To Seduce a Sinner

Page 33

She clapped her hands like an excited little girl, and Mr. Whippering beamed down at her fondly. Melisande set aside her plate and rose, but Aunt Esther was listing her guests on her fingers.
“Mr. and Mrs. Flowers—I’ve seated you next to Mr. Flowers because he’s always quite kind and knows when to agree with a lady. Miss Charlotte Stewart, who has the best gossip. Captain Pickering and his wife—he used to be in the navy, you know, and has seen the strangest things, and—oh! Here’s Meg.”
A maid, presumably Meg, had entered the room and curtsied.
Aunt Esther flew to her. “Show my nephew and his wife to their room—the blue room, not the green. The green might be bigger, but the blue is ever so much more warm. There’s a draft in the green,” she confided to Melisande. “Now don’t forget: seven of the clock.”
Vale, who had been sitting all this while, complacently munching muffins, finally rose. “Don’t you worry, Aunt. We’ll be down precisely at seven and with our best bows and buttons.”
“Lovely!” his aunt exclaimed.
Melisande smiled, for it seemed quite useless to try and say anything, and began to follow the maid from the room.
“Oh, and I forgot,” Aunt Esther called. “One other couple will be there as well.”
Both Melisande and Vale turned politely to hear the name of these new guests.
“Mr. Timothy Holden and his wife, Lady Caroline.” Aunt Esther beamed. “They used to live in London before they moved to Edinburgh, and I thought they might be a treat for the both of you. Mr. Holden is quite a dashing gentleman. Maybe you even know him?”
And for the life of her, Melisande didn’t know what to say.
SOMETHING WAS WRONG with Melisande, Jasper thought later that night. She sat on the farther end of the long supper table from him, between the kind Mr. Flowers and the punctilious Sir Angus, the latter already on his third glass of tongue-loosening wine. Melisande wore a deep brown dress with small green flowers and leaves embroidered down the bodice and around the sleeves. She looked quite lovely, her pale oval face serene, her light brown hair softly pulled back. Jasper doubted anyone else in the room noted her unease save he.
He sipped his wine and considered his lady wife, smiling vaguely at something Mrs. Flowers leaned close to say. Perhaps the company of newly met people intimidated Melisande. He knew she was a shy creature, as all the fey were wont to be. She didn’t like crowds, didn’t like long social events. It was opposite to Jasper’s own nature, but he understood this about her, even if he could never feel that way himself. He was used to her stiff reticence when they went out.
neight="0%" width="4%">But this unease was more than that. Something was wrong, and it bothered him that he didn’t know what.
It was a pleasant gathering. Aunt Esther’s cook was very good, and the supper was plain but enjoyable. The narrow dining room was intimately lit. The footmen were generous with the wine bottles.Miss Stewart was to his right. She was a woman of mature years, with powdered and rouged cheeks and an enormous gray-powdered wig. She leaned toward Jasper, and he caught the strong scent of patchouli.
“I hear you’ve just come from London, what?” the lady said.
“Indeed, ma’am,” Jasper replied. “Over hill and over dale we’ve ridden, just to visit sunny Edinburgh.”
“Well, at least you didn’t come in winter,” she retorted somewhat obscurely. “Travel’s dreadful after the first snowfall, though the city’s pretty enough—all the snow cloaking the dirt and soot. Have you seen the castle?”
“Alas, no.”
“You should, you should.” Miss Stewart nodded vigorously, making the wattles beneath her chin shake. “Magnificent. Not many English appreciate the beauty of Scotland.”
She fixed him with a gimlet eye.
Jasper hastily swallowed a bite of the very fine lamb his aunt had served. “Oh, quite. My lady wife and I have been stunned by the countryside thus far.”
“And so you should be in my opinion.” She sawed at her lamb. “Now, the Holdens moved here from London some eight or ten years ago, and they haven’t regretted it for a day. Have you, Mr. Holden?” she appealed to the gentleman sitting across the table from her.
Timothy Holden was strikingly handsome if one liked men with soft cheeks and red lips, which apparently most women did, judging from the feminine glances aimed his way. He wore a snowy white wig and a red velvet coat, worked in gold and green embroidery at the sleeves.
At Miss Stewart’s question, Holden inclined his head and said, “My wife and I enjoy Edinburgh.”
He glanced down the table, but oddly it wasn’t his own wife he looked at but rather Jasper’s.
Jasper sipped his wine, his eyes narrowed.
“The society here is quite superior,” Lady Caroline chimed in.
She looked to be a good deal older than her handsome husband and was titled to boot. There must lie a tale. She had blond hair so light it was nearly white, and pale pinkish skin that made her as nearly monochromatic as paper. Only her light blue eyes gave her any color, poor woman, and they looked rimmed in red against her colorless skin, giving her the appearance of a white rabbit.
“The garden is lovely this time of year,” she said. “Perhaps you and Lady Vale will honor us by coming to tea during your visit?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jasper saw Melisande go still. She was so motionless he wondered if she breathed.
He smiled po {">Hionlitely. “I’m devastated to decline your kind offer. I’m afraid we stay only the night in Edinburgh. I have business with a friend who lives north of here.”
“Oh, yes? Who is that?” Miss Stewart inquired.
Melisande had relaxed again, so Jasper turned his attention to his neighbor. “Sir Alistair Munroe. Do you know him?”
Miss Stewart shook her head decisively. “Know of him, of course, but never met the man, more’s the pity.”
“A wonderful book he’s written,” Sir Angus rumbled from the far end of the table. “Simply marvelous. Filled with all manner of birds, animals, fishes, and insects. Most instructional.”
“But have you ever met the man?” Aunt Esther demanded from the foot of the table.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“There!” Mrs. Whippering sat back triumphantly. “And I don’t know a single person who has—save for you, dear nephew, and I don’t think you’ve seen him in years, have you?”
Jasper shook his head somberly. It was his turn to stare at the table and twist his wineglass.
“Well, how do we know he’s even still alive?” Aunt Esther asked.
“I’ve heard he sends letters to the university,” Mrs. Flowers ventured from his left. “I have an uncle who lectures there, and he says Sir Alistair is very well respected.”
“Munroe is one of Scotland’s great intellectuals,” Sir Angus said.
“Be that as it may,” Aunt Esther said, “I don’t know why he doesn’t show his face here in town. I know that people have invited him to dinners and balls, and he always declines. What is he hiding, I ask you?”
“Scars,” Sir Angus rumbled.
“Oh, but surely that’s just a rumor,” Lady Caroline said.
Mrs. Flowers leaned forward, putting her ample bosom perilously near the gravy on her plate. “I’ve heard his face is so terribly scarred from the war in America that he has to wear a mask so that people don’t faint in horror.”
“Poppycock!” Miss Stewart snorted.
“It’s true,” Mrs. Flowers defended herself. “My sister’s neighbor’s daughter caught a glimpse of Sir Alistair leaving the theater two years ago and swooned. Afterward she took to bed with a delirious fever and wasn’t well for months.”
“She sounds a very silly girl,” Miss Stewart retorted, “and I’m not sure I believe a word of it.”
Mrs. Flowers drew herself up, obviously offended.
Aunt Esther intervened. “Well, my nephew ought to know whether or not Sir Alistair is horribly scarred. He served with the man, after all. Jasper?”
Jasper felt his fingers begin to shake—an awful physical symptom of the rotting malaise within himself. He let go of his wineglass before he knocked it ove {kno shr and hastily hid his hand beneath the tablecloth.
“Jasper?” his aunt repeated.
Damn it, they were all looking at him now. His throat was dry, but he couldn’t raise his glass of wine.
“Yes,” he finally said. “Yes, it’s true. Sir Alistair Munroe is scarred.”
BY THE TIME Jasper helped see off his aunt’s guests, he was bone-tired. Melisande had excused herself from the company shortly after supper. He paused outside the door to the bedroom Aunt Esther had given them. Melisande was probably abed. He twisted the doorknob gently so as to not awaken her. But when he entered the room, he saw that she wasn’t asleep. Instead, she was making a pallet on the floor against the far wall. He halted because he didn’t know whether to laugh or swear.
She looked up and saw him. “Can you hand me the blanket from the bed?”
He nodded, not trusting his voice, and went to the bed to pull off the blanket. What must she think of him? He crossed to the fire and handed the blanket to her.
“Thank you.” She bent and began tucking it about a pile of linens to make a rough mattress.
Did she worry that she’d married a madman? He looked away. The room wasn’t big, but it was cozy. The walls were a gray-blue, the floor covered by a faded brown and rose patterned rug. He went to the window and pulled back the curtain to look out, but the night was so dark, he couldn’t pick anything out. He let the curtain fall. Suchlike must have been and gone. Melisande had already undressed. She wore a pretty lace-trimmed shift and her wrapper.
He took off his coat and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “Lovely dinner.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Lady Charlotte was most amusing.”
“Mmm.”
He pulled off his neck cloth and then held the strip of material in his fingers, staring down at it blindly. “It’s because of the army, I think.”
She stilled. “What?”
“That.” He tilted his chin toward the pallet, not meeting her eyes. “We all have quirks, the men who came back from war. Some start violently at loud noises. Some can’t stand the sight of blood. Some have nightmares that wake them in the dark of night. And some”—he took a deep breath, closing his eyes—“some cannot bear to sleep in the open. Some fear attack in the night when they sleep and cannot . . . cannot help themselves. They must sleep with their back against the wall and with a lit candle so that they can see the attackers when they come.”
He opened his eyes and said, “It’s a compulsion, I’m afraid. They simply cannot help themselves.”
“I understand,” she said.
Her eyes were gentle, as if she hadn’t just heard that her husband was a lunatic. She bent and continued putting together the pallet. She seemed as if she really did understand. But how could she? How could she accept that her husband was only half a man {nlyt. ? He couldn’t accept it himself.
He poured some wine from a decanter on a table. He stood drinking it and gazing sightlessly into the fire for some time before he remembered what he’d been thinking about when he came to their room.
Jasper set his empty wineglass down and began unbuttoning his waistcoat. “You’ll think me fanciful, but for a moment when we were first introduced to the Holdens, I thought Timothy Holden looked like he recognized you.”
She didn’t reply.
He tossed his waistcoat to a chair and looked over at Melisande. She was plumping the bedding rather overhard. “My lady wife?”