Chapter 38: : Chapter 37

Small arms closed round his neck like a vise. Panicked breathing thudded against his chest. Molten flames shot up about them. He glanced round for a means of escape. He couldn’t feel the heat of the flames. Glass enclosed them, protected them, imprisoned them. The flames beat against it.

What’s happening, Charles? Honoria’s voice sounded in his ear, desperate and insistent.

Charles sat up in bed, digging his fingers into his scalp, caught between sleep and waking. He could still feel Honoria cringing to him, though he knew she wasn’t there.

The black streaks of the bedposts. The shadowy mass of dressing table and chairs. The lingering scent of his wife’s perfume. He was surrounded by his room at Dunmykel, yet the pounding of his heart and the sweat pouring through his hair made the dream world as vivid as reality.

Mélanie. He wanted to run to her and pour out his fears into her lap. But he couldn’t burden her. He couldn’t lay himself open. He pushed back the bedclothes, pulled on his boots, and stumbled to the door, dressed in the shirt and breeches he’d been sleeping in. Mélanie was to the left, in the central corridor, where she could keep watch on all the occupied bedchambers save their own, deepest into the north wing. He ignored the tug of her presence (insistent, battering, seductive, like the notes of the sonata she loved to play) and turned to the right, toward what he knew he had to face.

The far end of the north wing. The day nursery, smelling of chocolate and buttered bannocks, filled with ghostly shapes in the darkness. He crossed to the windows by instinct, tugged back the curtains, jerked open the shutters. Cool black glass. Protecting, imprisoning. As it had in the dream. As it had when he was a boy of ten and looked out the window of another nursery to see a molten glow on the lawn beyond.

The memory, buried for years, returned in a flood. He’d been staying at his grandfather’s. He’d woken and looked out the window of the nursery in his grandfather’s house to see the glow of flames out the window. Not a fire, but the lamps and flambeaux of a carriage arriving late at night. He’d looked down and seen the Marquis of Glenister ascending the steps of his grandfather’s house, shoulders stooped beneath a burden the ten-year-old Charles had not understood.

What’s happening, Charles ? Honoria had slipped into the nursery and tugged at his nightshirt, demanding an explanation he couldn’t give. All he could do was hold her close, imparting a comfort he feared was as false as his own mother’s promises.

The nursery door had jerked open. The thud of the oak and the rattle of the hinges reverberated through his memory. A dark figure had half fallen into the room. Dear God. Glenister’s voice, hoarse but still recognizable. He’d wrenched Honoria out of Charles’s arms and buried his face in her bright hair. Tears spilled from his eyes. Charles had never seen his father or any of his father’s friends cry before.

Sweetheart. Glenister had stroked Honoria’s hair. I’m so sorry. So very sorry. But I’ll make amends. I swear it. I’ll take care of both of you.

Charles, aged nine-and-twenty, stood alone in the day nursery at Dunmykel, picturing Glenister holding Honoria only days after he’d killed her father.

Both of you?

Mélanie fingered the strip of silk. ‘It’s definitely Miss Talbot’s. I saw her dressing gown when Charles and I searched her room.’

Simon nodded. ‘It’s the one she wore to my room and dropped on the floor. The question is, why the devil would Honoria have drugged David’s whisky? If she was trying to drug me and thought she’d have a better chance at having her way with me if I was unconscious, she knew less about men than I thought.’

Mélanie stared at the shimmering silk. ‘She could have been planning to seduce David. But again, I can’t see what she’d have to gain from drugging him unconscious first. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘No. I wish to God I knew what mischief she’d been planning, but it doesn’t get us any closer to knowing who drugged Honoria herself.’

‘Quite. The two may be completely unrelated.’

Simon stared into the shadows in the arched recesses between the wall sconces. ‘If Glenister killed her, David won’t let it go.’

‘Neither will Charles.’

‘I can’t stop David. I wouldn’t want to stop him, truth to tell. But it can be a dangerous thing, trying to bring down a peer.’ Simon turned to look at her. ‘How long can Charles keep this up?’

‘I don’t know.’

Simon’s gaze lingered on her face. ‘He’s always driven himself hard, from when I first knew him at Oxford. I used to be amazed at how long he could go without sleep and still render a coherent argument. Sometimes in Latin.’ He gave a faint smile, but his eyes stayed serious. ‘Later, after his mother died, I couldn’t believe how he could go on devouring Ludlow and Hume and Suetonius and sit up arguing politics in a coffeehouse as if nothing had happened. But—in the end none of us is truly immune to feeling.’

For a moment Mélanie thought he meant to say more, but instead he tented his hands together and stared at his fingertips.

She looked at the first of the grisaille paintings on the stair wall. Erato, the gray shadings of her form washed golden by the candlelight. In the flickering light, she almost seemed to be moving. ‘Simon. Did you ever wonder if Hamlet might have feared he was really Claudius’s son rather than the king’s?’

Simon raised his brows but didn’t question the change in subject. ‘Anything’s possible. I staged a production of Hamlet once where Laertes insisted on playing the part as though he was driven by an incestuous passion for Ophelia, which has about as much or as little textual evidence. I told him it was an interesting thought, but we weren’t doing ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore this season. What’s the matter?’

Mélanie was on her feet, her thoughts tumbling with possibilities that chilled her to the bone and quickened her blood. ‘I’ve just thought of something. Simon, I’m going to fetch Mr. McGann to keep watch with you. I’m sorry to desert you, but it’s important. You could say it’s the key to everything.’

Charles opened the door of the day nursery and stepped into the corridor. He started to turn to the left, toward his and Mélanie’s bedchamber, but sensed a stir of movement to the right, more a prickling of his nerves than a sight or sound. The door at the end of the north wing creaked softly. Someone was slipping down the servants’ stairs, away from the sharp gazes of those keeping watch in the central block.

Charles made his way to the end of the corridor and down the servants’ stairs, grateful that all the creaky treads were still ingrained in his memory from childhood. He could hear faint footfalls ahead. He reached the base of the stairs and inched through the archway into the corridor in time to catch a glimpse of pale hair and a black coat vanishing into the library. Tommy.

Charles walked down the corridor and eased open the library door. No stir of movement, no exclamation of surprise. He found a flint and lit the nearest lamp. The room was empty. Tommy must have gone down the secret passage.

Charles extinguished the lamp, put the flint in his pocket, and took one of the tapers from the mantel. There was nothing for it but to follow.

‘Mélanie.’ Gisèle looked up at the opening of the door to the room that had been given over to Ian. Her smile changed to a look of concern. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No.’ Mélanie closed the door and schooled her features to cheerful ordinariness. ‘Mr. McGann was chivalrous and gave me a brief respite. I thought I’d see how the rest of you were doing.’ She looked from Gisèle to Evie, who was perched beside her, to Ian, lying in the sickbed, and Andrew, sitting on the opposite side.

‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Fraser,’ Ian said. Mélanie was pleased to see he had a little more color than he’d had the previous evening. ‘I keep trying to think if there’s something more I can remember from when I worked for Mr. Wheaton.’

‘So do I.’ Andrew’s mouth tightened. ‘But I’m afraid I wasn’t important enough for Wheaton to reveal secrets to.’

Mélanie dropped down on the end of the bed. ‘Did you ever get the sense that the smugglers might have had special hiding places?’

‘Hiding places?’ Ian and Andrew asked, almost in unison, in the same surprised tone.

‘For especially valuable objects or papers.’ Mélanie glanced round the circle of faces. The lamplight shone off four puzzled gazes. ‘Charles and I suspect Mr. Fraser may have had some important papers that weren’t in his dispatch box. Papers that Miss Talbot had discovered, papers that may have to do with why she was killed. I was wondering if Mr. Fraser could have hidden the papers in the rooms off the cave.’

‘Rooms off the cave?’ Andrew shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to keep repeating things. But I didn’t realize—’

‘I though you must know. Mr. Fraser built a set of hidden rooms off the cave the smugglers used. Through a panel in the rock, much like the one in the library.’ Mélanie smoothed a wrinkle in the quilt. ‘It would have been the perfect place to hide something he didn’t wish to have discovered.’ She waited a moment, just to make sure the words had sunk in, then reached out to feel Ian’s forehead. ‘Oh, good. No fever.’

Charles traversed the passage, mentally calling himself every type of fool imaginable. How the hell had Tommy got downstairs without being glimpsed by Mélanie and whoever else was keeping watch over the first-floor corridor? No, that was a foolish question. Eluding attention was Tommy’s stock-in-trade, just as it had been Charles’s own. Damnation. He’d come far too close to trusting his erstwhile colleague. He should have remembered that Tommy was working for Castlereagh, whose loyalties and motivations with regard to the Elsinore League were still far from clear. He should have remembered that above all Tommy was always committed to winning the game. Of course, he still wasn’t sure what the hell game Tommy was playing.

No footfalls sounded ahead. Tommy was moving silently. At the fork in the passage Charles hesitated a moment, but he could think of no logical scenario for Tommy to have gone to the lodge, so he continued on toward the cave.

He inched into the cave as he had the library. When no sound greeted him beyond the pull of the waves, he lit his taper. The cave was as empty as when he and Mélanie had visited it two nights ago, the crates still stacked as they had been. He went to the mouth of the cave and shone the light of the taper over the sand. No footprints. Which meant that either he’d been wrong and Tommy had gone to the lodge for God knew what reason. Or that Tommy had triggered the panel to the supposedly secret rooms.

Charles pressed the depression Mélanie had found in the granite and blew out his taper as the panel slid open. This business was better accomplished in the dark.

The inner passage was as quiet as that from the house, leading Charles to wonder if perhaps he was on a fool’s errand. But then he rounded a corner and saw a blur of lamp-light that wanned the granite. The door to the secret chambers, with its intricate rose lock, had been left ajar. He stepped through the open doorway. Tommy stood with his back to the door, a lamp on the table beside him, fingers moving over the gauzy folds of the gown Juliet was half wearing in one of the paintings.

‘Looking for something?’ Charles said.

‘Christ, Fraser.’ Tommy spun round. ‘I should have known it was no good trying to give you the slip.’

‘So you should.’ Charles advanced into the room. ‘How the hell did you get past Mélanie?’

‘Slipped out my window and went along the outside of the house. You and Mélanie should have thought of that. Civilian life’s making you soft.’

‘You should have realized I was following you. What the hell are you doing here, Belmont? How did you even know where these rooms were?’

‘It wasn’t hard to figure out how to find them once you mentioned they existed. You aren’t the only one with picklocks.’

‘And your reasons?’

‘It doesn’t take a genius to deduce that if your father had any papers too dangerous to keep in the dispatch box, this is the most likely hiding place. I suppose to be sporting I should have come to you and we could have searched for the hiding place together. But we’re not at Harrow anymore. The playing fields of Europe are a bit more complicated.’

Charles set his unlit taper down on the table. ‘Have you found anything?’

‘If I had, I’d hardly have been running my fingers over Juliet’s charming frock. I prefer my women flesh and blood rather than painted. Since you’re here, I’ve no objection to searching together.’

Charles scanned the room. ‘Have you tried the Hamlet paintings?’

‘I checked Gertrude and her trio of gallants. I hadn’t got to Hamlet and Ophelia.’

Charles picked up the lamp from the table and held it up to the painting of the Prince of Denmark and the far-too-insipid-looking Ophelia. The couple were surrounded by shadows, but the lamplight revealed no hidden clues in the dark recesses of the picture. The light bounced off the filmy white of Ophelia’s gown. The texture appeared remarkably real. The artist had not been without talent. Like Juliet, Ophelia was half wearing the gown. It was pushed down to reveal her shoulders and breasts and the skirt was tucked up, but a jeweled girdle encircled her waist. Charles lifted the lamp higher. ‘Look at that.’

‘What?’

‘The clasp on the girdle.’

‘It looks like some sort of design, but—’

‘I think it’s the castle from the Elsinore League seal, tilted on its side. Hold the lamp.’

Charles dragged one of the Holland-covered chairs over and climbed up on it. The clasp on Ophelia’s girdle was the Elsinore League seal, or a simplified version of it, tilted on its side and unrecognizable unless one looked closely. He ran his fingers over it. Plots within plots, secrets within secrets, hiding places within hiding places. With a click, a piece of the painting sprang open to reveal a narrow aperture. Charles reached inside and felt the cool, dry crackle of old paper.

Tommy let out a low whistle and set the lamp down on the table. Charles lifted the papers out, sprang down from the chair, and walked over to the lamplight. A bundle of letters bound with pink silk ribbon and fastened to other papers with a plainer, buff-colored ribbon. He caught the date on the top letter, October 1784, and the words My dearest Cyril in a round schoolgirl hand. He moved closer to the lamp.

‘I take it back,’ Tommy said. ‘Civilian life hasn’t robbed you of your talents. But you were always too trusting. Set the papers down and step away from the table.’

Charles turned his head. Tommy was standing three feet away, a pistol in his hand.

‘I didn’t realize Castlereagh was so desperate for information,’ Charles said. ‘Or so lacking in trust in me.’

‘If you think I won’t fire because I’ll have to answer to Castlereagh, think again. This doesn’t have anything to do with our esteemed Foreign Secretary. Put the papers down, Charles.’

Charles set the papers on the table, aware that Tommy’s gaze was focused on his right hand as he did so. At the same time, with his left hand, he eased the flint from his pocket. Tommy reached for the papers. As he tucked them inside his coat, Charles hurled the flint at his right shoulder.

Tommy flinched and his arm jerked. Charles sprang at him as he pulled the trigger on the pistol. The shot went wide, as Charles had calculated it would. He and Tommy crashed through the archway into the next room. Tommy tossed aside the spent gun, spun away from Charles, and reached behind him. Something silver glinted in his hand. A rapier from the basket of props. The blade sliced through Charles’s shirt and across his left shoulder. Charles twisted away, stumbled to the basket, and snatched up a second rapier. He whirled round and smashed the rapier blade against Tommy’s sword.

They backed into the main room, blade meeting blade in a deadly parody of their Harrow fencing matches.

‘Careful, Charles.’ Tommy circled round, blade gleaming in the lamplight, eyes harder than the steel of the rapier. ‘I’ve been practicing all these months you’ve been lounging on a parliamentary bench and scribbling speeches.’

Charles circled in the opposite direction, gaze trained on Tommy for the smallest flicker of intention in the other man’s face. ‘How long have you been working for them?’

‘For whom?’ Tommy’s eyes glittered like dark glass. Sweat glistened on his forehead.

‘The Elsinore League. Or Le Faucon de Maulévrier. Or both. Did you meet with Le Faucon in London? Or did you come to Dunmykel to see him?’

‘My dear Charles.’ Tommy danced to one side, blade extended. ‘You should know better than to think a man in Le Faucon’s position stayed within reach of Dunmykel once he disembarked.’

‘So it wasn’t Le Faucon in the library the night Honoria was killed. It was you.’ Charles moved to counter him, dodging away from the trap of the table. ‘For God’s sake why, Tommy?’

‘Let’s say with the war over I needed a new scope for my talents.’

‘Doing Le Faucon’s dirty work? Did you kill Francisco Soro for him?’

Tommy edged away from the lamplight. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘Because I doubt Le Faucon, whoever he is, would have risked his neck taking shots at the Somerset Place terrace. And I know your talents as a sniper.’

‘You flatter me, Charles. If my aim was better you’d have been dead that night and we’d have been spared this bout of swordplay.’

‘Did you kill my father?’ The words came out with a desperation Charles hadn’t intended, as though the answer could somehow expunge nine-and-twenty years of distance and uncertainty. As though he owed a debt to the man who probably hadn’t been his father at all.

Tommy’s fingers tightened on the rapier handle. ‘That question’s a bit more complicated than you might think.’

‘The question of who bashed Kenneth Fraser’s head in isn’t complicated at all.’ Charles stepped to the side, so he had open space at his back. ‘If you’re planning on killing me, there’s no harm in telling me the whole truth.’

‘Oh, no, Charles. I’ve learned never to count on my plans working in advance,’ Tommy said.

Then he lunged for the kill.

Mélanie slipped into the library, moved to a wing-back chair in the corner beside the fireplace, and blew out her candle. Nothing to do now but wait and see if she was right, though her throat ached and her stomach churned with the fear that she was.

The cold seeped through her gown and shawl. The stillness pressed in on her. She was beginning to hope she was wrong when the hinges of the door creaked and the air stirred. She willed herself to immobility.

A slight, dark figure slipped into the room, stood still for a moment, then started across the room with determined steps and the stir of kerseymere.

‘Hullo, Evie,’ Mélanie said.