To Seduce a Sinner

Page 10

Suchlike took down the indicated gown, muttering under her breath. Melisande chose not to comment on the sound, instead rising and pouring out a basin of tepid water to wash her face and neck. Thus refreshed, she stood patiently while Suchlike dressed her.
Half an hour later, Melisande dismissed the maid and made her way to the lower hall, paneled in palest pink marble with gold and black accents. Here she hesitated. Surely breakfast was served in one of the lower rooms. But there were so many doors to choose from, and yesterday, in all the excitement of meeting the staff and moving in, she’d not thought to ask.
Nearby, someone cleared his throat. Melisande turned to find the butler, Oaks, behind her. He was a short man with round shoulders and hands that were too big for his wrists. On his head he wore an extravagantly curled and powdered white wig.
“Might I help you, my lady?”
“Yes, thank you,” Melisande said. “Could you have one of the footmen take my dog, Mouse, out into the garden? And please show me to the room where breakfast is served.”
“My lady.” Oaks snapped his fingers, and a lanky young footman sprang forward like an acolyte to a priest. The butler gestured to Mouse with a flick of his hand. The footman bent toward the dog and then froze as Mouse lifted a lip and snarled.
“Oh, Sir Mouse.” Melisande bent, picked up the little dog, and deposited him, still growling, in the footman’s arms.
The footman arched his head as far away from his own arms as possible.
Melisande tapped the dog on the nosp hog on te with one finger. “Stop that.”
Mouse ceased growling, but he still eyed his bearer with suspicion. The footman headed to the back of the house with Mouse held straight-armed before him.
“The breakfast room is through here,” Oaks said.
He led the way through an elegant sitting room to a room that overlooked the town-house gardens. Melisande looked out the window and could see Mouse sprinkling every ornamental tree along the main path as the footman followed.
“This is the room the viscount uses to breakfast when he has guests,” Oaks said. “Naturally, should you wish to make other arrangements, you need only inform me.”
“No. This is quite nice. Thank you, Oaks.” She smiled and sat in the chair he held for her at the long, polished wood table.
“Cook’s coddled eggs are excellent,” Oaks said. “But if you wish for herring or—”
“The eggs will be fine. I’d also like a sweet bun or two and some hot chocolate.”
He bowed. “Then I shall have a maid bring them up directly.”
Melisande cleared her throat. “Not yet, please. I’d like to wait for my husband.”
Oaks blinked. “The viscount is a late riser—”
“Nevertheless, I shall wait.”
“Yes, my lady.” And Oaks eased out of the room.
Melisande watched Mouse finish his business, then come trotting to the house. In another few minutes, he appeared at the breakfast room door with the footman. Mouse’s button ears pricked forward when he saw her, and he ran over to lick her hand and then settle beneath her chair with a groan.
“Thank you.” Melisande smiled at the footman. He looked quite young, his face still spotty beneath his white wig. “What is your name?”
“Sprat, my lady.” His cheeks reddened at her notice.
Good Lord, hopefully his parents hadn’t christened him Jack. Melisande nodded. “Sprat, you shall be in charge of Sir Mouse. He needs to visit the garden in the morning, again just after lunch, and before retiring for bed. Can you remember to see to him for me?”
“Yes, my lady.” Sprat’s head jerked down in a nervous bow. “Thank you, my lady.”
Melisande repressed a smile. Sprat didn’t look entirely sure if he should be grateful. From beneath her chair, Mouse gurgled a soft growl. “Thank you. That will be all.”
Sprat backed out and Melisande was alone again. She sat for a minute until her nerves couldn’t stand her inaction anymore; then she stood and paced to the windows. How to face her new husband? With wifely serenity, of course. But was there any way she could gently—discreetly—make it known that last night had been, well, a disappointment? Melisande winced. Probably not over the breakfast table. Gentlemen were notoriously sensitive in this area, and many were not at their most reasonable in the early m>much better than last night.
Somewhere a clock chimed the nine o’clock hour. Mouse stood and stretched, yawning until his pink tongue curled. With a twinge of disappointment, Melisande gave up waiting and went to the hall. Sprat was standing there, staring rather vacantly at the ceiling, although he brought his gaze hastily down when he saw her.
“Please bring me my breakfast,” Melisande said, and went back to the breakfast room to wait. Had Vale already left the house, or did he always sleep this late?
After a solitary meal shared with Mouse, Melisande turned her mind to other matters. She sent for the cook and found an elegant yellow and white sitting room to plan the week’s meals.
The cook was a small, wiry woman, her face thin and lined with concern, her graying black hair scraped back into a tight knot at the crown of her head. She perched on the edge of her seat, leaning forward and nodding rapidly as Melisande spoke to her. Cook didn’t smile—her face didn’t seem to know how—but the tight purse of her mouth relaxed as Melisande praised the tasty coddled eggs and hot chocolate. In fact, Melisande was just feeling that she’d established a nice understanding with the woman when a loud commotion interrupted their discussion. Both women looked up. Melisande realized that she could hear barking at the center of raised male voices.
Oh, dear. She smiled politely at the cook. “If you will excuse me?”
She rose and walked unhurriedly to the breakfast room where she found the makings of a pantomime drama. Sprat stood gaping, Oaks’s beautiful white wig was askew, and he was talking rapidly, but unfortunately in a voice that couldn’t be heard. Meanwhile, her husband of only one day was waving his arms and shouting as if impersonating a particularly angry windmill. The object of his ire stood resolute only inches from Lord Vale’s toes, barking and growling.
“Where did this mongrel come from?” Vale was demanding. “Who let it in? Can’t a man have breakfast without having to defend his bacon from vermin?”
“Mouse,” Melisande said quietly, but it was loud enough for the terrier. With one last triumphant arf! Mouse came trotting over to sit on her slippers and pant.
“Do you know this mongrel?” Lord Vale asked, wild-eyed. “Where did it come from?”
Oaks was straightening his wig, muttering under his breath, while Sprat stood on one leg.
Melisande’s eyes narrowed. Really! After making her wait an hour. “Mouse is my dog.”
Lord Vale blinked, and she couldn’t help noticing that even confused and out of sorts, his blue eyes were startling in their beauty. He lay on me last night, she thought, feeling the heat pool low in her belly. His body became one with mine. He is my husband at last.
“But it ate my bacon.”
Melisande looked down at Mouse, who panted up at her adoringly, his mouth curvedrea mouth as if in a grin. “He.”
Lord Vale ran a hand through his hair, dislodging his tie. “What?”
“He,” Melisande enunciated clearly, then smiled. “Sir Mouse is a gentleman dog. And he’s particularly found of bacon, so really you ought not to tempt him with it.”
She snapped her fingers and sailed from the breakfast room, Mouse on her heels.
“GENTLEMAN DOG?” Jasper stared at the door where his new wife had just swanned from the room. She’d looked remarkably elegant for a woman being followed by a foul little beast. “Gentleman dog? Have you ever heard of a gentleman dog?” he appealed to the males remaining in the room.
His footman—a tall, lanky fellow with a name like a nursery rhyme that Jasper couldn’t remember at the moment—scratched under his wig. “My lady seemed right fond of that dog.”
Oaks had put himself together by now, and he cast a rather fishy eye on his master. “The viscountess had specific instructions for the animal when she broke her fast an hour ago, my lord.”
Which was when it finally dawned on Jasper that he might’ve been an ass. He winced. To be fair, he’d never been particularly quick in the morning. But even for him, shouting at his new wife on the day after their marriage was a bit beyond the pale.
“I shall instruct Cook to make another breakfast for you, my lord,” Oaks said.
“No.” Jasper sighed. “I’m no longer hungry.” He stared meditatively at the door a minute more before deciding that he hadn’t the eloquence at the moment to apologize to his wife. Some might call him a coward, but discretion was the better part of valor when it came to women. “Have my horse brought ’round.”
“My lord.” Oaks bowed and whispered from the room. Amazing how lightly the man moved on his feet.
The young footman still stood in the breakfast room. He looked as if he wanted to say something.
Jasper sighed. He hadn’t even had his tea before the dog had spoiled his meal. “Yes?”
“Should I tell her ladyship that you’re off?” the fellow asked, and Jasper felt like a cad. Even the footman knew better than he how to behave with a wife.
“Yes, do.” And then he avoided his footman’s eyes and strode from the room.
A little more than half an hour later, Jasper was riding through the crowded streets of London, headed to a town house in Lincoln Inns Fields. The sun was out again, and the populace seemed determined to enjoy the fair weather, even at this early hour. Street venders were stationed at strategic corners, bawling their wares, fashionable ladies strolled arm in arm, and carriages lumbered by like ships in full sail.
Six months ago, when he and Sam Hartley had questioned survivors of the Spinner’s Falls massacre, they hadn’t been able to contact every soldier. Many had gone missing. Many were old men, crippled and reduced to begging and thieving. They lived their lives on the edge—the possibility that they might fall off and disappear at any moment wh=" any moas a real one. Or perhaps the danger was simply fading into oblivion, not so much dying as ceasing to live. In any case, many had been impossible to locate.
Then there were the survivors like Sir Alistair Munroe. Munroe hadn’t actually been a soldier in the 28th but a naturalist attached to the regiment and charged with discovering and recording the animal and plant life for His Majesty. Of course, when the regiment had been attacked at Spinner’s Falls, the hostile Indians hadn’t made a distinction between soldier and civilian. Munroe had been in the group captured with Jasper and suffered the same fate as those who’d been eventually ransomed. Jasper shuddered at the thought as he halted his mare, letting a team of shouting sedan-chair bearers past. Not everyone who had been captured and force-marched through the dark and mosquito-infested woods of America had come back alive. And those who had survived were not the same men as they’d been before. Sometimes Jasper thought he’d left a piece of his soul in those dark woods. . . .
He shook the thought away and guided Belle into the wide, fashionable square of Lincoln Inns Field. The house he rode to was a tall elegant redbrick with white trim around the windows and door. He dismounted and handed the reins to a waiting boy before mounting the steps and knocking. A few minutes later, the butler showed him into a study.
“Vale!” Matthew Horn rose from behind a large desk and held out his hand. “ ’Tis the day after your wedding. I hadn’t thought to see you so soon.”
Jasper took the other man’s hand. Horn wore a white wig and had the pale skin of a redheaded man. His cheeks often had reddened patches from the wind or his razor, and no doubt he’d be ruddy by the time he was fifty. His jaw and cheekbones were heavy and angular as if to balance his pretty complexion. In contrast, his eyes were light blue and warm, with laugh lines crinkling the corners, though he hadn’t yet seen his thirtieth birthday.