To Seduce a Sinner (Legend of the Four Soldiers #2)(84)

“Mmm. I expect so, but then so are boys.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam wrinkled her nose, which only made her lovely face more adorable. “And, really, it’s not as if he visits us very much anymore. Hardly once a month in the last year. I expect he has gotten himself another woman, like an Ottoman sultan. They keep ladies like sheep in a herd—the Ottomans, I mean. I believe they call it a harem.”

Melisande could feel herself blushing, and she looked down at her toes.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said. “I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I? I’m always saying the wrong thing, especially when I’m nervous. His Grace used to say that I should always keep my lips firmly together, because it spoiled the illusion when I opened them.”

“What illusion?”

“Of perfection.”

Melisande blinked. “What an awful thing to say.”

Mrs. Fitzwilliam cocked her head to the side, as if considering. “It is, isn’t it? I didn’t realize it at the time, I think. I was very much in awe of him when we first met. But then I was very young too. Only seventeen.”

Melisande truly wished she could ask the other woman how she had beco“ow seme the Duke of Lister’s mistress, but she was afraid of the answer.

Instead, she said, “Did you love him?”

Mrs. Fitzwilliam laughed. She had a lovely, light laugh, but it was tinged with sadness. “Does one love the sun? It’s there, and it provides us with heat and light, but can one truly love it?”

Melisande was silent because any answer she gave would only add to the other woman’s sadness.

“I think one must be equals to love,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam mused. “Equal on some fundamental level. I don’t mean in wealth or even status. I know of women who truly love their protectors and men who love the women they keep. But they are equal on a . . . a spiritual level, if you see what I mean.”

“I think I do,” Melisande said slowly. “If the man or the woman holds all the emotional power, then they cannot truly love. I suppose one must lay oneself open to love. Let oneself be vulnerable.”

“I hadn’t thought of that, but I think you must be right. Love is essentially a surrender.” She shook her head. “It would take courage to surrender like that.”

Melisande nodded, looking at the ground.

“I’m not a very courageous woman,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said softly. “In a way, every choice I’ve made in life has been out of fear.”

Melisande looked at her curiously. “Some would say that the life you’ve chosen takes a great deal of courage.”

“They don’t know me.” Mrs. Fitzwilliam shook her head. “To be guided by fear isn’t the life that I wished.”

“I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Fitzwilliam nodded. “I wish I was able to change.”

As do I, Melisande thought. For a moment, they shared an odd rapport, just the two of them, respectable lady and kept mistress.

Then Jamie gave a shout, and they both looked over. He appeared to have fallen in some mud.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam murmured. “I had better take him home. I don’t know what my maid will say when she sees his clothes.”

She clapped her hands and called briskly to the children. They looked disappointed but began slowly walking over.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Fitzwilliam said.

Melisande raised her eyebrows. “For what?”

“For talking with me. I enjoyed our conversation.”

Melisande suddenly wondered how often Mrs. Fitzwilliam got to talk with other ladies. She was a kept woman and therefore beyond the pale with respectable ladies, but she was also the mistress of a duke, which would place her far above most anyone else. She stood in a rarefied and lonely sphere.

“I enjoyed it too,” Melisande said impulsively. “I wish we might talk more.”

<“%" 4%"font size="3">Mrs. Fitzwilliam smiled tremulously. “Perhaps we shall.”

Then she was gathering her children and bidding farewell, and Melisande was left with Mouse. She turned back the way she’d come. A carriage waited for her, and a footman trailed her discreetly behind. She thought about what she’d said to Mrs. Fitzwilliam, that true love demanded vulnerability. And she wondered if she had the courage to make herself that vulnerable once again.

“WAS MUNROE ABLE to provide you with any new ideas of who the traitor could be?” Matthew Horn asked Jasper later that afternoon.

Jasper shrugged. They were riding through Hyde Park again, and he was restless. He wanted to nudge Belle into a gallop, ride until both he and the mare were sweating. He felt near the breaking point. As if he couldn’t push forward with his life until he found the traitor and moved on. God, how he wanted to move on.

Perhaps that was why his voice was sharp when he said, “Munroe said I should look at the money.”

“What?”

“The man who betrayed us was probably working for the French. Either he did so for political reasons or he was paid. Munroe pointed out I should look into the finances of the men who were captured.”

“Who would take money and then go through the hell of being captured?”

Jasper shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t intend to get caught. Maybe something went wrong with his plan.”