Chapter 13: : Chapter 12

Mélanie tensed inwardly as she did whenever Charles mentioned anything to do with France, but in this case she was able to shake her head without any need for deception. Charles gave a faint smile. ‘I sometimes forget what an infant you are.’

‘Only six years more so than you,’ she said. ‘An important six years in this case. You were a baby during the Reign of Terror. I was a young boy. And even then I probably wouldn’t know about it myself if I didn’t have cousins who emigrated from that part of France.’

‘Le Faucon de Maulévrier was active during the Terror?’ Charles nodded. ‘He was a représentant en mission in the Vendee at the height of the anti-Republican rebellion. He was very effective at keeping order, largely because he was willing to inflict whatever horrors it took to frighten the local populace into submission.’

‘When the guillotine proved too slow, he tied prisoners up, bombarded them with cannon fire, and bayoneted the survivors,’ Tommy said. ‘But his real task was to deal with a band of rebels who were hiding out in the hills, causing havoc for the local authorities. Le Faucon systematically had his men ravish the wives and daughters left behind in the village in an attempt to drive the men out of hiding.’

‘Did it work?’ Mélanie asked, shutting her mind to memories.

‘It was a start,’ said Tommy, seemingly unaware of the way Charles was scowling at him. ‘But after a few months he still hadn’t caught the rebel leader, who was eldest son of the d’Argenton family, the local landowners. The d’Argenton parents were dead, but a younger brother and sister still lived in the chateau. Le Faucon—’ Tommy caught Charles’s eye at last. ‘Got them to talk.’

‘He broke into the chateau and threatened to rape the sister if the younger brother wouldn’t tell him where the elder brother was?’ Mélanie said.

Tommy’s eyes widened. ‘How the devil did you know?’

‘It’s the obvious way to get the information.’ Mélanie glanced at Charles. ‘The moral dividing line is whether or not once he had the information he ravished the girl anyway and killed the younger brother.’

‘He did,’ Charles said, eyes grim. ‘And then ambushed the elder brother and his remaining followers in their camp.’

Mélanie willed herself to relax, the way she always had to when they discussed this part of French history. ‘Who was he? Le Faucon?’

‘That’s the odd thing,’ Charles said. ‘No one knows where he came from or his real name. He always signed his papers with a signet stamp, as on the paper you see there. Some say he was a student from the University of Paris, perhaps the younger son of an aristocratic family. There are even theories that he was foreign.’

‘English?’

‘Or Prussian or Belgian or Italian. Perhaps because a number of Frenchmen would prefer not to take credit for him.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘Just as the Terror was collapsing, he disappeared.’ Charles looked at Tommy.

‘We think Le Faucon is running the Elsinore League,’ Tommy said. ‘That he started the league in the days of the Terror. It may have gone on all these years, or he may have resurrected it after Waterloo.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’ Charles asked. ‘Or who he is?’

‘Damn it, Fraser, do you think I’d be in the wilds of the Highlands if I did? A lot of Frenchmen would like to see him brought to justice. A third d’Argenton son who was away at school survived the Terror and is new a; friend of the Comte d’Artois. He’s rumored to have offeree) a sizable reward for information on Le Faucon’s whereabouts.’

‘And Castlereagh?’ Charles said.

‘Would like to find him first. Le Faucon may have been a wanton criminal, but his intelligence gathering was phenomenal. Whether he continued the Elsinore League through the war or started the group up again since, he has contacts with a number of former Bonapartists who were powerful men. Castlereagh’s more interested in learning what Le Faucon can tell him than in exacting vengeance or retribution.’

‘You don’t have any idea where he went to earth?’

‘He could be anyone. A soldier in the Bonapartist army, a Bonapartist government official. He could even have been masquerading as a Royalist all these years. He could well not even be in France. The most persistent rumor is that he was British or at least-half-British and he took refuge in England.’

‘But nothing was ever proved.’

‘No. And Castlereagh knows no more than what you just outlined. Le Faucon would have been in a precarious enough position if his past had come to light under Bonaparte. Under the White Terror, with the current Vicomte d’Argenton one of d’Artois’s cronies, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of surviving.’

Charles surveyed Tommy. ‘Castlereagh told me he was afraid the Elsinore League were planning an assassination to stir up trouble between the allies. Surely that would be a bit extreme if Le Faucon fears for his life. He’s been content to lie low all these years.’

Tommy shifted his position on the settee.

‘That isn’t it, is it?’ Charles said. ‘You think they may be planning to kill someone but not to stir up trouble. To cover up Le Faucon’s past.’

‘Damn you, Charles. You could always put me in check before I even had my pawns arrayed.’

‘Who?’ Mélanie said. ‘Whom do you think they might try to kill?’

‘That’s just it.’ Tommy sprang to his feet and took a turn about the room. ‘Until we know who Le Faucon is, we can’t begin to guess.’

‘And you think McGann might know?’ Charles said.

‘He was a possible lead.’ Tommy gave a short laugh. ‘Our only possible lead.’

‘Did you find anything else in the cottage to indicate where he might have gone?’

Tommy shook his head.

‘There are no signs of violence in the cottage,’ Mélanie said, ‘but it looks as though Mr. McGann left abruptly, probably late at night.’

‘Could he have known you were on to him?’ Charles asked, his gaze trained on Tommy’s face.

Tommy stalked to the dresser and refilled his glass. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose it’s possible.’

‘What will you do now?’ Charles asked.

‘Keep looking for McGann. At present, he’s the best lead I have.’

‘Let me help make inquiries among the villagers. I can do that more easily than you can.’

‘Can you give me one good reason why I should trust you, Fraser?’

‘Not that I can think of. But I want to find McGann as much as you do.’

Tommy looked at Charles for a moment, measuring Charles as Charles had measured him. ‘All right.’

‘Where can I find you?’

‘Oh, no, I’m not going that far. Let’s appoint a meeting time and place. Midnight tomorrow?’

Charles nodded. ‘There’s a chapel on the Dunmykel grounds. Just beyond the birch coppice. It will be deserted at that hour.’

Tommy set down his port and straightened his cravat. ‘I hear your father’s to marry Honoria Talbot.’

Charles went still for a fraction of a second. ‘Gossip travels fast, even when one’s incognito. Yes. He is.’

‘She’s a lovely girl.’ A host of different subtexts hung in the air, but Mélanie couldn’t settle on any one of them. ‘For her sake, I hope they’re happy.’

‘So do I,’ said Charles.

Tommy gave a quick nod, turned to Mélanie, and lifted her hand to his lips. ‘Enchanting to see you, under any circumstances. I’d say not to let Charles drag you into anything too dangerous, but half the time it seems to be the other way round.’

Mélanie summoned up the sort of bright smile that went with champagne and dance cards and hid her true feelings as effectively as a silk fan. ‘How well you know me, Tommy.’

Tommy brushed his lips over her hand, but when he straightened up his gaze had turned serious. ‘Let me go out through the back. Then wait a bit before you leave.’ He looked from her to Charles. ‘These people are dangerous. Le Faucon, whoever he is, is still a powerful man. We know he’s ruthless, and now he has nothing to lose. Just because we’re in Britain doesn’t mean the world’s turned safe.’

Charles nodded. ‘Caution sits oddly on your tongue, Belmont. But I take your meaning.’

A smile tugged at Tommy’s mouth. ‘Despite everything, I really wouldn’t care to see you with your throat cut, Fraser. At least not until after we get to the bottom of this.’

Tommy left the room with the swish of well-cut coattails and the click of Hessian boots. Charles went to the door and looked into the hall to make sure he had really left. He came back into the room, leaned against the closed door, and nodded.

‘Do you believe him?’ Mélanie asked.

Charles prowled across the room. ‘Do you?’

‘I asked you first.’

He scowled at the bookshelves. ‘The paper with Le Faucon’s seal on it looked genuine. It was certainly old. They could have faked it, but—’

‘It would have been difficult.’

‘Yes.’ Charles ran a finger down the faded gilt of a book spine.

‘Charles.’ Mélanie looked across the room at her husband, feeling the familiar rush that always came when their minds clicked together over a problem. Some couples no doubt got this feeling from moonlight kisses or leisurely caresses exchanged on sun-dappled sheets. ‘According to Tommy, Colonel Coroux was found dead in his cell three weeks ago, which is just about the time Francisco and Manon fled Paris. What if Colonel Coroux was murdered and that’s what had Francisco so upset?’

Charles’s eyes narrowed. ‘They have to be stopped before they kill again. If Tommy’s right about Le Faucon trying to cover up his past, Coroux could have been killed because he knew too much.’

‘Perhaps the messages Manon carried were communications between Coroux and Le Faucon. Coroux was trying to blackmail Le Faucon over his past, and Le Faucon decided the only safe solution was to get rid of him.’ Mélanie fingered a fold of her skirt. ‘If McGann was involved with Le Faucon and the Elsinore League and he got wind that Francisco had escaped with the papers and the whole thing was unraveling—’

‘Then Giles would have had more than enough reason to disappear,’ Charles finished in a cold, flat voice.

‘Yes. But—’

The thud of horse hooves echoed through the dusty glass of the window. Charles crossed the room and flung open the casement. ‘Andrew.’

Mélanie followed her husband to the window in time to see Andrew Thirle, the Dunmykel estate agent, turn his dapple gray toward McGann’s gate. Andrew was the oldest of Charles’s small circle of real friends. His father had managed the estate before him, and he and Charles had grown up together at Dunmykel.

‘Charles. By all that’s wonderful,’ Andrew said. ‘I heard you arrived last night. Is McGann back?’

‘Apparently not. Where’s he gone?’

‘That seems to be the mystery.’

‘What the devil—’

‘Wait a bit,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ll come in.’

Andrew looped his horse’s reins round the gatepost and made for the door. Charles and Mélanie met him in the entrance hall. ‘What the hell happened?’ Charles demanded.

‘We aren’t sure.’ Andrew swept his beaver hat from his unruly chestnut hair. ‘Mrs. Fraser. It’s good to see you again.’

Mélanie returned the greeting. Andrew always treated her with careful formality, though she’d told him to call her Mélanie when they met three years ago.

Charles fixed his friend with a hard stare. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know what happened? Where did McGann go?’

‘No one seems to know. He’s been missing for over a fortnight. At least that’s the last time anyone saw him. He took a saddle into the tack shop in the village to be repaired two weeks ago last Thursday.’

‘He didn’t mention business to anyone? Ask anyone to look in on the house or the livestock?’

‘No. It took a while to sort out that he was actually gone. Danny Alford took the horses to his house and Meg and Harry Fyfe are feeding the rest of the animals. After a couple of days I took the spare key and had a look inside the cottage to make sure he hadn’t fallen ill or suffered an accident.’ Andrew cast a glance round the hall, as though to make sure there was no sign of McGann’s return. ‘But as you can tell, he must have gone away.’

‘In the middle of the night without warning, from the look of it.’

Andrew flicked a finger through the stack of newspapers on the gateleg table in the hall. ‘McGann never was the tidiest sort.’

‘Damn it, Andrew, don’t tell me you left it at that.’

‘What else could I have done?’ Andrew’s mobile features were set with a wariness Mélanie didn’t remember from their meeting three years before. ‘Look, Charles, I’m as fond of McGann as you are, but he’s able to take care of himself. He wouldn’t thank any of us for meddling.’

‘An old friend disappears without a word of warning, and it doesn’t even occur to you to wonder—’

‘Of course I wondered.’ Andrew’s voice cut against the beams overhead. ‘I asked questions of everyone who knew him. It’s the talk of the village—at least, it was for the first few days. But there’s no evidence of foul play. There’s no evidence he fell ill. He seems to have left of his own accord. I assume he had his reasons for doing so quietly. Which means he wouldn’t want us asking questions.’

‘Questions about what? Is there anything to even hint at why he might have done this?’

Andrew shook his head. ‘He’s always kept to himself, especially since his wife died. But my mother had him to dinner a week before he went missing and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If anything, he was in one of his more cheerful moods. He’d just received a copy of Madame de Stael’s De l’Allemagne from Edinburgh. We had quite a lively discussion about it.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Andrew, if you’re keeping something from me—’

‘Why would I keep anything from you?’

Charles stared at Andrew for a moment, then slammed his hand down on the table. ‘Did you write to me when you realized McGann had gone missing? Did I miss the letter because I left London?’ He read the answer in Andrew’s face. ‘Why the hell didn’t you at least write?’

Andrew shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was two years Charles’s senior, Mélanie knew, but in that moment he had the look of a schoolboy picking his way through a conversational mire. ‘I thought about it. But what could I have told you? There’s no reason to suspect anything untoward has happened. Besides—’ He glanced away.

‘What?’ Charles said.

Andrew looked back at Charles. ‘You haven’t wanted to have much to do with Dunmykel or anything associated with it for the past nine years.’

‘What the devil’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You’ve been back to visit—what? twice?—since you left Britain.’

‘What the hell does that have to do with—’

‘The world hasn’t stood still here any more than it has on the Continent. Do you have any idea what I deal with day to day? Thanks to your father’s Clearances, it’s next to impossible for a lot of the tenants to make a living with their cattle. I’m trying to repair cottages without the money to do so, scrape together food to get families through one more winter, scrounge up peat and firewood—let’s just say that the fact that an able-bodied man like McGann apparently disappeared of his own free will hasn’t been at the top of my list of concerns.’

Charles scraped his hand through his hair. ‘I know things have been difficult. But I assumed—’

‘That we could weather the storm better than the average Highland estate?’

‘That you’d have written to me if it was that bad.’

Andrew met his gaze as though they were confronting each other on the cricket field. ‘Did you write to me for my advice on the intricacies of Continental diplomacy? This isn’t your world anymore, Charles. Any more than the embassy in Lisbon or the Congress of Vienna is mine.’

‘Christ, Andrew, you should know I want to know when anything’s amiss at Dunmykel, whether it’s the tenants starving or McGann disappearing.’

‘That’s just it, Charles.’ Andrew’s friendly blue eyes had turned marble hard. ‘You made it clear you wanted to get as far away as possible from Dunmykel and your family. I can understand. God knows I tried to run from my own family, with less provocation, though I could only afford to go as far as Edinburgh. But it hardly inspired me to come running after you with the estate’s problems. Dunmykel hasn’t been your concern for a long time.’

‘I never—’ Charles swallowed. Mélanie saw Andrew’s words hit home like a hammer blow in her husband’s eyes.

Andrew put out a hand as though to touch Charles on the shoulder, then let it drop to his side. ‘Look, I didn’t mean—’

Charles squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I’ve no call to take my worries out on you.’

Andrew scanned Charles’s face. ‘The last few days can’t have been easy. It must have come as a shock.’

‘It?’ Charles said.

‘Your father’s betrothal to—to Miss Talbot.’ Andrew didn’t so much as glance at Mélanie as he spoke, but Mélanie suspected that had she not been present more words would have been exchanged between the two friends about Honoria Talbot. Andrew must have known Miss Talbot on her childhood visits to Dunmykel.

‘My father’s always had a knack for surprises,’ Charles said.

Andrew returned Charles’s gaze as though they were passing a memory back and forth between them. ‘McGann didn’t know about the betrothal, did he?’ Charles said.

‘No. We none of us knew until your father and Lord Glenister and Miss Talbot arrived. McGann will be pleased to see Miss Talbot as mistress of Dunmykel.’

‘I daresay. Though pardonably concerned about her marrying my father.’

‘He’s bound to be as surprised as the rest of us. He’s always had a soft spot for Miss Talbot. Mother says it’s the resemblance.’

‘Resemblance?’

‘To Miss Talbot’s mother,’ Andrew said. ‘You didn’t know? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. I didn’t know myself until Mother started reminiscing a few months ago. Apparently Miss Talbot’s mother visited Dunmykel as a girl several times with her family before her marriage, before Mr. Fraser bought the estate. According to my mother, McGann was quite taken with her. Nothing could come of it, of course. The gulf between their stations was far too wide. But it’s natural he’d care for her daughter.’

Charles regarded Andrew for a long moment, as though searching for a trace of his boyhood friend. ‘You know even more about McGann than I realized. You’re sure you can’t shed any light on why he disappeared?’

‘Quite sure,’ Andrew replied.

‘Andrew’s right.’ Charles strode along the worn ground of the path back to the house, booted feet thudding against the beaten-down grass as though he could pound some sort of sense out of it. ‘I had no call to turn my back on Dunmykel as I did.’

‘You were rather preoccupied, Charles. A little thing known as a war.’

‘I could have made more of an effort to keep in touch. I could have written to Andrew more often. I could have asked for news.’ He cast a quick glance at her, then looked back at the path ahead. ‘Andrew was reading law in Edinburgh when I left Britain. He claimed he had no desire to be immured in the country like his father.’

‘Did his father want him to take over running the estate?’

‘His father was the sort who doesn’t push. But he and Andrew quarreled when Andrew was at university. I never found out why. Andrew and I weren’t—we didn’t talk as much by that time. Then when I was in Lisbon he wrote me that his father was ill and he’d come home and later that he’d decided to stay on and run the estate. I never questioned why.’ He drew a breath. A layer of defenses was stripped from his face. It was like getting a look at the boy who had gone fishing and climbing with Andrew and borrowed books from Giles McGann. The boy she would never know. ‘Things were—bad—before I left Britain.’ He chose the words as though he were picking his way through bits of broken glass in his memory. ‘Andrew had every right to believe I didn’t want news from home. Because it was true. I didn’t want it.’

Mélanie studied his profile, outlined against the blue-gray of the sky. He seemed to have been whittled down to the bones of his past, so achingly vulnerable that she was afraid he’d break if she touched him. ‘Even if you’d known what was happening at Dunmykel, there wasn’t a great deal you could have done.’

He swung his gaze to her. ‘I could—’

‘I know you like to believe you’re responsible for everything, Charles, but the estate belongs to your father.’ She drew a breath, struck by the unreality of the fact that one day it would belong to Charles. Easy enough to think of Charles as lord of the manor. Quite impossible to imagine herself as mistress of this house that radiated history, this multitude of art treasures, these acres of land. Cutting ribbons at village fetes, taking tea with the minister’s wife, presiding over harvest dances, reviewing menus and seating arrangements for dinners of twenty-five served on the Spode china with the Fraser crest. Playing the role Honoria Talbot seemed to have been born to play. ‘It will be different one day when it’s yours.’

Charles watched her for a moment, his gaze as dense and lightless as the sky just before a thunderstorm. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose that would make a difference.’

For a moment she thought he meant to say more, but instead he took two long, impatient strides along the path. ‘Andrew knows or suspects something about why McGann went missing. I’d stake my life on it. Something he doesn’t want me to find out.’

The small window of confidences was shuttered. She wanted to wrench the shutters open, but that would only make him retreat further. Instead she fell into step beside him, forcing her mind back to the investigation. ‘Because he’s afraid for Mr. McGann?’

‘Because he doesn’t trust me.’

Mélanie frowned at the silvery line of birch that bordered the path. ‘Charles—it isn’t remotely possible that Mr. McGann is Le Faucon de Maulévrier, is it?’

‘I’d like to say no for a hundred reasons. But the most obvious is that McGann wasn’t gone from Britain long enough at the right times.’

She turned her gaze from the trees to her husband’s set face. ‘What about Cyril Talbot?’

Charles paused for a moment. ‘I only have the vaguest memories of Cyril. At the age of ten, I scarcely knew my father, let alone his friends. But from every description of him, he was as much of a dilettante as my father and Glenister, with rather less wit.’

‘That could have been a clever cover.’

‘So it could. And he did spend a great deal of time on the Continent. But if he was Le Faucon, Le Faucon died twenty years ago.’

Mélanie pushed a strand of hair beneath the satin-lined brim of her bonnet. ‘You’re certain Cyril Talbot did die?’

Her husband stared at her. ‘He’s buried in Dunmykel churchyard. And no, I wasn’t at the funeral—I was staying at my grandfather’s when he died. But why in God’s name would he have needed to fake his own death? He was safe enough in Britain as Lord Cyril Talbot.’

‘Suppose there were people who knew Lord Cyril and Le Faucon were one in the same. By faking his death and disappearing, he escaped them.’

‘But there must have been a body, even if I didn’t see it. Difficult to see how he could have managed the deception without help from Glenister and my father and perhaps others at the house party.’

‘If Lord Cyril was Le Faucon, I could imagine Glenister going to fairly drastic lengths to avert scandal and save his brother’s life. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible Lord Cyril really did die and someone else has resurrected Le Faucon’s network. Or that Lord Cyril wasn’t Le Faucon at all.’

‘Except that Cyril’s daughter seems to be in the middle of this.’

They had reached the edge of the stream that wound through the estate. Charles stared out over the clear water, but he seemed to be seeing something beyond it. Honoria, Mélanie thought. He’s remembering Honoria. He must have walked these same paths with her. She could picture Honoria, a delicate girl in a white frock, stopping to pick wild-flowers, while a gangly, teenaged Charles carried a basket and pruning sheers for her. Mélanie couldn’t remember the last time she’d had the leisure to pick flowers.

‘Francisco was right, wasn’t he?’ Charles said. ‘It keeps coming back to Honoria.’ His eyes darkened with a feeling Mélanie could not put a name to, though it made her insides twist as though someone were pressing a knife beneath her ribs. ‘I’ll talk to her tonight.’