With a last moist kiss to his hand, she skipped from the room. Perhaps she realized that the gift of several pounds’ worth of coins was an impulse on his part and that if she stayed longer, he might rethink his largess.
Jasper sighed, took out a large linen handkerchief, and wiped his hands. The vestry was a little room, the walls the same ancient gray stone as the church he’d planned to be married in. Dark wood shelves lined one wall, filled with the detritus of the church: old candlesticks, papers, Bibles, and pewter plates. Above, a window with small diamond panes sat high on the wall. He could see the blue sky with a single puffy white cloud floating serenely. A lonely little room to be once more left alone. He replaced the handkerchief in his waistcoat pocket, noticing absently that a button was loose. He’d have to remember to tell Pynch. Jasper leaned his elbow on the table beside his chair and cradled his head, eyes closed.
Pynch, his man, made a wonderful pick-me-up to settle a sore head after a night of overindulgence. Soon he could go home and take the brew, perhaps go back to bed. Goddammit, but his head hurt, and he couldn’t leave just yet. Voices rose from outside the vestry, echoing off the vaulted ceiling of the old stone church. From the sound, Miss Templeton was meeting with some paternal resistance to her romantic plan. A corner of Jasper’s mouth kicked up. Perhaps her father wasn’t as swayed by butter-yellow hair as she. In any case, he’d far rather face charging Frenchies than the family and guests outside.
He sighed and stretched his long legs before him. Thus was six months’ hard work undone. Six months was the amount of time he’d taken to court Miss Templeton. A month to find a suitable lass—one from a good family, not too young, not too old, and pretty enough to bed. Three months to carefully court, flirting at balls and salons, taking her for rides in his carriage, buying her sweets and flowers and little fripperies. Then the question put to her, a satisfactory answer, and the chaste kiss on a virginal cheek. After that, the only thing left had been the calling of the banns and various purchases and arrangements made for the upcoming blissful nuptials.
What, then, had gone wrong? She’d seemed perfectly complacent to his plans. Had never once before this morning voiced any doubts. Indeed, when presented with pearl and gold earrings, one might even go so far as to say she’d been ecstatic. Whence, then, this sudden urge to marry a butter-haired curate?
This problem of losing fiancées would never have happened to his elder brother, Richard, had he lived long enough to seek his own viscountess. Perhaps it was him, Jasper thought morbidly. Something in him that was anathema to the fairer sex—at least when it came to matrimony. One couldn’t help but make note of the fact that this was the second time in less than a year that he’d been handed his congé. Of course, the first time it’d been Emeline, who—let us be fair, here—was more sister than lover. Nevertheless, a gentleman might very well—
The sound of the vestry door creaking open interrupted Jasper’s thoughts. He opened his eyes.
A tall, slim woman hesitated in the doorway. She was a friend of Emeline’s—the one whose name Jasper could never remember.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” she asked.
“No, merely resting.”
She nodded, looked quickly over her shoulder, and shut the door behind her, closeting herself quite improperly with him.
Jasper raised his eyebrows. She’d never struck him as the dramatic sort, but then his perception in this area was obviously faulty.
She stood very straight, her shoulders square, her chin lifted ever so slightly. She was a plain woman, with features that a man would be hard-pressed to remember—probably why he couldn’t remember her name now, come to think of it. Her light hair was an indeterminate color between blond and brown, and worn in a knot at the back of her head. Her eyes were a nondescript brown. Her dress was a grayish brown, with an ordinary, square-cut bodice that revealed a meager bosom. The skin there was rather fine, Jasper noted. It was that translucent bluish-white that was often compared to marble. If he peered closer, no doubt he would be able to trace the veins that ran beneath the pale, delicate skin.
Instead, he raised his eyes to her face. She’d stood there, unmoving, as he’d examined her, but a faint flush was now visible high on her cheekbones.
The sight of her discomfiture, however slight, made him feel a cad. His words, in consequence, were rather sharp. “Is there some way in which I can assist you, ma’am?”
She answered with a question of her own. “Is it true that Mary will not marry you?”
He sighed. “It appears that she has set her heart on capturing a curate, and a mere viscount will no longer do.”
She didn’t smile. “You do not love her.”
He spread his hands. “Sadly true, though it marks me as a blackguard to confess it.”
“Then I have a proposition for you.”
“Oh?”
She clasped her hands in front of her and did the impossible. She straightened farther. “I wonder if you might marry me instead.”
MELISANDE FLEMING MADE herself stand still and look Lord Vale in the eye, steadily and without any hint of girlish fluster. She wasn’t a girl, after all. She was a woman in her eight and twentieth year, well past the age of orange blossoms and spring weddings. Well past the hope of happiness, in fact. But it seemed that hope was a hardy thing, almost impossible to beat down.
What she had just proposed was ridiculous. Lord Vale was a wealthy man. A titled man. A man in the prime of his life. In short, a man who could have his pick of simpering girls, both younger and more beautiful than she. Even if he had just been left at the altar for a penniless curate.
So Melisande braced herself for laughter, scorn, or—worst of all—pity.
Instead, Lord Vale simply looked at her. Perhaps he hadn’t heard. His beautiful blue eyes were a trifle bloodshot, and from the way he’d been holding his head when she entered the room, she suspected that he might have overcelebrated his impending nuptials the night before.
He lounged in his chair, his long muscular legs sprawled before him, taking up much more space than he should. He stared at her with those shockingly bright green-blue eyes. They were luminescent—even whilst bloodshot—but they were the only thing about him that could be called lovely. His face was long, creased with deep lines around the eyes and mouth. His nose was long, too, as well as overlarge. His eyelids drooped at the corners as if he were perpetually sleepy. And his hair . . . actually, his hair was rather nice, curly and thick, and a lovely reddish brown color. It would’ve looked boyish, perhaps even effeminate, on any other man.
She’d nearly not come to his wedding today. Mary was a distant cousin, one she’d spoken to only once or twice in her life. But Gertrude, Melisande’s sister-in-law, had felt ill this morning and insisted that Melisande come to represent their branch of the family. So here she was, having just made the most reckless move of her life.
How odd fate was.
Finally, Lord Vale stirred. He rubbed a large bony hand down his face and then looked at her through long, spread fingers. “I’m an idiot—you must forgive me—but for the life of me I can’t remember your name.”
Naturally. She’d always been the type to hover round the edges of a crowd. Never in the center, never drawing attention to herself.
While he was just the opposite.
She inhaled, tightening her fingers to still their nervous trembling. She would have only this one chance, and she mustn’t bungle it.
“I am Melisande Fleming. My father was Ernest Fleming of the Northumberland Flemings.” Her family was old and well respected, and she didn’t deign to elaborate. If he hadn’t heard of them before this, her protestations of respectability would do her no good now. “Father is dead, but I have two brothers, Ernest and Harold. My mother was a Prussian émigré, and she is also dead. You may remember that I am friends with Lady Emeline, who—”
“Yes, yes.” He lifted his hand from his face to wave away her credentials. “I know who you are, I just di
dn’t know . . .”
“My name.”
He inclined his head. “Quite. As I said—an idiot.”
She swallowed. “May I have your answer?”
“It’s just that”—he shook his head and gestured vaguely with long fingers—“I know I had too much to drink last night and I’m still a little dazed by Miss Templeton’s defection, so my mental facilities may not yet be up to par, but I don’t see why you’d want to marry me.”
“You are a viscount, my lord. False modesty ill becomes you.”
His wide mouth curved in a faint smile. “Rather tart-tongued, aren’t you, for a lady seeking a gentleman’s hand?”
She felt the heat rise in her neck and cheeks and had to fight the urge to simply fling open the door and run.
“Why,” he asked softly, “amongst all the other viscounts in the world, why marry me?”
“You are an honorable man. I know this from Emeline.” Melisande stepped cautiously, picking and choosing her words with care. “From the brevity of your engagement to Mary, you are anxious to wed, are you not?”
He cocked his head. “It would certainly appear so.”
She nodded. “And I wish to have my own household instead of living on the generosity of my brothers.” A partial truth.
“You have no monies of your own?”
“I have an excellent dowry and monies that are mine besides that. But an unmarried lady can hardly live by herself.”
“True.”
He contemplated her, apparently quite content to have her stand before him like a petitioner before the king. After a bit, he nodded and stood, his height forcing her to look up. She might be a tall woman, but he was a taller man.
“Forgive me, but I must be blunt in order to avert an embarrassing misunderstanding later. I wish a real marriage. A marriage that, with God’s grace, will produce children begot in a shared marriage bed.” He smiled charmingly, his turquoise eyes glinting just a little. “Is that also what you seek?”
She held his eyes, not daring to hope. “Yes.”
He bowed his head. “Then, Miss Fleming, I am honored to accept your offer of marriage.”
Her chest felt constricted, and at the same time it was as if a fluttering wild thing beat against her rib cage, struggling to burst free and go flying about the room in joy.
Melisande held out her hand. “Thank you, my lord.”
He smiled quizzically at her proffered hand and then took it. But instead of shaking to seal the bargain, he bent his head over her knuckles, and she felt the soft brush of his warm lips. She repressed a shudder of longing at the simple touch.
He straightened. “I only hope that you will still thank me after our wedding day, Miss Fleming.”
She opened her mouth to reply, but he was already turning away. “I’m afraid I have an awful head. I’ll call on your brother in three days, shall I? I must play the forsaken lover for at least three days, don’t you think? Any shorter a period and it might reflect badly on Miss Templeton.”
With an ironic smile, he gently closed the door behind him.
Melisande let her shoulders slump with the release of tension. She stared at the door a moment and then looked around the room. It was ordinary, small and a bit untidy. Not the sort of place one would associate with her world turning upside down. And yet—unless the last quarter hour had been a waking dream—this was the place that had seen her life take a new and completely unexpected diversion.
She examined the back of her hand. There was no mark to show where he had kissed her. She’d known Jasper Renshaw, Lord Vale, for years, but in all that time, he’d never had occasion to touch her. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, imagining what it would be like when he touched his lips to hers. Her body trembled at the thought.
Then she straightened her back again, smoothed her already smooth skirts, and ran her fingertips across her hair to make sure everything was in order. Thus settled, she began to leave the room, but as she moved, her foot struck something. A silver button lay on the flagstones, hidden by her skirts until she’d stepped forward. Melisande picked it up and turned it slowly in her fingers. The letter V was embossed in the silver. She stared at it a moment before hiding the button up her sleeve.
Then she walked from the church vestry.
“PYNCH, HAVE YOU ever heard of a man losing a bride and gaining a fiancée on the same day?” Jasper asked idly later that afternoon.
He was lounging in his specially made, very large tin bathtub.
Pynch, his valet, was over in the corner of the room, messing about with the clothes in the dresser. He replied without turning. “No, my lord.”
“I think, then, that perhaps I am the first in history to do so. London should put up a statue in my honor. Small children could come and gape whilst their nannies admonish them not to follow in my fickle footsteps.”
“Indeed, my lord,” Pynch replied in a monotone.
Pynch’s voice was the perfect tone for a superior manservant—smooth, evenly deep, and unruffled—which was just as well since the rest of him wasn’t much like a superior manservant at all. Pynch was a big man. A very big man. Shoulders like an ox, hands that could easily span a dinner plate, a neck as thick as Jasper’s thigh, and a big bald dome of a head. What Pynch looked like was a grenadier, a heavy infantryman used by the army to charge breaches in the enemy line.
As it happened, a grenadier was exactly what Pynch had originally been in His Majesty’s army. That was before he’d had a slight difference of opinion with his sergeant, which had resulted in Pynch spending a day in the stocks. Jasper had actually first seen Pynch in the stocks, stoically receiving spoiled vegetables to the face. This sight had so impressed Jasper that immediately upon Pynch’s liberation, Jasper had offered him the position of his batman. Pynch had readily accepted the offer. Two years later, when Jasper had sold his commission, he’d also bought out Pynch and Pynch had returned to England with him as his valet. A satisfactory series of events all around, Jasper reflected as he stuck a foot out of his bath and flicked a droplet of water from his big toe.
“Have you sent that letter to Miss Fleming?” He’d dashed off a missive politely stating that he’d call on her brother in three days if she did not signify a change of mind in the meantime.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. Good. I think this engagement will take. I have a feeling about it.”
“A feeling, my lord?”
“Yes,” Jasper said. He took up a long-handled brush and ran it across the top of his toe. “Like the one I had a fortnight ago when I wagered half a guinea on that long-necked chestnut.”
Pynch cleared his throat. “I believe the chestnut came up lame.”
“Did it?” Jasper waved a hand. “No matter. One should never compare ladies to horses, in any event. The point I’m trying to make is that we are already three hours engaged, and Miss Fleming hasn’t yet called it off. You’re impressed, I’m sure.”
“A positive sign, my lord, but may I point out that Miss Templeton waited until your wedding day to break the engagement.”
“Ah, but in this case, it was Miss Fleming herself who brought up the idea of marriage.”
“Indeed, my lord?”
Jasper paused in scrubbing his left foot. “Not that I’d want that fact to leave this room.”
Pynch stiffened. “No, my lord.”
Jasper winced. Damn, he’d insulted Pynch. “No good would come of hurting the lady’s feelings, even if she did rather fling herself at my feet.”
“Fling, my lord?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Jasper gestured with the long-handled brush, spraying a nearby chair with water. “She seemed to be under the impression that I was desperate to be married and therefore might take a chance on her.”
Pynch arched an eyebrow. “And you didn’t correct the lady?”
“Pynch, Pynch, haven’t I told you never to contradict a lady? It’s ungentlemanly and a waste of time
to boot—they’ll just go on believing what they want anyway.” Jasper scrunched his nose at the bath brush. “Besides, I have to get married sometime. Wed and beget as all my noble forefathers have done. It’s no use trying to avoid the chore. A male child or two—preferably with at least half a brain in their head—must be fathered to carry on the ancient and moldy Vale name. This way it saves me months of having to go out and court another chit.”
“Ah. Then one lady would do as well as any other in your view, my lord?”
“Yes,” Jasper said, then immediately changed his mind. “No. Damn you, Pynch, for your lawyerly logic. Actually, there’s something about her. I’m not sure how to describe it. She’s not exactly the lady I’d choose, but when she stood there, looking so very brave and at the same time frowning at me as if I’d spat in front of her . . . Well, I was rather charmed, I think. Unless it was the lingering aftereffects of the whiskey from last night.”
“Naturally, my lord,” Pynch murmured.
“Anyway. What I was trying to say was that I hope this engagement ends with me safely wed. Otherwise I shall very soon have a reputation as a rotten egg.”
“Indeed, my lord.”
Jasper frowned at the ceiling. “Pynch, you are not to agree with me when I compare myself to a rotten egg.”
“No, my lord.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, my lord.”
“One can only pray that Miss Fleming will not meet any curates in the coming weeks before the wedding. Especially yellow-haired ones.”
“Quite, my lord.”
“D’you know,” Jasper said musingly, “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a curate I liked.”
“Indeed, my lord?”
“They always seem to be lacking a chin.” Jasper fingered his own rather long chin. “Perhaps it’s some type of necessary requirement to enter the English clergy. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Possible, yes. Likely, no, my lord.”
“Hmm.”
On the other side of the room, Pynch transferred a stack of linens to the top shelf of the wardrobe. “Will you be at home today, my lord?”