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 didn’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 a wh">“Why,sked 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 hsho he’d nad 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 reegered hguinea 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?”