Chapter 39: : Chapter 38

‘Spasy, wake up.’

‘Quen.’ Aspasia sat up in bed, blood pounding, thoughts atumble. ‘What’s happened? Is Chloe—’

‘Everyone’s fine. My God, what we’ve come to.’ A desperate laugh underlay his voice. ‘You never used to scream when I came to your room in the middle of the night.’

‘Are you mad?’ She tugged the sheet over the serviceable linen of her nightdress. ‘I have no intention—’

‘It’s all right, Spasy. I haven’t come here to seduce you. I have more important things to think about’ The flame of the candle he carried wavered as though his fingers were trembling. He set the candle on her bedside table. ‘You were right. About Evie.’

Her throat closed. ‘I won’t say I told you so. I’m glad you talked to her.’

‘I didn’t bring it up. She did, though not in so many words. We were talking and then suddenly she was in my arms.’

She wanted this. She knew it was right. So why did it feel as if a knife was twisting beneath her ribs? ‘That sounds like effective communication.’

‘It’s the devil of a mess.’

‘Quen, if you’d only stop these Corsairlike delusions that you’re not fit to touch the hem of her gown—’

‘It’s not that. That is, I’m certainly not fit to touch the hem of her gown, but that’s not the problem.’ His hand clenched on the quilt, crumpling the moss roses. ‘I love Evie. But I’m not in love with her. I thought perhaps—but the moment she leaned into me, everything was clear.’

‘If you think—’

‘Will you be quiet for two seconds together, woman? This isn’t one of your schoolrooms. I’m not in love with Evie, and I don’t think I ever could be. I don’t think I’m capable of loving anyone else so long as I’m still in love with you.’

For a moment, she was sure she’d never breathe again. ‘Oh, my dear. I won’t pretend I’m not—that a part of me isn’t flattered. But you will get over—’

‘That’s just it.’ He placed his hand over her own. His fingers were warm and firm and oh so familiar. ‘I don’t see why I should want to.’

She tugged her hand away. ‘Because of what we said earlier today. We can’t go back.’

Quen stared down at a frayed thread in the quilt. ‘I learned a number of things today. Including the fact that apparently Kenneth Fraser fathered me.’

She’d thought no revelation about the Glenister House family could surprise her. She’d been wrong. ‘Quen—’

‘I’ve spent five-and-twenty years either trying to live up to my father’s expectations or trying to prove I could go merrily on my way to hell and not give a damn what he thought of me. Or sometimes both at once. One way or another I’ve let my entire life be shaped by a man who isn’t even my father, a man who may have killed Honoria. What’s the sense? I’m through with playing by other people’s rules. I’m going to rough-hew my own destiny. I don’t want to go back, Spasy. I want to go forward.’

She felt the pull of his words like a tug to the marrow of her bones. ‘I can’t, Quen. I can’t be your mistress again. It was madness the first time. Sweet madness, but I can’t repeat it.’

‘I don’t want you to be my mistress,’ the future Marquis of Glenister said. ‘I want you to be my wife.’

‘Mrs. Fraser.’ Evie turned from the library fireplace, her face a mask of shadows. ‘I came down to look for a book.’

‘In the secret passage in the dark?’

Evie stepped away from the carved Fraser crest that triggered the opening to the passage. ‘Silly of me, I suppose. Ian fell asleep and Gisèle seemed to want a moment alone with Mr. Thirle. I gave up any hope of trying to sleep myself tonight. I was thinking of what you were saying about the hidden rooms and I wanted to see them. I never have.’

‘Exploring the passage with a killer running about could be dangerous,’ Mélanie said. ‘Didn’t Simon and Mr. McGann ask you what you were doing?’

‘I told them I was going to get a book. I wasn’t thinking very clearly, truth to tell. I just wanted to be doing something.’

‘You wanted to find the papers I said might be hidden in the secret rooms.’

‘No. Well, yes, of course, if I could. It would help if we had them, wouldn’t it?’

‘If I’m right that they contain a secret Honoria was killed to conceal, then yes, very much.’

Evie’s eyes widened. The whites gleamed in the darkness. ‘You think that’s why Honoria was killed? Because she knew something dangerous?’

‘And was trying to use the knowledge to blackmail someone.’ Mélanie crossed the library and lit the lamp on the gateleg table in the center of the room. ‘What was it, Evie? Did she try to force you to slip into David’s bed? Some sort of revenge for Simon rejecting her?’

Evie drew back against the paneling. ‘Mrs. Fraser, I’m not sure what you think happened, but I can tell you’ve got it hopelessly twisted round.’

Mélanie studied Honoria Talbot’s cousin, only a little over a year younger than she was herself. One of the few people in Britain who’d accepted her from their first meeting. ‘It was the earrings. I should have thought of it earlier.’

‘The earrings?’ Evie repeated, as though Mélanie had taken leave of her senses.

‘You said Honoria came to your room the night of the murder because she wanted to borrow your coral earrings. But Fitton said Miss Talbot told her she wanted to wear her striped lilac sarcenet and her violet spencer the next day. Honoria had an impeccable sense of style and color. She wouldn’t have worn coral with lilac and violet.’

Evie burst into laughter that echoed off the dark reaches of the ceiling. ‘That’s what you’re basing this on? Mrs. Fraser, I know you’re desperate to find answers—we all are—but surely you realize Honoria might have changed her mind about what she meant to wear the next day?’

‘She might. But then I started considering the other facts. Simon figured out that it was Honoria herself who drugged David’s whisky. Not the way to embark on another seduction attempt. But what better revenge than to have Simon’s lover caught in bed with a woman, an unmarried young woman whom David would be in honor bound obliged to marry. David’s father would insist on it—in fact, he’d be only too happy to see David with a wife.’

‘David can stand up to his father.’

‘But David’s own sense of honor would compel him to make the girl an offer rather than see an innocent pawn face ruin.’

Evie shook her head. Wisps of chestnut hair fell about her face and clung to her forehead. ‘You can’t imagine I’d ever agree to such a scheme.’

‘Not without a great threat being held over your head.’

‘What could possibly be—’

‘We all have an ultimate weakness, something that can push us over the edge.’ Mélanie glanced down at the lamplight on the red-grained wood of the table. She knew, none better, how to search out those weaknesses and turn them to her own advantage. ‘Power, fortune, a cause, the need to protect those we love.’ She lifted her gaze to Evie’s face. ‘Lord Quentin said you think it’s your job to look after everyone in the family. Miss Newland said you were practically running Glenister House at thirteen.’

Evie’s gaze held the sort of confusion Mélanie saw on Colin’s face when he couldn’t follow the logic of an adult conversation. ‘I’m sorry, I must be being very stupid. I thought you were accusing me of killing Honoria. And now you’re saying I killed the girl who was practically my sister to protect my family?’

‘The rest of your family. Because the knowledge she’d acquired endangered all of them.’

A spasm crossed Evie’s face but her eyes remained as clear as spring water. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Your grandfather, old Lord Glenister, paid Kenneth Fraser to tidy up problems for him. Thirty-two years ago, he paid Kenneth Fraser a particularly large sum, so large a sum that Kenneth Fraser was able to stand for Parliament and eventually purchase Dunmykel. At roughly the same time, Mr. Fraser paid Mr. and Mrs. Thirle to raise a baby as their own baby daughter’s twin. Andrew.’

‘You’re saying Andrew Thirle is Mr. Fraser’s son?’

‘Andrew believed so, but Charles and I think Kenneth Fraser was acting as your grandfather’s agent in the matter.’

‘You think my grandfather—’

‘We couldn’t determine who had fathered Andrew, though we suspected it was a member of your family. We also learned that at some point in the past, the current Lord Glenister and Mr. Fraser embroiled their friends, both here and on the Continent, in something dangerous, something personal, something Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister feared Honoria learning the truth about to the day she died.’

Evie ran her hands over the thick gray folds of the gown she’d worn to Honoria’s funeral. ‘Mrs. Fraser, my uncle and Mr. Fraser and their friends did many things I’m sure they’d have preferred Honoria never to learn. Need I elaborate?’

Mélanie turned up the lamp so the light spilled between them. ‘And we know for a fact that twenty years ago this autumn, the current Lord Glenister and his brother, Lord Cyril, had a sudden falling-out at a house party at Dunmykel. Kenneth Fraser was present, as were a number of their friends, friends they’d known since university and the Grand Tour. Lord Glenister insisted on challenging Lord Cyril to a duel and mortally wounded him.’

Fear flashed in Evie’s gaze, like a ripple in a stream. ‘Uncle Cyril died in a shooting accident.’

”That was only the cover story. When he was dying Lord Cyril begged his brother to ‘take care of her.’ ‘

Evie wet her lips as though her mouth were dry. ‘Honoria. Of course Uncle Cyril would have wanted Uncle Frederick to look after her.’

‘So I thought at first. But Honoria’s guardianship was already arranged to be shared by Lord Glenister and Lord Carfax, all the legal documents drawn up. Lord Quentin suggested that Lord Cyril might have been referring to a different woman, a woman both brothers had loved. Andrew Thirle’s biological mother, perhaps? Lady Frances said Lord Cyril kept a succession of mistresses of the same physical type—chestnut-haired, blue-eyed, small-boned. She suspected they all resembled his first love. I think she may have been right and that that first love was Andrew’s mother. Then I realized the chestnut hair and blue eyes fit someone else.’ Mélanie surveyed the young woman before her. ‘I expect you look very like your mother, Evie.’

Aspasia stared into the dark eyes of the man who had been her lover. ‘That’s not funny, Quen.’

‘It wasn’t meant to be. Do you want me to go down on my knees?’ Quen’s gaze glittered with a fire that would spill beyond the confines of any grate. ‘You always laughed at that sort of thing in novels, but I’m happy to oblige.’

‘I’m fifteen years older than you.’

‘Charles is six years older than his wife. Thirle’s thirteen years older than Gisèle and that doesn’t stop them from looking longingly at each other.’

‘It’s different—’

‘With women? For shame, Spasy. I thought better of you.’

She drew back against the headboard, resisting the pull of his gaze and the false promise it held, bright as paste jewels. ‘You can’t marry a governess.’

‘You’ve suddenly become a believer in the social divide?’

‘We can’t ignore realities. We’d never be—’

‘Accepted? By a pack of dowagers we don’t care a rush for anyway?’

‘Your family—’

‘You mean the father who isn’t really my father? For what it’s worth, I think Val will come round. Evie’—a spasm crossed his face—’Evie won’t turn her back on us. She’s made of stronger stuff than that. Father may cut off my allowance. Are you afraid to be poor?’

‘I’ve been poor all my life. But you should have a family—’

‘You don’t want children of your own?’

She turned her head away and blinked back tears. ‘You don’t even know if I can have them.’

‘Well, for that matter, I don’t know if I can, either. We certainly went to rather uncomfortable lengths to prevent finding out five years ago.’

‘Quen—’

‘Do you love me?’

‘Unfair.’

‘Do you?’

‘It’s not that simple.’

‘You’re afraid we’ll make each other miserable? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been fairly miserable these past years without you. I really don’t see how marriage could make the situation worse.’

He gripped her shoulders and put his mouth against hers. ‘I need you. I’m lost without you. But don’t marry me because of that. Marry me because you need me, too.’

Evie scarcely moved, but the revulsion in her gaze was like the kick of a musket. ‘What are you saying? That it wasn’t Uncle Cyril’s indiscretion Mr. Fraser was paid to cover up? It was my mother’s?’

The weight of a still-unvoiced past thickened the air between them, like the smell of damp and leather and old parchment that filled the library. ‘A friend of Lord Glenister’s and Mr. Fraser’s recently blackmailed Mr. Fraser into helping him escape France,’ Mélanie said. ‘I suspect he had helped Mr. Fraser conceal the truth of Andrew’s birth. He asked Charles’s friend Giles McGann if he believed it was possible to ‘pawn a heart.’ We knew it was a quote, but none of us could place it or determine its relevance. Until just now, when Simon made a reference to ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. And all at once I realized where the quote came from and why the man had referred to it.’

‘For God’s sake, Mrs. Fraser, I know how Charles is about plays, but if you’re going to base this on earrings and quotations—’

‘ ‘I have… killed a love, for whose each drop of blood I would have pawned my heart.’ Its Pity is the story of a corrupt society in which the only pure love is the incestuous passion between a brother and sister.’

All the blood fled from Evie’s face. ‘That’s monstrous. You’re implying that my mother and Uncle Cyril—’

‘Were lovers when they were young. I can only guess at the details, but I can tell you what I think happened. Your mother became pregnant—she must have only been seventeen or so. At your grandfather’s request, Mr. Fraser—who had undertaken other secret errands for him—arranged for her to go away, probably to France, to have the baby in secret and then brought the baby to the Thirles. No doubt he sought the help of friends in France to make the arrangements.’

‘But even if that were true, Uncle Frederick would have known—’

‘Perhaps not. Perhaps it was only Mr. Fraser and his friends who were involved in the arrangements and they kept your Uncle Frederick in ignorance of his sister’s plight. Or perhaps he knew the truth of the matter and forgave his brother because he was so young. What he didn’t realize was that Lord Cyril and your mother had resumed the affair and your mother found herself with child again. Only this time she eloped with an impoverished army officer and passed the baby off as his. Somehow the truth came out at that house party twenty years ago. Whatever he knew of the past, Lord Glenister couldn’t forgive Lord Cyril this time. He insisted on fighting him. When Lord Cyril begged Lord Glenister to take care of ‘her,’ he wasn’t talking about a mistress or about Honoria. He was talking about his other daughter, the daughter he couldn’t claim. He was talking about you, Evie.’

Evie drew a long, harsh breath. ‘Mrs. Fraser, I grew up in Glenister House. I’m scarcely naive. But I don’t know whether to be more shocked or offended at what you’ve just implied about my mother. Not to mention my uncle Cyril.’

‘It takes something shocking to motivate a murder.’

‘But even if this fantastic story were true, why should it have motivated me or anyone else to kill Honoria?’

‘Because Honoria had been curious about her father’s death for years and she’d stumbled upon the truth. Probably in papers Mr. Fraser kept hidden. Papers that we have yet to discover. Papers you tried to find in Mr. Fraser’s dispatch box.’

‘How on earth could I—’

‘Someone picked the lock on the dispatch box. It can be done with a hairpin, though it’s a bit time consuming. But these papers aren’t in the dispatch box. You believed me when I suggested they might be in the secret rooms.’

‘Of course I believed you. It would never have occurred to me that you were playing such a fantastical game.’ Evie regarded Mélanie in much the way Rosencrantz or Guildenstern might stare at Hamlet when he spouted his most fantastical nonsense. ‘I still don’t see why you think I killed Honoria.’

‘Because Honoria, who turned all information to her own ends, threatened to reveal the story if you wouldn’t go along with her plan and hide in David’s bed. Which would have led to you and David being forced into an unhappy marriage of convenience. And Honoria would have had a hold over you forever and a way to bring unhappiness to those you loved.’

‘Honoria wouldn’t have dared reveal such a story even if it were true.’

‘Could you risk that?’ Mélanie pressed up against the hairline cracks in Evie’s composure with a relentlessness that was as automatic as the cut and parry of a sword fight. ‘Your mother’s happiness, your uncle’s, your own…’

‘There’s no risk if the story isn’t true.’

‘Your uncle feared the truth of the past coming out. That’s why he fled rather than face Charles’s questions.’

‘It’s absurd.’ Evie spun away, then turned back to face Mélanie. ‘I scarcely know where to begin, the story is so absurd. All other things aside, how could I have known Honoria would be in Mr. Fraser’s room?’

‘Because she told you.’ Mélanie turned her deductions against Evie like the edge of a blade. The words came easily, but nausea bit her in the throat, like last night when the smugglers had beaten her. She wondered if Charles would forgive her for destroying another of his childhood friends. She wondered if she’d forgive herself. ‘Other than Val, you’re just about the only person Honoria might have confided in about her plans to seduce Mr. Fraser. I suspect she did come to your room the night of the murder. Or summoned you to hers. Not to borrow your coral earrings, but to talk about her plans for David. She may have meant for you to slip into David’s bed that night or that may have been a plan for the future. But I’m quite sure she told you she meant to go to Mr. Fraser’s room herself later that evening. Perhaps she knew he’d gone off with Lady Frances and she said she planned to be waiting for him when he returned. If so, you’d have known she’d be alone in Mr. Fraser’s bedchamber.’

The slash of the accusations showed in Evie’s eyes, but her gaze did not waver. ‘Honoria was drugged.’

‘With laudanum. Probably the laudanum she kept in her own room. You must have known about it—it was part of the plan for David. Either you managed to drug her brandy in her room two nights ago, or you’d done so earlier.’

‘And then I went to Mr. Fraser’s room and strangled her with the bellpull? My cousin? My almost-sister?’

‘Who couldn’t be stopped in any other way,’ Mélanie said.

Evie stared at her with a gaze that was battle worn and bleeding but still defiant. ‘You’re mad, Mrs. Fraser.’

‘Quite possibly. That doesn’t mean I’m not right.’

The heavy oak door thudded open.

‘Mélanie, thank goodness.’ Gisèle ran into the library, a candle tilting in her fingers. ‘It’s Charles. I went to check on him and he’s not in his room. He didn’t come into the main corridor, so he must have gone down the back stairs in the north wing. Do you think he went to the secret rooms to look for the papers?’

Hell and the devil. Mélanie had been trying to draw Evie out with her theory about the papers, but the papers could well really be in the secret rooms. Charles must have concluded as much. Damn the man, why had he gone off without her?

Mélanie moved to the panel. ‘I’ll check.’

‘I’ll go with you,’ Evie said.

Mélanie looked into Evie’s bright, steady gaze, checked her instinctive retort, and nodded. Better to keep the girl where she could watch her. And if Charles had discovered the papers and they contained what Mélanie suspected, better to confront Evie with the proof away from the others.

‘Shall I come, too?’ Gisèle asked.

‘No, stay and help keep watch upstairs. Let David and Simon and the others know where we’ve gone.’

Gisèle’s gaze skimmed over Mélanie’s face. ‘Charles will be all right, won’t he?’

‘I should think so. Charles can take care of himself.’ Mélanie pressed her fingers to the crest and released the panel. ‘Most of the time,’ she added under her breath.

Charles parried Tommy’s sword thrust and spun to the side. Pain screamed through the cut in his shoulder. He brought his sword up in a counterattack. Blade whipped against blade. The world shrank down to the point of a sword, the flick of another man’s wrist, the advantage of a foot of ground, a split second of time, an inch of steel.

Tommy pressed the attack, driving Charles against the table. Charles fell back as though he had stumbled, snatched the pewter lamp from the table behind him, and hurled it at Tommy’s head.

Glass shattered. Metal struck flesh. The room was plunged into darkness, filled with the smell of coal oil and singed hair. Charles lunged forward, sword extended to slash at where Tommy had been standing. His blade met something solid. Tommy gave a muffled curse, followed by a stir of movement and then the slice of his blade against Charles’s own.

Charles could barely pick out the darker form of his opponent in the shadows. They dueled the length of the room again, but this time it was like fighting a phantom, relying not on the treacherous evidence of one’s eyes but on the stir of booted feet on the Aubusson carpet, the whip of a blade through the air, the smell of the other man’s sweat.

Charles stepped to the side, round where he thought the sideboard stood. The second it took him to judge the distance gave Tommy the opening he needed. He flung himself forward, pinning Charles to the wall with his body. Their blades twanged together overhead. White fire ran down Charles’s shoulder.

He pressed his arm against Tommy’s, scrabbling for an inch of advantage. Steel whined against steel. Then candlelight spilled through the open door. Tommy stumbled back, blade still aimed at Charles.

‘I suggest you stop trying to run a sword through my husband, Tommy, unless you want a bullet through the heart,’ Mélanie said.