Miss Lottie's Christmas Protector. Sophia James

Still, she could not give up the hope of it entirely.

      ‘I shall be at the Foundation for another week before I leave to join my mother and sister. If anything were to come up that concerned Harriet White’s whereabouts, I would be most eager to know of it.’

      ‘You shall be the first person I inform, Miss Fairclough.’

      ‘Thank you, Mr King.’

      The formality was back, as was the distance.

      Already her street was in view and the brick walls of the Foundation could be seen. Another minute and he would be gone.

      Impulsively she took his hand in hers, surprised by the warmth of it.

      ‘I should like to say that I am most grateful and that without your help, Mr King, I doubt I would have achieved anything at all.’

      ‘It is music to my ears to be hearing such a turnaround,’ he replied, his mouth twitching.

      ‘My family would probably say that, too,’ she returned, and knew it to be true.

      Mama would like Jasper King. He was strong and determined and his own man. There were secrets there, she supposed, his leg for one and why he had not married.

      She had heard once he was engaged to be wed and wondered what had happened to that relationship. She remembered Silas saying Jasper’s father had been sick for a very long time as well and that father and son were close.

      All snippets of Jasper’s life were fascinating and she wished she knew more. None the less, she had survived today finding out that her brother was still alive and that Harriet White had been carried out of Old Pye Street in a crested carriage which was a clue that could be followed up to find her. She hadn’t had a coughing fit for at least an hour and the tightness in her chest that had begun this morning was starting to loosen.

      All in all, it had been an unsettling day and almost every emotion she had experienced had something to do with the enigmatic Mr Jasper King. She felt uncertain as to what she felt about him and resolved to leave the letter she had written of her sister’s need for a husband in her pocket and see how the rest of it played out. Jasper King did not seem like a man who might be persuaded to do anything he did not want to and the thought of him falling at the feet of her beautiful sister and offering marriage was not at this moment as appealing as it once had been.

      When the carriage pulled up in front of the Foundation and he opened the door she saw that he was saying goodbye without coming in. Then he called the driver on.

      In another moment he was gone altogether.

      His sister Meghan arrived at his town house an hour later and her face was full of questions.

      ‘Who on earth was she, Jasper? I have met her before, I know it, and she said she’s from the Fairclough Foundation, but I cannot quite place her face.’

      He knew who she spoke of but played along, not particularly wanting the advice he knew she would be doling out next.

      ‘Miss Susan Seymour. She was a friend of Verity Chambers.’

      ‘Not her.’

      His sister swiped at his arm and finished her drink, dropping herself on the sofa opposite his chair and holding her glass out for another.

      ‘The one with the wild curls and the golden eyes. The interesting one.’

      ‘Miss Charlotte Fairclough.’

      ‘Oh, my, of course. I met her a year or more ago at some event and she charmed everyone there. Isn’t she just so very beautiful?’

      Jasper got up to cross to the drinks cabinet, wincing as his leg caught.

      ‘It’s sore? Your leg? I have told you again and again to go back to the doctor. I am sure after all this time medical science has moved along and, who knows, there could be a cure for your problems.’

      At least talk of his leg had diverted his sister from extolling the charms of Charlotte Fairclough though he knew also that state of affairs would not last for long.

      ‘I’m fine, Meghan.’

      ‘No, Jasper, you are not, but you were always stubborn and have become even more so with age. How on earth did you meet Miss Fairclough?’

      ‘I know her brother Silas—you may remember we took him on as an apprentice some years ago—but today was the first time I have spoken with her.’

      ‘That ghastly Susan Seymour was so rude, wasn’t she? As rude as Verity Chambers could be at times, in my opinion, and God knows you should have been thrilled to be untangled from her wiles. I know I was certainly pleased to hear of it despite your feelings for her.’

      Jasper smiled at his sister’s loyalty. At the time he had been heartbroken and very sick. A collapse of spirit and body had been a hard thing to recover from. Now he agreed with his sister. A marriage between Verity and himself would never have worked but that thought, too, had been a long time in coming.

      ‘I worry about you, Jasper. I worry that you are too alone, too isolated and too hardened to see that truth. If Papa was here—’

      He didn’t let her finish. ‘Well, he isn’t.’

      ‘He wanted to die in the end. Did you know that?’

      This was new.

      ‘After your accident, when you could not care for him and I came up, he said that four years was long enough for you to be his nursemaid. He wanted you to travel to all those places you’d dreamed about and instead…’ She stopped. ‘Instead you were glued to his side providing all the care that I could not because he would not leave Liverpool and come to London.’

      ‘It wasn’t quite that simple, Meg, and you know it.’

      ‘Then how was it, Jasper? It seemed to me that he was selfish and you were the one who took the whole brunt of it.’

      ‘He was sick and forgetting things and you had lost baby after baby and were just about as ill. He wouldn’t have coped somewhere new and you could not have managed with all his needs. Then when I was no longer there—’

      His sister did not let him finish. ‘He’d had enough when I came up to stay that last time. He said that he was proud of us. But I’ve told you all that?’

      ‘Probably.’

      Jasper couldn’t remember this, but then he couldn’t remember much about that terrible time. Meghan had arrived in Liverpool just as their father was dying and a matter of months after his own accident. The beginning of the years of hell. The dreams that he’d had across that time still came sometimes and he woke sweating.

      ‘Will you see her again?’

      The constant change in topic was a hallmark of his sister’s conversation.

      ‘Miss Fairclough? I doubt it. She is very busy at her Foundation, saving lost souls.’

      ‘Then she should be an expert in saving yours,’ Meghan shot back, ‘and God knows you could do with an angel.’

      They had always been close, Meghan and himself, her five years on him having the effect of making her almost like a mother. She gave him advice on everything.

      ‘You need someone you can love, Jasper, someone kind and true and sensible. Someone who can give you children and make up for all those lonely years…’

      He stopped her. There were some things that were private between them and this was one of those. Such a thought cut close to the bone and he finished his own drink in one swallow. He wouldn’t have another.

      ‘I am off back to Liverpool after the Christmas season and won’t be back in London for at least a few months. There is a job in Manchester that is complex.’

      Meghan