Chapter 41: Chapter : Epilogue

It was a variation on the aftermath of Honoria’s murder. Mélanie went to get David and Simon. Charles went in search of Quen. They had placed Evie on the library sofa, as they had Kenneth the night before.

They gathered in the old drawing room, where Gisèle and Andrew, who had been in the library when they returned to the house, were already waiting. Quen brought Miss Newland with him. ‘We’re going to be married,’ he said without preamble.

In another set of circumstances, it might have been a surprising announcement. As things were, Mélanie was merely conscious of a vague happiness for them, overlaid by all the sorrows of the night.

Numbness encased them all, like the white-painted walls and linenfold doors of the room. Later, Mélanie thought, when the reality of Evie Mortimer’s death and what she had done in life had gnawed its way through their consciousness, it would be worse. For now, that numbness was the only thing that allowed them to listen to the truth of what had happened.

They sat round the unlit fireplace, and she and Charles once again recounted the facts, past and present, that had come to light in the past few hours. Cold facts that could not begin to explain the feelings behind the events or the feelings that those events would now stir.

Strangely enough, it was David who protested that it couldn’t be the way they said, who questioned every detail, who made them go over the story again and again. Quen sat by in frozen silence, eyes glazed not with shock or horror but with grief.

‘David, don’t,’ Quen said at last, his voice like a lash. ‘Questioning won’t change the facts.’

David, who’d been pacing, turned from the fireplace. ‘You believe it?’

Quen drew a breath, as though he had to sift the air through the mesh of everything he’d learned in the past two days. ‘It makes a sort of horrible sense,’ he said. ‘That’s the thing with all these revelations. Honoria and Val, Kenneth Fraser and my fath—Glenister—and my mother. None of the revelations has been half so surprising as they should have been.’

Miss Newland gripped his hand. He looked at her for a moment. What he saw in her eyes seemed to steady him.

‘Yes, but—’ David shook his head. ‘The idea that Honoria wanted Evie to be caught in my room as some sort of revenge for Simon—’ He couldn’t even say it. ‘It’s preposterous. And she should have known I’d never—’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Simon, leaning against the piano, turned to fix his lover with a hard, even stare. ‘If Evie had been publicly caught in your bed and faced social ruin, you’d have felt in honor bound to offer to marry her. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be the man I lo—you wouldn’t be yourself if you’d done otherwise.’

David looked back at him. ‘But why the devil would Honoria—’

‘Pique.’ Quen scraped his hands over his face. ‘Honoria couldn’t abide being made a fool of. I knew that, even if I didn’t—even if there was a lot about her I didn’t understand.’

Andrew had said nothing at all. He was staring at the candlelight on the swirls of green and gold on the carpet, as though answers lay in the intricacies of the pattern. Now he raised his gaze to Charles’s face. ‘If Cyril and Georgiana Talbot were my parents—Evie Mortimer was my sister. They both were. Miss Mortimer and Miss Talbot.’

‘At least by blood. Not in the way Maddie is.’

‘If I’d known—’

‘But you didn’t,’ Mélanie said. ‘None of us did, until too late.’

Gisèle spread her hands over her skirt, stained with dust and dirt and blood that must be Evie’s. When they’d brought Evie into the library, Gisèle had knelt beside her for a long interval. ‘She was crying,’ Gisèle said now. ‘The night of the—the night Honoria was killed. Evie almost never cried. I should have known something was wrong.’

Charles crouched beside her chair and squeezed her hands. ‘You couldn’t have guessed this, Gelly. It takes a great deal to drive someone over that edge. You couldn’t have known Evie was teetering on it.’

‘But she was my friend. I should have—’ Gisèle rubbed her hand across her eyes. ‘Evie’d always do absolutely whatever she thought necessary to sort a situation out. She’d always seemed so sweet and reasonable, but she could be quite ruthless, really. I suppose she must have decided—’

Quen nodded. ‘She never shirked what she thought needed to be done. I loved her for it. I never guessed—’ His hands went white-knuckled. ‘I don’t think I can even remember ever seeing Uncle Cyril and Aunt Georgiana together. But there’s a painting of them at Glenister House. Uncle Cyril must have been seventeen or so, Aunt Georgiana would have been sixteen. They’re in a garden, laughing together. I’d always look at that painting and think how happy they looked, so much more at ease with each other than most siblings. I never thought—’

‘That they were lovers,’ Andrew said.

Gisèle wrinkled her nose. ‘It seems so—I mean, no offense, Charles, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to—’

‘Who’s to say what drove them?’ Charles squeezed Gisèle’s hands again and got to his feet. ‘The lure of the forbidden? The comfort of the familiar? The fact that perhaps they saw each other little enough that they didn’t really feel like brother and sister? If the intrigues of their parents’ generation were anything like their own, it’s always possible they really weren’t brother and sister, at least not by blood. But whatever bound them together, it seems to have drawn them back to each other for years.’

‘From my conception to Miss Mortimer’s,’ Andrew said.

Gisèle stretched out her hand to him, then let it fall in her lap.

‘Uncle Cyril went away to school when he was eight,’ Quen said. ‘Aunt Georgiana would have only been seven. After that they wouldn’t have seen much of each other. I suppose at some point he must have come home and—’

‘They looked at each other and didn’t see a brother and sister anymore,’ Andrew said. ‘I think—I think I can understand how it might have happened.’

‘But—’ Gisèle’s eyes darkened the way Charles’s did when he was piecing evidence together. ‘Oh, Andrew, did you think Father—did you think I was—is that why—good God, why didn’t you tell me?’

Andrew looked back at her without flinching. ‘That was only part of it. There are a lot of reasons why it would never work, Gelly.’

‘There aren’t any that matter,’ Gisèle said.

Quen stared at the flame of one of the tapers on the mantel. ‘I said I’d kill whoever took Honoria’s life. It seemed so simple. But if Evie were still alive, I don’t know what the devil I’d feel—save relieved to have her back.’

‘They were both in my charge,’ Miss Newland said. ‘I should have—’

Quen gripped her hand and shook his head. ‘No.’

Simon tore his concerned gaze away from David. ‘Tommy Belmont—he was working for Le Faucon?’

‘He as good as admitted as much and that Le Faucon was the man Wheaton conveyed from France to London and McGann escorted up the coast to Dunmykel.’

‘I still can’t make sense of it,’ Quen said. He seemed to find it a relief to focus on the Elsinore League rather than Evie. ‘Le Faucon, the Elsinore League, my father—the man I thought was my father—and the man who apparently really is. Can you explain it, Charles?’

‘I can try, though a lot of it’s speculation.’ Charles walked to the fireplace and wiped a trickle of wax from one of the candlesticks. ‘Our fathers—Glenister and Kenneth Fraser—formed a club at Oxford called the Elsinore League. We can’t be sure of the exact membership, but I imagine it included a number of wealthy and powerful young men from Britain as well as foreigners they met at university and on the Grand Tour. They drank, they whored, I expect they gambled. Expensive habits. Kenneth Fraser was probably one of the poorer members of the league at this time. But he’d come to the notice of his friend’s father. Old Lord Glenister started employing Kenneth to do secret errands for him when Kenneth was still at Oxford. Kenneth kept a ledger recording the payments he received from old Lord Glenister, and he concealed the notes he received with the payments in the binding of the ledger. The notes are cryptic, but I imagine old Lord Glenister employed Kenneth to tidy up his sons’ peccadilloes. And possibly his own as well. But none of these tasks could have been as serious as the predicament old Lord Glenister brought to Kenneth in 1785. His seventeen-year-old daughter Georgiana was with child and arranging a marriage with the baby’s father was impossible, as the father was his own younger son.’

Andrew drew a swift, hard breath. Gisèle moved to the sofa where he sat and placed her hand over his own.

‘Kenneth arranged for Georgiana Talbot to have her baby in secret,’ Charles said, ‘probably somewhere in France.’

‘I think Aunt Georgiana did travel on the Continent at about that time,’ Quen said. ‘Before she made her debut. What about my fath—the current Lord Glenister? Did he help Kenneth Fraser hush up Cyril and Georgiana’s affair?’

‘I suspect so,’ Charles said in a tone that was classic Charles Fraser—cool, concise, all the facts marshaled, all feeling held at bay. ‘That would fit with what Gelly and Honoria and Evie overheard him say to Kenneth about involving the members in something personal. I’m quite sure Kenneth turned to some of his fellow Elsinore League members for help in making the arrangements for Georgiana’s stay abroad and her accouchement. A Frenchman named Coroux and another man who may or may not have been French but who later became known in France as Le Faucon de Maulévrier. Meanwhile, Kenneth arranged for Catherine Thirle, who was also pregnant, to go away from Dunmykel for her own delivery. After Georgiana gave birth—after you were born, Andrew—Kenneth brought you to Mrs. Thirle. Mrs. Thirle brought you back to Dunmykel as her daughter Maddie’s twin brother.’

‘And Georgiana Talbot?’ Andrew said.

‘Returned to her family,’ Quen said. ‘Made her debut in society in due course. But though by all accounts she had a flock of suitors, she didn’t marry for a long time.’ He looked at Charles. ‘You think she and Uncle Cyril resumed their affair?’

‘Then or later. What seems certain is that whatever force held them together endured. Eventually Cyril married. Perhaps he was trying to cover up his affair with his sister. Or to find a refuge from it. Aunt Frances said she thought he chose Susan Mallinson because he’d made up his mind to marry and she was the most convenient choice. He continued to keep mistresses who strongly resembled Georgiana.’

‘My poor Aunt Susan,’ David said. ‘She wouldn’t have understood any of it. And she died giving birth to Cyril’s daughter.’

Charles nodded. ‘Her death may have been the catalyst that drove Cyril and Georgiana back together. In any case, not long after Susan died giving birth to Honoria, Georgiana found herself pregnant. This time she took matters into her own hands. She eloped with Captain Ronald Mortimer, who evidently loved or wanted her enough to ignore the fact that she was four months pregnant with another man’s child. Whether her father guessed the baby was really Cyril’s or whether he thought Georgiana had been Mortimer’s mistress, he washed his hands of her and cut off her dowry.’

‘A cold devil, my grandfather,’ Quen said.

‘Quite.’ Charles’s mouth tightened. ‘Georgiana and Captain Mortimer were left to live off his half-pay in the obscurity of Ramsgate. Meanwhile, Kenneth Fraser had done very well off the payment he received for covering up Georgiana’s first pregnancy. He’d entered Parliament and bought Dunmykel and married my mother. The Elsinore League gatherings continued, though perhaps not as frequently as when the members had been younger. Some of the members had been caught up in the French Revolution and one had become Le Faucon de Maulévrier. Perhaps Cyril Talbot was involved in Le Faucon’s revolutionary activities. Or perhaps he and the others didn’t even know this man was Le Faucon. In any case, Le Faucon was present at the Elsinore League gathering Kenneth hosted at Dunmykel in the autumn of 1797. Colonel Coroux was there as well, as were Cyril Talbot and the present Lord Glenister, who by this time had inherited his father’s title. Whatever role Glenister had played in hushing up Georgiana’s first pregnancy, I’m quite sure he didn’t know Cyril and Georgiana had resumed the affair or that Cyril was Evie’s father.’

‘Until the house party?’ David said.

‘Yes.’ Mélanie took up the story. ‘Somehow Cyril revealed the truth—a slip of the tongue made in a drunken stupor, perhaps, or a desperate confession, or a bit of both. Glenister may have been able to forgive his brother for the initial affair with Georgiana when Cyril was eighteen, but he couldn’t forgive him for resuming the liaison and for getting Georgiana pregnant again. He insisted on challenging Cyril to an impromptu duel and he killed him. With his dying breath, Cyril asked his brother to look after Evie.’

‘Glenister rushed to my grandfather’s to see Honoria and repeated the promise,’ Charles said. ‘I heard him, though it wasn’t until tonight that I understood what he meant. Kenneth tried to keep the duel secret from the others at the house party, but Coroux and Le Faucon must have overheard something. They knew about Georgiana’s first pregnancy. They were probably able to piece together something very close to the truth.’

‘And then, after Waterloo, in the face of the White Terror, they realized how useful that truth could be,’ Mélanie said.

‘Quite. Colonel Coroux found himself imprisoned in the Conciergerie as a Bonapartist officer. Le Faucon, whatever his original nationality, seems to have been living in France as well. We know that the current Vicomte d’Argenton was trying to uncover Le Faucon’s identity. Both Le Faucon and Colonel Coroux needed to escape France and both tried to blackmail Kenneth Fraser and Glenister into helping them.’

‘So Francisco Soro was working for your father and Glenister?’ David said.

‘Indirectly. I think Kenneth and Glenister once again turned to their fellow Elsinore League members for help. According to Glenister, members of the Elsinore League wound up on both sides in the war in France. I suspect Francisco was hired by Royalist members of the Elsinore League in Paris who were acting as intermediaries between Kenneth and Glenister and Coroux and Le Faucon. Francisco and Manon were carrying messages to Coroux in prison as Coroux negotiated for his escape. Francisco may have been in communication with Le Faucon as well. The coded letter he gave me could have been from either Coroux or Le Faucon, threatening to reveal the truth about Cyril Talbot’s death if Kenneth and Glenister didn’t get him out of France. And who would Kenneth and Glenister most fear learning the truth? Cyril’s daughter. Glenister’s beloved niece, the girl Kenneth wanted to marry. Francisco must have heard the Royalist Elsinore League members he was working for say that the men Coroux and Le Faucon were blackmailing ‘feared most for Honoria.’ ‘

‘So it was our fathers—Glenister and Kenneth Fraser—who had Colonel Coroux killed?’ Quen said.

Charles nodded, his mouth hard. ‘They must have decided it was safer to have Coroux killed than to get him out of prison. I suspect it was his death that made Francisco turn on them and flee for England.’

‘And you think Tommy Belmont followed him and killed him?’ David said. ‘How the hell did he get mixed up in all this?’

‘We can only speculate. Perhaps his father or one of his uncles was a member of the league. They’d have been at Oxford with Father and Glenister. Perhaps after Castlereagh employed Tommy to investigate the league, Tommy decided it was more of a challenge to work with the league than to expose them. The closest he came to explaining himself was to say that with the war over he needed a new scope for his talents.’

‘My God,’ David said. ‘Belmont was always a cynic, but surely he had some sense of loyalty—’

‘Tommy is addicted to risk,’ Mélanie said. ‘It’s what made him a good agent And what made him restless in peacetime.’ She cast a glance at Charles. ‘It isn’t easy, learning to live in a world that doesn’t teeter constantly on the edge of chaos. There’s a wonderful freedom in never having to think beyond momentary survival. Whatever drew Tommy to the league, I suspect he was caught by the challenge of a new game to play. He can’t resist dangerous games. In that sense, he’s very like Honoria Talbot.’

Charles looked back at her for a moment, gaze steady with understanding, then turned back to the others. ‘I’m not sure when Tommy became entangled with the league, but I suspect he had something to do with Colonel Coroux’s death and Le Faucon’s escape to London. Tommy admitted that he followed Francisco to London and killed him. But meanwhile Le Faucon had decided Father posed a danger to him.’

‘Why?’ David asked. ‘If they’d kept each other’s secrets all these years and your father had helped him escape Paris—’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps because only Father knew where Le Faucon had gone to earth in Britain. We don’t know that Glenister or any of the others knew the details of his escape. Glenister may have deliberately stayed out of it. Or perhaps because of the papers Tommy was at such pains to retrieve from the secret rooms.’

‘The papers Evie died for’ Quen said. ‘What were they?’

‘I only got the briefest glance,’ Charles said. ‘On top was a bundle of love letters from Georgiana to Cyril, which Father probably got his hands on when he was covering up her first pregnancy. But there were other papers that weren’t part of that packet. Papers that I suspect hold the truth about Le Faucon’s identity. It would have made sense for Father to keep all his various forms of insurance together.’

‘And Honoria found them?’ Quen said.

‘She must have done. We know she was looking for information about her father’s death. And perhaps she thought it would be handy to know any secrets Kenneth Fraser possessed in the event he ever learned the baby she carried wasn’t his. She must have learned about the secret rooms somehow—perhaps from one of the servants. Once she found them she would have been able to discover the papers.’

‘Which Tommy Belmont was also after,’ Simon said.

‘Yes. As best I can guess, Le Faucon contacted Tommy after he reached Britain and engaged Tommy to kill Father and retrieve the incriminating papers.’

‘So it was Mr. Belmont whom you found in the library the night Honoria was killed?’ Gisèle said. ‘He’d come to see Father? Was he planning to kill him then?’

‘I believe so. He’d probably sent Father a message saying they needed to talk. Father went back up to his room after his—interlude—with Aunt Frances. No doubt he intended to change and then go down to meet Tommy. But instead he found Honoria and all thoughts of Tommy fled. Tommy arranged the meeting again for last night and—’ Charles’s eyes went dark. ‘We all saw what happened.’

Quen stared at Charles, the weight of his family’s past sliding over his face. ‘Do you think Tommy will come after my father—Glenister?’

‘I doubt it. If Tommy had wanted to get rid of Glenister as well, I think he’d have asked both Father and Glenister to meet him and dispatched them at the same time. But we can warn Glenister of what we’ve learned. Then he’ll have to decide for himself how to proceed.’

David frowned as though he were trying to make sense of a complex set of Parliamentary maneuvers. ‘What now?’ he asked.

‘As I said, I expect Glenister will deny knowledge of any of this. So, I imagine, will Tommy’s family, who will probably give it out that he’s gone to India or Jamaica for a protracted stay. I’m quite sure Castlereagh will refuse to talk, and I’m not sure how much he knows in any case. The two agents who were supposedly infiltrated into the Elsinore League worked for Tommy. They’ll probably disappear. If they even existed in the first place. We can confront Wheaton—in fact, it will give me great pleasure to do so—but I doubt even he knows more than he told us, save perhaps that Tommy was working for Father at one point.’

‘And Evie?’ Quen said.

A shadow crossed Charles’s face, though the candlelight didn’t waver. ‘Glenister and David’s father should know at least part of the truth about what happened to her and to Honoria. I leave it up to you and David to decide how much.’

Quen exchanged a look with David and nodded slowly. ‘My Aunt Georgiana will have to know something as well.’

Andrew, who had fallen to staring at the carpet again, looked up at him. ‘Miss Mortimer’s mother? Oh, God, she’s my—’

For the first time, he seemed to realize that the woman who had given birth to him and Evie Mortimer was not simply a name with a tragic history, but a very much alive human being. The full impact of what the evening’s revelations implied about his own life seemed to break over him. He went completely still, his face drained of feeling, as though to feel or think anything at all would be to shatter in pieces.

Gisèle put her arms round him. Mélanie expected him to draw away. Instinctively, she braced for rejection on Gisèle’s behalf. But instead Andrew leaned into Gisèle and clutched her tightly. Gisèle smoothed his hair. ‘It’s all right, love. I’m here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Andrew said. ‘I—’

‘Don’t talk, dearest. Not now.’ Gisèle glanced at Charles and then led Andrew from the room.

Quen helped Miss Newland to her feet. ‘We’ll talk more tomorrow, Charles. I’m afraid—I can’t think further tonight.’

David gripped Charles’s arm for a long moment. ‘It had to be done. We had to know. Thank you. And you, Mélanie.’

Charles shook his head. ‘There’s no thanks for this.’

‘There’s always thanks for the offices of a friend.’

David turned and touched Mélanie’s arm. Simon squeezed her hand, and then they, too, left the room, Simon’s arm round David’s shoulders. The various lovers scattering to different parts of the house in a sort of dark version of the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: ‘Jack shall have his Jill; Naught shall go ill.’

Mélanie turned to look at her own lover. No, not her lover, as she had told Gisèle. Her husband. A tie at once closer and farther removed, Charles was standing by the fireplace, one hand on the mantel, his head bent, his face hollowed out by the candlelight. There were soot marks on his cheeks and jaw. His shirt was streaked with dirt and blood. She was going to have to get him to let her examine the sword cut on his shoulder, which he’d been endeavoring to keep hidden from her.

Without looking up, he said, ‘I’m sorry I went to the secret rooms without you.’

Her breath stuck in her throat for a moment. ‘I went to confront Evie without you.’

‘If we’d—’

‘We can play it out a hundred different ways, Charles. I should have guessed Evie might have a pistol. We should have guessed Tommy might have a knife. But God knows what Evie might have done in desperation if she’d stayed in the house while we confronted Tommy. God knows what Tommy might have tried to disarm us if Evie hadn’t been there. We can’t ever be sure.’

Charles nodded, still without looking at her. ‘She was scarcely more than a girl.’

‘Not in the end. She was a woman, forced to make hard and desperate choices. But she did choose.’

‘It’s a damned bloody waste. Both her and Honoria.’ He swallowed. The candlelight shot through the linen of his shirt and picked out the pulse beating just above his collarbone. ‘I wasn’t in love with Honoria,’ he said a low voice. ‘But I loved her. She was my friend. She was beautiful, yes, and of course there were times when I couldn’t help but notice it. But that wasn’t the sum of it. That wasn’t even the most important part. Why does every relation between a man and a woman have to come down to the carnal?’

‘Perhaps because that’s the easiest for people to understand.’

‘A sad commentary on humanity. I don’t think David’s ever been remotely close to being in love with me. Why should everyone assume that I could only care about Honoria if I was in love with her?’

‘Difficulty looking beyond the obvious. I was the worst offender of all.’ Mélanie found herself staring at the gold circle of her wedding band. She’d cast Charles’s relationship to Miss Talbot in terms of romance and desire from the moment she overheard them in the library at the Glenister House ball. ‘I was jealous.’ She let the word linger in the air with all its implications. ‘But of all the sorts of intimacy, perhaps what happens between two people in bed was the one I had the least cause to be jealous of.’

She looked at her husband. Charles’s gaze was as unreadable as the Elsinore League’s codes. ‘In the end I scarcely knew Honoria,’ he said. ‘You can’t be jealous of an intimacy I shared with a woman who was a stranger to me.’

‘I can be jealous of what you shared with the woman you thought she was.’ Mélanie gripped the hard gold of her wedding ring. ‘You and Miss Talbot came from the same world. Whatever your feelings for her, you could scarcely avoid imagining the sort of life you might have had with her.’

Self-mocking laughter glinted in her husband’s eyes. ‘Christ, Mel, you’ve read the way my Parliamentary speeches are received in the press. I don’t belong in the world I was bom into. I never have. If I’d married Honoria she’d have wanted to see me Prime Minister or at the very least Foreign Secretary. We saw the world in different ways. I understood that even before I learned—everything we’ve learned about her. I’m not even sure who she was anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how she could play dice with other people’s lives. And yet—I can’t believe she couldn’t have been more than what we’ve learned these past days.’

Mélanie felt something twist in her chest that might have been regret or fear. Or guilt. ‘That’s the wonderful thing about you, Charles. You always think people can be better than they are.’

Charles stared at his hand where it gripped the mantel. ‘I’m glad Quen’s going to marry Miss Newland. Perhaps Andrew and Gelly will be able to salvage something from the wreckage.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Odd how we latch onto marriage as the only sort of happy ending to balance the scale.’

Mélanie’s nails scraped against her jaconet skirt. ‘I suppose it’s some sort of affirmation of hope for the future. If one does it for the right reasons.’

‘Assuming one knows what those are.’ He dug his fingers into his hair, his gaze still fixed away from her. ‘Suppose Hamlet had married Ophelia, instead of trying to send her off to safety in a nunnery. Would he have been impossibly selfish?’

Her fingers tightened, snagging a thread. She didn’t pretend to surprise at his change of subject. It wasn’t really a change at all. ‘I’m quite sure that if Ophelia had been raped and left pregnant, Hamlet would have offered her marriage to protect her. That wouldn’t have been selfish. That would have been heroic.’

‘Would he have made her happy?’

‘I suspect in a few years she wouldn’t have been able to imagine life without him.’ She swallowed, pushing air and words past the tightness in her throat. ‘Better to ask, would she have made him happy? And would he ever have been able to believe he had any right to be happy?’

Charles stared at his fingers spread on the golden oak of the mantel. Without any change in inflection, he said, ‘I tried to kill myself once.’

She couldn’t control her intake of breath. Other than that, she sat absolutely still.

‘After my mother died,’ he continued. ‘After she put a bullet through her head. Not immediately after. I went through the motions of finishing up at Oxford. By that time, I knew I’d lost my brother as well. That we’d never be the friends we’d been, though I didn’t understand why. I still don’t. And I realized my father would never—not that I ever thought he would. Or I should have known better than to think it. And I didn’t begin to understand what Gisèle needed from me. Not then. Perhaps if I had—’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what triggered it, what sent me over the edge. Why I was suddenly standing in my rooms in the Albany, trying to slash my wrists. Not very effectively.’

‘Thank God for once there was something you didn’t have a talent for.’

He gave a faint smile. ‘David found me. He and Simon wouldn’t let me out of their sight for a fortnight. David got his father to arrange my post at the embassy in Lisbon. I let him bundle me off. I let him connive at my running away.’

‘He probably saved your life.’

‘Perhaps. If I’d been stronger—Gelly needed me. I should at least have tried to explain to her. The Dunmykel tenants needed a voice raised on their behalf, not an absentee heir across the sea. Running away may have given me a respite, but it didn’t solve anything.’

It had led him to her and to their children, the one he had given his name to and the one they had created with their own bodies. But she didn’t say any of that. She didn’t dare.

‘I thought if I could learn who killed Honoria, if this time I could actually confront things instead of running—’ He dropped his hand from the mantel. ‘But we seem to be left with a worse mess than ever.’ He took a turn about the hearthrug, as though it were an enclosed space. As though he wanted to break free but couldn’t. ‘There’ll be things to do. Andrew and Quen are bound to have more questions come morning. We have to decide how much to tell the others. And we need to arrange for the funeral—both funerals—Father and Evie—’

‘Darling.’ She got to her feet. ‘We don’t have to do any of it tonight.’

He spun round to face her, his gaze raw. ‘I have to.’ The words thundered against the oak ceiling. ‘Because if I stop and think—’

He broke off. She waited in an eternity of silence. The tapers guttered on the mantel. The smell of beeswax drifted through the room.

‘Last night, when Wheaton’s men had you, I was terrified,’ he said.

It was the last thing she’d expected to hear. ‘You can be ridiculously overprotective, Charles.’

‘No, not that.’ His voice was rough, as though he were trying to pick his way through an unfamiliar tongue. ‘It was sheer bloody selfishness. I was terrified at the thought of losing you. I couldn’t imagine—I need you, Mel.’

She stared through the shadows at him, robbed of speech.

‘Oh, God, Mel, I—’ He took a half step toward her, and then stumbled into her arms. She held him, his head against her shoulder, his chest shuddering against her own.

He clutched her as though he was afraid she’d be wrenched from his arms. He sobbed into her hair. Sobs that bridged years and worlds, lies and deceptions, words they had never spoken and perhaps never would.

‘Don’t let me go.’

She smoothed his hair. They didn’t live in a fairy tale. They couldn’t ever forget what they had both seen of the world. They could only hold each other in the face of it. ‘It’s all right, darling. I’m here.’

In the end, perhaps, that was the most anyone had.