To Seduce a Sinner (26 page)

“Yes.” Jasper moved into the room. “This is my lady wife, Melisande.”

Munroe nodded, though he didn’t turn back around to acknowledge her. “I believe I wrote you not to come.”

“I received no missive,” Jasper said honestly.

“Some might take that as an unwelcoming sign,” Munroe said dryly.

“Would they?” Jasper took a deep breath to control the anger surging in his breast. He owed Munroe much—things he could never repay—but this involved Munroe too. “But, then, the matter I come on is most pressing. We need to talk about Spinner’s Falls.”

Munroe’s head reared back as if he’d been hit in the face. He stared at Jasper, his light hazel eye hooded and unreadable.

Finally he nodded once. “Very well. But it’s late, and your lady is no doubt tired. Wiggins will show you some rooms. I do not promise comfort, but they can be made warm. In the morning we will talk. Then you can leave.”

“I have your word?” Jasper asked. He wouldn’t put it past Munroe to simply disappear and stay away until they were gone.

The side of Munroe’s mouth kicked up. “My word. I will talk to you on the morrow.”

Jasper nodded. “I am grateful.”

Munroe shrugged and walked out of the room. Thƒof "3"e little red-haired man—presumably Wiggins—had been lurking about the doorway, and now he said grudgingly, “I ’spose I can make th’ fire in your rooms.”

He turned and left without another word.

Jasper blew out a breath and looked at Pynch. “Can you look to settling the other servants? See if there’s anything to eat in the kitchens and find them rooms.”

“Yes, my lord,” Pynch said, and departed.

And that left Jasper with his lady wife. He turned reluctantly to look at her. She still stood in front of the fireplace. Any other woman might be in hysterics by now. Not Melisande.

She stared back at him levelly and said, “What happened at Spinner’s Falls?”

SALLY SUCHLIKE CAREFULLY
spread the hot coals with a poker and then hung a kettle from the big hook in the fireplace. It was a huge fireplace, the biggest Sally had ever seen. Big enough for a grown man to walk into and stand upright. What anyone wanted with such a big fireplace, she didn’t know. It was harder to work with than a nice, normal-sized one.

The water in her kettle soon began to steam, and she dropped in the jointed rabbit Mr. Pynch had found in the pantry. A lady’s maid was a superior servant, and it wasn’t part of her duties to cook, but there wasn’t anyone else about to prepare their supper. No doubt Mr. Pynch knew how to make a rabbit stew—and a better one than she was attempting—but he was busy finding rooms for their mistress and master.

Sally threw some chopped carrots into the kettle. They were a little withered, but they’d have to do. She added some little round onions and stirred the whole thing. It looked a bit of a mess at the moment, but maybe it’d perk up once it had stewed a bit. She sighed and sat in a nearby chair, wrapping her shawl tightly about her shoulders. The fact was, she didn’t know much about cooking. When she’d been a scullery maid, she’d mostly washed dishes and cleaned. Mr. Pynch had given her the rabbit, carrots, and onions and told her to boil them, so she did. They’d had no help from that nasty red-haired man, Wiggins. He reminded Sally of a troll from a fairy tale, he did. And he’d disappeared the minute Mr. Pynch’s back was turned, leaving the Renshaw servants to stumble about in an unfamiliar house.

Sally got up and peered into the simmering pot. Perhaps she ought to add something else. Salt! That was it. Mr. Pynch would think her a ninny if she didn’t know enough to salt a stew. She went to a big cupboard standing in the corner and began to rummage. It was nearly empty, but she did manage to find the salt and some flour.

Ten minutes later, she was trying to knead a bowl of flour, salt, butter, and water, when Mr. Pynch walked into the kitchens. He set down his lantern and came to where she was battling the dough, then stood silently at her elbow looking into the bowl.

She glared up at him. “It’s dumplings for the stew. I tried to do it like I’ve seen Cook do, but I don’t know if I have, and for all I know, it may taste just like glue. I’m not a cook, you know. I’m a lady’s maid, and I’m not expected to know how to cook. You’ll just have to be content with what I can make, and if it turns out terrible, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’m not cƒ="3canomplaining,” Mr. Pynch said mildly.

“Well, don’t.”

“And I like dumplings.”

Sally blew a lock of hair out of her eyes, feeling suddenly shy. “You do?”

He nodded. “Yes, and those look perfectly fine. Shall I carry the bowl to the hearth so you can drop them into the stew?”

Sally straightened her shoulders and nodded. She rubbed her hands to get most of the dough off, and Mr. Pynch picked up the big crockery bowl. Together they went to the fireplace, where he held the bowl while she carefully dropped spoonfuls of dough into the stew. She covered the kettle with an iron lid so the dumplings would steam and turned to Mr. Pynch. She was conscious that her face was sweaty from the heat of the fire. Strands of her hair had come down and were sticking to her face, but she looked him in the eye and said, “There. How’s that?”

Mr. Pynch leaned close and said, “Perfect.”

And then he kissed her.

MELISANDE PILED BLANKETS
on the floor and watched her husband pace the room. He was agitated tonight, as if at any moment his control would break and he’d leave the room and run. Was that what Sir Alistair had been doing, riding so late and in the dark? Was he trying to outrun demons as well?

Yet Vale stayed, and she was grateful for that. He hadn’t answered her question about Spinner’s Falls yet. He drank from a glass of whiskey and paced the room, but he stayed with her. There had to be some comfort in that.

“It was after Quebec, you see,” he said suddenly. Facing the window, he might not have even been talking to her, save for the fact that she was the only other person in the room. “It was September, and we’d been ordered to Fort Edward to spend the winter. We’d already lost over one hundred men in the battle and left another three dozen behind because they were too wounded to march. We were decimated but thought the worst was over. We’d won the battle —Quebec had fallen to us—and it was only a matter of time before the French would be forced to surrender entirely and the war would be ours. The tide had turned.”

He paused to gulp from the whiskey and said softly, “We were so hopeful. If the war ended soon, we could go home. That’s all we wanted: to go home to our families. To rest a bit after battle.”

Melisande tucked a sheet about the blankets. It was a bit musty from the press where it’d been stored, but it would have to do. As she worked, she thought of a younger Jasper, marching with his men through an autumn forest half a world away. He would’ve been elated after a battle won. Happy at the prospect of going home soon.

“We were marching down a narrow trail, with rugged hills on one side and a river on the other that ran along a cliff face. The men were only two abreast. Reynaud had just ridden up to me and said he thought we were too strung out; the tail of the marching column was half a mile back. We decided to inform Colonel Darby, to request that we slow the head to let the tail catch up, when they struck.”

His tone was flat, and Melisande sat back on her heels to watch him as he spoke. He still faced ƒHe hethe window, his back broad and straight. She wished she could go to him, wrap her arms about him and hold him close, but it might interrupt the flow of his words. And she sensed that, like lancing an infected wound, he needed to let the festering corruption drain away.

“You can’t think in battle,” he said, his tone almost musing. “Instinct and emotion take over. Horror at seeing Johnny Smith shot with an arrow. Rage at the Indians screaming and running at your men. Killing your men. Fear when your horse is shot from beneath you. The surge of panic when you know you must jump clear or be trapped underneath the beast, helpless to a war axe.”

He sipped at his drink while Melisande tried to understand his words. They made her heart beat faster, as if she felt the same urgent panic he had experienced so long ago.

“We fought well, I think,” Vale said. “At least others have told me so. I can’t evaluate the battle. There’s only the men around you, the little piece of soil that you defend. Lieutenant Clemmons fell and Lieutenant Knight, but it wasn’t until I saw Darby, our commander, dragged from his horse that it occurred to me that we were losing. That we would all be killed.”

He chuckled, but the sound was dry and brittle, not at all like his usual laugh. “That was when I should’ve felt fear, but oddly I didn’t. I stood in a sea of fallen bodies and swung my sword. And I killed a few of those savage warriors; yes, I did, but not enough. Not enough.”

Melisande felt tears prick her eyes at the sad weariness of his voice.

“In the end, my last man fell and they overwhelmed me. I went down with a blow to the head. Fell on top of Tommy Pace’s body, in fact.” He turned from the window and crossed to a table where the decanter of whiskey stood. He filled his glass and drank. “I don’t know why they didn’t kill me. They should’ve; they’d killed nearly everyone else. But when my wits returned to me, I was roped by the neck to Matthew Horn and Nate Growe. I looked around and saw that Reynaud was part of their booty as well. You won’t believe how relieved I was. Reynaud at least had lived.”

“What happened?” Melisande whispered.

He looked at her, and she wondered if he’d forgotten she was in the room. “They marched us through the woods for days. Days and days with little water and no food, and some of us were wounded. Matthew Horn had taken a ball to the fleshy part of his upper arm during the battle. When John Cooper could no longer walk because of his wounds, they led him into the woods and killed him. After that, whenever Matthew stumbled, I leaned my shoulder into his back, urging him on. I couldn’t afford to lose another soldier. Couldn’t afford to lose another man.”

She gasped at the horror. “Were you wounded?”

“No.” He wore a horrible half-smile on his face. “Save for that bump on the head, I was perfectly fine. We marched until we reached an Indian village in French-held territory.”

He drank more of his whiskey, nearly emptying the glass, and closed his eyes.

Melisande knew, though, that this wasn’t the end of the tale. Something had caused the horrific scars on Sir Alistair’s face. She took a deep breath, bracing herself, and said, “What happened at the camp?”<ƒ atf t/font>

“They have a thing called a
gauntlet,
a pretty way to welcome captives of war to the camp. The Indians line up, men and women, in two long lines. They run the prisoners, one by one, between the lines. As the prisoners run, the Indians hit them with heavy sticks and kick them too. If the man falls, he is sometimes beaten to death. But none of us fell.”

“Thank God,” she breathed.

“We did at the time. Now I’m not so sure.”

He shrugged and drank more whiskey. He sat slumped into a chair, his words slurring a bit now.

“Jasper?” Perhaps it would be best to go no further. Melisande was afraid of what would come next. He’d already endured so much, and it was late and he was tired. “Jasper?”

But he didn’t seem to hear her. He stared into his whiskey glass, as if bemused. “And then came their real fun. They took away Reynaud, and they tied Munroe and Horn to stakes. They took burning sticks and they . . . they . . .”

He was breathing hard. He closed his eyes and swallowed, and still he couldn’t seem to get the words out.

“Don’t, oh, don’t,” Melisande whispered. “You don’t have to tell me, you don’t.”

He looked at her, puzzled and sad and tragic. “They tortured them. Burned them. The sticks were red-hot, and the women wielded them—the women! And then Munroe’s eye. God! That was the worst. I screamed at them to stop, and they spit at me and cut off the men’s fingers. I knew then to be silent, no matter what they did, because crying out, showing any emotion, only made it worse. And I tried, Melisande, I tried, but the screams and the blood . . .”

“Oh, my dear, oh, my dear.” Melisande had moved to him. She bent and held him in her arms, his face against her breast. And she couldn’t hold back her tears now. She sobbed for him.

“The second day, they brought us to the other side of the camp,” Vale whispered against her breast. “They were burning Reynaud there. He was crucified and on fire. I think he was dead already, because he didn’t move, and I thanked God again. I thanked God that my dearest friend was dead and could no longer feel the pain.”

“Shh,” Melisande whispered. “Shh.”

But he didn’t stop. “And when the fire had died out, they took us back to the other side of camp and went on with it. Munroe’s face and Horn’s chest. On and on and on.”

“But you were saved in the end, weren’t you?” she asked desperately. He had to leave these dreadful images and go on to the hopeful part. He’d survived. He had lived.

“After two weeks. I’m told Corporal Hartley led back a rescue party and ransomed us, but I don’t really remember. I was in a daze.”

“You were in despair and wounded.” Melisande tried to comfort him. “It’s understandable.”

He pulled violently out of her arms. “No! No, I was perfectly well, entirely intact.”