“And your best friend, Reynaud St. Aubyn, bought a commission at the same time?”
“Oh, yes. We were terribly excited to join the 28th Regiment of Foot. May it rest in peace.” He closed the wardrobe doors and went to brood at the window.
Perhaps she should leave it be. Stop poking at him, let his secrets lie buried. But some part of her wouldn’t let go. Every bit of his life was fascinating to her, and this bit that he kept hidden even more so than the others. Sighing, she rose from the armchair. She wore a heavy satin wrap over her chemise, and she slipped out of the wrap now, carefully laying it on the chair.
“Did you like army life?” she asked quietly.
She could see his reflection watching her in the black glass of the window. “Some of it. Men complain [. Mh=" of the ghastly food, the marches, the living in tents. But it can be a lark at times. Sitting by a campfire, trying to eat boiled peasemeal and bacon.”
She drew off her chemise as she listened, and he abruptly stopped talking. Nude, she walked toward him and laid her hands on his back. His muscles were rock-hard, as if he’d turned to granite.
“And the battles?”
“Like being in hell,” he whispered.
o;No,” Melisande answered. “Lord Vale and I don’t have that type of marriage.”
And that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? She’d loved once before and had [bef0%" been wounded to her very soul. She simply couldn’t endure that kind of pain again. Melisande felt a shrinking, a sadness, infuse her being as she acknowledged this fact. She would never have one of those glorious marriages based on love and mutual understanding.
“Ah,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said, and then they stood together silently and watched the children and Mouse.
Finally, Mrs. Fitzwilliam turned to her and smiled, a wonderfully beautiful smile that simply took Melisande’s breath away. “Thank you for letting them play with your dog.”
As Melisande opened her mouth to answer, she heard a shout from behind her. “My lady wife! What a joy to find you here.”
And she turned to see Vale riding toward them with another man.
MELISANDE HAD BEEN so deeply in conversation with the other woman that she didn’t even notice Jasper until he hailed her. As he and Lord Hasselthorpe rode closer, the other woman turned and strolled unhurriedly away. Jasper recognized the woman. She called herself Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and she’d been the Duke of Lister’s mistress for almost a decade.
What had Melisande been doing, talking to a demimondaine?
“Your wife keeps fast company,” Lord Hasselthorpe said. “Sometimes young matrons get the idea in their head that they can become fashionable by skirting the edges of respectability. Best warn her, Vale.”
A biting retort was on Jasper’s lips, but he swallowed it. He’d just spent the prior half hour ingratiating himself to Hasselthorpe.
He grit his teeth and said, “I’ll keep it in mind, sir.”
“Do,” Hasselthorpe replied, pulling his horse to a stop before they’d reached Melisande. “No doubt you wish to discuss matters with your lady wife, so I’ll part ways with you here. You’ve given me much to think about.”
“Does that mean you’ll help us find the traitor?” Jasper pressed.
Hasselthorpe hesitated. “Your theories seem sound, Vale, but I dislike rushing into things. If my brother Thomas was indeed killed because of some cowardly traitor, you will have my help. But I would like to contemplate the matter further.”
“Very well,” Jasper said. “May I call on you tomorrow?”
“Best make it the day after,” Hasselthorpe said.
Jasper nodded, though he hated the delay. He shook hands with the other man and then rode toward Melisande. She had turned to watch him approach, her hands folded at her waist, her back as usual impossibly straight. She didn’t look at all like the woman who’d seduced him so expertly the night before. For a moment, he wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, make her lose her impenetrable poise, make her back bend.
He did no such thing, of course; one didn’t accost one’s wife in a public park in the middle of the morning even if she had just been conversing with persons of low repute.
Instead, he smiled and hailed her again. “Out for a walk, my hear [ waeigt?”
Mouse caught sight of him and, abandoning a small, muddy boy, raced toward Vale’s horse, barking frantically. The dog really did have the brains of a peahen. Fortunately, Belle merely snorted at the terrier dancing at her hooves.
“Mouse,” Jasper said sternly. “Sit down.”
Miraculously, the dog planted its arse in the grass.