Her sister’s response left her feeling defensive once more. “I have some funds of my own. The pin money Papa has given me…I saved it. I have, despite my best intentions, a hand with sewing. I have managed to alter my old gowns to avoid having to purchase new ones for my few social calls. As my invitations have waned, I found myself no longer requiring ball gowns. And yet, I wrote to mother and father with news of all the glittering fetes I have attended in my search of a husband.”
“Octavia.”
She winced at the pitch of her sister’s voice. “It was wrong of me, I know. But I wanted something for myself. From the moment I first saw one of the scandal broadsides, I knew that I wanted to do something very much like them, only better. However, a lady cannot so easily begin her own empire.”
“And so you sought out Jasper Sutton?” Mirabel was incredulous. “Why not ask myself, or my husband for that matter? Why sneak about in the darkness, putting yourself at risk, endangering not just your reputation but your very life?”
The reason was simple.
But Octavia still felt sheepish revealing it. “I wanted to build this myself. I did not want to ask for help.”
“And yet you did ask for help, but from an unscrupulous man like Jasper Sutton.”
Was he unscrupulous? Octavia did not like to think so.
But his final words to her returned just then, and she had to admit that perhaps some parts of him were indeed as bad as her sister suggested.
“I cannot explain it, Mirabel,” she said softly, her voice entreating, her eyes pleading her sister for understanding. “All I can say is that asking you and Damian for aid would be alms. I wanted to do this on my own terms.”
Still, she had failed thus far.
And now she had destroyed her sister’s trust.
Mirabel’s countenance was tinged with undeniable sadness. “Oh, Octavia. You have gone about this all wrong. How can you not see that?”
“I have disappointed you.”
“You have broken my heart.” There was a sheen of tears in her sister’s eyes that shattered Octavia’s heart in turn.
“I am sorry,” she whispered. “I hope you will forgive me.”
“I need to tell Damian about what has happened,” Mirabel said.
Oh dear.
“Must you?” she asked, for she had been hoping that her sister would continue her campaign of leniency when it came to Octavia and her foibles.
“We have no secrets from one another,” Mirabel confirmed, grim. “I have to tell him and see where we shall go from here.”
Chapter 3
He woke up as he always did when he had the dream.
Yelling.
Covered in sweat.
But this time, there were other cries of terror joining Jasper’s. High-pitched and girlish. Through the gloom of the early morning light slipping between the curtains, he discovered that he was not alone in his bed.
“Anne and Elizabeth,” he bit out, trying to keep the curtness from his voice, “what the devil are you doing in my chamber?”
They were meant to be in the chamber which had recently been turned into a nursery for them.
Loge’s chamber.
But now was not the time to think of his dead brother. His daughters had apparently been wandering the private quarters of the hell in the midst of the night. And the bloody woman who was meant to be watching over them had failed to take note.
He needed to find a wife.