Miss Merton's Last Hope Read Online Free Page A

trembled still, revealing her anxiety over the question as clearly as if she’d spoken an answer. She might not like him to assume he had the right, but he thought at that moment Melanie Merton desperately needed to unburden herself.
    She stared at the pin in his cravat while her fingers wriggled in his grip as if she were fighting her own instincts to flee. Indeed, her next words were the softest of whispers. “Why do you ask me that now, of all times?”
    “I have perhaps just destroyed a friendship to defend your honor, and I want to know it wasn’t without a very good reason. I do not deny you the right to refuse a proposal of marriage, but there have been eleven other spurred suitors over the years. Most were decent men of good social standing who your father would have approved of.”
    She nodded and her hand smoothed over his shoulder.
    He drew her closer, widening his fingers on her back. “Today, I could not help but notice you shy away from any comfort offered, even by Valentine. You were not always this way. You were my sister’s best friend once, and now you barely speak. As a girl you were held often, and comforted others when they were in need. Julia once came to you when she’d hurt herself on one of her misadventures, rather than to Imogen. So did Imogen.”
    She stiffened as soon as he reminded her of those happier times, so he took another step to distract her. “Tell me what happened. It was after your Andy’s death, after you returned to Brighton with a new governess we all hated, that I think you started to change toward us.”
    She inhaled raggedly and she stumbled forward, something she’d never done while dancing with him in public. She hadn’t stumbled even during practice as a little girl. “I didn’t know.”
    Walter pulled her into his chest, dropping the pretense of dancing. “Tell me, Mellie?”
    She sniffed at the use of her childish nickname. He hadn’t used it in a long time, but that name had once echoed through all the houses of her friends in Cavendish Place. Not since the days before Andy had died, in fact, had a little girl called Mellie run about and laughed with them. After that unexpected death, this reserved creature had begun to walk among them and had turned aside every overture of familiarity.
    Until he’d taken the initiative today.
    “I was supposed to keep out of the servants’ quarters, but I hadn’t seen her for days. I snuck upstairs and into her room after my parents had gone out for the night to an entertainment at the university. I was young and wanting a cuddle so I climbed upon her bed and she let me come into her arms. Her breath was very loud and strained. She hugged me tight against her and I didn’t want her to let me go. She told me she loved me and after a while she fell silent.” She dropped her head to his chest. “I was only supposed to stay a moment and then I was to go back to the nursery where I belonged.”
    Walter wrapped both arms about her and held her against him, suspecting what she would say next if she could bring herself to that point. He’d seen a corpse or two, his parents’ faces in death were still with him, but he’d been older when they had died and had been able to distract himself with the arrangements for their burials and in comforting Imogen. But a child of Melanie’s age then might not have been able to push it from her mind so easily.
    At last she said, “I fell asleep there in her arms and she died holding me.”
    Walter closed his eyes briefly, heart breaking for her. Valentine had never spoken of the servant’s death. Did he even realize what had happened to Melanie that night? “That must have been a shock when you woke.”
    She shuddered and jerked back out of reach. Her lashes were wet with tears and she looked about to fall to pieces. It took a long time before she spoke again and her words were raw, hard with pain. “I couldn’t get free of her grip, she held me so tightly.”
    And so now she lets no