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.
Never in the whole of his two and thirty years had he performed an errand of this nature. Once resolved to it, he’d embarked on the business with extraordinary care.
By God if he wasn’t a bit nervous.
He could almost believe it was real. That he was some infatuated boy approaching a young lady’s father for permission to court her.
But he wasn’t a boy any longer. And he wasn’t infatuated.
He wasn’t.
This was about Miss Wychwood’s fortune. And if he liked her a little, too . . . Well. That was all the better for their future together.
His visit here was merely a formality. Jasper prayed it would go quickly. He still had that solicitor to call on in Fleet Street. And afterward, there was this evening’s ball to prepare for. He was conscious of the passing seconds, each of them marked by the ticking of an ornate ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.
The footman returned momentarily. “Sir Eustace will see you in his study. This way, if you please.”
Jasper followed him down the hall. Sir Eustace’s study was at the back of the residence. Heavy draperies were drawn shut over the windows, and a fire blazed in the grate, making the room as uncomfortably warm as the rest of the house. Far worse, it reeked of animal lard and herbs. A chest plaster, Jasper suspected, or some other manner of medicinal.
Sir Eustace looked as though he needed it. Seated behind a mahogany desk, he was as pale as a waxwork effigy. He wore a quilted banyan, with a cap on his head, a muffler tucked at his throat, and a rug draped over his shoulders. “Captain Blunt,” he said weakly.
Jasper bowed. “Sir Eustace.”
“Come in and have a seat.” Sir Eustace waved away the footman. “That will be all, Jenkins.”
The footman departed, shutting the door behind him.
Jasper sat down in a leather-upholstered chair, facing Sir Eustace across the desk. He saw no resemblance to Miss Wychwood in the man’s face. No similarity in shape, coloring, or expression. Perhaps she took after her mother?
Or perhaps not.
An oil portrait on the study wall depicted an expensively dressed woman with dark hair and drooping, aristocratic features. Lady Wychwood, Jasper presumed. She looked no more like Miss Wychwood than the baronet.
Which begged the question: Where did Julia Wychwood get her beauty? Her sweetness? It wasn’t from her parents. For all she resembled them, she might have been a changeling left on their doorstep. A fey child, merely biding time among mortals until the fateful day she was retrieved by her people.
She didn’t belong here.
Jasper felt the truth of it even more than he had when he’d first entered the house.
Sir Eustace regarded him narrowly, a shrewd expression in his eyes. “Jenkins tells me you’ve come about my daughter.”
“I have,” Jasper said.
It had been his plan from the beginning. A mercenary plan. To woo her and win her. To claim her fortune for his own. Ridgeway had insisted it could be done without any trouble. Miss Wychwood was a wallflower. A self-proclaimed oddity with two failed seasons behind her. Surely, Sir Eustace would jump at the chance to see her married off.
But something wasn’t right.
It was that look in the baronet’s eyes. That shrewd, measuring look, completely at odds with his frail demeanor.
Jasper was at once on his guard.
“Your visit is ill-timed,” Sir Eustace said. “I’ve been too long from my bed today. My constitution can’t abide it. The prospect of death is a constant companion to me.”
“You have my sympathies,” Jasper said.
“Sympathy is poor medicine. But I don’t complain. I’ve long accepted that it’s my lot in life, never knowing which day will be my last.” Sir Eustace emitted a long-suffering sigh. “The doctor’s been summoned. He’ll be here shortly.”
“I’ll endeavor to be brief.” Jasper paused. “Unless . . . If you’d rather I return some other time—”
“There’s no point in delaying. I’m rarely better off than you see me now. And I confess, I’ve been expecting you. There have been reports.” Sir Eustace withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket. “You’ve been spending time with my daughter.”
“I’ve had that privilege, yes. We’re invited to many of the same functions.”
“And that’s all? Come, sir. I may be confined to my bed the majority of the day, but news still reaches me from various quarters; my daughter’s chaperone and others. It seems you’ve singled my daughter out for your attentions.”
Jasper was unaccustomed to being challenged. Given his reputation, most men wouldn’t dare. But there was no mistaking the querulous thread in the older man’s voice.
He knew about Jasper’s pursuit of Miss Wychwood and was plainly unhappy about it.
Jasper couldn’t altogether blame him. Any father who loved his daughter was bound to be protective of her. “Miss Wychwood is a charming young lady. I’ve come to admire her very much.”
“Charming?” Sir Eustace chuckled. “She’s an heiress. I’ve made no secret of it. And you . . . You’re an ex-soldier in straitened circumstances.”
“A fact of which I’ve made no secret,” Jasper said.
“I’ll give you that, Captain. There are others who would attempt to hide their poverty. But you’ve been aboveboard, haven’t you. Is it honesty, I wonder, or some variety of stratagem? A tactic meant to disarm an enemy?”