Chapter 37: : Chapter 36

Charles met Quen’s gaze across the study. The look in the younger man’s eyes reminded him of soldiers who’ve returned from their first battle. ‘When?’ Charles said.

‘We’re not sure exactly.’ Quen pushed the door shut. ‘I saw him pour himself a glass of wine when we first went into the dining room. Everyone was milling about the sideboard. It was nearly an hour later that Evie realized he wasn’t in the room and went to look for him. Apparently when he returned from the funeral he gave orders to have the carriage readied and had his valet pack a bag. I’m sorry, Charles. I should have guessed he might try something. But it never occurred to me he was a coward as well as a criminal.’

‘You think your father killed Honoria? Or my father? Or both?’

‘Why else would he have run?’

‘Because he didn’t want to answer further questions.’

‘For fear he’d implicate himself.’

‘Or someone else he cared about.’

Quen’s eyes narrowed. ‘You think he might be protecting me? Or Valor Evie?’

‘Or Aunt Frances or just about anyone else in the house given the right circumstances. Especially if he feels responsible.’ Charles touched his fingers to the ledger on the desk. ‘What do you know about your uncle’s death?’

‘My uncle?’ Quen passed a hand over his face. ‘Oh, you mean Honoria’s father. I was only five when he died. I don’t remember much, save that Father came back from Scotland looking as though he’d simultaneously lost a prizefight and suffered a bout of influenza. He told us our uncle Cyril was dead and Honoria was going to be our sister now.’ Quen glanced round, as though for the first time taking in the presence of Mélanie, Tommy, and McGann. He peered at McGann. ‘Giles?’

McGann inclined his head. ‘I’m sorry about your cousin, Lord Quentin.’

‘Thank you. So am I.’ Quen’s gaze whipped from McGann to Charles. ‘What have you learned?’

‘You’d better sit down, Quen,’ Charles said.

‘Look, Charles, I know I’m still a suspect. You just said as much and I’m not stupid. But I can help you better if I understand. And if I was guilty of one or both murders, presumably I’d know whatever it is already.’

‘Only the relevant bits.’

‘And you can’t be sure which are relevant.’

‘Quite. For your own sake I’d rather you never had to hear any of this. But too many people know too much of it now to keep it quiet.’

‘Then you’d better tell me.’

Charles watched Quen for a moment longer. He had an image of the bright-eyed little boy he’d taught to hold a cricket bat. His throat went tight with the difficulty of choosing the right words, the way it had when he’d had to explain to his son that people who were sick didn’t always get better. How to judge how much was important, how much Quen would learn anyway, how much Quen had a right to know. How much Quen would want to know. In Quen’s place, Charles realized, he’d want to know all of it. That, in the end, decided him. Without further prevarication, he recounted the story of Quen’s birth as he’d been told it by Glenister and Kenneth Fraser.

Quen scarcely moved a muscle. He remained standing and watched Charles with a fixed gaze that grew darker and more intense as Charles unfolded the story.

When Charles finished, Quen was silent for the length of several heartbeats. ‘I should be more shocked than I am. I never suspected, but—I always used to wonder why Father favored Val.’ He drew a long breath, the sort that shudders through bone and muscle. ‘This explains it. It’s not as though we’re the first family this has happened to. Everyone knows old Lord Melbourne didn’t father William Lamb and they manage to rub along—’ He swallowed as though forcing the revelations down his throat. ‘My mother died when I was in shortcoats. I didn’t really know her. She—’

‘Was a pawn in a nasty game Kenneth and Glenister played,’ Charles said. ‘Don’t blame her, Quen.’

‘Does Val know?’

‘None of us has told him.’

‘I see.’ Quen gave a curt nod, though his eyes contained a world of burdens still to be dealt with. ‘That’s my problem in any case.’ His gaze flickered round the company. ‘What the devil does this have to do with my uncle Cyril’s death?’

Charles exchanged a glance with Mélanie. ‘Nothing that we’ve yet been able to determine.’

‘But Giles told you something about him? Something to do with his death? Oh, Christ, don’t tell me it wasn’t an accident? Did Father—’

‘You’re very quick,’ Charles said.

Quen looked back at him with a gaze from which all feeling had been bled. ‘In the past few hours I’ve come to believe my father—Lord Glenister—capable of anything. How did Uncle Cyril die?’

Giles McGann repeated his account of the midnight duel on the beach. Quen listened with the air of one who has overflowed his capacity for shock.

‘Do you have any idea what the duel might have been about?’ Charles asked.

Quen shook his head. ‘I have vague memories—Father and Uncle Cyril on horseback. Arguing about politics. Laughing together in the drawing room when we were brought in to say good night. They’d try to outdo each other, but that’s much the way of it with brothers—’ He frowned and turned to McGann. ‘Uncle Cyril said ‘Take care of her’ to Father? He didn’t use Honoria’s name?’

‘No. No, I’m sure of it.’

Quen looked at Charles. ‘I said they tried to outdo each other. The way Val and I do. Riding, sparring, fencing. Women as well, I don’t wonder.’

‘You think the ‘she’ Cyril wanted Glenister to take care of was a woman they both loved? A woman they fought over?’

‘It fits the facts, doesn’t it? They were all drinking at this house party. Uncle Cyril let slip that he’d seduced Father’s mistress. Father insisted on fighting him. Later Father was apparently overcome with remorse, and Uncle Cyril begged him to look after the woman with his dying breath.’ Quen’s mouth hardened. ‘Honoria learned the truth and Father killed her to cover up his crime. Your father—oh, Christ, my—Kenneth Fraser guessed that Fath—Glenister—had killed Honoria and so Glenister killed him to keep him quiet.’

‘It fits the facts on the surface,’ Charles agreed. ‘It doesn’t explain why Glenister was eager to have Honoria’s murder investigated until Father’s death and then suddenly became so eager to avoid questions that he turned tail and ran.’ He flipped open the ledger. ‘Do you know of any reason why Kenneth Fraser would have received payments from your grandfather?’

Quen’s mouth curled. ‘You mean from the late Marquis of Glenister? My grandfather is apparently Kenneth Fraser’s father. No, I don’t. Was he receiving payments?’

Charles explained about the ledger.

‘I can imagine either Uncle Cyril or Father being entangled in a secret marriage,’ Quen said in the same sort of strangely matter-of-fact voice they’d all been using to discuss such revelations. ‘Oh, Lord, I suppose that could bastardize Val and me, but as I seem to be a bastard in any case—’ He rubbed his hands over his eyes. ‘You think that’s why they quarreled? Uncle Cyril was asking Father to look after a woman whom he’d secretly married? But if the whole thing had been hushed up over a decade earlier, why did they suddenly quarrel at the house party?’

‘Perhaps Lord Glenister didn’t know of the marriage until the house party,’ Mélanie suggested. ‘Perhaps as you suggested, they both loved the lady.’

‘Have you ever heard of the Elsinore League, Quentin?’ Tommy asked.

Quen shook his head with no sign of fear or recognition. ‘No. Are they important?’

‘Very,’ Charles said. ‘Though we can’t determine just the hell how. Apparently they’re an organization Kenneth Fraser and Glenister started.’

‘Father—Glenister—wasn’t much in the habit of confiding in me.’

‘Nor was Kenneth Fraser in me.’

Quen gave a nod that was at once curt and tinged with fellow feeling. ‘What now?’

‘We continue the investigation.’

‘Can you learn the truth?’

‘I can try,’ Charles said.

Quen nodded again. ‘Evie and Val are upset about Father. I should tell them—something. If you don’t—’

‘It’s all right,’ Charles said. ‘We can talk more later.’

Quen moved to the door, then turned round, his hand on the doorknob. ‘Charles? When all’s said and done, I’m rather glad you’re my brother.’

Tommy watched the door close behind Quen, then spun round to look at Charles with the gaze Charles remembered from the cricket field at Harrow. ‘You can’t tell me that’s all it was. Two brothers quarrel over a woman or a secret marriage and one kills the other? That’s what they’ve been so desperate to cover up? Where does Le Faucon fit in?’

‘Perhaps Le Faucon knew the truth of what happened and used it to blackmail Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister into helping him escape France,’ Mélanie suggested.

‘And then he killed Mr. Fraser? So why did Glenister run? He seems to be the one man who might know where the hell Le Faucon is. I’m half tempted to chase off after him, but I’m afraid Charles would learn something and not have the grace to share.’

‘How well you know me, Belmont.’

Tommy scanned Charles’s face as though it were an encoded document. ‘To quote Quentin, what now? This might be a good time for the investigative equivalent of the St. Crispin’s Day speech.’

‘I’ll talk to Aunt Frances. She’s known Glenister and Cyril and Father longer than any of us. She was at Dunmykel when Cyril died.’

‘Not exactly the stuff that inspires the happy few, but I suppose it’s a start.’ Tommy moved to the door. ‘I’m going to search out some dinner. Or at least a drink.’

‘I’d like to look in at my cottage,’ McGann said. ‘But I can come back and help keep watch tonight.’

Assuming you trust me. He didn’t add that, but the thought was evident in his tone. ‘Thank you, Giles,’ Charles said. ‘We’d be grateful for it.’

McGann’s gaze filled with a mixture of relief and worry at what was to come. He inclined his head to Mélanie and followed Tommy from the room.

Charles stared at the door. ‘Quen took that better than I expected,’ he said without looking at his wife.

‘A combination of stoicism and shock, I suspect.’

He nodded, gaze still on the polished mahogany. Without planning, he found himself saying, ‘I’d like to claim Quen for a brother. But I’m not sure—’ He drew a breath and added in a rush, ‘Did you ever wonder if part of Hamlet’s problem was that he suspected his father wasn’t his father at all?’

He could feel the thoughtful shift in Mélanie’s gaze, though he didn’t look at her. ‘You think Claudius might have been his father?’

‘Who’s to say when Gertrude and Claudius became lovers? If young Hamlet suspected that his actual father wasn’t the man demanding vengeance but the man he was being told to wreak vengeance on…’

‘Your father doesn’t have a brother,’ Mélanie said.

‘No.’

‘But you wonder if someone else—’

He looked out the window at the rain-spattered lawn. ‘For years, I think. But I haven’t admitted it until now.’

‘Why now?’

‘Because I can’t run away from him or any of it. And because of the viciousness of what Father did in seducing Glenister’s wife. Perhaps I’m giving Father too much credit, but I think something more than the thrill of the game was behind it. If Father knew or guessed that his own—that I—was illegitimate, then Glenister’s calm certainty that no gentleman would foist a bastard heir on another would have particularly rankled.’

‘You don’t think Glenister—’

‘Fathered me? No, or I doubt he’d have spoken to Kenneth as he did. I’m afraid I haven’t the least idea who got my mother pregnant.’

‘Darling—’

He’d said too much. He fell into that trap with Mélanie. The moment he let his guard down, confidence tumbled upon confidence until his defenses were shattered like the walls of Badajoz. He moved to the door. ‘It’s academic, really. Father or not, my relationship with Kenneth Fraser is a blank. And I still have to discover who killed him. Let’s talk to Aunt Frances.’

It was still light outside—the clock had just struck eight—but Mélanie lit a number of candles in the old drawing room. At this point they needed to illumine the questions asked in any manner they could. Lady Frances’s hair shone golden in the candlelight, and the figured lilac sarcenet and Valenciennes lace of her skirts shimmered against the sofa. A queen, condescending to listen to the questions of a troublesome foreign ambassador.

‘You’re asking me to remember whom Glenister and Cyril Talbot were bedding nearly twenty years ago?’ she said when Charles finished speaking.

‘At the time of Cyril Talbot’s death,’ Charles said. ‘Hardly an insignificant moment.’

‘My dear Charles, I can barely keep track of the romantic intrigues of my friends from week to week, let alone dredge up details from two decades ago.’

Charles gripped the back of one of the canvaswork chairs. ‘This isn’t drawing-room gossip, Aunt Frances. Two people are dead. And there’s no reason to be certain it will stop there. Seventeen ninety-seven. Christopher was a baby. The Directory was in power in France. Pitt was Prime Minister. The French had landed at Fishguard in February. Fox retreated from active politics. Tell us what you can remember.’

She smoothed her hands over her skirt. ‘I can’t be sure of the dates,’ she said at last, ‘but I think Glenister was still in the midst of his intrigue with Lady Bessborough. Cyril probably had one of his opera dancers in keeping—yes, he did, I remember seeing him driving in the park with her not long after I emerged from my lying-in with Christopher. I’m not sure of her name—I need hardly say we were never introduced, and he kept a whole string of them. Even if I had known their names I couldn’t have told them apart. They were all the same type. Curly chestnut hair, blue eyes, delicate features. I always suspected Cyril was trying to replace his first love, whoever that might be.’

‘Mr. McGann didn’t think Lord Cyril had been in love with his wife,’ Mélanie said.

‘No,’ said Lady Frances agreed. ‘Of course one can never say exactly why any two people choose to marry, but I always thought there was something a bit perfunctory about Cyril allying himself with Susan Mallinson. As though he’d made up his mind to marry and she was the most convenient choice at hand. Susan was fair-haired, like Honoria. None of Cyril’s mistresses were blondes.’

‘Do you think it’s possible Glenister and Cyril competed for the same woman?’ Charles asked.

‘Given the way they both behaved, it would have been a wonder if they hadn’t pursued the same woman at one point or another,’ Lady Frances said. ‘But I know of no specifics.’

Charles walked to the piano and stood staring down at the keys. ‘Do you think Cyril Talbot could be Andrew Thirle’s father?’

‘Andrew’s? Good heavens, have we come to question everyone’s paternity? Catherine Thirle isn’t at all Cyril’s type.’

‘Apparently Mrs. Thirle didn’t give birth to Andrew,’ Charles said, and proceeded to tell the story of Andrew’s birth, the ledger, and their suspicions that Glenister or Lord Cyril had made a secret marriage.

‘Old Lord Glenister was an appalling high-stickler,’ Lady Frances said. ‘He cut off poor Georgiana—Cyril and Frederick’s sister—without a shilling when she eloped with a man he deemed ineligible. Of course, it didn’t help that she gave birth to Evie a scant five months after the elopement. Her reputation never recovered.’ She shook her head. ‘When I think of the way Frederick and Cyril carried on their affairs with impunity while their sister suffered miserably for one love affair—which ended in marriage—it’s enough to make me take that Wollstonecraft woman seriously.’

‘Quite,’ Charles said. ‘But if Frederick or Cyril had actually married a girl their father had deemed unsuitable, he wouldn’t have been able to look the other way.’

‘No. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if old Lord Glenister had tried to cover up such a marriage. Or if he turned to Kenneth for help in doing so.’

Charles ran his finger over the keys. ‘The sort of woman you say Cyril favored has Andrew’s coloring.’

Lady Frances pursed her lips. ‘I would have barely been out of the schoolroom when Andrew was born. I never heard any gossip about Cyril having a by-blow. But if you’re asking if Andrew looks as though he could be the son of the sort of woman Cyril favored—yes. Very much so.’

‘Did Father ever say anything to you that would indicate payment from old Lord Glenister was the real source of his legacy?’

Lady Frances fingered her diamond bracelet. ‘He hated to discuss the legacy, which in itself may be suggestive.’ A fold of her lace overskirt had caught on the diamonds. She disengaged it. ‘Though he did once say—it was late one night. We were at Dunmykel. In the library. We’d just—suffice it to say, Kenneth was in the condition in which gentlemen are likely to make confidences.’

A spasm crossed Charles’s face, as though he could have lived without this image of his father and his aunt engaged in such an act in his favorite room at Dunmykel. ‘And?’

‘I was looking at a Caravaggio drawing Kenneth had just bought. I said he’d been lucky to have acquired a fortune that allowed him to indulge his tastes. Kenneth turned his head toward me and said, ‘Wise men make their own luck.’ Which doesn’t precisely fit with his fortune being founded on a legacy that was a lucky chance.’

Charles nodded. He moved to the door as though done with the conversation, then turned back to his aunt. ‘Aunt Frances, did Father ever—’

‘What?’

Mélanie felt the air quicken between her husband and Lady Frances.

After a seeming eternity measured by the trickle of wax down the tapers on the mantel, Charles shook his head. ‘Never mind. It doesn’t really matter now.’

Gisèle twisted round on one of the two straight-backed chairs on the first-floor landing to look at Mélanie. They were taking their turn keeping watch over the upstairs corridors. The long-case clock by the stairhead had just chimed out a quarter past one. ‘How on earth did you get Charles to agree to sleep? I’d have thought he’d insist on sitting guard all night.’

Mélanie shifted her position on the chair, conscious of the weight of her pistol in the pocket of her gown. ‘Even Charles knows his limits. Though he’s constantly testing them.’

‘What about you?’

‘I know my limits.’ Mélanie twitched her gray jaconet skirt smooth. ‘I slept a few hours earlier. Charles will do better without me.’

Gisèle studied her as though she were a half-deciphered text. ‘I used to not be able to make sense of the two of you. You don’t act romantic in the least, not the way one expects lovers to act—’

‘We’re not lovers. We’re married.’

‘But then you do that thing.’

‘What thing?’

‘The thing where you have a whole conversation just looking at each other, without talking at all,’ Gisèle said, as though Mélanie was very slow not to have realized what she meant.

‘That’s what happens when you live with someone for a long time.’

Gisèle shook her head. ‘I’ve seen lots of married couples. I’ve never seen anyone quite like the two of you. And then there’s the way Charles looks at you when he doesn’t think you’re noticing.’

‘How?’ Mélanie asked before she could stop herself.

‘Like Romeo gazing up at Juliet on her balcony. I hoped—’ Gisèle drew in her breath, so sharply that Mélanie felt the stir of air. ‘If I can’t have that, I think I’d rather not be married at all.’

Mélanie looked into her sister-in-law’s eyes, bright with the reflected flame of the candle on the table between them. Any answer she might have made seemed to stick against painful truths in her throat. What could she say to a girl of nineteen ready to turn her back on love? It’s all an illusion? She’d have said that once. Did she even believe it anymore? Could she believe in anything more lasting?

She was spared the necessity of speech by Simon’s appearance. ‘I’ll take over.’ He touched Gisèle on the shoulder. ‘Go get some rest, Miss Fraser.’

‘Oh, goodness, I’m not Charles. I couldn’t sleep a wink tonight. I’ll look in on Ian. Andrew and Evie are sitting with him.’

Simon watched Gisèle walk off down the corridor, then sat beside Mélanie. His brows were drawn and an unvoiced fear lurked behind his eyes.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘I found something tucked away behind David’s whisky bottle. I’m damned if I can explain what it means, but I think I know who drugged David’s whisky.’

‘Who?’ Mélanie said.

Simon uncurled his clenched palm to reveal a strip of ice-blue silk. ‘Honoria Talbot.’