The Belle of Belgrave Square (Belles of London #2)(3)

Jasper suspected not.

Her parents were well-known invalids, prone to all manner of fancies. Their elegant town house in Belgrave Square played host to an endless stream of doctors, chemists, and an ever-changing roster of servants.

Even Miss Wychwood’s groom was of a recent vintage—a different fellow from the one who had accompanied her three days ago. He cantered a length behind her, the pair of them disappearing into the distance.

Jasper’s frown deepened.

He’d learned many things about Miss Wychwood in the past several weeks, enough to know that marrying her and whisking her away to Yorkshire was going to be anything but simple.

Damn Viscount Ridgeway for suggesting it.

Exiting the park, Jasper returned to Ridgeway’s house in Half Moon Street. It was a fashionable address, if not an ostentatious one, tucked between the house of a rich old widow on one side and that of a well-to-do solicitor on the other. After settling Quintus in the stable with his groom, Jasper made his way up the front steps to the door.

Ridgeway’s grizzled butler, Skipforth, admitted him into the black-and-white-tiled hall. “His lordship has requested your presence in his chamber,” he said as he took Jasper’s hat and gloves. “He’s breakfasting there.”

Of course he was.

Ridgeway rarely emerged from his room before ten, and then only on sufferance.

Jasper felt a flare of irritation. Not for the first time, he regretted accepting Ridgeway’s invitation to stay.

“Shall I take you to him, sir?” Skipforth asked.

“No need.” Jasper bounded up the curving staircase to the third floor. He rapped once on Ridgeway’s door before entering.

The heavy draperies were drawn back from the windows. Sunlight streamed through the glass, revealing an expansive bedchamber decorated in shades of rich crimson and gold. On the far side of it, opposite his unmade four-poster bed and the silver tea tray containing the remains of his breakfast, sat Nathan Grainger, Viscount Ridgeway.

He was sprawled in a wooden chair in front of his inlaid mahogany dressing table, eyes closed as his valet trimmed his side-whiskers.

“That you, Blunt?” He squinted open one eye. “Back so soon?”

“As you see. Skipforth said you had need of me?”

“So I do. And excellent timing, too. Fennel’s just finished shearing me.” Ridgeway dismissed his valet with a wave of his hand.

Fennel, a weedy man with a shifty expression, promptly withdrew into the dressing room, shutting the door behind him with a click.

“I require your opinion on a horse I’ve been eyeing at Tattersalls,” Ridgeway said. “Unless you have other plans today?”

“Nothing that can’t be changed. When are you leaving?”

“Presently.” Ridgeway sat forward in his chair, examining his freshly trimmed side-whiskers in the glass. “What do you think?”

Jasper could detect no difference from the way Ridgeway usually looked. “I suppose they’re shorter.”

“I despaired of them growing too full. A man wants to appear dignified, but after all, one doesn’t wish to look like the prime minister.”

“No chance of that.” Jasper crossed the floor to take a seat in a velvet-upholstered wing chair near the fire.

Ridgeway kept only enough servants to support a bachelor establishment. His house was, nevertheless, comfortable and well tended—a definite improvement from the hotel Jasper had been staying at when he’d first arrived in town.

Not that he’d had much choice in lodgings.

He had no family in London to impose upon. No real friends on whom he could inflict his company.

Even his connection with Ridgeway was tenuous at best.

They’d met six years ago in Constantinople—both men at their lowest ebb. Ridgeway had come to Scutari Hospital to collect the body of his younger brother, killed in the skirmish that had taken the lives of the rest of Jasper’s men.

Jasper had been at Scutari, too; not on an errand, but as a gravely injured patient—the sole survivor of the skirmish, rendered all but unrecognizable by the severe wound on his face.

Ridgeway had spoken to him, attempting to rally his spirits. A futile task. Jasper had been in no mood to speak to anyone. But later, upon his release from hospital, when Ridgeway had written to him, Jasper had grudgingly replied.

An occasional correspondence had followed.

It wasn’t a friendship. Not anywhere near it. Jasper hadn’t any friends. And unless he was mistaken, neither had Ridgeway. They were merely two men brought together by circumstance. Cordial acquaintances—and sometimes, not even that.

Indeed, since coming to stay with him, Jasper had found Ridgeway’s cold-bloodedness increasingly repellent.

“Why so glum?” Ridgeway cast him a glance. “No luck with Miss Wychwood?”

“Luck has nothing to do with it.”

“You did see her?”

“I did,” Jasper said. Despite the fact that she clearly didn’t want to be seen.

Given the drab, ill-fitting clothing that shrouded her figure and the riding veils that concealed her face, one might think she had reason to hide. That her face and body were something to be ashamed of.

It wasn’t true.

Julia Wychwood was beautiful.

He’d realized that from the first moment he’d set eyes on her.