To Seduce a Sinner

“How was your day?” Vale asked her carelessly.



Really, he could be a most aggravating man at times. “I took luncheon with your mother.”



“Did you?” He gestured to the footman for more wine.



“Mmm-hmm. She served stuffed artichokes and cold sliced ham.”



He shuddered. “Artichokes. I never know how to eat them.”



“You scrape the leaf against your teeth. Quite easy.”



“And leaves. Who thinks to eat leaves?” he asked, apparently rhetorically. “I wouldn’t. Probably some woman discovered artichokes.”



“The Romans ate them.”



“A Roman woman, then. She probably served up a plate of leaves to her husband and said, ‘Here you are, dear, eat hearty.’”



Melisande found herself smiling at Vale’s depiction of the fictional Roman wife and her unfortunate husband. “In any case, the artichokes your mother served were very good.”



“Huh.” Vale grunted skeptically. “I expect she told you all about my misspent youth.”



Melisande ate a pea. “You expect correctly.”



He winced. “Anything particularly egregious?”



“Apparently you spat up a lot as a baby.”



“At least I’m over that,” he muttered.



“And you had a flirtatio cad oven with a milkmaid at the age of sixteen.”



“I’d forgotten that,” Vale exclaimed. “Lovely girl. Agnes, or was it Alice? Perhaps Arabella—”



“I doubt Arabella,” Melisande murmured.



He ignored her. “She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin and the biggest . . .” He suddenly coughed.



“Feet?” Melisande asked sweetly.



“Amazing, really. Her feet.” His eyes gleamed wickedly at her.



“Humph,” Melisande said, but she had to repress a smile. “And what about your day?”



“Ah. Well.” Jasper stuck a large piece of beef in his mouth and chewed vigorously before swallowing. “I went ’round to Matthew Horn’s house. Remember him? Fellow from my mother’s garden party?”



“Yes.”



“You won’t believe it, but he has a map of the world that doesn’t have Italy on it.”



“Perhaps you weren’t looking in the right spot,” she said kindly.



“No. No.” He shook his head and drank some wine. “It’s this side of Russia and above Africa. I’m pretty sure I’d’ve noticed it.”



“Perhaps the map was made by someone who disliked Rome.”



“Do you think?” He seemed much struck by the thought. “Just decided to do away with Italy altogether?”



She shrugged.



“What an idea! I wouldn’t have had to study Latin all those years if Italy had disappeared.”



“But now you already have, and I’m sure you’re a better man for it.”



“Huh.” Jasper sounded unsure.



Melisande ate some boiled carrots. They were quite good. Cook had added something sweet—honey, perhaps. She’d have to remember to compliment the little woman. “And did you discuss anything more with Mr. Horn besides his defective map?”



“Yes, we talked about a fellow we know in Scotland.”



“Oh?” Vale was drinking more wine, and it was hard to read his expression. Melisande’s interest sharpened. “What is his name?”



“Sir Alistair Munroe. He was attached to my regiment, but he wasn’t a soldier. He was sent by the crown to record animals and plants in America.”



“Really? He sounds like a fascinating man.”



Vale frowned. “He is if you like talking about ferns for hours at a time.”



Melisande sipped her wine. “I quite like ferns.”



Vale frowned harder. “In any case, I’m thinking of making a trip up to jolly old Scotland to see him.”



There was a silence as Melisande con c Meto templated her cooling peas and carrots. Was he running from her? She’d so enjoyed living in his house and knowing he was nearby. Even if he was away for large parts of the day or stayed out until all hours of the night, she knew he’d come home eventually. Just being in the same house as he soothed her soul. Now she wouldn’t have even that.



Vale cleared his throat. “Thing is, he lives north of Edinburgh. It’s a ways away, a trip of a week or more on bad roads in a carriage. There’ll be drafty inns and bad food and the possibility of highwaymen—probably be an awful trip altogether.”



He had transferred his scowl to his plate. He jabbed at his beef with the tines of his fork.



Melisande was silent, no longer eating because her throat seemed to have closed. He was going to see a man, whom, by his own admission, he didn’t particularly like or know well. Why?



“But, despite all that, I wonder if you’d like to accompany me, my lady wife.”



She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that for a minute his words didn’t make sense. She looked at him to find that he was watching her intently, his eyes bright blue-green. A blessed relief began spreading through her chest.



“When will you leave?” she asked.



“Tomorrow.”



Her eyes widened. “So soon?”



“I have something important to discuss with Munroe. Something that can’t wait.” He leaned forward. “You can take Mouse. We’ll have to bring his leash, of course, and make sure he doesn’t scare the horses at inns. It really won’t be comfortable, and you might be terribly bored, but—”



“Yes.”



He blinked. “What?”



“Yes.” Melisande smiled and resumed eating. “I’d like to come with you.”



“THEY’RE TRAVELING TO Scotland,” Bernie the footman said as he brought the dish of peas back into the kitchen.



Sally Suchlike nearly dropped her spoon into her bowl of soup. Scotland? That heathen land? They said the men grew beards so fierce you could hardly see their eyes. And it was a well-known fact that the Scots didn’t bathe.



Cook was obviously having similar thoughts. “And them only newly married,” she lamented as she set dishes of lemon curd tart on a tray. “It’s a pity, truly it is.”



She gestured for Bernie to take the tray in and then stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Have they said how long they’ll be gone?”



“He’s only now told my lady, but it’d have to be weeks, won’t it?” The footman shrugged, nearly upsetting the tray on his shoulder. “Months, even. An’ they leave right away. Tomorrow.”



One of the scullery maids burst into tears as Bernie left the kitchen.



Sally tried to swallow, but there didn’t seem to be any spit left in her mouth. She’d have to travel with Lady Vale to Scotland. That was what lady’ cwasut s maids did. Suddenly her new position, with the lovely increase in wages—enough even to set some by—didn’t seem so grand. Sally shuddered. Scotland was the edge of the world.



“Here now, there’s no need to carry on like this.” Mr. Pynch’s deep voice came from beside the fireplace where he was smoking his nightly pipe.



At first Sally thought he was admonishing her, but he was clearly addressing Bitsy, the scullery maid.



“Scotland isn’t as bad as all that,” the valet said.



“Have you been to Scotland, then, Mr. Pynch?” Sally asked. Perhaps if he’d journeyed there and back and survived, it wouldn’t be so terrible.



“No,” Mr. Pynch said, dashing her hopes. “But I’ve known Scotsmen in the army, and they’re just the same as us, saving for the fact that they speak funny.”



“Oh.”



Sally looked down at her beef soup, made from the bones left over from the roast Cook had prepared for their master and mistress. It was a very good soup. Sally had been enjoying it until just a couple of minutes ago. But now her stomach made a little unpleasant turn at the sight of the grease floating on top. Knowing a Scotsman and traveling to Scotland were two entirely different things, and Sally was almost angry with Mr. Pynch for not knowing the difference. His Scotsmen were probably tamed from their time in the army. There was no way to know what a Scotsman was like on his home ground, so to speak. Perhaps they had a liking for short blond girls from London. Perhaps she’d be kidnapped from her bed and used in horrible ways—or worse.



“Now, see here, my girl.” Mr. Pynch’s voice was very near.



Sally looked up to find that the valet had taken the seat opposite her at the table. The kitchen servants had gone back to work while she brooded. Bitsy was snuffling over the pan of dishes she washed. No one paid any mind to the valet and the lady’s maid at the far end of the long kitchen table.



Mr. Pynch’s eyes were bright and intent on her. Sally had never noticed before what a lovely shade of green they were.



The valet put his elbows on the table, his long, white clay pipe in one hand. “There’s nothing to fear in Scotland. It’s just a place like any other.”



Sally stirred her spoon about in her bowl of cooling soup. “I’ve never been farther than Greenwich in my life.”



“No? Where were you born then?”



“Seven Dials,” she said, and then peered up at him to see if he’d sneer at the knowledge she’d been raised in such a hellhole.



But he merely nodded his head and sucked on the end of his pipe, blowing fragrant smoke to the side so it wouldn’t get in her eyes. “And do you have family there still?”



“Just my pa.” She wrinkled her nose and confessed, “Leastwise, he used to live there. I haven’t seen him in years, so that might not be true anymore.”



“Bad sort was your pa?”



“Not too bad.” She traced the rim of her soup bowl with a finger. “He didn’t beat me much, and he fed me when he could. But I had to get out of there. It was like I couldn’t breathe.”



She looked at him to see if he understood.



He nodded, pulling on his pipe again. “And your mam?”



“Died when I was born.” The soup smelled good again, and she took a spoonful. “No brothers or sisters either. Leastwise none that I know of.”



He nodded and seemed quite content to watch her eat the soup as he smoked his pipe. Around them, the kitchen and downstairs servants scurried about, doing their jobs, but this was a time of rest for Sally and Mr. Pynch.



She ate half her soup and then looked up at him. “Where are you from, then, Mr. Pynch?”



“Oh, a ways off. I was born in Cornwall.”



“Really?” She stared curiously at him. Cornwall seemed nearly as foreign as Scotland. “But you don’t have an accent.”



He shrugged. “My people are fisher folk. I got the wandering urge, and when the army men came to town with their drums and ribbons and flash uniforms, I took the king’s shilling fast enough.” One corner of his mouth curved in a funny sort of half-smile. “Didn’t take me long to find out there’s more to His Majesty’s army than pretty uniforms.”



“How old were you?”



“Fifteen.”



Sally looked down at her soup, trying to imagine big, bald Mr. Pynch as a lanky fifteen-year-old. She couldn’t do it. He was too much a man now to have ever been a child. “Do you still have family in Cornwall?”



He nodded. “My mother and a half-dozen brothers and sisters. My father died when I was in the Colonies. Didn’t know about it until I returned to England two years later. Mam said she paid for a letter to be written and sent to me, but I never got one.”



“That must’ve been sad, coming home to find your father dead for two years.”



He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world, lass. Nothing a man can do but go on.”