Jonathon. I do, you do. You put on that handsome smile of yours and no one guesses there might even be an ounce of darkness in you. Why should Thomas be any different?’
‘I just can’t imagine what reasons he’d have,’ Jonathon admitted. Thomas had everything: a family, money, social status. He was well liked.
Owen rose, signalling the conversation was over. ‘We’re getting ahead of ourselves. It might not be him.’ In fact, it was unlikely that it was after seven years. What it could be was dangerous. This could be a trap, an attempt at extortion that played on a family’s desperate hopes. It wouldn’t be the first time. There’d been earlier attempts right after the war to claim money in exchange for ‘information’ about Thomas. Those attempts had devastated his parents.
‘The best thing you can do is go brush up on your French.’ Because Vienna loomed, because if there was a chance this fellow was Thomas, Jonathon would have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Jonathon stood, too. He knew what he needed to do. He needed to find Claire and step up the lessons. He needed to forget about kisses in the Rosedale garden, or lowered bodices, or sherry eyes that sparkled when she looked at him, or the feel of her dancing in his arms. He needed to concentrate all of his attention on the lessons as if his life depended on it, because it did—his and quite possibly Thomas’s.
* * *
Of course, he had to find her first. For a person who claimed her life was uneventful, she was proving difficult to track down. She wasn’t home and neither was Lady Stanhope, which meant no one precisely knew her direction, only that she was out making calls. The butler did, however, know where Lady Stanhope had gone: Lady Morrison’s, the ton’s most notorious gossip. For a man to show up there was nothing short of walking into the lion’s den.
* * *
Jonathon tried there, but it only earned him a tepid cup of tea and crumbly cakes. Once he’d been announced, he had no choice but to put in his fifteen minutes before he could leave again. In exchange, though, he got a rather shockingly long list of possible locations from Lady Stanhope. He might try the Worths or the Penroses or the Milhams, she told him, eyeing him speculatively as she gave the advice. ‘The flowers you’ve been sending are positively gorgeous, Mr Lashley,’ she added with sly calculation. He didn’t imagine it. Every ear in the room perked up at that.
He left the moment those fifteen required minutes were up, but fate was determined to play with him a little. He called at the Worths, the Penroses to more tea but to no avail, the calls eating up more of his time before he arrived at the Milhams, only to be told the ladies were indisposed at the moment by a butler who was a stickler for propriety, even though they both knew very well the lady he was after was inside somewhere.
After a sleepless night and dubious news over Thomas, Jonathon was in no mood for mannerly games. He stepped around the butler and into the hall. He was a man who believed in never leaving a place until he got what he came for and, right now, what he needed most was Claire Welton. He spied a sitting room off the corridor. ‘I’ll wait.’
* * *
Claire couldn’t wait. She blurted out the words, ‘We have to stop. It has gone too far’, as soon as the foursome was seated in the Milham’s garret the next day. She’d been up all night thinking it through and she knew her decision was the right one. Apparently, fate agreed with her. Jonathon hadn’t shown up for the lesson that morning and she knew why; things had got out of hand in the Rosedale garden.
‘It sounds to me like it’s gone just far enough,’ Beatrice argued with a twinkle in her eye. ‘He’s sending you flowers and dancing with you every night.’
Claire gave an exasperated sigh. How many times did she have to explain it? ‘Only because he thinks I have a gentleman whose attentions I would like to attract.’
‘You do.’ May laughed over the rim of her teacup. ‘His.’
‘But he thinks it’s someone else and I’ve let him,’ Claire insisted. ‘He thinks he’s helping me in exchange for the French lessons.’ While that line of reasoning explained everything up to a point, that point had run out fourteen hours and eleven minutes ago.
The words came out in a rush. ‘Last night, he kissed me.’ Everyone began to talk at once, but she raised her voice to be heard. ‘This morning he didn’t show up for the lesson.’ She didn’t want him to quit the lessons over a kiss. He needed them too badly, more than he needed to feel remorse over a kiss. Had it been such a poor kiss that he didn’t want to see her again, not even for lessons? She had thought it was rather nice. More than nice...extraordinary.
‘He kissed you?’ Evie’s eyes were dreamy, but May’s eyes were sharp.
‘Well, this is certainly a development,’ May drawled. ‘He didn’t need to kiss you in order to help you. I’d call that progress in the right direction.’ May fixed her with a hard stare and Claire braced herself. ‘You wanted Lashley, Claire, and now it seems you can have him. You can’t stop now. You do want him, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ More than before if that was possible. After spending hours with him in lessons, walking and talking with him, she was discovering a whole new Jonathon Lashley. When she’d started this, it had been with the intention of showing him a different side of her. She’d not bargained on also seeing a different side of him. Now, there were consequences she’d not planned on. ‘But not like this—’ Claire insisted.
‘Like what?’ Beatrice interrupted. ‘We’re doing what every woman since Eve has done to get a man and that’s use our assets to attract a man’s notice. The last time I checked, that wasn’t a sin.’
‘But if I hadn’t forced my way into his life, he would still be on a trajectory headed for Cecilia. I don’t want to steal another girl’s beau.’ Even if that girl was Cecilia and there was definitely some settling to do between the two of them.
‘I think your definition of stealing is a bit too liberal, Claire. There’s been no formal announcement, except for Cecilia clinging to his arm for the past year.’ May shook her head. ‘If that was all it took to claim a man, we’d all have the husbands of our dreams by now. If he wants to marry her, he will. It’s simple.’
‘It’s not simple at all, May.’ Because Jonathon was not simple. He had layers beneath that easy smile, layers she was just beginning to discover. ‘He can’t sell himself to her. She will never understand him. You heard her, he’s nothing but the “colour” of the month.’
She had to tell them. ‘You’ve all worked so hard for me and I appreciate everything you’ve done, I truly do. Evie, your gowns are lovely and I feel beautiful in them. Bea, you gave me the courage to seize my moment and I did. May, you made everything happen by setting up seats at the dinner and dropping the right hints at the right time. It all worked wonderfully, but I don’t want to stoop to Cecilia’s level,’ Claire said firmly.
She hoped they wouldn’t notice how hard it was to say such a thing calmly. It had been a difficult decision to make. She wasn’t as sure as May and Beatrice that the kiss signified progress, but if there was even a flicker of ‘progress’ it was even harder to give up knowing she might have success. But at what price? She did not want to ‘lure’ Lashley away. After last night, she felt that might be the case. ‘I think it’s gone too far.’
He’d kissed her out of desperation over his own circumstances or over hers. And that was the ‘good’ explanation. Perhaps he’d kissed her because
