Chapter 32: : Chapter 31

Charles stared across his father’s study at his oldest friend. ‘Knowing Father, I don’t know why I’m remotely surprised.’

‘That’s all you have to say? Jesus, Charles, I almost—with your sister. Our sister.’ Andrew pressed his hand over. his eyes.

Charles moved round the desk, watching the man who, like Quen, might be Kenneth Fraser’s son. ‘Andrew, there’s something you should know. Actually, I’d have thought you already did know it, given the gossip.’

‘Charles, nothing can—’

‘Hear me out. From my earliest memories, my parents could barely be in the same room without baring their teeth. Gisèle was born twelve years into the marriage. Mother and Father had stopped sharing a bed long since. None of us knows exactly who Gisèle’s father is, but it’s almost certainly not Kenneth Fraser.’

Andrew lifted his head to look at Charles. Hope leaped in his eyes, then was ruthlessly quenched. ‘Almost,’ he echoed. ‘You can’t know for a certainty.’

‘I’m as certain as I can be.’ Charles leaned against the desk. ‘Certain enough to have no qualms about you and my sister.’

‘And if the truth got out?’ Andrew strode back to the fireplace. ‘Even if you’re right, the world assumes Kenneth Fraser is Gisèle’s father. If Gelly and I married’—his voice caught for a moment, like rope frayed raw—’and then there was gossip about Kenneth Fraser being my father as well, what would that do to Gelly? What would it do to any children we might have?’

‘There’s no reason the world should ever know Kenneth Fraser fathered you. It’s remained secret for thirty-odd years.’

‘It’s remained secret because I’ve been out of the way of the world. If I married the Duke of Rannoch’s granddaughter, people would pay attention. Secrets have a way of working their way to the surface at inopportune moments. The past twenty-four hours have proved mat.’

‘Gossip can’t destroy a marriage. Not if two people—’

‘Really love each other?’ Andrew’s shoulders shook with bitter laughter. ‘Christ, Charles, this ought to be funny. You arguing for the power of love to overcome all obstacles.’

‘It depends on the people involved. You’ve been steadfast in your loyalties for as long as I’ve known you, and Gelly showed tonight that she’s a lot more mature than I believed her to be. Don’t you think she should have a say in this?’

‘Brilliant, Charles. How exactly would you suggest I explain it?’

‘So you haven’t told her any of this?’

‘You think I’d tell her that the man she fancies herself head over ears in love with may be her own brother?’

‘So instead you told her it couldn’t go any further between the two of you and didn’t offer an explanation.’

Andrew’s jaw clenched. ‘More or less.’

‘Which has her thinking that you love someone else or that she’s in some way inadequate. It can be particularly painful to be nineteen, Andrew. Even imagined slights hurt like salt on a wound.’

‘Do you think I haven’t wanted to write to her these past months?’ The words seemed to be ripped from Andrew’s throat. ‘Haven’t picked up the pen and written only to toss the letters on the fire? Haven’t tormented myself with imagining what might have been? My God, you don’t know how sickeningly happy I was when she arrived at Dunmykel just now. I had to do something—anything—to push her away. Even letting her think I cared for Miss Talbot. Because when I’m with her a part of me doesn’t care that there’s no hope for us. A part of me wants her anyway. Even believing she’s my sister.’

‘And now I’m telling you she’s not your sister.’

‘Think, Charles. Even if it weren’t for my parentage, what do I have to offer Gisèle? I’m an Edinburgh lawyer turned estate manager. Not to mention a former smuggler. She’s an heiress, a duke’s granddaughter. She could—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t go all lending-library novel about the disparity of fortune bit. Gelly’s got enough money for both of you.’

‘And you don’t think people would comment on that?’

‘Is that what you’re letting stand in the way of my sister’s and your happiness? That people would call you a fortune hunter? I thought you were tougher than that.’

‘Are you so sure marrying me would make her happy?’

‘Gelly demonstrated that fairly convincingly this evening.’

‘I’m not talking about tonight, I’m talking about five years from now. Ten years from now. She’s nineteen, Charles. I’m almost two-and-thirty. Her family were smashed to bits when she was eight years old. It hurt her more than anyone realizes when your mother died and then when—’

‘I left.’

‘Yes.’ Andrew looked him full in the face. ‘I understand why you did, but Gelly doesn’t. She’s got used to people leaving her. Sometimes I think she’s grabbing onto me like a spar in a shipwreck. How long would it be before she realized what she’d thought was love was really infatuation, before she decided she wanted someone closer to her age, someone who moved in the same world, someone who could let her be a grand London hostess—’

‘Someone like Val Talbot?’

Andrew grimaced. ‘Someone of good character who could offer her all those things. Jesus, what kind of a man would I be if I married her knowing I can’t give her what she deserves?’

Mélanie’s face the day he’d asked her to be his wife flickered before Charles’s gaze. He had spelled out precisely what he was offering her—protection, his name, care for her child. A cold substitute for what she deserved. ‘You don’t know you can’t give her what she deserves, Andrew. You can’t know it.’

‘What the hell do I have to offer her?’

Charles recalled the way Andrew had looked up at Gisèle when he recovered consciousness in the cottage, his gaze stripped naked with vulnerability. ‘Yourself.’

Andrew gave a mirthless laugh.

‘Don’t scoff. It’s a damnably difficult gift to give.’

‘Damn it, if you’re such an expert on marriage—’

‘What?’

‘Look, Charles. I know you just found your father’s body smashed to pieces. I know this must be hell for you. But I saw how much it hurt Mélanie in the tower just now when you could scarcely even look at her.’

Only someone who knew him so well could strike so effective a blow. Charles swallowed, tasting the emptiness inside himself. ‘I said giving yourself was a great gift. I never claimed to be much of a success at gift-giving myself.’ He scraped a hand through his hair. ‘I hate to see you and Gelly unhappy.’

Andrew shook his head. ‘Same old Charles. You still haven’t learned that you can’t fix things for everyone.’ He strode back to the desk. ‘Let’s look at your father’s papers.’

‘Our father’s.’

‘He never—’ Andrew cast a glance round Kenneth Fraser’s study. The paintings Kenneth had collected hung on the walls, the bronzes and marbles stood on the desk and tables, the smell of the snuff Kenneth had blended in London lingered in the air. ‘I can’t think of him that way. I had a father.’

‘A far better one.’ Charles moved back round the desk.

Andrew stared down at the blotter. ‘I told you Father never confronted me about the smuggling. But not long after he lied to the excisemen for me, I overheard him say to Mother that he’d always worried blood would tell. I didn’t understand it. Not then.’

‘I saw him with you, Andrew. He loved you. The way a parent should love a child.’

‘I think he did, though God knows I didn’t give him a lot of reason to in the last years of his life. The devil of it is, I’ll never be able to ask him about any of it now.’ Andrew opened a ledger. ‘What do you want to look at first?’

Charles stared down at the columns of figures in the ledger. Routine estate expenses, but the dates made him realize something about Andrew’s story. ‘Father didn’t own Dunmykel yet when you were born.’

‘No, it still belonged to his godfather.’ Andrew ran his finger down the page. ‘But he must have been familiar enough with the estate to realize my parents would be good people to take charge of his by-blow.’

‘He hadn’t yet come into his legacy from his uncle in Jamaica, either. He was a London barrister without much to his name in the way of fortune.’

Andrew flipped the page. ‘Frankly, I’m surprised he went to the trouble of providing for me.’

‘So am I. Father wasn’t one to take his responsibilities seriously in my experience. Not at any expense to himself.’ Charles stared at an entry for replastering the Gold Saloon. ‘Do you know who your mother was?’

‘No. I didn’t even ask at first. I know who my parents are. Whom I’ll always think of as my parents. But I did finally ask Mother who was—who’d given birth to me. She didn’t know. Mr. Fraser brought me to her when I was a week old.’

‘If your mother—the lady who gave birth to you—had been a country girl or a maidservant, one would think Father would have simply paid her money to raise you herself. The fact that he found surrogate parents for you, under such secrecy—it sounds as though your mother was a lady of fashion. Who lacked a husband or wasn’t in a position to pass you off as her husband’s child.’

Andrew stared down at the ledger, gaze fixed and glassy. ‘Does it matter now? We’re supposed to be investigating Miss Talbot’s death. And Mr. Fraser’s.’

‘Precisely.’

‘You think this has something to do with it?’

‘I think anything to do with the secrets my father kept may have something to do with why he died. The question is which pieces are important. And how. Let’s have a look at Father’s dispatch box.’

At David’s suggestion, Mélanie gathered the oddly assorted band together in his bedchamber. She glanced round the circle of people clustered within the green-trellis-papered walls. Gisèle sitting on a jade satin settee, pleating the fabric of her skirt between her fingers. Tommy lounging on one of the shield-backed chairs, David sitting bolt upright on the other. Simon leaning against the wall by the window. Charles’s sister, Charles’s friends, Charles’s colleague. It was, she realized, the first time she’d presided over such a gathering without her husband present. Yet they were all looking at her with that air of expectancy with which they looked at Charles. The barricades between her and her husband might be stronger than ever, but she seemed to have crossed over a line with the other people in his life. That was something. At least it should be.

Everyone present knew bits and pieces of the evidence uncovered in the past four-and-twenty hours. It took a little time to fill them in on the parts they didn’t know, but they were patient and refrained from unnecessary questions. Though the latter might have been due to shock as much as tact.

‘You lot don’t do anything by halves, do you?’ Tommy said when she finished speaking. ‘I know every family has its secrets, but—’ He shook his head ‘It occurs to me that I may have been unfair to Charles. In this household, he’s lucky to have grown up sane. Though come to think of it, I’ve accused him of insanity on more than one occasion.’

‘Our family’s attitude toward scandal is a bit like Vanbrugh’s ideas about architecture,’ Gisèle said. ‘Nothing’s so perfect it can’t be improved upon by excess.’ Her bright, brittle voice was an echo of the tone Charles had used in the Gold Saloon. ‘And it looks as though that applies to the Talbots as well. Unless we’re all so tangled at this point that we count as one family. How odd that we never knew Quen is Father’s son.’

Tommy gave her one of his rare smiles that was kind rather than mocking or flirtatious. ‘Surprised you have another brother?’

‘Not really.’ Gisèle twisted the grimy green ribbon at the waist of her gown. ‘I mean, I don’t really have another brother. Everyone knows Father isn’t—wasn’t—really my father. You see what I mean, Mr. Belmont? We’re straight out of a Greek tragedy, except not nearly so mythic and profound.’

‘More of a Jacobean drama,’ Simon murmured.

David was staring across the room at Tommy. ‘Just exactly why did you ask Honoria to meet you yesterday?’

Tommy crossed his legs. ‘I told you, I wanted to make sure she was happy.’

‘Why would the happiness of a girl you’d met briefly in Lisbon six years ago seem important enough to risk jeopardizing this secret mission of yours?’

Tommy returned the fire in David’s gaze with the steadiness of a seasoned campaigner. ‘A gentleman doesn’t talk, but I think in this case the facts speak for themselves. I don’t blame you if you want to call me to account, but might I suggest you wait until Miss Talbot’s and Mr. Fraser’s murders are resolved? We really can’t afford to have anyone else get killed just now.’

David sprang to his feet. ‘By God, Belmont—’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, David.’ Gisèle snapped a length of the green ribbon off in her fingers. ‘If you’re going to defend Honoria’s honor, you’ll have to resign your seat in Parliament, because confronting Honoria’s lovers will be full-time employment.’ She glanced round the circle of faces. ‘Mélanie put it as delicately as she could, but I can add the pieces together. It’s obvious how far Honoria and Val’s games went.’ She looked at David. ‘If you want to thrash Val when this is over, I won’t have any objection. In fact, I’ll help.’ She turned to Mélanie. ‘Does Charles think the man who shot at him in the secret passage is the same man who killed Father?’

‘He thinks it’s possible,’ Mélanie said. ‘The man was here to meet someone last night, perhaps Mr. Fraser. He could have come back to see him tonight.’

‘But why would he kill him?’ Gisèle looked at Tommy. ‘Could the intruder be this Faucon de Maul-whatever-it-is?’

Tommy rolled his eyes at the public nature of his once-secret mission. ‘Perhaps. It sounds as though he’s the man Wheaton brought over from France and Giles McGann escorted up the coast.’

Simon crossed to the cabinet in the corner. ‘It sounds as though Le Faucon de Maulévrier—or whoever the man was who Wheaton ferried over to Britain and McGann brought up the coast—was blackmailing Kenneth Fraser to see to his safety.’ He opened the satinwood doors of the cabinet and retrieved a bottle of whisky. ‘There’s that bit Wheaton remembers about old debts coming in handy and what Miss Fraser overheard her father and Glenister say about ‘the members’ helping them tidy up a mess of some sort. But if this man was blackmailing Kenneth Fraser, it’s hard to see why he’d kill him.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t need Father anymore now that he’s out of France,’ Gisèle said. ‘If Father was the one person in Britain who knew who he really was, he’d be a liability.’

‘And Honoria?’ David said. ‘Where does she fit in?’

Gisèle leaned forward, elbows on her knees. ‘If she was poking into the past, and she stumbled on something concerning Le Faucon and whatever nasty thing the Elsinore League swept under the carpet years ago—’

‘She was killed by someone in the house,’ David pointed out.

Gisèle blinked. ‘The only people in the house who would have been afraid of her investigating the Elsinore League are Father and Lord Glenister, and Father couldn’t have killed her, so…’

‘We don’t know that she was killed because of the Elsinore League,’ Simon said. He was pouring the whisky into a variety of drinking vessels—glasses, mugs, a coffee cup he’d brought up from the Gold Saloon.

‘But we know Soro claimed they’d killed at least once and we know Honoria was poking her nose into their business,’ Tommy said. His voice had its habitual drawl, but his hands were balled into fists.

Mélanie felt herself softening inside as though she were looking at her son rather than her husband’s former colleague and frequent rival. ‘Whyever she was killed, it wasn’t because of anything you told her when you met her in the churchyard, Tommy. You said yourself you kept talking at cross-purposes.’

‘If I’d got her to explain why she was suddenly so interested in the past—’ Tommy shook his head.

Mélanie accepted a glass of whisky from Simon. ‘She wanted to know about her father. We keep coming back to him and the Elsinore League.’

Gisèle scowled into her whisky. ‘What is the effect Honoria has on men? I know she is—was—pretty, but that’s not enough to explain how she could make all men besotted with her. Even Charles—’ She glanced at Mélanie and drew a breath. ‘I mean—’

‘It’s all right.’ Mélanie took a sip of whisky to cover the fact that it wasn’t all right at all. Beneath the smoky taste, something lingered on her tongue, like an afterthought.

‘She didn’t actually mention her father’s death when we met,’ Tommy said, ‘even though we were standing in the churchyard right beside his grave.’

‘Yes, but—’ The afterthought clicked into place in Mélanie’s head. ‘Don’t drink.’

‘What is it?’ Gisèle said.

Mélanie set the glass down. ‘Laudanum.’