Debutantes Don’t Date (7 page)

“I thought you would have more sense than making love in full view of my staff, Bingham.
And you miss, if you intend to stay under my roof, you will act with some restraint
and decorum.”

Lord Harrison’s voice had the effect of a bucket of cold water on Grace. She leapt
out of Jasper’s arms, tripped on the hem of her borrowed dress and landed soundly
on her bottom on the cold marble floor. Tears sprang to her eyes, partly from the
pain but mostly from the humiliation of being caught again; and being made to feel
like a slut. Good Lord, this whole time-warp was going to take some getting used to.
Really, who thought a kiss was an act of sin?

“You keep this up much longer, Bingham, and you will need to procure a special licence.”

“Thank you, Neal. I will be sure to heed your advice.” Sarcasm dripped from his lips.
“Come, Miss Lancaster, I believe we have a few things to discuss.”

She was so glad to see the door shut in Lord Harrison’s face that she almost broke
out in giggles. She managed to cover them with a cough that lasted so long Jasper
stepped towards her to smack her back.

“Are you quite well? Now then, Grace, I may call you Grace, can I not? I think we
are past formalities.” A cheeky smile spread on his face.

“Of course,” she snorted.

“Good, call me Jasper.” He raised his hand and almost brushed a wayward strand of
hair from her eyes but turned to pace the room instead. “Maybe Neal’s right. Maybe
we shouldn’t have a long engagement. There’s really no reason to wait; my family consists
of Victoria and you say you no longer have one.” He turned to face her. “What do you
say? We get married in a week?”

“A week?” she squeaked and collapsed into the nearest chair. She couldn’t get married,
and certainly not in a week’s time! For the second time in five minutes hysteria set
in, but this time instead of laughter there was a body-numbing panic. What if she
couldn’t figure out how to get home before then? What if there
was
no reason that she time-travelled? What if she just disappeared without a trace,
anyone she married would be frantic for her. She couldn’t marry someone and then disappear
into thin air. But…she couldn’t
not
marry this man either. As Victoria had pointed out last night, she had no other option.
Victoria’s evil husband would just as soon throw her out of his house on her ass as
look after her. If it wasn’t for Victoria and Jasper’s protection, what would become
of her? Would she end up on the street? It was not as if event managers were in high
demand in the 1800s was it? She knew if she didn’t at least pretend to be engaged
to Jasper, Victoria wouldn’t be able to protect her and Jasper wouldn’t want to. She
would be out on her ear in no time. Oh God, she would have to become a prostitute.
The thought of selling her body to the unwashed men of this time made her skin crawl.
Eww, yuck.

Jasper watched as the panic filled her wide eyes. Her face became so pale he was afraid
she might faint. Surely the thought of marrying him wasn’t that bad? He knew of several
women who’d sell their souls to become the next Countess of Bingham. “Are you perfectly
well?” he asked.

Grace shook herself out of her daydream, looked him in the eye and opened her mouth
to accept…nothing came out.

“Come.” Jasper pulled her to her feet and led her over to the sofa, gently pushed
her down and sat next to her. He rubbed her hands briskly in between his to try to
get some blood flowing. “Grace,
Grace
, are you feeling better now?” At the slightest nod of her head Jasper continued.
“If getting married to me is scaring you, you need not worry. I will look after you.
I’m very well off you know, you will never want for anything and I will never hurt
you. Grace, are you listening to me? I know you were confused last night after you
hit your head, but surely you feel better now. I’m sorry if you don’t remember the
event that caused us to get in this situation to begin with, but going by our reaction
to each other, I believe we’ll get along very well together.”

Grace marvelled at how sweet he looked sitting next to her. His eyes were filled with
concern as he continued to rub her hands. He was going to rub the skin right off if
she didn’t respond soon. She took a deep breath, looked him in the eyes again and
crushed his ego. “I am honoured you would ask me to marry you, I really am. But I
can’t marry you. Not because I don’t think that you are a good man, but we just met.
I don’t want to rush into anything.”

“Rush anything?” Jasper jumped off the sofa to his feet and frowned down at her, his
hands on his hips. “Every time we are in the same room as each other we are
rushing it
! If we rush it any more, you are going to be with child!” The last point he punctuated
with flailing hand gestures.

Grace calmly got to her feet. She didn’t like being looked down on, even if she was
vertically challenged. “Don’t be ridiculous. We need to have sex before we can make
a baby. And we certainly haven’t done that yet, have we?”

“S…s…sex! What kind of woman are you to utter such a word?!”

“Really Jasper, keep your voice down.” Victoria swept into the room and firmly shut
the door behind her. “You don’t want Neal coming down from his study do you? Now sit,
both of you, I have an idea that just might work.”

Chapter Seven

Robin arrived home to find some of his creditors at his door. It was as though they
were having a conference on how best to thrash him. He overheard them fighting over
who got to have him first. He wasn’t about to wait around to find out who the lucky
one was. He ducked around a corner before they saw him and hid behind a tree further
down the street. Curtains flicked at his neighbours’ houses as the residents there
tried to see what he was up to, but he wasn’t about to satisfy their curiosity.

The minutes ticked by as he waited for the men to leave. He looked at his pocket watch
constantly until he resorted to playing a game with himself to see how long he could
go without pulling the watch from his pocket to look at the time. He only made it
up to five minutes once.

He forced himself to wait for an hour before cautiously emerging from his hiding spot.

Luckily the men had gone.

His butler opened the door as he approached. “There were some men here to see you,
sir. I did not admit them but they did congregate on the steps for a time. They left
their cards. I have put them on your desk in your study.”

“Thanks, Harold.” Robin made his way to his study, but not to see who had called,
he already knew their names; he was going to pour himself a drink, if he could find
a bottle with some liquor still left in it, that was.

“Well, what is it?”

“Patience, Jasper, stop glowering and sit down would you?” Victoria selected the chair
nearest the fire, leaving Grace and Jasper to sit where they were before. “Grace,
from our conversation earlier,” Victoria started and Grace’s heart skipped a beat;
surely she wouldn’t tell Jasper about the time-travelling, would she? He’d have her
committed and she had heard Bedlam was not a nice place to visit. “I gather that you
don’t want to rush into anything, for reasons of your own,” Victoria continued. Grace
let out a sigh of relief.

“But you, Jasper, want to be engaged to the girl you ruined so your honour stays intact.
Yes? Am I right so far?” At both their nods, she continued, “Well, why don’t you have
an extended engagement, for as long as you both need, and at the end of it, you either
marry or you both go your own way? The
ton
will soon forget this scandal when the next one arrives. What do you think? If you
do go ahead with my plan at least Grace has some time before Neal throws her out and
we don’t want him to do that do we, Jasper?”

Jasper and Grace looked warily at each other. “I suppose that would work,” Grace ventured.
“What do you say, engaged for now?”

Jasper hoped that when he asked someone to marry him, it would have been met with
a bit more enthusiasm. “I do think that we need a time limit, don’t you? Otherwise
this could go on for years.”

“Don’t be ridiculous Jasper. Of course you won’t be engaged for years; months maybe,
but not years. No one is engaged for years, well, except for you and Lady Anne of
course.”

“Victoria,” he ground out, “we were not engaged.”

“True. But everyone thought you were, or at least that you were going to be engaged
and that is essentially the same thing, is it not?” She waved her hands around vaguely.
“It is neither here nor there now though, is it? What I’m saying is of course you
have to come to a decision someday, you just don’t have to come up with that decision
right now.”

“I don’t see why we need to worry about it now, Jasper,” Grace said. “Why don’t we
just pretend for now and see how it goes? You never know, I might find someone else
and let you off the hook,” she joked with a laugh.

Jasper didn’t like the sound of that. He briefly saw red when he thought of another
man’s arms holding Grace. She was
not
replacing him with someone else.

“I think we need a time frame. We can’t drag this on forever.” He didn’t want to analyse
the feeling gripping his gut, but he knew he didn’t like the thought of anyone besides
him kissing Grace, and holding her soft supple body, and feeling her naked skin against…he
was going insane. That was the only explanation for the visions entering his mind.
How was he going to handle keeping his hands off her? “A month. We can wait a month.”

“A month? That’s barely longer than your last offer!” Grace squeaked as the air stilled
in her lungs. She couldn’t get married in a month! She didn’t even know this guy.
Sure, she got all horny every time she was near him, but that didn’t mean she wanted
to marry him. She needed to find a way back home. “Three months.”

“A month.” He was adamant. He couldn’t wait longer than that. He might not be able
to even wait that long.

“Jasper, it would be near impossible to organise a wedding in a month,” Victoria said
with a slight roll of her eyes, “besides, everyone will think you anticipated your
wedding vows and there is a
little
reason the wedding is rushed. We all know to stop any gossip you’ll have to wait
at least until March.”

“I can handle that, can’t you, Jasper?” Grace looked at him intently and although
she was putting on a brave face he could only too easily remember the panic in her
eyes before Victoria came into the room.

“Very well, three months,” he sighed. His blood quickened whenever he looked at his
new fiancée and wondered how he was going to be able to keep his hands off her for
that long.

Lady Anne breathed in the steam from her cup and sighed with delight as the chocolaty
aroma tickled the back of her throat. Before even taking a sip, she could feel relaxation
making its way through her body. Reading the broadsheet paper this morning lifted
a huge weight off her shoulders and she felt lighter and freer than she had felt since
the moment she was told that she was to marry Lord Bingham eleven years ago. A giggle
of pure joy escaped her lips as she raised her drink for a sip of the chocolate. Mmm,
bliss. This was the life she’d always dreamed of having. Up until now she thought
the closest she would come to any type of freedom would be after providing Lord Bingham
with the heir and spare. She’d hoped she’d be able to live out her life in the country
on one of his estates with her children. But now! Now, she could really live the life
she wanted. She could find someone to love her and give her the kind of family she
desired.

Putting her chocolate down, she picked up the society column again. Who was suitable
to marry? She had wasted three seasons waiting for Lord Bingham to propose. She didn’t
have much time left. If she could snag a good husband before the start of the next
season, she would not have to live through her fourth as the older desperate woman
all the gentlemen steer well clear of. She knew she was considered pretty and she
had a decent amount settled upon her, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to attract a
husband, especially now that she wasn’t spoken for by Lord Bingham?

She grabbed paper from her desk but before she could start making her list, the door
of her room opened softly and her brother Robin stepped inside. Unlike her, he wasn’t
smiling.

“What in the blazes happened last night, Anne? When I left I thought we were in agreement.
We had an arrangement!”

“Really, Robin, what was I supposed to do? The man was caught in a compromising position.”

“You should’ve made sure the only compromising position he was in was with you.” Robin
paced back and forth in front of her like a bear stuck in a cage, his eyes wild and,
if she listened carefully, she was sure she could hear him growl. “You should have
brought him up to scratch years ago. You have to fix this!”

“The announcement has already been made, Robin, how on earth am I to ‘fix it’ now?”
She hated being browbeaten by her brother, but she knew it was coming, and there was
nothing she could do about it.

“You have to become best friends with this Miss Lancaster and go everywhere with her.
You need to be in her pocket; do you understand me, Anne?”

“How will that help? Miss Lancaster is engaged to Lord Bingham, being friends with
her will not change that.” Anne sometimes wondered at the quality of brains between
her brother’s ears.

“Don’t worry about that, you just do your part and I’ll do mine.” Robin slammed the
door behind him, obviously forgetting why he’d snuck into the room to begin with.

Anne chuckled at the closed door. Serve him right if their mother spotted him here.
He could spend all day at her side, allowing Anne some time to think.

No one ever asked her if she wanted to marry Lord Bingham. Not Lord Bingham, not her
father and definitely not her brother. She was quite glad Lord Bingham had succumbed
to passion…with someone other than her.