“I’m so happy for you.” Gertrude gave her a stiff hug, pressing her cheek briefly to Melisande’s. “Are you ready?”

Melisande straightened her back and drew in a steadying breath before answering. Even her trembling nerves couldn’t keep the quiet joy from her voice. “Yes, I am.”

JASPER LOOKED DOWN at the slice of roasted duck on his plate and thought how very odd the tradition of the wedding breakfast was. Here was a group of friends and family gathered to celebrate love when in reality it was fertility they should be feting. That was, after all, the desired point to a union such as this: the production of children.

Ah, well, he was finally married, and perhaps he should lay aside cynicism and look no further than that fact. Yesterday, whilst riding toward London, he’d begun to wonder if he’d left off returning for too long. What if Miss Fleming had grown weary of being ignored? What if she didn’t even bother showing up at the church to give him his congé? He’d been detained in Oxfordshire far longer than he’d planned. There always seemed to be something more to delay his return there—another field his land steward wanted to show him, a road that badly needed repair, and, if he was honest with himself, the very steadiness of his fiancée’s gaze. She seemed to see right through him with those tilted brown eyes, seemed to look beyond his surface laughter and saw what he hid in the depths of his soul. At Lady Eddings’s musicale, when he’d turned and saw Melisande Fleming watching him and Matthew Horn, he’d had a moment of stark terror—fear that she knew what they talked about.

But she didn’t know. Jasper took a swallow of ruby wine, reassured on that point. She didn’t know what had happened at Spinner’s Falls, and she would never know if, with God’s grace, he could help it.

“Jolly good wedding, what?” an elderly gentleman leaned forward to shout down the table.

Jasper hadn’t a notion who the gentleman was—must be a relative of his bride’s—but he grinned and raised his wineglass to the fellow. “Thank you, sir. I rather enjoyed it myself.”

The gentleman winked hideously. “Enjoy the wedding night more, what? I say, enjoy the wedding night more! Ha!”

He was so taken with his own wit that he nearly lost his gray wig laughing.

The elderly lady sitting across from the gentleman rolled her eyes and said, “That’s quite enough, William.”

Beside him, Jasper felt his bride still, and he cursed under his breath. Some of the color had finally returned to her cheeks. She’d gone quite white at the ceremony, and he’d prepared himself to catch her should she faint. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d stood like a soldier before a firing squad and grimly recited her marriage vows. Not quite the expression a bridegroom hoped for on his bride on her wedding day, but he’d learned not to be particular after the last fiasco.

Jasper raised his voice. “Will you tell us the story of your own wedding, sir? I feel we shall be quite entertained.”

“He doesn’t remember,” the old lady said before her husband could recover enough to speak. “He was so drunk he fell asleep afore he even came to bed!”

The guests within earshot roared.

“Aw, Bess!” the elderly man shouted above the laughter. “You know I was plumb worn out from chasing you.” He turned to the young lady beside him, eager to recount his memories. “Courted her for nigh on four years and . . .”

Jasper gently replaced his wineglass and glanced at his bride. Miss Fleming—Melisande—was pushing her food into neat piles on her plate.

“Eat some of that,” he murmured. “The duck is not nearly as bad as it looks, and it’ll make you feel better.”

She didn’t look at him, but her body stiffened. “I am fine.”

Stubborn girl. “I’m sure you are,” he replied easily. “But you were as white as a sheet in the church—for a while, you were even green. I can’t tell you how it shattered my bridegroom’s nerves. Indulge me now and have a bite.”

Her mouth curved a little, and she ate a small piece of the duck. “Is everything you say in jest?”

“Nearly everything. I know it’s tedious, but there it is.” He motioned to a footman, and the man bent near. “Please refill the viscountess’s wineglass.”

“Thank you,” she murmured when the man had poured more wine. “It’s not, you know.”

“What isn’t?”

“Your jesting.” She looked at him, her tilted eyes mysterious. “It isn’t tedious. I like it, actually. I only hope you will be able to bear my own reticence.”

“If you look at me like that, I shall bear it most admirably,” he whispered.

She held his eyes as she sipped from her wineglass, and he">

The thought was strange at this highly civilized breakfast. Strange, and at the same time pleasantly arousing. What a very odd thing marriage was between people of his rank. Like breeding horses in many ways. One picked out the dam and the sire based on their bloodlines, put them in proximity to each other, and hoped nature took its course and produced more horses—or aristocrats, depending on the parties.

He smiled as he watched his new wife, wondering what she would say if he told her his thoughts about horses and aristocratic marriages. Alas, though, the topic was too risqué for virginal ears.

But others were not. “Is the wine to your liking, my lady?”

“It’s acidic, tart, with just a tiny bit of sweetness from the grapes.” She smiled slowly. “So, yes, it’s to my liking.”

“How delightful,” Jasper murmured, his eyelids drooping lazily. “It is, of course, my duty as your husband to see that your every desire, no matter how small, is fulfilled.”

“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then what is my duty as your wife?”

To bear my heirs. The reply was too blunt to voice. This was a time for pretty flirtation and banter, not the cold realities of a marriage such as theirs. “My lady, you have no more onerous a duty than to be lovely and grace my home and heart.”

“But I believe I may soon become bored by such light duties. I’d require additional tasks to fulfill than merely looking lovely.” She sipped her wine and set the glass down; as she did so, her tongue darted out to slowly lick a droplet from her bottom lip. “Perhaps you can invent a more exacting duty?”

He inhaled, for his entire attention had become focused on her wet bottom lip. “My lady, my mind is awhirl with possibilities. It dances hither and yon, brushing many but alighting on none, though several tantalize. Have you no examples to give me of what a wife’s duties should be?”

“Oh, examples abound.” A smile was playing about her lips. “Should I not obey and honor you?”

“Ah, but those are light duties, and you specified an exacting one.”

“Obeying you may not always be a light task,” she murmured.

“With me it shall be. I will merely bid you to do such things as smile at me and make my day brighter. Will you obey me in this?”

“Yes.”

“Then already I feel a surfeit of wifely honor. But I seem to remember another vow.”

“To love you,” she said. Her eyes dropped in maidenly modesty. He could no longer see her expression.

“Yes, only that,” he said lightly. “To love me is, I fear, a much greater taexach greask than any other wifely duty—I am a very unlovable fellow at times—and I’ll not blame you should you choose to forsake it. You may merely admire me instead, if it is more to your liking.”

“But I am a woman of honor, and I have made a vow,” she said.

He looked at her and tried to see which was the banter and which was her real feeling—if she had one. “Then you will love me?”

She shrugged. “Of course.”

He raised his glass to her. “Count me, then, the most fortunate man alive.”

But she merely smiled now, as if wearying of their wordplay.

He sipped his wine. Was she looking forward to this night or dreading it? Surely the latter rather than the former. Even at her age—older than many brides—she likely knew very little of the physical act between a man and a woman. Perhaps that fact accounted for some of the paleness in her face earlier. He must remind himself to go slowly tonight and not to do anything that might frighten or disgust her. Despite her lively repartee, she was by her own admission a reserved woman. Perhaps he ought to consider putting off the consummation for another day or so, in order that she grow more used to him. A depressing thought.

He shook his head and shoved all depressing thoughts aside, then took another slice of roast duck. After all, it was his wedding day.

“OH, IT WAS a beautiful wedding, my lady,” Suchlike said dreamily that night as she helped Melisande from her gown. “His lordship looked so handsome in his red embroidered coat, didn’t he? So tall and with those lovely wide shoulders. I don’t think he needs to use padding at all, do you?”

“Mmm,” Melisande murmured. Lord Vale’s shoulders were one of her favorite things about him, but her new husband’s physique didn’t seem quite the thing to discuss with her maid. She stepped out of her underskirts.

Suchlike draped the underskirts over a chair and began unlacing Melisande’s stays. “And when Lord Vale threw those coins to the crowd! What a kind gentleman he is. Did you know, ma’am, that he gave a guinea to every servant in this house, even the little bootblack boy?”

“Really?” Melisande bit back a fond smile at this evidence of Lord Vale’s sentimental nature. She wasn’t surprised at all. She rubbed a sore spot under her arm where the stays had chafed a bit. Then, clad in her chemise, she sat at a dainty burlwood vanity and began taking down her stockings.

“Mrs. Cook says that Lord Vale is a very pleasant gentleman to work for. Pays a regular wage and doesn’t shout at the maids as some gentlemen do.” Suchlike shook out the stays and laid them carefully in the big carved wardrobe in the corner.

The viscountess’s rooms in Renshaw House had been closed since Lord Vale’s father had died and his mother had moved to the London dowager residence. But Mrs. Moore, the housekeeper, was obviously a very competent woman. The rooms had been thoroughly cleaned. The bedroom’s honey-colored woodwork was freshly waxed and shining dully, the dark blue and gold drapes had been aired and brushed, and even the carpets looked to have been taken out and beaten.

The bedroom was not overly large but was quite lovely. The walls were a soothing creamy white, the carpets dark blue with spots of gold and ruby patterning. The fireplace was a pretty little thing, tiled in cobalt blue and surrounded by a white woodwork mantel. There were two gilt-legged chairs in front of it with a low marble-topped table between them. On one wall was a door that led to the viscount’s rooms—she looked quickly away from it—on the opposite wall, a door that led to her dressing room, and beyond, a private little sitting room. Now and again, a faint scratching came from the dressing room, but she ignored it. Overall, the rooms were very comfortable and pleasant.

“So, you’ve met the other servants?” Melisande asked to distract herself from staring at Lord Vale’s connecting door like a lovesick ninny.

“Yes, my lady.” Suchlike came over and began taking down her hair. “The butler, Mr. Oaks, is very stern, but he seems fair. Mrs. Moore says she respects his judgment wholeheartedly. There are six downstairs maids and five upper, and I don’t know how many footmen.”

“I counted seven,” Melisande murmured. She’d been introduced to the household this afternoon, but it would take time to learn individual names and duties. “They were all kind to you, then?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.” Suchlike was silent a moment, taking out the myriad of pins that had held her hair up. “Although . . .”