“Then what’s the problem?”
“Perhaps she’s not alone.” She felt her hot blush rise again. “You know. What if he’s in there? Right fool I’d look if I go trotting in there and they’re not . . . not . . . not”—Sally inhaled deeply, trying to get a grip on her runaway tongue—“right. I’d be most embarrassed.”
“He isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?”
“In there,” Mr. Pynch said with utter certainty, and entered the room of their master.
Sally scowled after him. What a nasty man. She gave a last tug to her apron and rapped smartly on her mistress’s door.
MELISANDE WAS SITTING at her desk, translating the last of the fairy tales when she heard a rap on her door. Mouse, who’d been lying at her feet, jumped up to growl at the door.
“Come,” she called, and was unsurprised when Suchlike peeked in.
Melisande glanced at the china clock on her mantel. It was just after eight o’clock, but she’d been awake for over two hours. She rarely slept past sunrise. Suchlike knew her routine and usually came to dress her much earlier than this. The maid probably had been circumspect because of Melisande’s newly wedded status. She felt a flash of mortification. Soon the entire household would know that she’d slept apart from her husband on their wedding night. Well, it couldn’t be helped. She’d just have to get through it.
“Good morning, my lady.” Suchlike eyed Mouse and edged around the terrier.
“Good morning. Come here, Mouse.” Melisande snapped her fingers.
Mouse gave a last suspicious sniff at the maid and ran to sit under the desk next to Melisande’s legs.
She’d already pulled back the drapes from the window over the desk, but Suchlike went now to open the other drapes as well. “It’s a lovely day. Sunshine, not a cloud in the sky, and hardly any wind. What would you like to wear today, my lady?”
“I thought the gray,” Melisande murmured absently.
She frowned over a German word in the story she was working on. The old book of fairy tales had belonged to her dearest friend Emeline, a memento from her childhood. It had apparently come from Emeline’s Prussian nanny. Before she had left to sail to America with her new husband, Mr. Hartley, Emeline had given the book to Melisande so that she could translate its stories. When she’d accepted the task, she’d understood that it meant much more to both of them than a simple translation. Giving the cherished book to her was Emeline’s way of promising that their friendship would endure this separation, and Melisande had been touched and grateful for the gesture.
She’d hoped to translate the book and then have the stories copied out and hand-bound to give to Emeline when next she visited England. Unfortunately, Melisande had run into a problem. The book consisted of four related fairy tales, each the story of a soldier returning from war. Three of these stories she’d translated handily enough, but the fourth . . . The fourth was proving to be a challenge.
“The gray, my lady?” Suchlike repeated doubtfully.
“Yes, the gray,” Melisande said.
The problem was the dialect. And the fact that she was trying to translate the written word. She’d learned German from her mother but had mostly spoken the language, not read it, and the difference was proving to be key. Melisande stroked her finger across the brittle page. Working on the book reminded her of Emeline. She wished her friend could have been there for her wedding. And she wished even more that she was here right now. How comforting it would be to talk to Emeline about her marriage and the puzzle that was gentlemen in general. Why had her husband—
“Which gray?”
“What?” Melisande finally glanced at her maid and saw that Suchlike wore an exasperated frown.
“Which gray?” Suchlike opened wide the doors to the wardrobe, which, admittedly, was filled with a rather dull-colored collection of gowns.
“The bluish gray.”
owned at the thought. He’d never before seen anything particularly wrong with fashionable marriages of that sort. The ones in which the interested parties produced an heir or two and then went their separate ways socially and sexually. It was the type of marriage that was almost usual in his tier of society. The type of marriage he himself had been expecting. Now, however, the thought of a marriage in which the man and wife were civil and nothing more seemed . . . cold. And rather unpleasant, actually.
Jasper shook his head. Perhaps matrimony was having a morbid effect on his brain. That might explain these odd thoughts. He stood and set the glass by the decanter on a side table. His rooms were more than twice as large as his new wife’s. But that fact only made the space hard to adequately light at night. Shadows loomed in the corners near the wardrobe and around the big bed.
He disrobed and washed himself in the chilly water already in his rooms. He could’ve sent down for fresh, warm water, but he didn’t like anyone entering his rooms after dark. Even Pynch’s presence made him restless. He blew out all but one candle. Picking that up, he took it into his dressing room. Here there was a small bed such as a valet might use. Pynch, however, had other rooms, and this bed was never used. Beside the bed, in the corner against the far wall, was a rather wretched pallet.
Jasper set the candle on the floor near the pallet and checked, as he did every night, that everything was here. There was a bundled pack with a change of clothes, water in a tin canteen, and some bread. Pynch refreshed the loaf and water every couple of days or so, even though Jasper had never discussed his pack with his valet. Beside the pae’sBeside ck was a small knife and a steel and flint. He knelt and wrapped the one blanket about his naked shoulders before lying down on the thin pallet, his back to the wall. He stared for a moment at the flickering shadows the candle cast against the ceiling, and then he closed his eyes.
Chapter Four
By and by, Jack came upon another old man in tattered rags sitting by the side of the road.
“Have you aught to give me to eat?” the second beggar called in a disagreeable voice.