Debutantes Don't Date. Kristina O'Grady

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.”