“Yes, and I’ve just said so.” Emeline bounced a little in her chair. Melisande could be so didactic sometimes. “Anyway, there he was, skulking in a quite suspicious manner in a dark alley.”
“Perhaps he makes his living as a footpad,” Melisande said. She was examining the tray of sweets that the maid had left them.
Emeline frowned. It was very hard sometimes to tell when her friend was jesting and when she was not. “I don’t think so.”
“How reassuring,” Melisande said, and chose a tiny pale yellow cake.
“Although he does seem to move very quietly,” Emeline mused, “which I would think would be most helpful if one was a footpad.”
Melisande had popped the cake into her mouth, and she merely raised her eyebrows now.
“But no. No.” Emeline shook her head decisively. “Mr. Hartley isn’t a footpad. So that leaves the question, What was he doing walking about so late?”
Melisande swallowed. “The most obvious answer is an assignation.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” Emeline didn’t know why her friend’s suggestion so nettled her. It was, as she said, obvious. Emeline took a steadying breath. “I asked and he said most explicitly that he had not been to see a lady.”
Melisande coughed dryly. “You asked a gentleman if he was returning from a tryst with a female.”
Emeline blushed. “You always make things sound so awful.”
“I merely repeated your words.”
“It wasn’t like that at all. I made an inquiry; he replied most properly.”
“But, dearest, don’t you see that he would deny an assignation to you in any case?”
“He didn’t lie to me.” Emeline knew she spoke too vehemently. Her face and neck were hot. “He didn’t.”
Melisande looked at her with eyes that were suddenly weary. This was a sore point for her friend. Melisande was nearly eight and twenty and had never married, despite having a very respectable dowry. She’d been engaged once, nearly ten years ago, to a young aristocrat whom Emeline had never really liked. And her dislike had proven well founded. The cad had thrown Melisande over for a dashing titled widow, leaving Melisande with an unnaturally cynical view of gentlemen in general.
Yet, despite her own views, Melisande merely nodded now at Emeline’s rather silly assertion that a gentleman she hardly knew would tell her the truth about so private a matter.
Emeline smiled in gratitude. Brown or not, Melisande was the dearest friend imaginable.
“If he wasn’t returning from an assignation,” Melisande said thoughtfully, “then perhaps he’d been to a gaming hell. Did you ask him where he’d been?”
“He wouldn’t tell me, but I really don’t think it was anything as prosaic as a gaming hell.”
“Interesting.” Melisande stared out the window. The little sitting room was at the back of Emeline’s town house and overlooked the garden. “What does your aunt think of him?”
“You know Tante.” Emeline wrinkled her nose. “She is worried that his sister might not wear shoes.”
“Does she wear shoes?”
“Of course.”
“What a relief,” Melisande murmured. “Tell me, is your Mr. Hartley a tall gentleman with lovely brown hair, unpowdered and clubbed back?”
“Yes.” Emeline stood and moved to the window. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I believe he is doing something gentlemanly in his back garden.” Melisande nodded out the window.
Emeline looked and felt an odd little nervous jolt when she saw Mr. Hartley’s form just over the wall that divided the gardens. He was handling a very long gun.