“Why didn’t you threaten me, to take what your friend needed?” she asked at last, looking back to him. There was nothing soft in her blue eyes now. “You should have, shouldn’t you?”
It was not in her, he saw, to hurt someone who meant her no ill.
“I see.” He ducked his head to try to hide the smile he felt on his face.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“No! No, I assure you. I simply never expected to meet someone like you.” A wave of melancholy swept over him at that. He knew what options a young woman in her position had. He knew that it was unlikely she would ever find a better match than her suit. “Your Mister Dupont is a very lucky man,” he managed.
“He’s not my Mister Dupont,” she said at once, with feeling. Her voice was icy, and she returned to searching with a vengeance, brushing branches aside with angry swipes of her hand.
“Is that why you ran out here?” It was really none of his business, but Jasper could not stop the words. He hardly recognized himself lately. It was as if he had lost all control.
Where Clara is concerned, his mind whispered. He ignored it. Clara, he told himself, was a Yankee woman. A woman he would never see again as soon as Horace was recovered.
“Yes,” Clara admitted finally, and she sounded so ashamed of herself that Jasper stopped dead in his tracks.
“Does he know where you are?”
“Yes!” Clara said indignantly and then she whispered, “Well, no. I left him by the barn.”
Jasper felt his mouth twitch. He heard a chuckle escape himself and turned away to hide his laughter. He was trying not let his humor get the better of him, but the sound of Clara’s own giggle was too much, and he descended into laugher. The image of Cyrus Dalton standing alone by the barn in his expensive coat was just too much. What started as a giggle devolved into shrieks of laughter, until both of them were holding their stomachs and gasping for air.
“I did say I had to leave,” Clara said, a bit desperately.
“You just left.” Jasper gave a shout of laughter, leaning against a tree and shaking with mirth.
“Oh, dear.” Clara covered her mouth with her hand, but it did no use. Her face was flushed. “Oh, my. I, oh, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Shouldn’t you?” Jasper wiped his eyes and stood, a few chuckles still bursting out around the edges. “He seems deadly dull.”
“He doesn’t like you, either,” she said with an impish smile.
A moment later, they both remembered the danger.
“Did he say something?” Jasper asked quietly.
“He said he didn’t think you were trustworthy.” Clara’s voice was just as subdued.
She was combing through the undergrowth, and Jasper began to wonder if she was the type of woman who could not sit still when she was anxious. He pictured her whirling around the house, knitting and cleaning and inspecting the barn and felt a smile tug at his lips before he processed her words.
“Mister Perry, that is—”
“Call me Jasper,” he said. Please.
“Jasper, then,” she said after a pause. “What did you say to him?”
“I, er...” He knew from the steely look in her eyes there was no escaping this without telling her the truth. “I told him that you were a very capable woman, and not to underestimate you.”
She blinked at him. “You did?”
“Yes,” he said finally, looking away to hide his embarrassment. “It isn’t my place to judge, perhaps.”
Cyrus Dupont certainly thought so.
“I see.” Clara looked away and pushed herself up to check a new patch of undergrowth. She pulled up several mushrooms and laid them neatly on the ground beside her. “Thank you,” she added finally.
“It’s nothing.” Embarrassment burned in his cheeks. A splatter of rain hit his hand, and Jasper grimaced up at the clouds gathering nearby. “Perhaps you should go back to the house.”