Chapter 28: : Chapter 27

Tommy strode down the length of the chapel, boot heels slamming into the granite like hammer blows. ‘Why the devil would I hurt Honoria? Because I was playing the spumed lover? Look, old man, I cared about her. I thought I’d make her a damned sight better husband than your father. But to be brutally honest, my feelings don’t run that deep for anyone.’

‘That, I suppose, is why you nearly dashed my brains out against the chapel wall a quarter-hour ago.’

‘That was—’ Tommy’s hand closed on the back of a pew. ‘I could scarcely think straight. I couldn’t believe she was dead. I kept worrying that something I’d done or not done had contributed to it.’

The lash of self-hatred in Tommy’s voice flicked against a raw wound in Charles’s own mind. ‘Honoria played dangerous games. You’ve never been one to overindulge in guilt, Tommy. Don’t start now.’

Tommy looked at him, the usual reckless glint back in his gaze. ‘Unless of course I killed her.’

‘Quite.’

Tommy lifted his hand from the pew back. ‘What sort of games?’

Before Charles could answer, the chapel door thudded open. ‘Charles.’ Gisèle stumbled into the chapel. ‘Thank God.’

Charles caught his sister by the arms. She was breathing so hard she could scarcely stand. Her hair fell about her face in a tangle, and the flounce was torn half off her gown.

Gisèle gripped his shoulder. ‘They’ve got Mélanie.’

Fear bit Charles in the throat. ‘Who does?’

‘Men. They jumped out of the trees at us. I think they might be smugglers.’

‘Where?’ Tommy joined them. ‘Where were you when they grabbed you?’

‘The edge of the birch coppice. I think they think—’ Gisèle pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. ‘Who are you?’

‘Thomas Belmont,’ Charles said. ‘My sister, Gisèle.’

‘Enchanted,’ Tommy murmured.

Gisèle tugged a yew leaf out of her hair. ‘You went to Harrow with Charles, didn’t you? Aren’t you stationed in Paris?’

‘Theoretically that’s where I am now. Do these men know who Mélanie is?’

‘No, that’s just it. I think they think she’s a boy, because of the way she’s dressed.’

‘Ah, yes, Mélanie’s adventuring clothes. How could I forget, particularly when they show off her legs so well. Stop glowering, Fraser, surely when she tells them she’s your wife, they’ll let her go.’

‘If she tells them,’ Charles said.

‘Why wouldn’t she?’

‘Because she’ll think she can get more information out of them by playing along with the charade. The only problem is, this particular charade includes knives and guns.’ Charles shut his mind to a number of unpleasant possibilities. He was used to doing so where Mélanie was concerned.

Concern flickered in Tommy’s eyes. ‘It’s been too long since we’ve done this. I keep forgetting she’s as mad as you are. Now would be a good time for one of your irritatingly brilliant plans, Fraser. For Mélanie’s sake, I even promise not to raise objections.’

Charles scowled, feeling anything but brilliant. ‘The smugglers have been using the cave at the end of the secret passage.’

‘Yes,’ Gisèle said, ‘they have, but that’s not where they’ll have taken her tonight.’

‘How can you—’ Charles stared at his sister. Her face held fear and urgency, but no hint of surprise at the events of the night. ‘Gelly—’

‘Don’t look at me like that, Charles.’ Gisèle straightened her shoulders. The candlelight bounced off her cheekbones and hollowed out the girlish softness of her face. She seemed to have grown a couple of inches taller in the last five minutes. ‘For heaven’s sake, you didn’t really think that all I was doing last night was throwing myself at Andrew like a lovesick schoolgirl, did you?’

The grip on Mélanie’s arms felt tight enough to dislocate her shoulders. Hot breath that smelled of garlic and sausages wafted over her. ‘Search his pockets,’ her captor said.

Another of the men moved to comply. Mélanie kicked him in the stomach as he bent over her. The man grunted in pain, staggered, and slapped her across the face. The blow sliced through her jaw and sent a wave of nausea into her throat. She decided she’d put on enough of a show of a struggle. She didn’t want to do so much that they actually released her, for the same reason she hadn’t pulled out her pistol in the few seconds before they’d reached her and Gisèle, for the same reason she didn’t try announcing she was really Mrs. Charles Fraser. She didn’t want them to let her go. She wanted to find out what they were up to.

‘Hah.’ The man who was searching her pulled her pistol from her coat pocket. ‘Running about with a gun. Fancy silver thing, too. That just about proves you’re him. Where’s your friend?’

‘Don’t know,’ Mélanie muttered. She’d never actually attempted a Perthshire accent, but her effort was apparently believable enough not to undeceive her captors.

‘Not bloody likely. You know. Probably sent your sweetheart off to warn him.’ The searcher drew back his arm to hit her again.

‘There’s no time, Bill.’ The third man, who had been hanging back, grabbed his aim. ‘We’re late as it is. We’ll have to take the boy with us. Here, tie him up.’

The man holding Mélanie lashed her arms together with what felt like a piece of twine and pressed the cold metal of a pistol against her side. ‘Not a word out of you, mind. March.’

Jaw still tender, Mélanie nodded.

They pushed and dragged her over the uneven ground. Her head was spinning, but the sound of the waves and the whiff of salt told her they were moving toward the coast. She slouched her shoulders and shifted her center of gravity low in her pelvis. Posture was more than half the work of masquerading as the opposite sex. Her captors said nothing as they walked, save to mutter once or twice about being late and ‘Mr. Wheaton’ being angry.

The path snaked downhill. At last they came to a halt in front of a thatch-roofed stone cottage on an open bit of ground, exposed to the buffeting of the wind off the sea. A chink or two of light showed behind burlap nailed up over the cottage’s windows. One of the men rapped at the door. A moment later it was jerked open by a thin man with straw-colored hair. He scanned the three men and Mélanie. ‘You’re late.’

‘Bit of a disturbance,’ the one called Bill said. ‘We found one of them.’

The thin man raked Mélanie with his gaze for a moment, then gave a brisk nod. Her captor pushed her into the cottage.

The air in the single room was clotted with smoke and the smell of close-pressed bodies, sour beer, and tallow candles. The greasy yellow light flickered over smoke-stained whitewashed walls, rough plank furniture, and a jumbled crowd of men. About a dozen of them, she decided, willing her vision to clear. The crowd went silent when they entered the room, and she felt the press of a multitude of gazes upon her. She was accustomed to making entrances, but not quite of this sort.

More than one face looked familiar from their visit to the Griffin & Dragon, but she saw no spark of recognition in the gazes turned her way. A stout gray-haired man in an old-fashioned claret-colored frock coat sat in an armchair covered in stained blue canvaswork. A broad-shouldered man with close-set eyes and a pistol stuck in his belt stood on one side of the chair, a dark-haired man in a black coat holding a ledger on the other. The other men present appeared to be Dunmykel tenants, but the three in the center of the room had the mark of outsiders—something about the way they stood, the cut of their coats, the careful distance between them and the others.

Mélanie’s captor addressed the man in the armchair. ‘Sorry to be late, Mr. Wheaton. We’ve found one of the rascals.’ He jerked Mélanie forward. ‘Had a pistol on him. There was a girl with him, but she ran off before we could catch her. Wouldn’t tell us where his friend is, but I fancy you can make him talk.’

‘So you’re one of the lads who chose to defy me.’ Wheaton’s gaze swept over Mélanie. His accent didn’t sound Scottish. London, with a lingering trace of the North Country. The claret-colored coat might be old-fashioned, but the cut and fabric were expensive, as was the buff-colored satin of the waistcoat beneath. Underneath the bushy gray hair, his face was surprisingly youthful. His blue eyes were sharp and appraising but didn’t seem to see beyond her disguise. Thank God for the dim light.

Wheaton leaned back in his chair. ‘I don’t know whether to admire your pluck or pity your stupidity. Or both.’ He fixed her with a gaze as hard as the pistol barrel still pressed against her ribs. ‘Where’s your friend?’

‘Where you won’t find him,’ Mélanie said in the lowest, roughest voice she could manage.

‘See here, lad, I don’t have time to waste dancing about the question. I don’t doubt you had your reasons for what you did. I’m not much interested in them at the moment. I run a business. You and your friend interfered with that business. To such an extent that I was forced to leave the convivial comforts of London and pay a visit to this’—he glanced round, his gaze lingering on the dirt floor and the traces of damp on the walls—’place.’ His inflection managed to make the word ‘place’ seem several degrees lower than a backwater. ‘We’ve lost—how much is it in the last quarter, Mr. Pryce?’

The man in the black coat flipped open the ledger and peered down at the pages. ‘Sixty-five pounds, eight shillings, nine pence.’

‘Sixty-five pounds, eight shillings, nine pence.’ Wheaton stared hard at her as he repeated the words, each number like an accusation of a capital crime. ‘I’d be a poor businessman if I didn’t do what it took to stop you from interfering again. Is that clear?’

‘Crystal,’ Mélanie muttered, and then decided that had probably been a poor word choice.

Wheaton’s gaze lingered on her. She understood the hard gleam in the depths of his eyes. Not evil, which she had long since ceased to believe existed, at least in its pure form, much as she had ceased to believe in absolute good. This was something that could be just as deadly—a willingness to do whatever it took to achieve a desired objective. ‘So where’s your friend?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

His hands closed on the arms of the chair. A piece of wood gave way with a crack. ‘You’re not in a position to play games, boy. And your insolence grows tiresome.’ He jerked his head at the man with the close-set eyes, whose broad shoulders and crooked jaw indicated that he might have been a prizefighter. She had ten seconds to brace herself. This time the blow caught her in the stomach. She doubled over, gasping.

‘See here, Mr. Wheaton,’ said a deep voice. Mélanie was bent over concentrating on not being sick, but the voice sounded like Stephen Drummond, proprietor of the Griffin & Dragon. ‘He’s only a boy.’

‘When boys start interfering in men’s affairs, they have to take a man’s punishment.’

‘Who the devil is the lad?’ said another Scots voice. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

‘I’m from Inverurie.’ She didn’t have to work to make her voice sound thick. ‘Don’t know anything about the rest of it. What you’re talking about.’

The prizefighter grabbed her by the shoulders, jerked her upright, and struck her a blow that sent her careering back against the wall.

The door burst open. ‘For God’s sake, have you gone mad, meeting tonight of all nights?’

It sounded like Andrew Thirle. It was Andrew, Mélanie saw, lifting her head and blinking through blurred vision. She turned her face to the shadows.

Andrew’s gaze swept the room. ‘You could have been followed here,’ he said to the group in general. ‘Everyone’s asking questions just now. If someone found you were meeting—’ His gaze moved past Mélanie. Then he broke off, swung his gaze back to her, and stared. ‘Good God, you blithering idiots—’

He got no further. The man behind him brought a cudgel down on his head. He collapsed on the dirt floor, unconscious.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Stephen Drummond said. ‘It’s Andrew Thirle.’

‘Yes, it’s Mr. Thirle.’ The man who’d struck the blow set down his cudgel. ‘He’s not on our side anymore, in case you’d forgotten. Now there’s a chance he won’t remember everyone he’s seen here.’

‘Too risky,’ Bill muttered. ‘No telling what he might remember.’

Wheaton glanced at Andrew as though he were a troublesome piece on the opponent’s side of the chessboard. ‘Thirle always had an annoying habit of blundering into the wrong places. It doesn’t look as though ten years have improved him. What’s his price these days?’

‘Doesn’t have one,’ Bill said. ‘Pure as the driven snow since he took over running the estate.’

‘Unless his price is Mr. Fraser’s daughter,’ Mélanie’s captor suggested with a rough laugh. ‘Or his fiancee.’

‘Or his own past,’ Stephen muttered.

‘Won’t do,’ Bill said. ‘Thirle’s turned into the sort of idiot who risks his neck for his principles. The only way to be sure he’s silent is to throw him down a well. Make it look like he took a tumble in his cups. No one’d know the difference. Leastways, they couldn’t prove it.’

Jaw smarting, bile in her throat, Mélanie began to wonder if she’d made a serious miscalculation. Even if she revealed who she was, they might decide that having abused Mrs. Charles Fraser so badly, their only hope was to get rid of her. She ought to be able to fight her way out, but she couldn’t do so and get Andrew out with her.

‘What does Thirle know about the current operation?’ Wheaton asked.

‘Nothing,’ Stephen said. ‘He hasn’t had anything to do with it since he went off to Edinburgh. The lads knew to keep him out of it when he came back to Dunmykel.’

‘That’s to say, we knew enough to try to keep him out of it.’ Bill rubbed his jaw. ‘Someone helped the wounded lad last night. He ran into the passage but we never found hide nor hair of him. The lodge opens onto the passage. Couldn’t help but wonder—’

Wheaton swung his gaze to Mélanie. ‘Did Thirle help your friend last night? Is that how he knew about our meeting tonight?’

‘No!’ Mélanie’s voice squeaked without any effort on her part. ‘Why would Mr. Thirle help me?’

‘A tender heart, perhaps? This sense of fair play we’ve been hearing about? Atoning for the sins of his own past?’

Mélanie shifted her tack. ‘You think I’ve been smuggling. Me and this friend you keep talking about. Interfering with your trade.’

‘You know damn well you have. Making your own trips to the south, bringing back goods, selling them at a lower rate.’

‘A clever plan. But not mine. Look, it’s bad enough with the laird’s lady being found dead this morning—’

Another blow caught her across the mouth. She tasted blood. ‘What do you know about the girl’s death?’ Wheaton asked.

‘Nothing.’ The words came out thick, thanks to the cut to her lip. ‘Save that it’s no time to be making trouble.’

‘Which is why you should tell us the truth.’

‘I would if—’

As she sought for words to cover her appalling lack of invention, the door thudded open yet again. Through eyes glazed with pain, Mélanie saw her husband stride into the cottage, followed by Gisèle and Tommy Belmont. She would have let out a gasp of relief, save that deep breathing of any sort hurt too much.

Charles’s gaze settled on her for the briefest instant, then swept the company. ‘Sorry to interrupt. Just in case you’re thinking of overpowering us, Mr. Belmont and I are both armed. Hullo, Stephen. I didn’t expect to see you again so quickly.’

‘Charles.’ Stephen Drummond flushed, but did not avoid Charles’s gaze.

‘Quite a gathering of old friends. But I don’t believe I know you, sir.’ Charles turned to Wheaton. ‘I’m Charles Fraser. My sister, Gisèle, and the Honorable Thomas Belmont.’

Gisèle gave a cry and dropped down beside Andrew. ‘Murderers! What have you done to him?’

Wheaton bowed in the manner of a banker to a lady of fashion who has been shown into his office. ‘I assure you, Miss Fraser, the poor gentleman is merely stunned.’

Gisèle smoothed Andrew’s hair back from his forehead. ‘How?’

‘An unfortunate accident. I’m afraid Mr. Thirle suffered a fall in the road and hit his head. One too many pints in the village, perhaps. A couple of the men carried him in here to recover.’ He looked at Charles and Tommy, who were standing on either side of the door, pistols drawn. ‘There seems to be some misunderstanding about our purpose here this evening. My name is Wheaton. I’m up from London on a fishing trip and looked up some cousins I’d never met before. They were kind enough to arrange a little party. We were just debating the best way of getting Mr. Thirle home. He’s a friend of yours? Perhaps you could see him to his house?’

‘It’s a bit more complicated, I’m afraid,’ Charles said. His gaze drifted over the crowd and fastened on Mélanie. ‘You’ll have to permit me to see my wife home as well. My dear, what sort of deception have you been practicing on these gentlemen?’

Mélanie straightened her shoulders and lifted her head as though she wore a trained court gown and a diamond tiara. ‘Really, darling, I was about to tell them when you burst in so unceremoniously. There was no need to bring guns into it.’