But then he broke the stare and walked away, back to his desk.

She shifted, and then words fell from her mouth that she had not intended nor wished for. “Do you hate me for my part in all this, Harcourt? More to the point, will you forgive me for it?”

Jasper stared at Thomasina, her chin lifted, her back straight as she tried to put up a front of strength and calm. But he saw her hands trembling at her sides, saw the way her breath moved short. His answer mattered to her.

He pondered the question a moment, rolling it around in his mind. Then he drew a deep breath. “The world believes me to be a very proud man,” he said slowly, uncertain why he didn’t give her a shorter answer, but needing to explain himself somehow. “Perhaps not in the best sense. I am considered harsh by some. Cold by most. And I suppose that I do often make a judgment on someone and then never change it. I have learned, sometimes the hard way, to believe it when someone shows me who they are through their actions.”

She nodded. “Then you must think very ill of me.”

Her voice cracked when she said it and her lashes fluttered down, accepting his censure before he had even given it. Once again, he found he didn’t like that response. He would rather have her fight him, argue her case and her cause, than simply accept that she deserved punishment for a crime she’d only had a small part in.

“I don’t,” he said, a bit sharply. “Please look at me.”

She did so, lifting her gaze, making him lose himself in green depths for a moment.

“I was not happy with you last night,” he said. “Mostly because one thing I like about you, Thomasina, is that you seem to have more sense than most people. That you would trade places with your sister was a confusion to me. I don’t like being confused, because it means I cannot read a situation, and that can be dangerous. But in the end, you thought you were doing something harmless, didn’t you?”

“I thought I was helping Anne,” Thomasina said with a shake of her head. “I thought if she had a night to herself, a break from all the chaos of the upcoming wedding, that perhaps it would clear her head and help her be more ready for what was to come. I certainly didn’t think I was abetting her escape with…with… Honestly I don’t know how to describe the man she fled with in such a cowardly fashion.”

He smiled. There it was. That flash of hotter emotion, that moment of defiance of her sister. Even of him, as she explained herself.

“Yes,” he said softly. “As I’ve thought more of what happened last night, I could see your thoughts. I could recognize that you weren’t working against me, but for her. And I cannot fault that kind of loyalty in a sister. I wish I’d had the same in my own sibling.”