Chapter 25: : Chapter 24

Charles left the study with more questions than he’d had when he went in search of his father and Glenister. He paused at the bend in the corridor between the north wing and the central block and rubbed his hand over his eyes. If their story was to be believed, Quen was his brother. Probably. At the moment, he couldn’t afford to consider the fact except as it might impact who had killed Honoria.

‘Charles.’ His sister’s voice came from the hall. From the note of insistence, he suspected it was not the first time Gisèle had called his name. ‘I need to talk to you.’ She came running toward him, muslin skirts rustling, kid slippers thudding against the marble tiles.

‘Gelly.’ Charles forced his mind from the revelations in the study to the earlier revelations that involved the man his sister loved.

Gisèle clutched his arm. ‘Is it true? I know you talked to him.’

Oh, Christ. Had Val gone to Gisèle and tried to make excuses for himself? Charles looked down at his sister, subduing the impulse to smooth her hair as he would have done when she was a girl. ‘Yes, I talked to him. Gelly, I don’t know what you’ve heard—’

‘You have to listen to me, Charles. I know you think you understand, but you’ve got it all twisted round backward.’ Gisèle glanced toward the hall, where Alec was still on duty, then dragged him through the nearest door into the old drawing room.

Charles looked at his sister’s flushed face and determined eyes. Even before Vial’s revelations about Honoria, he’d hated the thought of Gisèle spending the rest of her life with Valentine Talbot. But he hated, too, the thought of wounding the vulnerability that lay behind her fierce defense of the man she thought she loved.

Gisèle’s eyes went dark with loathing. ‘Oh, God, you’re doing it, too.’

‘What?’

‘Looking at me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you think I’m going to put a pistol to my head. It’s what everyone does whenever I lose my temper. The legacy of being Elizabeth Fraser’s daughter.’

Charles flinched. Her words cut close to his fears both for her and for himself. He stared at the canvaswork chairs grouped round the rosewood table in the center of the room. He could picture his mother sitting there reading them a story during one of her fleeting visits to Dunmykel, her quicksilver voice weaving a magical tapestry. His gaze shifted to the Sevres vases on the mantel. One of the set was missing. He could still hear the crash when their mother had thrown it against the linenfold door.

‘Mother didn’t leave any of us an easy legacy,’ he said. ‘But I know you aren’t her any more than I am.’

‘I sometimes wonder if you know me at all, Charles. No, don’t.’ She put out a hand to stop him from speaking. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. The important thing is that you don’t understand what happened last night. You have to—’ She stopped as though the words had got caught in her throat and picked at the basket-weave embroidery on one of the chair backs.

Charles felt his way carefully, not sure how much Val had told her. ‘Gelly, I know you care for him—’

‘You can’t believe—’ Gisèle looked up at him. ‘How on earth do you know I care for him?’

‘You haven’t exactly made a secret of it.’

‘I know you’re quick at things, Charles, but I didn’t think you paid that much attention to me.’

‘Of course I pay attention to you. You’re my sister.’

‘That didn’t stop you from—oh, poison, I’m doing it again. Look, I don’t know exactly what you believe—’

‘I don’t know what exactly he’s told you.’

Gisèle blinked. ‘He hasn’t told me anything. He’s the last man on earth who’d come running to me because he needed help. You should know that. He’s your friend.’

‘Val and I were never friends.’

‘You always—’ She stared at him as he though he’d started quoting from the wrong play. ‘Val?’

‘Val. Lord Valentine Talbot. The man you’ve been flirting madly with for the past two months.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Charles. You didn’t think I was actually in love with Val, did you?’

‘Actually in love? No. But I thought you’d convinced yourself you loved him.’ He studied his sister’s face, the brilliant scorn in her eyes, the twisted mockery in the curve of her mouth. ‘It seems I was wrong.’

‘That’s really what you think of me? A silly little chit whose head could be turned by a man like that?’

‘When it comes to infatuation, sense often has very little to do with it.’

‘I know we don’t know each other well, but somehow I thought you had more faith in me.’

‘Gelly—’

‘It doesn’t matter now, Charles.’ She straightened her slender shoulders. In that moment she reminded him keenly of their mother, not her instability, but her air of command. ‘Marjorie, my maid, is second cousin to Morag, who works in the kitchens. Morag told Marjorie that she slipped back into the library late last night and saw—’

‘Andrew.’ The puzzle pieces locked into place in Charles’s mind. ‘You’re concerned about Andrew.’

Gisèle took a step toward him, eyes emerald green with urgency. ‘I know how it must look, Charles, but it—why he was in the house last night—it doesn’t have anything to do with Honoria’s death.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘Because I know why he used the passage. He was seeing me back to my room.’

‘What?’

‘No, not like that. Not that I didn’t—’ She turned on her heel and fiddled with the vase of roses that stood on the pianoforte. ‘Last Christmas—before you came back from Paris—we came to Dunmykel for the holidays—Aunt Frances and Chloe and me. Father joined us just before Christmas. It was years since I’d been here—Aunt Frances isn’t fond of the house. I think it was the first time Andrew had thought of me as grown up. At least I thought he thought of me as grown up.’ She snapped off a rose that was drooping and jabbed the shortened stem into the water.

Wounded pride and an injured heart radiated from the curve of her shoulders and the sting in her voice. ‘ ‘Grown up’ is a relative term,’ Charles said in the gentlest voice he could.

‘I’m the same age Mélanie was when you married her.’

The truth of this statement was like the shock of a cloudburst. ‘Very true,’ Charles said. He couldn’t explain the experiences mat had made the nineteen-year-old Mélanie old beyond her years, so instead he said, ‘But I was younger myself. Andrew’s more than ten years older than you.’

‘Father was more than thirty years older than Honoria, though perhaps that’s not the best parallel.’ She pushed her fringe of curls back from her forehead. ‘Anyway, Andrew thought I was grown up enough to kiss. Well, I suppose to be fair, I kissed him, but he definitely kissed me back.’ She looked at Charles over her shoulder with a gaze that dared him to exclaim with shock at the image of his baby sister locked in his friend’s arms.

Charles suppressed the impulse to do so. ‘And then?’

Gisèle looked away. ‘The details don’t matter. The point is Andrew told me it couldn’t go any further.’

‘Further than what?’ Charles said, leashing the alarm in his voice.

‘I told you he—I—we kissed. Once. I thought it meant more than it did. To him it must have been holiday cheer or loneliness or something.’

‘It’s not easy, caring for someone more than they care for you,’ Charles said, and then wondered what the devil he was doing giving romantic advice. His experience was decidedly limited.

Gisèle spared him another brief glance. ‘I was furious and hurt. That’s why I struck up the flirtation with Val this spring and why I didn’t want to come to the house party. Then I decided I had to see Andrew again and try to make him understand.’ She swallowed. ‘I know, I should have accepted how he felt, but—’

‘It’s difficult to make the feelings go away.’

‘Yes.’ She started to look away, then seemed to force herself to keep her gaze on his. ‘Last night, I went through the secret passage and slipped into Andrew’s room.’

Charles had visions of Honoria in his rooms in Lisbon. ‘Gelly—’

‘Don’t worry, Andrew was horrified. He was very kind, but he said I had to understand there could be nothing between us. He doesn’t love me.’

Renewed fear tightened Charles’s throat. ‘Do you think he might be in love with someone else?’

‘How on earth should I know?’ Gisèle said with a swiftness that betrayed more clearly than any words that she, too, feared Andrew had been in love with Honoria.

‘What time was it when you got back to your room?’

Gisèle’s fingers curled round the broken rose stem. ‘Charles—’

‘What time, Gelly?’

Her eyes were wide and as fragile as porcelain. ‘One-thirty.’

Which meant Andrew had still had time to have gone to Kenneth’s room and killed Honoria.

Lady Frances regarded Mélanie as though she were gaping, which, Mélanie realized, she very likely was. ‘I know. You thought Kenneth and I detested each other. We do. We have since he married my sister, if not before. My dear, surely you’re old enough to realize that liking has very little to do with it.’

‘No, of course not.’ For a moment Mélanie could feel Charles’s hands on her skin and his lips against her throat. And then the memory of other hands, other kisses, other moments of oblivion. ‘That is—’

Lady Frances let her gaze drift round the garden and linger on her daughter for a moment. ‘It’s odd. After watching the early days of my sister’s marriage, I was determined not to marry someone as cold and remote as Kenneth. So I chose George Dacre-Hammond, who was darkly handsome and looked very dashing in his military uniform. We were married nearly a year before I realized how dull he was. I disliked Kenneth, I thought he was horrible for my sister, but he challenged me in a way my husband never did.’

Lady Frances’s acid-tongued exchanges with Kenneth Fraser echoed in Mélanie’s head. ‘When—’

‘An alcove during a Christmas house party.’ Lady Frances tucked a strand of golden hair beneath her satin-straw hat. ‘Here, as it happens, which perhaps accounts for my somewhat conflicted feelings about the place.’ She glanced up at the house, a turreted mass against the blue sky, washed white by the sunlight. The thirteenth-century tower, the fifteenth-century north wing, the seventeenth-century central block and south wing, all overlaid by the embellishments and improvements of the eighteenth century. A jumble of eras, layered one on top of the other, like a tangle of memories. ‘Afterward I was half disgusted, half intrigued. I felt guilty at deceiving my sister, though Kenneth said Elizabeth couldn’t care less and he was probably right.’

‘Did she know?’ Mélanie asked. Charles’s mother still remained a cipher to her.

‘I’m quite sure she suspected. I never told her, perhaps out of guilt, perhaps because the secrecy gave spice to the liaison.’

Mélanie fingered the coquelicot border of her Lyons scarf. On the drive back from the village, she’d told Charles that at its crudest level lovemaking came down to the same thing. And yet she wasn’t entirely sure that was true anymore. Four and a half years of marriage had shaped what she and Charles gave and took from each other, in bed and out of it. With the weight of so much between them, it was impossible for pleasure to be merely casual or for a caress to hold no meaning beyond momentary delight.

‘The affair continued all these years?’ she asked Lady Frances.

‘Off and on,’ Lady Frances said in the tone she might have used to discuss whist partners. ‘It was never anything like exclusive. But oddly enough for two people who quickly tired of lovers, we didn’t get bored with each other. I kept thinking just one more time and I could make sense of Kenneth. Kenneth likes to master women and he could never succeed in mastering me, which made me a continual challenge.’

On the sunny patch of lawn some twenty feet away, Lady Frances’s daughter and Mélanie’s son were now building a block tower while the cat raced in circles round them. Their shrieks of excitement carried on the breeze. Was it a fool’s errand, Mélanie wondered, to even try to shield one’s children from the reality of the world? ‘And Mr. Fraser’s betrothal?’ she said. ‘Did that change things?’

‘My dear Mélanie, in our world marriage rarely changes these things.’ Lady Frances stared into the cool shadows by the granite steps. ‘But as it happens, I told Kenneth it had to end now that he was marrying again. Honoria didn’t necessarily play the game by the same rules as he and I and Elizabeth.’

‘So last night was a farewell?’

A whisper of something too intense to be shared drifted through Lady Frances’s gaze. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Did you go to the rooms off the secret passage?’

Lady Frances’s penciled brows rose. ‘You know about them?’

‘Charles and I found them last night. It was clear a couple had been there.’

Lady Frances did not flush. ‘Yes. Kenneth and I were there last night. We went downstairs shortly after midnight. We returned to our own rooms just before three. Kenneth went upstairs first, just in case anyone was up and about. I lingered downstairs, which is why I didn’t hear him scream. He must have gone straight to his room and found Honoria.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else downstairs?’

‘No. The passage and the library were empty when we came through. The intruder Charles saw in the library must have come just after.’

‘Had you been in Mr. Fraser’s secret rooms before?’

‘Occasionally. They’re a bit cold, but they have their charms.’

‘They seem designed for more than merely one couple.’

‘Very tactfully put. The correct term, I believe, is orgy. More appealing in theory than in fact, if you ask me, though it has a certain piquancy every now and again. The rooms off the caves were designed for house parties at which the women present weren’t ladies. I had heard rumors for years.’

‘What sort of rumors?’

‘The titillating sort involving various acts of debauchery. I teased Kenneth to invite me, but he never did. So I—’ Her gaze clouded. ‘I suppose in a roundabout way it might have to do with Honoria.’

‘What might?’

Lady Frances took a step away, into the shadows of the overhanging birch. ‘It was years ago. The autumn of 1797. My second son, Christopher, was cutting his baby teeth. I was staying at my father’s in Alford with the children. Elizabeth was there as well with Charles and Edgar, and my friend Lousia Mitford with her brood. Then Cyril Talbot stopped by and left Honoria with us while he went off to Dunmykel. Kenneth and Glenister and some of their other friends were having a shooting party, though I suspected the majority of their games didn’t involve guns. I was longing for some excitement, cooped up in the Highlands with a houseful of children. Elizabeth said she already knew more than she wanted to about how Kenneth spent his leisure hours, but Louisa and I decided to pay the gentlemen a surprise visit at Dunmykel.’

‘And?’

‘I don’t think I’ve ever received such an ungracious greeting from a group of gentlemen. I expected to find a party of doxies installed, but if so, they whisked them out of the way when we arrived.’

‘Was this when—?’ Mélanie did sums in her head. ‘Charles told me Miss Talbot’s father died in a shooting accident at Dunmykel.’

‘So he did, in a manner of speaking.’ Lady Frances turned to Mélanie. Through the shadows, Mélanie could see the dark line of the other woman’s drawn brows. ‘No one was in much mood for carousing. Louisa and I took ourselves off to bed after dinner.’ She fell silent for a moment. A gold crest fluttered its wings overhead. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if there had been doxies present or if Louisa and I had stayed awake. The gentlemen apparently got up to shooting games after broaching several bottles of brandy. Cyril shot himself in the chest.’

‘Dear God.’

‘To do Glenister justice, I think he blamed himself. He was a broken man, much as he was last night when he saw Honoria.’

‘Did you see Lord Cyril’s body the next morning?’

Lady Frances lifted her brows. ‘No, they had him decently put in a coffin, thank God. The funeral was the next day. Louisa and I stayed for it and then returned to my father’s.’

‘Do you remember who else was at the shooting party?’

Lady Frances frowned. ‘Sir William Cathcart. Billy Gordon. And several men I’ve never seen before or since. A couple of them gave innocuous English-sounding names, but I’d swear they were really French. Probably friends of Kenneth’s from the Grand Tour. I suspect they were visiting Britain incognito, as we were at war with France at the time, and everyone kept worrying about an invasion. And there was an Irishman whose name I can’t recall at the moment. He had the coldest eyes I’ve ever seen. As if Scotland isn’t chilly enough.’

Mélanie watched as the gold crest flew from the tree branches overhead to the hedge opposite. ‘Are you sure they were playing shooting games?’

She felt the sudden sharpness of Lady Frances’s gaze like the rake of nails on her skin. ‘Are you asking if Cyril could have died differently?’

‘Do you think he might have?’

Colin let out a cry of delight on the lawn. Miss Newland’s murmuring voice carried on the wind, the words indistinguishable. ‘Did I think it at the time?’ Lady Frances said. ‘No. But if you’re asking me if it’s possible—’ A host of possibilities hovered in the air as she drew in her breath. ‘I suppose—yes. It’s possible.’

‘Do you still think the purpose of the house party was debauchery?’

Lady Frances was silent for a long moment. ‘That’s the purpose of most activities the Glenister House set engage in. And yet when we failed to find any women present, I did wonder—’

‘If there was another reason for the gathering?’

‘No.’ Lady Frances adjusted the brim of her hat. ‘If perhaps this particular debauchery didn’t involve females at all.’

Gisèle stood at the window of the old drawing room after Charles had left, willing her heart to slow and her breathing to return to normal. She had done it. She had lied to her clever brother. And he seemed to have believed her.

She rubbed her arms. Triumph surged through her, but there was a bitter taste like burnt toast on her tongue.

She spun away from the window. Her gaze went to the hearthrug where Charles had built block castles for her dolls, to the pianoforte where he’d helped her master the Walidstein Sonata, to the window seat where he’d held her horn primer and helped her learn her letters. She tugged her shawl up about her shoulders. She had long since ceased to be the ringleted little girl who thought her brother’s tall shoulders could shield her from all harm. And that brother was gone in any case, replaced by a cool-eyed stranger who probed relentlessly at truths she couldn’t allow to come to light. She had no room for guilt. She had done what had to be done. Now she had to continue to do it and see this business through to the end.

She should be able to do so. After all, she was Elizabeth Fraser’s daughter.