by April Munday
“Very well.”
Meldon could almost manage it by himself, but she sat next to him on the bed and put her arms under his shoulders to help him.
“That’s better,” he said, when she had arranged his pillows to support him.
He looked at her now and nodded when he saw her clothes.
“You followed me to Carstairs’ house.”
“Yes. I shot him. I...I killed him.”
“My poor, brave love.” He pulled her to his chest and she came willingly.
“I do not regret killing him,” she mumbled against his nightshirt.
“I should have saved you the necessity.”
Reluctantly she pulled away from him, but her hands still rested on his chest and his on her waist.
“It was not just to save your life, although that was reason enough.”
His lips lifted in an ironic smile; and she remembered that it was only a few weeks ago that she had tried to kill him.
“I am glad to hear that you value my life.” He lifted a hand to stroke her cheek and then returned it to her waist.
Now was not the time to tell him that she valued his life more than her own. Even now she doubted it would please him to hear it.
“My name is Anna Vincent. James Vincent, Marquis of Wreybourne was my brother.”
She had rendered him speechless. Confusion, then understanding crossed his face.
“Again, I should have saved you the trouble of killing Carstairs. Vincent was my friend. I’m sorry I could not save him.”
“Why did you tell me you had killed him?” She had not meant to ask him now. It seemed cruel while he was at such a disadvantage.
Meldon hesitated and she wondered if he were going to lie to her again. “It seemed a more honourable death for him.” He swallowed. “Are you sure that you want to hear how he really died?”
Anna shook her head. Meldon pulled her back against his chest and held her tight. “Good. I’m not sure I could tell you. I think it is enough that you know that Carstairs was responsible and I was not.”
In her relief Anna cried. James was still dead, but Meldon was not his killer. When she was calmer Anna became aware that he was stroking her hair. She nestled closer and his hand stilled.
“You asked me to kiss you.”
She bit her lip in surprise at this unexpected statement. “Yes.”
“Will you tell me why?”
She sighed; she would have to look him to tell him and she was so comfortable here in his arms.
“Yes, if you wish it.”
His arms did not want to release her.
“You can hold me or you can know about the kiss. I’ll have to look at you to tell you.”
With a groan he released her, but held her hands.
“It was the jewellery.”
“The jewellery?”
“The jewellery you lent me for the ball. Mr Finch told me that you asked him to bring it for me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I thought it might mean that you liked me, so I asked you to kiss me, so that I could be certain.”
“But you ran away from me.”
“You touched me, so I thought it might be no more than lust.”
“There was some lust,” admitted Meldon.
“On my part as well, so I ran away. But it was extremely pleasant.”
He smiled, then clasped her hand in his and kissed her fingertips.
“And is it a pleasure you think you might welcome again?”
He seemed genuinely uncertain, for he could barely meet her eyes. Anna pulled her hand free and stroked the small scar on his cheek where her shot had grazed him.
“I think that, when you are well, I should welcome it very much.”
Meldon pulled her to him. “I wasn’t thinking of waiting that long. I have no plans for the next hour or so.”
“Hour?” she repeated.
“Or so.” Then his lips covered hers and she thought he could kiss her for a lifetime and it would be too short.
It was light outside when Meldon awoke. Anna was asleep in his arms, her skin warm under his fingers, her breath light against his chest. Despite the pain in his leg, he would not move or disturb her. He was more than content just to hold her now. He was sure that it had been less than an hour before he had fallen asleep, but his lips could still remember the feel of her. The memory of their shared pleasure, innocent though it had been, made him smile.
There were still many questions. One thing, at least, he could resolve, but that could wait until she woke.
“Blue moon rises,” he said softly, annoyed that he still had no idea.
“Mmmm?” Anna mumbled into his chest.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Oh, you must be uncomfortable.” She tried to sit up, but he held her tight.
“I am perfectly comfortable.”
She kissed his chest and made her way up to his lips. When she had finished with him, she rested her head on his shoulder.
“You said ‘Blue moon rises’.”
“Yes.” He remembered their conversation of the day before. Carstairs had used Anna, but perhaps it meant something to her. “Do you know what it means? Carstairs didn’t, but thought I should.”
“I know something of what it means. It’s from a poem I wrote.”
Meldon groaned. Once again he had been stupid. Some time ago Vincent had given him a gift.
“Your brother published some of your poems. I have a copy.”
“He gave them to some friends. Blue Moon Rises is about a trysting place where James used to meet Harriet. It was under the branches of a willow that hung so low no one could see what happened beneath. I think I understand now what they might have got up to there and why they would not want to be seen.”
Meldon felt the blush that rose to her face against his skin and smiled.
“I hope they’re the sort of things you might want to do with me.”
Anna kissed him briefly on the lips and he took that as an affirmative answer.
“The book is behind you, on the table by the bed.”
It went everywhere with him, Vincent’s single gift. It was the last thing he packed when he travelled and he always packed it himself. The book had even gone with him to Kent. Vincent had inscribed the first page with a short note commending the poet and then signed and dated it. Meldon had read some of the poems and liked them enough to read them occasionally when he could not sleep. And now, folded and tucked between the cover and the first page, it also contained the poem that Anna had written for him, those few sheets being the most precious of his possessions.
Anna lifted herself away from him. This time he didn’t try to stop her, but watched as she stretched her arm to the table. She saw where he was looking and smiled. Even when he had it in his hands, he hardly knew whether to look at the book or her. Eventually the book won. The poem he wanted was near the end.
“Do you know where this willow is?” he asked after he had read it, disappointed to find he was no nearer the solution.”
“Yes.”
“Then we must go there and see if your brother hid something there.”
“So it’s true that he was a spy?”
“He came to my house the night he was killed and left me a message. It said. ‘The blue moon rises’. I think he expected me to have read more of your poems than I had. If I had read this I would have gone to see you.”
“What would you do with what you found there?”
“I’d...Oh.” She had him. He could admit that he was Vincent’s commanding officer or ... “It would depend what we found there,” he said at last. “If it looked like something that has to do with the war I would take it to General Warren. He’s someone important in the army. I’d give it to him.”
“There’s nothing in the willow now,” she said slowly.
“You found it?”
She nodded.
“Then it’s here. It’s been here all this time?”<
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She nodded again and he almost groaned in his frustration. The answer had been under his roof for weeks and he had been too stupid to know.
“What is it?”
“Papers.”
“What sort of papers?” He could not afford to reveal that he knew exactly what he expected them to be. “Would you turn it over to General Warren?” Even after all these months their value was incalculable.
“Yes. James mentioned his name once and told me I could trust him, as I could you.”
“I have given you little reason to trust me.”
She shook her head. “You have been kind and generous to a stranger who tried to kill you.”
Meldon stroked her cheek thoughtfully.
“There is one other thing we must settle.” Meldon thought about his mother or Caro, or even one of the servants coming to check on him whilst he had slept with Anna. She no longer wore her shirt and he had removed his nightgown. The care he had taken with her reputation would be worth nothing now. She looked at him expectantly.
“I would rather have done this when I was able to present myself properly, but I think the sooner we can announce it the better.”
“What?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Oh.” Anna smiled, then looked disappointed. Slowly she lifted her shirt from where it lay on the counterpane and slipped it over her head. She began tucking it into her breeches. “Did someone see us last night and now you must save the reputation of your friend’s sister?”
Damn! He’d done it badly. Why could he say nothing right to her? He caught her hands and held them still. “Stop that and look at me. I don’t know, but that’s why it must be today. Anna, I would go down on my knees and beg you to marry me if I could.”
“I appreciate the honour that your lordship does me,” she said coolly as she pulled her hands away.”
“Did you really love Carstairs, then? Or Finch?” It seemed impossible that she could have meant anything else than that she loved him. She had let him kiss her and ... more. Surely she could not do that and love another.
“Of course not. You were the one determined to throw us together.”
“I didn’t throw you together. You asked me to find out about him.”
“You offered. I understood then that it was only your body that lusted after me, for I knew you wanted me, as all men want me and I guessed your affections were elsewhere.”
“My affections! Anna, I have loved you almost from the first, perhaps even when you were Jonas Smith.” He grunted in pain as he tried to raise himself from his pillows.
“You said nothing. You pushed me towards Mr Carstairs.”
“I thought you liked him and you had gone to a lot of trouble to kill me. I thought you might not take too kindly to my protestations of love.”
Impatiently Anna brushed tears from her cheeks.
“Even as Jonas Smith I loved you,” she whispered. “You were kind to a stranger who was nobody. But you had sent to me that you had killed James.”
Meldon remembered how drawn she had looked the closer it had got to the time when she must call him out.
“You didn’t want to kill me?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted. I had come to love you. Perhaps I wanted to die by your hand as James had.”
“No!” It didn’t matter that Meldon had long suspected something of this kind. That Anna could put it into words distressed him.
Again he tried to sit up enough to reach her, but the pain was too much. He saw it reflected in her face.
“I cannot come to you,” he said as he fell back into the pillows, “you must come to me.”
She came to him then and he held her.
“Tell me,” he said as he kissed and stroked her hair, “did you just say that you love me?”
“Yes.”
“And you understand that I love you?”
“Yes.”
“Then may I tell my mother and my sister that we are engaged?”
“Yes.”
Shortly afterwards Lady Meldon came quietly into the room. Her son raised a hand in greeting, then put it carefully back on Anna’s head and fell asleep.
Meldon was in no hurry to end his convalescence; he was finally able to spend time alone with Anna without causing comment. The Warrens had returned to London, but Finch, despite his desire to return to his son, remained. He gave no reason for extending his stay and Meldon did not ask; sometimes it was better not to know what Finch was thinking. He suspected that his friend was bothered by the absence of both Carstairs’ body and his servants when he and the general had gone to his house the morning after he had shot Meldon. Whatever he feared, he was in a better position to do something about it than Meldon himself.
His mother visited him each morning and Finch came to play cards in the evening, but the rest of the time was Anna’s. Every morning she went out with Finch to inspect the estate. Over breakfast she discussed what needed to be done with Meldon and, whilst his mother was with him, Anna met his steward in the estate office and passed on their discussions. It had not taken much effort on Meldon’s part to persuade Jennings to follow her orders as he would his; the steward had already heard from the farmers and tenants that Lady Anna knew almost as much about managing an estate as his lordship.
Anna seemed to enjoy this time as much as he did. He found that, although he could make her laugh, he preferred to make her smile. He grew used to the signs of her affection. Sometimes she would simply touch the back of his hand with her fingertips, at other times she would pat his shoulder as she passed him to fetch something or entered or left the room.
Better than all these were her kisses. More enthusiastic than he had expected, she would often initiate a kiss, seemingly for no reason.
“Because you can’t get away,” she’d said when he asked her. “You can’t excuse yourself to go and ask Perkins about your new boots or to ask Jennings whether the cows have been brought down from the top field. Just for the moment, you are mine.”
“I am yours forever,” he had responded, pulling her carefully into his lap.
Anna did not protest as he had expected, but sat perfectly still, as if accepting that he held her in a way that did not harm his leg. Now he was able to kiss her, an arrangement both found satisfactory.
Eventually Anna rested her head on his shoulder.
“When do we return to London?” she asked.
“We could marry here if you wish.”
“I thought you would want your friends there.”
She seemed surprised by his suggestion.
“I find have surprisingly few friends. Or would you prefer to marry in Staffordshire?”
He had not thought much about the possibility of her having friends elsewhere. He had never quite believed her protestations that she had no one. He knew that with Vincent and their parents dead there were no near relatives, but it hurt him to think that there was no one else to care whether she lived or died.
She kissed his cheek. “No, my love, I have no desire to return there. I told you the truth when I said I had no one.”
“Then let us marry here and let us do it quickly.”
“I should like that.”
Meldon wondered how quickly the arrangements could be made without causing a scandal. As it turned out it was not able to be done as quickly as he had hoped. The countess took over the arrangements and was sad that she had not been able to persuade her daughter to stay for longer. Meldon suggested that Anna was the person who should be consulted, but Lady Meldon said that she had enough to do with running the estate while he was resting and should be spared the added burden of arranging the wedding because he could not.
The rumours of the arrangements that reached his ears via Finch worried him and Anna began to look careworn. Eventually she confessed that the wedding seemed to be becoming more important than their marriage. Meldon was taken aback, but when he asked his mother the following morning to explain what she had planned, he understoo
d and told his mother that, as soon as he was able to ride a horse, he would go to Mr Gossett, ask him to post the banns, then he and Anna would appear in church the day after the third reading with Finch and Mrs Gossett as witnesses.
“That would hardly be appropriate for the Earl of Meldon and his countess,” said Lady Meldon.
“I should, at least, have a happy bride.”
“She’s the daughter of a marquis, she knows that this is how things are done.”
“Mother, you mean well, but Anna has not found these last few days easy. She is strong, but it would be a kindness to give her her way in this.” Meldon knew that his mother thought that he had been the one to kill Carstairs, not Anna, and he had no wish to disabuse her.
“George, there is already enough gossip about Anna. Do you want people to say that there was a reason for not having a proper wedding?”
“The gossip, whatever it is, is not true.”
“You know as well as I do that that does not matter. People will say what they want. You brought a Miss Smith here, but now she is Lady Anna Vincent, sister of the late Marquis of Wreybourne. Why did she hide her true identity? Why is that identity revealed at the same time as you announce your intention to marry her? Why is she marrying the man who killed her brother?”
The last was said in a lowered voice and Meldon saw that this was his mother’s own question.
“There has been a lot of nonsense said about Vincent’s death,” he said slowly.
“I know that it was a fair fight, but for Anna...”
“Mother, James Vincent was my friend and Anna knows that I was his friend to the last. If she is satisfied, can’t you be?”
Lady Meldon held his gaze for a long time. Meldon found that he wanted to look away, but refused to do so.
Eventually she said, “Very well. The wedding will be smaller, but it will be very public.”
“Then we will both be happy.”
In many ways he had been right about the effect that killing a man would have on Jonas Smith. Since she had killed Carstairs Anna had stopped writing and sometimes, when she was sewing, he would look up from his book to see that her hands were still and her gaze focused on nothing. During those moments he would not interrupt her, but watch until she came back to herself. If he was close enough he placed his hand close to hers so that she might take it if she needed it. Sometimes she grasped it with a sigh, at others she stroked it gently as if he were the one in need of comfort.