To Seduce a Sinner

  Melisande paused. The kitchen had a vast, wide-arched ceiling, plastered and painted with flaking whitewash. It looked terribly old. In the corner, she saw that two pallets had been laid out. Suchlike was fast asleep on one, and Mr. Pynch raised his head from the other. Melisande nodded silently at the valet before slipping out the kitchen door.

  Outside, Mouse ran delightedly in circles before stopping to do his business. There was a long, sloping lawn here, uncut and wild, and farther on, terraced gardens that must once have been magnificent. Melisande began strolling in that direction. It was a lovely day, the bright morning sun just beginning to blow off the low mist from green hills. Melisande stopped and looked back at the castle. In the daylight, it wasn’t so frightening. Of weathered pale pink stone, it rose up to crumbling stepped gables, and chimneys stuck out here and there. Round turreted towers projected from all four corners, making the whole look solid and ancient. She couldn’t help but think the castle must be cold in winter.

  “She’s half a millennium old,” a deep rasping voice came from behind her.

  Melisande looked around just as Mouse raced up and began barking.

  Sir Alistair stood with a dog so tall its head was above his waist. The animal’s fur was a shaggy gray. Mouse stood in front of it and barked frantically. The big dog didn’t move. It simply looked down its long nose at Mouse as if wondering what manner of dog this little yapping thing was.

  Sir Alistair frowned at the terrier a moment. This morning, his hair was brushed and clubbed back, and he’d covered his damaged eye with a black eye patch.

  “Whisht, laddie,” he drawled in a broad Scots brogue, “dinna fasht yourself.”

  He hunkered down and held out his fist to Mouse, who trotted over and sniffed. Melisande saw with a little tremor of horror that Sir Alistair’s right hand was missing the forefinger and little finger.

  “He’s a brave wee lad,” Sir Alistair said. “What do you call him?”

  “Mouse.”

  He nodded and stood, looking away, down the sloping lawn. His big dog sighed and lay down by his feet. “I didn’t mean to frighten you last night, ma’am.”

  She looked at him. From this side, with his scars nearly concealed, he could’ve been handsome. His nose was straight and arrogant, his chin firm and not a little stubborn. “You didn’t. I was merely startled at your sudden appearance.”

  He turned his face fully toward her as if daring her to flinch. “I’m sure you were.”

  She tilted her chin up, refusing to give ground. “Jasper thinks you blame him for those scars. Do you?”

  She held her breath at her own bluntness. She’d never have been able to confront him if it had been only for herself. But she needed to know if this man was going to hurt Jasper more.

  He held her gaze, perhaps startled himself at her candor. She’d wager that not many dared mention his scars to him.

  Finally he looked away again, to the broken, ruined gardens. “If you wish, I’ll talk to your husband about my scars, my lady.”

  JASPER AWOKE ALONE, his arms empty. After only a few nights, it was already a strange feeling. A wrong feeling. He should have his sweet wife by his side, her soft curves next to his harder body, the scent of her hair and her skin surrounding him. Sleeping with her was like a reviving elixir—he no longer tossed and turned the night away. Dammit! Where had she got to?

  He got up and dressed hurriedly, swearing over the buttons on his shirt. He left off a neck cloth altogether and threw on a coat before leaving the room.

  “Melisande!” he called like a lack-wit in the hall. The castle was so big, she wouldn’t hear him unless she was nearby. He called anyway. “Melisande!”

  Downstairs, he made his way to the kitchen. Pynch was there, stirring the fire. Behind him, Melisande’s little maid slept on a pallet. Jasper raised his brows. There were two pallets, but still. Pynch merely nodded silently at the back door.

  Jasper went outside and had to squint against the sunshine. Then he saw Melisande. She was standing talking to Munroe, and just the sight gave him a twinge of jealousy. Munroe might be a scarred recluse, but he used to have a way with women. And Melisande was standing too close to the man.

  Jasper strode toward them. Mouse caught sight of him and announced his presence by barking once and running toward him.

  Munroe turned. “Up at last, Renshaw?”

  “It’s Vale now,” Jasper growled. He put his arm around Melisande’s waist.

  Munroe followed the movement, and his brow arched over his eye patch. “Of course.”

  “Have you broken your fast, my lady wife?” Jasper bent toward Melisande.

  “Not yet, my lord. Shall I see what there is in the kitchens?”

  “I sent Wiggins to a nearby farm for some bread and eggs this morning,” Munroe muttered. His cheeks were a little red, as if his lack of hospitality might finally be embarrassing him. He said gruffly, “After breakfast, I can show you both the top of the tower. The view is marvelous from there.”

  Jasper felt a shudder run through his wife’s frame and remembered how she clutched the side of his tall phaeton. “Perhaps another time.”

  Melisande cleared her throat and pulled gently away from Jasper. “If you gentlemen will excuse me, I’d like to see if there are any scraps for Mouse in the kitchen.”

  Jasper had no choice but to bow as his lady wife nodded and walked toward the castle.

  Munroe stared after her thoughtfully. “Your wife is a charming lady. Intelligent too.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Jasper concurred. “She does not like heights.”

  “Ah.” Munroe turned to look at Jasper speculatively. “I wouldn’t have thought her your type.”

  Jasper scowled. “You have no notion of my type.”

  “Indeed I do. Six years ago, it ran to big-titted females of low intelligence and lower morals.”

  “That was six years ago. Many things have changed since then.”

  “That they have,” Munroe said. He began strolling toward some overgrown terraces, and Jasper fell in beside him. “You’ve become a viscount, St. Aubyn is dead, and I have lost half my face, which, by the way, I don’t blame you for.”

  Jasper stopped. “What?”

  Munroe halted as well and turned to face him. He gestured toward the eye patch. “This. I don’t blame you for it, never have.”

  Jasper looked away. “How can you not blame me? They cut your eye out when I broke.” When he’d groaned in horror at what was being done to his fellow captives.

  Munroe was silent for a moment. Jasper couldn’t bear to look at him. The Scot had been a handsome man once. And though taciturn, he’d never before been a recluse. He used to sit by the fire with the other men and laugh at their coarse jokes. Did Munroe even smile anymore?

  Finally, the other man spoke. “We were in hell then, weren’t we?”

  Jasper clenched his jaw and nodded.

  “But they were human, you know, not demons.”

  “What?”

  Munroe’s head was back, his one good eye closed. He looked like he was enjoying the breeze. “The Wyandot Indians who tortured us. They were human. Not animals, not savages, just humans. And it was their choice to put out my eye, not yours.”

  “If I hadn’t groaned—”

  Munroe sighed. “If you hadn’t made a sound, they would’ve put it out anyway.”

  Jasper stared.

  The other man nodded. “Yes. I’ve studied it since. It’s their way of dealing with prisoners of war. They torture them.” The unscarred corner of his mouth twisted up, though he looked far from amused. “Just as we hang small boys by the neck for picking a grown man’s pocket. It’s simply their way.”

  “I don’t see how you can look at it so dispassionately,” Jasper said. “Don’t you feel anger?”

  Munroe shrugged. “I’ve been trained to observe. In any case, I do not blame you. Your wife was quite adamant that I should tell you.”

  “Thank you.”

 
“I think we must add loyal and fierce to your wife’s list of virtues. Can’t think how you found her.”

  Jasper grunted.

  “A rake like you doesn’t deserve her, you know.”

  “Just because I don’t deserve her doesn’t mean I won’t fight to keep her.”

  Munroe nodded. “Wise of you.”

  As one, they began walking again. There was a bit of silence that Jasper found oddly companionable. Munroe had never exactly been a friend—their interests were too different; their personalities tended to clash. But he’d been there. He’d known the men who were now dead, he’d marched through those hellish woods with a rope about his neck, and he’d been the one tortured at the hands of their enemy. There was nothing to explain to him, nothing to hide. He had been there and he knew.

  They reached the terrace’s second level, where Munroe stopped and stared at the view. In the distance was a river, to the right a copse. It was beautiful country. The deerhound that had been following them sighed and lay down beside Munroe.

  “Was that what you came for?” Munroe asked idly. “To seek my forgiveness?”

  “No,” Jasper said, then hesitated, thinking about his confession to Melisande last night. “Well, perhaps. But it isn’t the only reason.”

  Munroe looked at him. “Oh?”

  So Jasper told him. About Samuel Hartley and the damning letter. About Dick Thornton laughing in Newgate Prison. About Thornton’s accusation that the traitor was one of the men captured. And finally about Lord Hasselthorpe’s near assassination just after Jasper had talked to him.

  Munroe listened to the whole story silently and attentively, and at the end, he shook his head and said, “Pure nonsense.”

  “You don’t believe that there was a traitor and that we were betrayed?”

  “Oh, that I believe readily enough. How else to explain why such a large party of Wyandot Indian warriors were waiting to ambush us on that trail? No, what I don’t believe is that the traitor was one of the men captured. Which of us could do that? Do you think it was me?”

  “No,” Jasper said, and it was true. He’d never thought that Munroe was the traitor.

  “That leaves you, Horn, and Growe, unless you think one of the dead men did it. Can you imagine any of them, dead or alive, betraying us?”

  “No. But dammit.” Jasper tilted his face toward the sun. “Someone betrayed us. Someone told the French and their Indian allies that we would be there.”

  “Agreed, but you only have the word of a half-mad murderer that it was one of the captives. Give it up, man. Thornton was toying with you.”

  “I can’t give it up,” Jasper said. “Can’t give it up, can’t forget it.”

  Munroe sighed. “Look at it from another angle. Why would any of us do such a thing?”

  “Betray us all, you mean?”

  “Aye, that. There must be a reason. Sympathy for the French cause?”

  Jasper shook his head.

  “Reynaud St. Aubyn did have a French mother,” Munroe said dispassionately.

  “Don’t be an idiot. Reynaud’s dead. He was killed almost as soon as we made that wretched village. Besides, he was a loyal Englishman and the best man I ever knew.”

  Munroe held up a hand. “You’re the one pursuing this, not I.”

  “Yes, I am and I can think of another reason for betrayal—money.” Jasper turned and looked significantly at the castle. He didn’t truly think Munroe a traitor, but the allegation against Reynaud had irked him.

  Munroe followed his gaze and laughed, his voice rusty with disuse. “Think you if I’d sold us all to the French that my castle would be in such disrepair?”

  “You might have the money tucked away.”

  “What money I have I’ve inherited or made. It’s my own. If someone did it for money, they were probably in debt or richer for it now. How are your finances? You used to like the cards.”

  “I told Hartley and I’ll tell you—I paid off the gambling debts I had back then long ago.”

  “With what?”

  “My inheritance. And my lawyers have the papers to prove it, if you must know.”

  Munroe shrugged and began walking again. “Have you looked into Horn’s finances?”

  Jasper fell in beside him. “He lives with his mother in a town house.”

  “There were rumors that his father had lost money in a stock scheme.”

  “Really?” Jasper looked at the other man. “The town house is in Lincoln Inns Field.”

  “An expensive part of London for a man with no inheritance.”

  “He has the money to tour Italy and Greece,” Jasper mused.

  “And France.”

  “What?” Jasper stopped.

  It took a moment for Munroe to realize he’d paused. He turned from several paces ahead. “Matthew Horn was in Paris this last fall.”

  “How can you know this?”

  Munroe cocked his head, turning his good eye toward Jasper. “I may be a recluse, but I’m in correspondence with naturalists in England and the Continent. I received a letter from a French botanist this winter. In it he described a dinner party he went to in Paris. It was attended by a young Englishman called Horn who had been in the Colonies. I think this must be our Matthew Horn, don’t you?”

  “It’s possible.” Jasper shook his head. “What would he be doing in Paris?”

  “Seeing the sights?”

  Jasper arched a brow. “When we are enemies with the French?”

  Munroe shrugged. “Some would see my correspondence with my French colleague as subversive.”

  Jasper sighed, feeling weary. “It’s a mare’s nest. I know I’m chasing possibilities that are vague at best, but I can’t forget the massacre. Can you?”

  Munroe smiled bitterly. “With the memories engraved on my face? No, I can never forget.”

  Jasper tilted his face to the breeze. “Why don’t you come visit us, my lady wife and me, in London?”

  “Children cry when they see me, Vale.” Munroe stated it as an unemotional fact.

  “Do you even go to Edinburgh now?”

  “No. I go nowhere.”

  “You’ve imprisoned yourself in your castle.”

  “You make it sound like a tragedy on the stage.” Munroe’s mouth twisted. “It’s not. I’ve accepted my fate. I have my books, my studies, and my writing. I am . . . content.”

  Jasper looked at the other man skeptically. Content to live in a big drafty castle with only a dog and a surly manservant for company?

  Munroe must’ve known that Jasper would argue the point. He turned back toward the mansion. “Come. We haven’t broken our fast, and no doubt your wife waits for you inside.”

  He strode ahead.

  Jasper cursed and followed. Munroe wasn’t ready to leave his safe nest, and until the stubborn Scot was ready, there was no use arguing. Jasper only hoped that Munroe would budge in this lifetime.

  “THAT MAN IS sorely in need of a housekeeper,” Melisande said as their carriage drove away from Sir Alistair’s castle. Suchlike’s head was already nodding in the corner.

  Vale shot an amused look at her. “You didn’t approve of his linens, my heart?”

  She pinched her lips together. “The musty linens, the dust on every surface, the nearly empty larder, and that horrible, horrible manservant. No, I certainly did not approve.”

  Vale laughed. “Well, we’ll stay on clean sheets tonight. Aunt Esther said she was eager to see us on our return trip. I think she wants to hear gossip about Munroe.”

  “No doubt.”

  Melisande took out her embroidery and sorted through her silks, looking for a shade of lemon yellow. She thought she must have a few strands left, and it was the perfect shade to highlight the lion’s mane.

  She glanced at Suchlike to make sure the maid was asleep. “Did Sir Alistair tell you what you wanted to know?”

  “In a way.” He stared out the window, and she waited, carefully threading her needle. “Someone betra
yed us at Spinner’s Falls, and I’ve been trying to discover the man.”

  She frowned a little as she placed the first stitch—no small feat in a bumping carriage. “Did you think Sir Alistair was the man?”

  “No, but I thought he might help me figure out who was.”

  “And did he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The words should’ve held disappointment, but Jasper seemed cheerful enough. Melisande smiled to herself as she worked the lion’s mane. Perhaps Sir Alistair had given him some peace.

  “Blancmange,” she said a few minutes later.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  “You once asked me what my favorite food is. Do you remember?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, it’s blancmange. We had it every year at Christmas when I was a girl. Cook colored it pink and decorated it with almonds. I was the youngest, so I had the smallest dish, but it was wonderfully creamy and delicious. I looked forward to it every year.”

  “We can have pink blancmange every night for supper,” Vale said.

  Melisande shook her head, trying not to smile at his impulsive offer. “No, that would spoil the specialness of it. Only at Christmas.”

  A happy thrill went through her to be planning a Christmas with him. There would be many Christmases with him, she thought. She couldn’t think of a more wonderful prospect.

  “Only at Christmas, then,” Vale was saying across from her. He was solemn, as if settling a business contract. “But I insist that you have an entire bowl for yourself.”

  She snorted and found herself smiling. “What would I do with a whole bowl of blancmange?”

  “You could make a pig of yourself,” he said, perfectly seriously. “Eat the entire thing at once if you like. Or you can hoard it, just looking at it and thinking how good it will be, how creamy and sweet—”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Or you can eat but one spoonful every evening. One spoonful, and me sitting across the table looking on with envy.”

  “Won’t you have your own bowl of blancmange as well?”

  “No. That’s why yours will be so special.” He leaned back in his seat and folded his arms across his chest, looking well pleased with himself. “Yes, indeed. I pledge an entire bowl of pink blancmange to you every Christmas. Never let it be said that I am not a generous husband.”