Chapter 26: : Chapter 25

Charles found his wife sitting on a granite bench in a quiet bit of garden, her gaze fixed on the hedge opposite. He paused along the walkway, allowing himself the luxury of a moment to appreciate the way the curve of her bonnet shadowed her cheekbones and her eyes caught the sparkle of the early evening sun. His throat tightened with the ache of something he could imagine but would never really know.

As usual, she glanced up, quickly aware of his regard.

‘You’ve learned something,’ he said.

‘Yes.’ She scanned his face. ‘From the look of it, so have you.’

He nodded and sat beside her.

‘You first,’ Mélanie said.

His own gaze went to the intricately interwoven leaves and branches of the hedge. Impossible to tell what lay at the heart of that thicket. ‘A number of things. The most significant of which is that Quen seems to be my father’s son.’

Mélanie drew a breath that was like the slice of a knife. ‘Start at the beginning, Charles.’

He managed to give a reasonably coherent account of his scene with his father and Glenister. Mélanie heard him out in silence. She didn’t offer sympathy or ask him how he felt about the revelations, which was a good thing because he didn’t think he could have borne it. She watched him for a moment when he finished speaking. He could feel the press of everything they had and hadn’t said to each other in the course of the day. ‘I suppose the first question is the one we keep asking,’ she said. ‘Do you believe them?’

He stared at the toes of his boots against the damp grass. ‘Father might have been able to stage the scene in the study, but I don’t think Glenister’s a good enough actor. So I’m inclined to believe them about the wager and Glenister’s wife. And Quen.’ He brushed a fallen leaf from the bench. ‘But I think it’s possible Father was playacting when he claimed to be shocked that Honoria was pregnant.’

‘Did he seem to be acting?’

‘No, but when Father’s at his best he seems utterly genuine.’ Charles shifted his position on the hard granite. ‘We’re back to the likeliest scenario. Honoria slipped into his room, he realized she was pregnant, he jumped to the conclusion that Glenister had connived at revenge—’

‘Charles, your father couldn’t have killed Miss Talbot.’

‘Mel, we keep going round in circles on this, but you can’t deny it’s possible—’

‘Yes, I can. Now. Your father couldn’t have killed Miss Talbot because he has an alibi. Your aunt Frances.’

‘What the devil would Father have been doing with Aunt Frances in the middle of the—oh.’ He stared into his wife’s open gaze. ‘Good God.’

Mélanie smoothed her hands over the sheer fabric of her skirt, as though determined to press out every wrinkle, and told him about her talk with Lady Frances.

Countless verbal duels between his father and aunt ran through Charles’s head. He rubbed his hand over his eyes. ‘I always thought they despised each other.’

‘Respect and liking don’t necessarily have anything to do with it, as Lady Frances pointed out to me.’

Charles looked at his lover and wife, thought of holding her in his arms, touching her, taking solace from her warm flesh. How poorly demarcated was the line between want and need, between lust and tenderness, between giving a lover pleasure and using her for it When did desire become manipulation and honesty give way to deceit? Was what Romeo felt when he took Juliet in his arms so different from what Edmund felt when he kissed Goneril or Regan?

‘I suppose… I always credited Aunt Frances with better taste.’

‘For what it’s worth, I think she’s rather shocked by her own response to your father. But, darling, whatever else it means, it means your father can’t have killed Miss Talbot.’

‘Unless Aunt Frances is lying.’

‘You think she’s telling the truth about having an affair with your father but lying about the times?’

‘It doesn’t seem likely, but it’s a possibility.’

‘A remote one.’

‘Yes.’ He drew a breath. The air seemed lighter. Which was absurd, because any relief at his father’s innocence was tempered by the fact that someone else, very likely someone who mattered more to him than his father did, was undoubtedly guilty.

He focused on another piece of information from her account of her talk with Lady Frances. ‘Interesting that Cyril Talbot’s death wasn’t the simple hunting accident we’d been led to believe.’

‘And that Lady Frances suspected some of the men present were Frenchmen incognito. Of course if they were friends of your father’s from before the war, they might have simply been using assumed names to spend a fortnight indulging themselves with old friends.’

‘Or they could have been members of the Elsinore League using the house party as a cover to meet with Cyril Talbot, who may have been Le Faucon de Maulévrier.’

‘Or one of the mysterious Frenchmen or the Irishman with the cold eyes could have been Le Faucon and Lord Cyril could have been a member of the league. Either way, I continue to wonder how accidental his death was.’

‘Or if he really died at all? I still find it hard to believe he’s alive somewhere, but then Cyril’s death is a truth I grew up with. If Father and Glenister were helping members of the Elsinore League stage Cyril’s death and disappearance, one can see why they’d have been so ungracious about Aunt Frances and Louisa Mitford’s arrival. On the other hand, Aunt Frances’s theory that Father and Glenister and Cyril and the others were in the midst of some sort of all-male orgy would explain it as well.’ Charles ran a finger over the granite of the bench, pockmarked by time and salt air. ‘I never thought of Father and Glenister as lovers, but I suppose it makes a sort of odd sense of the way they’ve competed and tried to take each other’s women and stayed friends of a sort despite all the betrayals.’

‘Charles,’ Mélanie said, with that intent, breathless note she got in her voice when she was piecing things together, ‘suppose both theories are true. Suppose it was an all-male orgy and suppose Cyril Talbot and some of the others were members of the Elsinore League. Suppose one of the incognito Frenchmen was Colonel Coroux. Then perhaps he wasn’t trying to blackmail Le Faucon or another member of the Elsinore League to help him escape France. Perhaps he was blackmailing your father and Lord Glenister about their relationship or about Cyril Talbot’s past. The coded letter Francisco gave us that threatens to reveal the truth could have been written to your father and Lord Glenister, and they could be the ones who ‘fear for Honoria.’ Fear her learning the truth of her father’s past or the truth that they were lovers. Or both.’

‘And if Tommy’s right that Le Faucon plans to assassinate someone to cover up his past, the target could be Father or Glenister. Or both of them.’

‘Yes. Unless we were right last night to suspect that target was Miss Talbot herself.’

‘I still don’t see what Honoria could be expected to remember about events that happened when she was little more than a baby. Or why she’d suddenly be a threat now.’

‘We could confront your father and Lord Glenister, but assuming it’s true they’d probably deny the whole emphatically.’

‘Quite. Better to wait and see if Tommy can shed some light on the matter tonight. I’d rather have as much ammunition as possible before we spring this on Father and Glenister. It’s still entirely possible Honoria’s death had nothing to do with the Elsinore League.’ Charles drew a breath. ‘I also had a talk with my sister.’ He told her about Gisèle and Andrew. ‘Which explains what Andrew was doing in the house. But Gisèle obviously suspects he was in love with Honoria, and if she’s right it gives him a motive. Andrew isn’t in the estate office. I just walked over to the lodge and his mother says he hasn’t been home. I’m not sure—’

Footsteps thudded on the grass. ‘Charles.’ David strode up to them, face ashen. ‘I’m sorry, I know you shouldn’t talk to me about any of this, but I need to know. Simon told me—about Honoria—about her coming to his room. I didn’t want to believe him at first. Christ, I actually accused him of lying to me. It’s the first time I’ve ever done that. I still can’t—in God’s name, why? Do you have any idea?’

Charles got to his feet and faced his friend. ‘Why she went to Simon’s room? Yes. Why she was killed? A number of ideas, but no answers. Yet.’ He glanced at Mélanie. ‘I think it’s time for another council of war. But we should include Simon as well.’

‘Are you sure you want to tell us anything?’ David said. ‘Technically we’re both suspects—’

‘Technically. But—’

‘I know, you can’t imagine either of us having killed her. But I can’t imagine anyone in the house having killed her.’

Charles smiled and clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘Actually, I was going to say that even in the event you or Simon killed her, I think we still have more to gain than to lose from hearing your reactions to what we’ve discovered.’

David looked at him for a moment, then gave an answering smile. As they started for the house, Charles wondered if his friend had the faintest idea how very much in earnest his words were.

A buffet supper had been laid out in the dining room, sparing the guests the awkwardness of a formal dinner. Charles, Mélanie, David, and Simon carried plates into the old drawing room and picked at the food while Charles recounted nearly all of what he and Mélanie had discovered in the course of the day. He omitted Gisèle’s revelations about her feelings for Andrew.

Mélanie watched David and Simon as they heard her husband out. David became progressively paler. Simon frowned, but didn’t appear surprised.

‘I was there,’ David said when Charles finished speaking. ‘In Lisbon. And you never told me—’

‘What good would it have done?’ Charles was leaning against the pianoforte, hands locked behind him. ‘I thought it was a schoolgirl infatuation. I thought she’d grow out of it.’

‘But she didn’t. I mean—’ David swallowed, as if he still couldn’t believe it. ‘She didn’t grow out of whatever it was. If you’d told me—’

‘If I’d told you, then what?’

‘I’d probably have suggested you marry her.’

‘Yes, I expect you would have done. Hardly the wisest course of action for any of us.’

Echoes of what might have been reverberated between the two men. ‘You could have—’

‘Protected her? Honoria didn’t want to be protected.’

‘She cared about you. I’d swear to that.’ David regarded his friend for a moment. ‘I think she loved you.’

‘I’m not sure Honoria knew what love was. But even if she had cared for me, love is notoriously unreliable as a guarantee of happiness.’

Mélanie stared at the blood-red claret in her wineglass, willing her inward flinch not to show in her eyes.

‘How could she?’ David took a turn about the room. ‘How could she degrade herself like—’

‘Like Glenister, Quen, and Val?’ Simon said in a voice as dry as the best fino.

‘No. Yes. Damn it, you know it’s different with girls.’

‘Because we don’t want to do those sorts of things?’ Mélanie looked up from the glass. ‘Or because we’re not supposed to?’

David drew a breath and ran a hand over his hair. ‘You’re kind to defend her, Mélanie. But you know you’d never do such things yourself.’

Mélanie took a sip of wine, gaze fixed on the gilt-edged rim of her plate. She could feel Simon watching her.

‘Can you be sure?’ David said to Charles. ‘Of the whole story? We only know bits and pieces and we only have Val’s word for it. Suppose he’s making it up about Honoria and him playing these games—’

‘And some other man dared Honoria to slip into my bed?’ Simon said.

David rounded on his lover. ‘You haven’t been any help, either. If you and Charles had both been honest with me at the time—’

‘You’d have suggested Honoria marry me? That would have created some interesting family gatherings.’

‘If you’re going to talk like one of your damn plays, then shut the hell up.’

‘Only trying to be honest, old boy.’

‘I don’t know where to begin to look for honesty. Honoria’s whole life was a lie.’

‘She wasn’t what you thought she was,’ Simon said. ‘Which of us would be, put under a microscope? Christ, you and I live a secret every day of our lives—’

‘If you’re going to put my loving you on a par with conducting love affairs for sport—’

Simon brushed his fingers against his lover’s cheek. ‘No. Fair enough.’

‘She was surrounded by romantic intrigue and yet expected to remain under glass,’ Mélanie said. ‘Like Ophelia at Elsinore. ‘The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon.’ I’m quite sure Lord Glenister and Mr. Fraser would have been quick to second Laertes’s opinion.’ She thought of the Fragonard paintings that were littered about the house. Young lovers in a rose-strewn garden, watched over by Venus and Cupid. A world of sugar-coated romance with carnality pulsing just beneath the surface. ‘Miss Talbot had an enviable position in life—far more so than most women. She had an old family name and a fortune and all the pin money she could spend. But there wasn’t much she was allowed to do with her life beyond looking decorous until she married. I don’t think much of how she tried to use Simon. And Charles. But I think I’m coming to understand her. She wanted to be more than a pretty ornament.’

She could feel Charles’s gaze upon her as she spoke, but he said nothing. David pushed aside his untouched plate. ‘Women don’t have many choices in life. I’m not—I do understand that. But she could have written or painted or composed music—’

‘She grew up in the Glenister House set,’ Charles said. ‘Sexual intrigue was the currency of power.’

‘It’s a pity she couldn’t have gone into the army or politics,’ Mélanie said. ‘She’d have made an admirable general, and I imagine she’d have been quite lethal at steering a bill through the House.’

David shook his head. ‘It seems so—joyless.’

Simon took a sip of wine. ‘Joy comes in many different forms. As I’m sure Lady Frances would say.’

‘Oh, God, Lady Frances,’ David said. ‘I still can’t believe—’

‘That she was Father’s lover?’ Charles said. ‘Surprising, I’ll grant you. More surprising, perhaps, than the thought of Father and Glenister as lovers.’

A look of revulsion crossed David’s face, as though he couldn’t bear the thought that Kenneth’s and Glenister’s amorous intrigues were remotely similar to his own love life. ‘Surely if they were lovers—’

‘They’d have behaved more like you and Simon?’ Mélanie said. ‘Not necessarily. Mr. Fraser and Lady Frances didn’t behave a bit like Charles and me.’

A rap sounded at the door. Addison and Blanca stepped into the room. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ Addison said, ‘but I thought you’d like a report on our questioning of the staff.’

‘Very much so,’ Charles said. ‘Come in. Have you eaten?’

Blanca wrinkled her nose and cast a glance at the scarcely touched plates that littered the room. ‘They had food set out in the servants’ hall like they do abovestairs. None of us was very hungry, either.’

Blanca and Addison sat side by side on one of the cream silk sofas, a very correct three feet apart. The affection between them was obvious to one trained at observing, but Mélanie could only guess at the exact state of their relationship. If it was up to Blanca, she suspected the two would have been lovers years ago, but Addison took the gentleman’s code every bit as seriously as Charles and was every bit as guarded about his feelings.

‘We’ve talked to all of them, at least a bit,’ Blanca said, smoothing her skirt. ‘Some of the maids were inclined to look down their noses at me because I’m a foreigner—either that or they were jealous because I know all the latest styles from Paris—but I did very well with the footmen.’

‘Hardly surprising on either score,’ Mélanie said.

‘Except for Miss Talbot’s maid, most of the staff and the visiting servants have been at their posts for some years,’ Addison said. ‘That doesn’t, of course, preclude their having been employed by the Elsinore League, but it does make it less likely.’

‘And with all the visiting valets and ladies’ maids, most of them are sleeping three and four to a room,’ Blanca added. ‘It is not an easy thing to slip from one’s bed or do anything remotely interesting at night when conditions are so crowded.’ She cast a sidelong glance at Addison.

‘Quite.’ Addison kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. ‘The one young lady Blanca spoke with, Morag, who had slipped out to meet her young man, had sworn the other three maids who shared her chamber to secrecy.’

‘One of them, Marjorie—Miss Eraser’s maid—seemed very nervous about the whole thing,’ Blanca said. ‘But all I could get her to admit was that she was afraid of getting Morag in trouble.’

‘It was difficult to get any of them to admit to anything,’ Addison said. ‘But men discretion is a vital attribute when one is in service.’

‘As we have cause to be extraordinarily grateful for in your case,’ Charles said.

Addison gave a brief, warm smile that made him look quite five years younger. ‘Your father’s and Lord Glenister’s valets were particularly reluctant to say anything about their masters. But I did gather that Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister and their friends have had many gatherings here through the years. Shooting parties, I understand. Not the sort of parties at which—’

‘Women were present,’ Charles finished for him. ‘At least not wellborn ladies.’

Addison nodded. ‘Lord Cyril Talbot met his death at one of those shooting parties. An accident with a gun, apparently. A few of the current staff were present on that occasion—Hopetoun was a footman at the time and Mrs. Johnstone was an upstairs maid—but it was a bit difficult to get the exact sequence of events straight. Apparently none of the staff was allowed in the room after Lord Cyril shot himself.’

Charles leaned forward. ‘Are you saying my father deliberately kept them out?’

‘No one put it in so many words, but that was the impression I received,’ Addison said. ‘Also—’

‘Lord Cyril didn’t die immediately, but they didn’t send for a doctor,’ Blanca said.

Addison swung his gaze to her. ‘We don’t know that for a fact.’

‘No, but we can jolly well put the pieces together, as you’re always saying. Mrs. Johnstone was sure she heard Lord Cyril’s voice inside the library after he was injured. And no one remembers anyone sending for a doctor.’

‘Do any of them remember seeing Lord Cyril’s body?’ Mélanie asked.

Addison met her gaze for a moment. ‘No. Hopetoun doesn’t remember any of the footmen being called upon to transport the body to the chapel or to arrange for the coffin. Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister and their friends must have done it themselves.’

Evie cracked open the door to the Blue Saloon. She wasn’t sure why she had thought she might find him here, save that Honoria had once said it was her favorite room at Dunmykel. The room was in shadow, lit only by the glow from the windows. The sun was just beginning to set. The rays of light slanting through the windowpanes picked out his golden hair, so like Honoria’s. He was hunched on a settee by the fireplace, back to the door, shoulders shaking.

Evie slipped into the room and pulled the door to behind her. ‘It’s all right to cry. She was your cousin. Not to mention that she was carrying your child.’

Val went completely still, then looked round to stare at her through the shadows.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Val, I’m not blind. Or deaf. Surely you don’t think I could have lived in Glenister House all these years and not known?’

‘You never—’

‘What on earth was I supposed to do?’ Evie crossed to the lapis lazuli-inlaid writing table behind the settee, found a flint in one of the drawers, and lit a pair of tapers in Sevres candlesticks. ‘Tell you and Honoria that what you were doing was deplorable and dishonorable and likely to get all sorts of people hurt? It was, you know, but neither of you has ever listened to a word I’ve said. I tried to get Honoria to talk when I suspected about the baby, but she wouldn’t discuss it with me. I couldn’t even get her to return my earrings. How the devil was I supposed to control her in this?’

Val continued to stare at her over the back of the settee. The candlelight glistened off streaks of damp on his cheeks. ‘How can you talk about it so calmly—’

‘Why not?’ Evie put the flint away and pushed the drawer shut with a snap. ‘You can.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘Oh, I see, you don’t usually discuss this sort of thing with virgins. Unless they’re the virgins you take to bed?’

He flushed claret-red. ‘Evie—’

‘I know, the rules are different when it comes to girls who might be your sisters. Only with Honoria they weren’t.’

‘For God’s sake, you shouldn’t even know—’

She walked round the settee and dropped down beside him. ‘It’s a little late, Val. I grew up in Glenister House.’

Fear flashed in his eyes like a signal fire. ‘Oh, Lord, you haven’t—’

‘No, I’m still distressingly pure. I’m not quite sure why, except I have these absurd delusions that I’m supposed to wait for love and marriage.’

‘You are,’ Val said, with an earnestness that under other circumstances might have been funny. ‘I mean—’

The pain of the past four-and-twenty hours bubbled up inside her. She laid her hand over Val’s on the silk damask of the settee. Cerulean blue. Honoria’s favorite color. ‘It’s all right, Val. There’s no sense in recriminations now. I didn’t understand her. God knows, at times I hated her.’

His gaze swung to her face, wide with surprise.

‘Don’t look at me like that. You know how maddening Honoria could be. I wouldn’t be human if I hadn’t hated her on occasion. I suppose that gives me a motive, but then everyone else seems to have one.’

Val grimaced. Evie squeezed his hand. She hadn’t come here to talk about motives. ‘But I do miss her. As you must.’

He opened his mouth as though to speak, swallowed, and nodded.

She laced her fingers through his own. ‘Tonight I keep remembering the good things. The way she’d slip into my room and hold my hand when I first came to Glenister House and I’d wake crying for home. Those wonderfully silly theatricals she organized the summer we were in Argyllshire and it rained a fortnight straight. The Christmas she decided to knit us all presents and gave us those horribly lopsided scarves. It was rather endearing that there was something Honoria wasn’t good at.’

Val gave a choked laugh and tightened his fingers round her own.

They sat in silence, surrounded by the glow from the two candles. They’d sat like this on the schoolroom hearthrug, in the long-ago days when she’d first come to Glenister House and had thought her cousins could do no wrong. Before she’d understood the darkness that lurked in all of them. Even her.

If London had stirred unwelcome memories, Scotland chilled him to his very bones. The heavy damp in the air was worse than London’s soot and grime. The tiny hold of the boat that had brought him up the coast made the fishing boat that had ferried him across the Channel seem as spacious as a yacht. His drafty room in the London lodging house had been exquisite luxury compared to this granite hut with cobwebs in every corner and the smell of peat soaked into the stones and rafters.

Still, he’d known worse. Mud huts in Spain. Caves in the Pyrenees. A burned-out farmhouse in Russia with ice crusting the roof and snow falling through the charred ceiling.

But he hadn’t felt such a fool in any of those locations. His failure in London lingered at the back of his throat, like the taste of rancid meat. He shouldn’t have allowed Soro’s mistress to escape him. Even then, he might have been able to put things right had not this abrupt journey to Scotland prevented him from searching for her. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes here. He tugged open the string on his powder bag and began to load his pistol for the night’s work ahead.