As do I, Melisande thought. For a moment, they shared an odd rapport, just the two of them, respectable lady and kept mistress.
Then Jamie gave a shout, and they both looked over. He appeared to have fallen in some mud.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam murmured. “I had better take him home. I don’t know what my maid will say when she sees his clothes.”
She clapped her hands and called briskly to the children. They looked disappointed but began slowly walking over.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said.
Melisande raised her eyebrows. “For what?”
“For talking with me. I enjoyed our conversation.”
Melisande suddenly wondered how often Mrs. Fitzwilliam got to talk with other ladies. She was a kept woman and therefore beyond the pale with respectable ladies, but she was also the mistress of a duke, which would place her far above most anyone else. She stood in a rarefied and lonely sphere.
“I enjoyed it too,” Melisande said impulsively. “I wish we might talk more.”
Mrs. Fitzwilliam smiled tremulously. “Perhaps we shall.”
Then she was gathering her children and bidding farewell, and Melisande was left with Mouse. She turned back the way she’d come. A carriage waited for her, and a footman trailed her discreetly behind. She thought about what she’d said to Mrs. Fitzwilliam, that true love demanded vulnerability. And she wondered if she had the courage to make herself that vulnerable once again.
“WAS MUNROE ABLE to provide you with any new ideas of who the traitor could be?” Matthew Horn asked Jasper later that afternoon.
Jasper shrugged. They were riding through Hyde Park again, and he was restless. He wanted to nudge Belle into a gallop, ride until both he and the mare were sweating. He felt near the breaking point. As if he couldn’t push forward with his life until he found the traitor and moved on. God, how he wanted to move on.
Perhaps that was why his voice was sharp when he said, “Munroe said I should look at the money.”
“What?”
“The man who betrayed us was probably working for the French. Either he did so for political reasons or he was paid. Munroe pointed out I should look into the finances of the men who were captured.”
“Who would take money and then go through the hell of being captured?”
Jasper shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t intend to get caught. Maybe something went wrong with his plan.”
“No.” Horn shook his head. “No. This is ridiculous. If there was a French traitor, he’d make sure he wasn’t near Spinner’s Falls when the Indians ambushed us. He’d pretend illness or fall behind or simply desert.”
“What if he couldn’t? What if he was an officer? See here, only the officers knew where we marched—”
Horn snorted. “There were rumors among the men. You know how well secrets are kept in the army.”
“Granted,” Jasper said. “But if he was an officer, he would’ve had a hard time getting away. We’d already been decimated at Quebec, remember. Officers were in short supply.”
Horn pulled his horse to a halt. “So you will investigate the finances of every man who was there?”
“No, I—”
“Or will you just investigate the finances of the captives?”
Jasper looked at Horn. “Munroe told me something else as well.”
Horn blinked. “What?”
“He also said you were in Paris.”
“What?”
“He said he has a French friend who wrote that he met a man named Horn at a dinner party in Paris.”