Chapter 22: : Chapter 21

Memories choked Charles’s brain. The Spanish oak and the embroidered silk coverlet of the bed in his rooms in Lisbon. The erratic light of the candle that dangled from his nerveless fingers. Honoria, eyes blue-black and wide with pleading, lips parted, hair spilling over her naked breasts. His own breathing quickened, his thoughts a tumble of confusion, his body taut with unthinking response.

He looked across the familiar jumble of the old drawing room at his wife. At the sea-green eyes that could see things he could keep hidden from most people. So that sometimes his only hope of escape was to barricade himself against her. Perhaps he should have known she’d guess about Honoria. She’d always been able to piece things together quickly, but how the devil—

‘She did the same thing to Simon the night he arrived at Dunmykel,’ Mélanie said.

His fingers thudded against the keys of the pianoforte. ‘What?’

She crossed the room to him. ‘Listen, Charles, I don’t know how this fits with the Elsinore League, but I think I understand at least some of what’s been going on.’ She scanned his face, the way she did with the children when she was forced to break disappointing news. ‘I know this is difficult, darling. I know it flies in the face of everything you believe about her. But at least hear me out.’

He got to his feet. He felt as though he’d been pushed off the cliffs on Dunmykel Bay. ‘When have I ever failed to hear you out?’

‘I know. It’s one of the things I lo—it’s one of the wonderful things about you.’ She seized his hands in a firm grip. Her eyes were like polished agate at the bottom of a deep, still pool. ‘I think Miss Talbot was in your bed for the same reason she was in Simon’s three nights ago. Because of a dare.’

He bit back an incredulous laugh. ‘Mélanie—’

Her grip on his hands tightened. ‘She made every effort to get Simon to take her to bed. When he turned her down flat, she muttered something about ‘How am I going to explain it to him.’ ‘

But I love you, Charles. A beseeching voice. A tremulous voice. A voice that shook with sincerity. ‘You think a man dared Honoria to seduce me and now Simon.’ It sounded even more ridiculous when he said it aloud.

‘A particular man. The man who gave Miss Talbot his love letters from other women as proof of the success of his seductions.’

‘Val?’

‘It explains why Lord Quentin saw letters from his brother’s mistresses among Miss Talbot’s things. It explains what she was doing in your bed and later in Simon’s.’

He jerked his hands from her grip. ‘It fits some of the facts without making any sense at all. You can argue that I didn’t know Honoria, but what has everyone kept saying about her? That she wanted to be in control. And you’re suggesting that she risked everything for—not even for love but for—’

‘Power. Control.’

‘How the hell would risking her reputation give her control?’

‘As an unmarried virgin, she was in a powerless position. A pawn. The most she could do was defend her virtue. This let her be a player in the game.’

‘The game?’

‘The oldest game of all, darling. The game of the Glenister House set. The game your father and Miss Talbot’s uncle excel at.’

‘But you can’t assume Honoria would have cared—’

‘She must have lived and breathed it growing up in Glenister House. She’d have watched her uncle conduct his intrigues and then Lord Quentin and Lord Valentine.’

‘You think I don’t know? I grew up in that world, too.’

‘And you walked away from the intrigues. But you can’t assume Miss Talbot felt the same. Besides, she couldn’t run off to Lisbon.’

He saw Honoria as a little girl in a white frock twisting the adults round her finger when she, Evie, and Gisèle got up to some mischief or other. And then for a moment he saw her as she’d been last night on the terrace. You don’t have the right to demand anything of me anymore. ‘It’s a reach.’

‘Think, darling. Forget your need to defend her memory. Forget the girl you thought you knew. Forget the girl you loved.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You did love her, Charles, one way or another. No sense pretending now. But look at the facts. Why else would she have tried to seduce Simon? He’s by far the greatest challenge at the house party. If she’d succeeded, she could have been sure he wouldn’t have told anyone, and even if he had, who would have taken Simon’s word over hers? Having failed with him, I expect she’d have turned her attention to someone like Andrew Thirle—’

‘She did. I mean, she—dear God.’ Andrew’s account of Honoria’s rides with him echoed in Charles’s head. He closed his eyes for a moment while the sense of having been a fool washed over him.

He opened to eyes to find Mélanie’s gaze slashing into his own, pinning him where he stood, forcing him to confront the truth. He drew his tattered defenses about him and said the few words that needed to be said.

‘We have to talk to Val.’

Charles pulled the gig (the carriage the Dunmkyel grooms had been able to ready most quickly) up in front of the lime-washed facade of the Griffin & Dragon, tossed the reins to a stable boy, and helped Mélanie down from the carriage. Val had left for the village just after the gathering in the Gold Saloon. Charles would lay a monkey he was to be found in the inn.

The varnish on the front door was peeling and a couple of the windows had cracks he didn’t remember, but the primroses spilling out of the window boxes were as plentiful as ever. The familiar smells of local brewed ale and cider greeted him when he opened the door, as though they had leached into the wood and stone. Instead of escorting Mélanie to the coffee room, where under normal circumstances they would have refreshed themselves, he steered her down a twisting, low-ceilinged slate-flagged passage to the common room with its rough stone walls and high-backed benches and gleaming dark bar. The buzz of conversation, audible from the passage, came to an abrupt halt at their entrance. Someone clunked a tankard down on a deal tabletop. Someone else hastily extinguished a pipe. A score of curious gazes turned their way, much as when he’d taken Mélanie to one of the Regent’s receptions at Carlton House a month since.

Bits and pieces of his own past shone back at him from the startled eyes and wind-chapped faces. Men with whom he had played village cricket, men who had given him rides on cart horses and handed him peppermints over shop counters. Men to whom he was now a stranger, returned from an alien world, seemingly heir to the man whose policies had threatened their livelihood and sent much of their kin off to seek work in factories in the south.

A slosh and a clatter broke the silence. A towheaded boy, who probably had not been born when Charles left Britain, had dropped the ale pot he carried.

‘Mind what you’re doing, Dugal.’ Stephen Drummond, whose father owned the Griffin & Dragon, cast a glance at the boy and then walked toward Charles and Mélanie.

‘Ch—Mr. Fraser.’ His grin of greeting changed to a cautious nod.

‘Hullo, Stephen.’ Charles checked his impatience to find Val and smiled at his boyhood friend. Stephen had smuggled ale out of the tavern on more than one occasion to share with Charles and Andrew on fishing expeditions. ‘How’s your father keeping?’

Stephen’s blue eyes closed a shade further. ‘He died last winter.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Charles said, aware as he spoke how inadequate the words sounded.

Stephen nodded again. Charles introduced Mélanie, who was continuing to draw a number of surprised looks. But then Mélanie always attracted attention, one way or another.

‘Mrs. Fraser.’ Stephen inclined his head and then nodded toward the towheaded boy, who was now mopping up the spilled ale. ‘Dugal, my eldest.’ He looked back at Charles. ‘I married Alice Ellon the year after you left for the Continent.’

The name conjured up a memory of a girl with coppery plaits and a smattering of freckles who had played with Andrew’s twin sister. ‘He’s a fine lad. I didn’t realize about you and Alice.’

‘No reason you should.’ Stephen shifted his weight from one foot to the other, creaking the leather of his boots. ‘Mrs. Fraser might be more comfortable in the coffee room. I can have coffee sent in. Or tea. Was there something in particular you wanted, sir?’

‘We’re looking for Lord Valentine,’ Charles said. ‘Is he here?’

Stephen’s gaze moved toward the slate fireplace. ‘Y—er—no, he left some time ago.’

‘Damn it, Stephen.’ Charles nearly grabbed his old friend by the collar of his coat. ‘I don’t care how many doxies he’s with. I need to see him.’

Someone let out a coarse laugh, quickly smothered. Stephen flicked a surprised gaze at Mélanie, then jerked his head toward the stairs. ‘First room on the right. But—’

‘Thank you.’

‘Charles,’ Stephen said as they turned to go.

Charles looked back at him, one hand on the doorframe.

‘We heard the news about Miss Talbot. I’m sorry.’

Charles had an image of Stephen helping a ringleted, muslin-skirted five-year-old Honoria over the rocky cliffs down to Dunmykel Bay. He nodded, not sure he trusted himself to say more, not sure what more there was to say. Then he strode up the spiral stairs, Mélanie at his heels, and pushed open the first door on the right.

Grunts and the smell of brandy greeted them. Val had a fair-haired young woman pushed up against one of the spooled bedposts, her bodice unbuttoned, his mouth against her breasts, one hand fisted in her hair, the other gripping her bottom.

Charles crossed the room in three steps, seized Val by the back of his shirt, and hurled him against the scarred deal wall.

He turned to the woman, who was pulling the flaps of her bodice closed over her red-marked skin. ‘My apologies for the intrusion, madam. I trust Lord Valentine will make it up to you later.’

Val pushed himself upright. ‘You bloody, interfering—’

‘There are ladies present, Val.’ Charles held the door open for Val’s fair-haired friend. The young woman did up the last button on her bodice, cast a glance at Val, and swept from the room, head held high.

Charles slammed the door shut behind her. The heavy brass knocker rattled in its oak frame. ‘How long have you and Honoria been playing at Les Liaisons Dangereuses?’

‘What?’ Val was trying to do up the buttons on his trousers.

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t read it. You and Honoria may not have reached Valmont and Merteuil’s level, but you came close. You dared each other to seductions and collected trophies as proof of your success.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

Charles grabbed Val by the throat and pushed him up against the wall. A pewter candlestick thudded to the floor. ‘I’d like nothing better than an excuse to thrash you within an inch of your sorry life. Now unless you want us to tell your father, you’ll answer all our questions truthfully. Then there’s a chance I won’t break every bone in your body.’

Val’s fair skin drained of color. The smell of sweat and fear radiated from his body. ‘What do you know?’

Charles took a step back and glanced at his wife. ‘Mel?’

‘You gave your mistresses’ letters to Miss Talbot,’ Mélanie said, ‘presumably as proof of your success. You challenged Miss Talbot to seduce Simon Tanner and she failed. Miss Talbot went to your room last night and you bedded her yourself. The only thing I’m not sure of is whether or not you killed her afterward.’

Val slumped against the wall, eyes wide and glazed. ‘How—’

‘Logic and deduction,’ Mélanie said, her voice as cool as a steel blade. ‘Well? Are you going to fill in the rest of the details?’

Val put his hand to his throat where Charles had grabbed him. ‘It’s not the way you make it sound. Not exactly. The first time we—I didn’t force her. I’ve never forced a woman in my life.’

‘Commendable.’ Charles barely restrained the impulse to throttle him again.

‘She wanted it as much as I did. At least she did before I bedded her. Afterward she threw a tantrum.’

‘How old were you?’ Charles asked.

‘I was sixteen, she was fifteen. She wasn’t my first.’

‘But you were hers?’

‘What? Oh, yes. Of course.’ Val pushed his sweat-drenched hair back from his forehead. ‘She got angry afterward, the way girls do. But Honoria isn’t—wasn’t—like other girls. Everyone thought she followed the rules, but actually she made her own. After her first fit of playing the wounded virgin, she said that if she told Father what had happened, he was sure to believe her side of the story. I’d have to marry her and she’d see to it her money was tied up so I couldn’t touch a penny of it. She said she wasn’t in any more of a hurry to get married than I was. Instead we’d keep each other’s secrets.’

‘And so your game began,’ Charles said.

‘If you want to call it that.’

‘You dared each other to further conquests.’

‘Not exactly, not at the beginning.’ Val smoothed the rumpled superfine of his riding coat. ‘When I brought a school friend home for the holidays, Honoria made me help contrive things so she could seduce him. That was all her idea.’

‘You weren’t jealous?’

‘No. Well, yes, a bit, but I was pursuing the wife of one of our neighbors at the same time. We—er—compared notes.’

‘Quite an erotic game in itself,’ Mélanie said.

Val’s gaze flickered toward her, wide with surprise.

Mélanie returned his gaze without blinking. ‘That was when you began daring each other?’

Val nodded.

‘And then you went to Lisbon with David and his father,’ Charles said. ‘And you dared Honoria to seduce me.’

‘That was Honoria’s idea. I warned her you’d insist on marrying her. She said she might rather like to be married to you. I don’t think she ever quite got over her pique at not succeeding with you. She had more than half a mind to try with you again now you were back in England. I told her you were a lot safer now you were married.’

Charles drew a breath. The smell of sweat and brandy in the room was not as foul as the rank stench in his mind. ‘I can see you ignoring the risks, but didn’t Honoria know she was playing with fire? Getting caught would have been awkward for you. It would have meant ruin for her.’

‘She only took men who had more to lose than she did if the truth got out. She used to complain because she had to pretend to be Miss Prim and Proper and I could flaunt my reputation. But she liked the risk. It was—’

‘An aphrodisiac,’ Charles said.

Val’s brows lifted. ‘Yes.’

‘Suppose she’d found herself pregnant?’

‘She was careful about the times. And she—’ Val broke off. For all he’d already admitted, this last seemed to make him too uncomfortable to voice.

‘I expect she used sponges,’ Mélanie said.

Val stared at her as though she had stumbled through a portal from another world. ‘It worked very well until—’

‘We know she was with child,’ Charles said.

Val’s eyes darkened to cobalt. ‘Yes, damn it, and it was my baby. She had no right to go off and marry someone else.’

‘Are you saying you wanted to marry her yourself?’

‘I suppose so. Eventually. I’d always assumed—but I’d have married her straight off because of the baby. Only she had to go and promise herself to your father.’

‘Why?’ Charles asked.

‘She said he could give her what she wanted.’

‘What did she want?’

‘God knows what women ever want.’

‘Power?’ Mélanie said.

Val stared at the cracked looking glass above the chest of drawers for a moment. ‘Perhaps.’ He shook his head. ‘We had a terrific row when I found out about the engagement. I went to Father, because I was sure he’d see sense—’

‘You told your father Honoria was carrying your child?’ Charles said.

‘I was sure he’d insist she had to marry me. It’s not very sporting to foist your son’s bastard off on your best friend. But Father told me if I ever breathed a word of it, he’d strip me of my allowance and send me to the plantation in Jamaica.’ Val sucked in his breath, as though realizing he’d done precisely what his father had ordered him not to.

‘But her betrothal didn’t end your game?’

‘Honoria said it didn’t have to. She seemed to think it would add an extra thrill. What could be more of a challenge than to deceive her betrothed under his own roof while he thought she was a spotless virgin? And I thought—’

‘That this would be a way to hold her,’ Mélanie said.

‘No. That is—oh, what does it matter. The point is, that was when I challenged her with Simon Tanner. I said it would be her greatest coup if she could pull it off. And he’d never talk—I mean, how could he risk David knowing he’d been unfaithful with David’s own precious cousin? Besides, no one would take the word of an upstart playwright over Honoria’s. I actually thought she’d pull it off, too. If any woman could tempt him, Honoria could.’

‘If any man could tempt another man, I’d think Simon could,’ Mélanie said. ‘Could he tempt you?’

‘What? No, of course not. But it’s not the same thing at all.’

‘Isn’t it?’

Val snatched up the open brandy that stood atop the chest of drawers and took a swig. ‘Anyway, she had to admit she failed with Simon. She was quite cross about it. So I said what about Thirle, your father’s steward.’

Charles’s throat closed. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, Honoria was keen to try. Thirle has a strength about him, this unshakable air of doing what’s right—’

Charles felt his mouth tighten. ‘Andrew’s a good man. We forgive you the praise.’

‘Honoria had already gone riding with him a few times before the business with Tanner. Thirle seemed intrigued, but not too intrigued. So it was still a challenge. Then last night Honoria came to my room and told me Thirle wouldn’t work.’

‘Why?’ Charles asked.

‘She wouldn’t say. She snapped at me when I pressed her.’

‘And?’ Charles said.

‘She left. That was all.’

‘All?’

‘Well, we—er—spent some time together.’

‘You had intercourse.’ Charles saw no reason to use a prettier term for it.

‘She was already pregnant. We didn’t need to worry—’

‘Didn’t you wonder how she meant to pass the child off as Kenneth Fraser’s?’ Mélanie asked. ‘The wedding was two months away.’

‘She said she’d have to slip into his bed before too much longer. She didn’t seem very worried about it.’

‘And you?’ Charles said. ‘Surely you hadn’t got over your anger at the thought of your child being passed off as another man’s.’

‘Between them, Honoria and Father had made it clear there wasn’t much I could do about it.’

‘Not even argue with her? If the woman I loved was lying in my arms, I’d certainly avail myself of the opportunity to try to win her back.’

Val clunked the brandy bottle down on the chest of drawers. ‘Damn it, how do you do it? It’s like witchcraft. Yes, all right, last night I tried to talk her into breaking with your father and marrying me. We had a rip-roaring quarrel, not for the first time. But I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘What time did she leave your room?’

‘A little past one.’

‘Did she eat or drink anything while she was with you?’

‘We had a drink. Before the quarrel.’

‘What sort of a drink?’

‘I had whisky. I keep a bottle in my room. Never know when you’ll need it at family affairs. Honoria doesn’t like whisky. She had brandy.’

‘Which you also kept in your room?’

‘No, she brought it with her.’

‘Where’s the bottle now?’ Charles asked.

‘In my wardrobe. She left it when she flounced out after the fight.’

‘Did you and Honoria experiment with opiates?’

‘Er—I did once get some stuff from a fellow at my club. It was supposed to heighten—’ Val looked at Mélanie and glanced away. ‘Honoria quite liked it. But if she was doctoring her brandy, she didn’t tell me about it. Mind you, if she was going to slip into your father’s bed last night, she might have wanted double Dutch courage.’

‘Where did she keep the brandy?’ Charles asked.

‘In her dressing case.’

‘Who else knew it was there?’

‘How the devil should I know? Honoria didn’t flaunt it, but she didn’t go to great lengths to hide it, either. Anyone who made a cursory inspection of her room would have found it.’

‘What did you do after Honoria left you last night?’

‘Went to bed.’

‘Did you know she’d gone to my father’s room?’

‘Not for a certainty, though I knew she meant to do so soon. But what could I do? I’ve already told you what my father threatened if I let slip the truth.’ Val shifted his weight from one foot to the other. ‘See here, Fraser—’

‘I’ll have to question your father about Honoria’s pregnancy. There’s no way round that.’

‘But—’

‘The woman you claim you wanted to marry is dead, Val, along with your unborn child. I wouldn’t think much else would matter to you besides finding the killer.’

To Charles’s surprise, Val met his gaze and gave a slow nod. He was pale, but his eyes hardened with determination.

‘One more thing,’ Charles said. ‘My sister.’

‘You mean what are my intentions?’ Val’s mouth curled. ‘Don’t worry, Charles. I was more apt to run risks when I was younger. I know to avoid seducing well-born virgins now. Gisèle’s a tempting morsel, I’ll grant you. I’ve begun to wonder—a fellow has to get leg-shackled at some point.’

‘You so much as dance with my sister and I’ll make sure not only your father but my father and Aunt Frances know every word you’ve told me. After I’ve torn you limb from limb. Are we clear?’

‘Steady on, Fraser. I told you I wouldn’t—’

‘Are we clear?’

Val swallowed. ‘Yes.’