Chapter Three (#u388d3239-b0ee-5698-8db9-a1a731d03b74)

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.