"She can't stay here. A single woman, at an inn, with no maid, in the same house as a duke who stopped her wedding this morning?" Thrale shook his head. "By Sunday they'll be saying you did it to have her yourself."
"Let them say it."
"They'll say it about *her*, Jasper. Not you."
Jasper was silent.
"Her uncle's done for," Thrale went on, more quietly. "If Saltash is convicted, a felon's goods go to the Crown — that means his debts as well as his credits, and the Crown's agents will call in every note he holds, and they won't wait for Lady Day. Penhallow will be in the Fleet by Christmas. And she's no money of her own till September, and no character either after today, not in Bristol. You'll have to do something."
"I offered," said Jasper. "This afternoon. In the gig, on the way here from the Liberty. I said I would buy up her uncle's notes — all of them, whatever they came to — and burn them, and that would be the end of it."
"And?"
"And she said—" He stopped. He could still hear it: the level voice, the face turned away toward the cathedral towers. "She said, *Thank you, Your Grace, but I have just spent seven weeks being sold to pay my uncle's debts, and I find I have no wish to be bought to pay them instead. Even by a kind man. Even with no conditions.*" He turned the glass in his fingers. "*Especially* with no conditions, she said. Because then she would never know what they were."
Thrale looked at him for a long moment.
"Well," he said at last. "I like her."
"Yes," said Jasper. "So do I."
---