He shrugged. “My people are fisher folk. I got the wandering urge, and when the army men came to town with their drums and ribbons and flash uniforms, I took the king’s shilling fast enough.” One corner of his mouth curved in a funny sort of half-smile. “Didn’t take me long to find out there’s more to His Majesty’s army than pretty uniforms.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Sally looked down at her soup, trying to imagine big, bald Mr. Pynch as a lanky fifteen-year-old. She couldn’t do it. He was too much a man now to have ever been a child. “Do you still have family in Cornwall?”
He nodded. “My mother and a half-dozen brothers and sisters. My father died when I was in the Colonies. Didn’t know about it until I returned to England two years later. Mam said she paid for a letter to be written and sent to me, but I never got one.”
“That must’ve been sad, coming home to find your father dead for two years.”
He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world, lass. Nothing a man can do but go on.”
o;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?”