“No.” Matthew shook his head. “But he was there. He might remember something we haven’t.”
“I’ve tried writing him.” Jasper grimaced in frustration. “He doesn’t write back.”
Matthew looked at him steadily. “Then you’ll just have to travel to Scotland, won’t you?”
MELISANDE SAW HER husband for the first time that day at dinner. She’d actually begun to wonder if he was avoiding her, if something was the matter, but he seemed perfectly normal now as he forked up peas and joked with the footmen.
“How was your day?” Vale asked her carelessly.
Really, he could be a most aggravating man at times. “I took luncheon with your mother.”
“Did you?” He gestured to the footman for more wine.
“Mmm-hmm. She served stuffed artichokes and cold sliced ham.”
He shuddered. “Artichokes. I never know how to eat them.”
“You scrape the leaf against your teeth. Quite easy.”
“And leaves. Who thinks to eat leaves?” he asked, apparently rhetorically. “I wouldn’t. Probably some woman discovered artichokes.”
“The Romans ate them.”
“A Roman woman, then. She probably served up a plate of leaves to her husband and said, ‘Here you are, dear, eat hearty.’”
Melisande found herself smiling at Vale’s depiction of the fictional Roman wife and her unfortunate husband. “In any case, the artichokes your mother served were very good.”
“Huh.” Vale grunted skeptically. “I expect she told you all about my misspent youth.”
Melisande ate a pea. “You expect correctly.”
He winced. “Anything particularly egregious?”
“Apparently you spat up a lot as a baby.”
“At least I’m over that,” he muttered.
“And you had a flirtatio cad oven with a milkmaid at the age of sixteen.”
“I’d forgotten that,” Vale exclaimed. “Lovely girl. Agnes, or was it Alice? Perhaps Arabella—”
“I doubt Arabella,” Melisande murmured.
He ignored her. “She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin and the biggest . . .” He suddenly coughed.
“Feet?” Melisande asked sweetly.
“Amazing, really. Her feet.” His eyes gleamed wickedly at her.
“Humph,” Melisande said, but she had to repress a smile. “And what about your day?”
“Ah. Well.” Jasper stuck a large piece of beef in his mouth and chewed vigorously before swallowing. “I went ’round to Matthew Horn’s house. Remember him? Fellow from my mother’s garden party?”
“Yes.”
“You won’t believe it, but he has a map of the world that doesn’t have Italy on it.”
“Perhaps you weren’t looking in the right spot,” she said kindly.