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Melisande took the other lady’s hands. “I’ve asked to borrow her carriage. You said you might have been followed. The carriage will go ’round back and wait at the end of the mews. We’ll smuggle you and the children in disguised as servants. Your watchers won’t be expecting you to take Lady Vale’s carriage. Trust me, Mrs. Fitzwilliam.”
“Oh, please call me Helen,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said absently. “I wish . . . I wish there was some way I could show my thanks.”
Melisande thought a moment before asking, “You said your hand was very fine, didn’t you?”
“Yes?”
“Then there is a small thing you can do for me, if you don’t mind.” Melisande rose and went to the dresser again, pulling out a drawer and taking out a flat box. She brought it back to where Helen sat. “I’ve just finished translating a children’s book for a friend, but my handwriting is deplorable. Could you copy it out fresh for me so that I can have it bound into a book?”
“Oh, yes, certainly.” Helen took the box and smoothed her fingers over the top. “But . . . but where are you sending me? Where are my children and I going?”
Melisande smiled slowly, because she really was rather pleased with herself. “Scotland.”
MELISANDE WAS GONE when Jasper returned that afternoon. Inexplicably this irritated him. He’d been avoiding his lady wife for nearly a full day, and now that he wanted to see her, she wasn’t here. Fickle woman.
He ignored the voice in his head that said he was being an ass and climbed the stairs to his rooms. He paused outside his own door and then looked down the hall to hers. On impulse, he entered her room. Nearly a month ago, he’d come here for answers to who his wife was and had gone away no wiser. Now he’d traveled with her to Scotland, learned she’d had a lover and been with child, made love to her thoroughly and wonderfully, and still—still—he felt that she held something back from him. God! He didn’t even know, after all this time, why she had married him.
Jasper prowled the room. He’d been ridiculously vain when she’d first presented him with her proposal of marriage. He’d assumed—if he’d thought about it at all—that she hadn’t other choices. That she was on the shelf and had no suitors. That he was her last chance at marriage. But now, after living with her, bantering with her, making love to her, Jasper knew that his first vague thoughts were terribly off the mark. She was a quick-witted, intelligent woman. A woman who flamed to life in bed. The kind of woman a man could spend his entire life looking for and never find. But if he did find her . . . then he would make sure he held her and kept her close and happy.
g fght="0%" width="4%">Melisande had had choices. The question was, why had she chosen him?
Jasper found himself in front of her chest of drawers. He stared at them a moment and then bent and pulled out the bottom drawer to find the little tin snuffbox. He straightened with it in his hand. Inside was the same little china dog and the silver button, but the pressed violet was missing. He stirred the items with his finger. Other things had been added to the little cache in place of the violet: a tiny sprig and a few hairs curled together. He picked up the sprig and looked at it. The leaves were narrow, almost needlelike, and small lavender flowers climbed the stem. It was a sprig of heather. From Scotland. And the hair looked like it might very well be his own.
He was frowning down at the snuffbox when behind him the door opened.
He didn’t bother trying to hide what he’d found. In a strange way, he welcomed this confrontation.
He turned to face Melisande. “My lady wife.”
She closed the door gently behind her and looked from his face to her treasure box. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to discover something,” he said.
“What?”
“Why you married me.”
VALE STOOD BEFORE Melisande with her most intimate secrets in his hand and asked her the stupidest question she’d ever heard.
She blinked and because she couldn’t quite credit him with such idiocy, said, “What?”
He prowled toward her, the snuffbox still in his long, bony fingers. His curling mahogany hair was pulled back in a queue that was coming undone; his face was lined and sad, pouches beneath his eyes testament to his sleepless nights. His wide shoulders were covered in a brown and red coat with a stain on the elbow, and his shoes were scuffed. She had never felt so angry at another person and at the same time been aware of how beautiful he was to her.
How perfect in all his imperfections.
“I want to know why you married me, my one and only heart,” he said, his complete attention on her.
“Are you stupid?”
He cocked his head at her tone and her words, as if his curiosity was aroused more than his anger. “No.”
“Perhaps you were dropped on your head as a child,” she said sweetly. “Or mayhap madness runs in your family.”
He shook his head slowly, still advancing toward her. “Not to my knowledge.”
“Then your stupidity is all your own.”
“I don’t think I’m any more dim-witted than other males.” He was right in front of her now, leaning into her face, too close, too personal.
