Chapter 6: : Chapter 5

Charles paused beside the black metal of the Berkeley Square railing, beneath the spring-green late-afternoon shade of the plane trees. A nursemaid and two small boys were descending the steps from one of the houses, and a smart yellow racing curricle with a showy pair of bays was drawn up near the pavement. Otherwise, the square was empty, most of the residents no doubt out paying calls or making a circuit of Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five o’clock.

He stared at his father’s house, to which he’d been summoned the evening before. The house of which Honoria would soon be mistress. Smooth walls of gray Portland stone, graceful ivory moldings, lacy filigree lampposts framing a polished front door. Despite the classical elegance of the pediments and columns, despite the delicate fanlight and the greenery spilling from the window boxes on the first floor, it had the look of a fortress.

He’d never thought of it as home, not like Dunmykel, the estate in Scotland, which had been in his blood since boyhood. The Berkeley Square house had been the mysterious place to which his parents vanished after their infrequent visits to their children in Scotland. On rare childhood stays in London he had felt like an unbidden guest, curious about the life in this mysterious place but under no illusion that he belonged and not quite sure he was welcome.

Which, of course, was completely irrelevant now that he was nearly thirty, a husband and father himself, gone from his father’s roof for nearly ten years. Yet as he climbed the sand-scoured steps and rang the bell, he couldn’t shake the sensation of powerlessness, as familiar and unchanging as cambric tea in the nursery. In a few hours, he and Mélanie were to meet with Francisco Soro, but in its own way the interview with his father promised as much danger as whatever Francisco was about to drag them into.

Most of the servants he’d known as a boy were long gone, but the footman on duty recognized him from his handful of visits in the three months he’d been back in Britain. ‘Mr. Fraser’s in the study, sir. If—’

‘Thank you.’ Charles handed the footman his hat and gloves. ‘I know the way.’

‘Yes, sir, but he’s with—’

‘Your sister.’ The cool tenor voice came from the hall beyond. A golden-haired figure rose from one of the velvet benches, a newspaper rustling in his hand.

‘Hullo, Val.’ Charles walked toward Lord Glenister’s younger son. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

‘I drove Gisèle round in my curricle. Your father wanted to see her.’ Val tossed the newspaper onto the bench. ‘Did you think you were the only one of his children he’d summoned?’

‘I long since gave up trying to puzzle out what Father might or might not do.’

Val regarded him, arms folded across his light blue coat and striped silk waistcoat. ‘Strange to think this farce of a marriage is going to make us—what? Stepcousins once removed? Of course, to all intents and purposes Honoria’s a sister to me, which means to all intents and purposes I’ll be your stepuncle. You’ll have to start showing me some respect.’

‘What odds on hell freezing over?’ Charles said with his pleasantest smile.

‘A few days ago, I’d have given those same odds on the chances of Princess Icicle marrying your father. I swear, I think she accepted him because he’s the one man in London we’d all be shocked at her getting herself leg-shackled to.’

‘Honoria doesn’t do things simply to shock people.’

A cold smile curved Val’s mouth. ‘So sure you know her, Charles? After all these years?’

‘Val, I’m—oh, Charles.’ Gisèle swept into the hall and stopped short, a pair of lilac kid gloves clutched in one hand, her gaze as still and cool as a Highland stream on a windless day in January.

‘Hullo, Gelly,’ Charles said.

She tugged on her gloves and began doing up the buttons. ‘I suppose Father wants to talk to you about it, too.’

‘It?’

‘This ridiculous marriage of his.’ She walked over to Val and tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. ‘Not that he really explained anything. He never does.’

Charles looked down at her, seeking echoes of the little girl he’d built dollhouses for and scooped up for rides on his horse. The top of Gisèle’s head still barely reached his shoulder, but the round-faced, bright-eyed child was gone, replaced by a modish young woman with plucked brows, sharpened cheekbones, and fashionably cropped hair. She looked as polished and frozen as one of the porcelain dolls she’d played with as a girl. ‘I know it’s odd,’ he said, ‘for Father to be marrying one of your friends—’

Gisèle’s chin jerked up, making the ribbons on her bonnet rustle. ‘You’ve been gone a long time, Charles. Honoria and I haven’t been friends for years. If we ever were.’

Her green eyes were as hard as glass. Nine years of mistakes and broken promises, unspoken words and unvoiced failures hung like dust motes in the air between them. ‘Childhood companion, then,’ Charles said.

‘Assuming you call being odiously superior companionship. Whatever we once were, I don’t imagine Honoria’s any more eager to have me for a daughter than I am to have her for a mother.’

‘Don’t worry, my sweet.’ Val smiled down at her. ‘Now when she really makes you cross you can call her ‘Mama.’ ‘

Gisèle tilted her head back to look up at him. For a moment, the reckless glint in her eyes was so like their mother’s that Charles’s throat tightened with fear. ‘Do you know, that almost reconciles me to the whole sorry business.’

Val flicked his fingers against her cheek. ‘I’d give a monkey to see Princess Icicle’s face when you try it.’

‘If you’re good, perhaps you will.’ Gisèle tightened her grip on his arm and tugged him down the hall. ‘You’d better not keep Father waiting, Charles.’

‘Val’s seeing you back to Aunt Frances’s?’ Charles said. Gisèle had made her home with their mother’s sister since their mother’s death.

‘No, he’s sweeping me off to Gretna Green to marry me over the anvil. And before you go all glowering, that was a joke.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Val said. ‘It would drive Honoria mad if we got married first and stole her thunder.’

Charles bit back a number of blistering comments that would only have made the situation worse and suppressed the impulse to wrest his sister from Val’s grasp and plant Val a facer.

Gisèle paused midway down the hall and looked back at Charles over her shoulder. ‘I’m sure this is harder for you than it is for me, Charles. I didn’t even like Honoria. Let alone love her.’

She dragged Val from the house with a swish of muslin skirts. Charles swallowed, counted to ten, and strode to face his interview with his father.

As infrequent as his visits to the Berkeley Square house had been, his visits to the study had been even more rare. Only when he or his brother Edgar did something so extreme that their father couldn’t ignore it, as he did most of their actions, were they called into the study to feel the sting of Kenneth Fraser’s tongue, sharper than any birch rod.

‘Ah. Charles. Good.’ Kenneth Fraser looked up from behind the mahogany ramparts of his desk. A pen and penknife lay on the blotter before him, and a stack of papers rested at his elbow. A Renaissance bronze that had the look of Cellini served as a paperweight.

Charles closed the door and advanced into the room, negotiating the Axminster carpet as though it were a battlefield. ‘I saw Gisèle in the hall. And Val.’

‘I thought you might. I suppose Gisèle could do worse, though Val’s not exactly the match I’d choose for her.’

‘You don’t fancy the thought of your daughter marrying a younger version of yourself?’

Kenneth’s gaze hardened. ‘Even at four-and-twenty I flatter myself that I had rather more finesse than Valentine Talbot.’

‘He hasn’t offered for her, has he?’

‘Not yet. Stop scowling, Charles, you’ve scarcely seen Gisèle for nine years. I shouldn’t think you’d have much interest in whom she married.’

‘And you do, sir? I never thought you had much interest in any of us.’

‘On the contrary. I’ve always been very fond of Gisèle. Sit down, Charles,’ Kenneth added as Charles continued to stand before the desk.

Charles glanced about the room. He couldn’t remember actually sitting in it before. Two high-backed velvet chairs were drawn up by the fireplace. Instead he moved a ladder-back oak chair beside the desk, less commodious but better positioned to join whatever battle his father was about to begin. ‘I haven’t had a chance to offer you my felicitations.’

Kenneth Fraser leaned back against the claret-colored damask of his armchair. ‘It must have been a surprise. You were always very fond of Honoria yourself, as I recall.’

Charles dropped into the chair in one motion. Images from last night’s nightmare teased at the corners of his mind. ‘Of course I’m fond of her. We grew up together.’

Kenneth’s mouth curved in a faint smile. ‘You learned the art of diplomacy well.’ He regarded Charles for a moment. ‘No questions? You must have been as surprised by the announcement as Gisèle was.’

Charles’s hand must have clenched, because he felt a stab of pain through the bandage on his palm. He met his father’s gaze, willing his defenses not to slip. The least he owed Honoria was to protect her from the implications of the past.

‘You made up your mind exactly what you were going to tell me long before I walked into the room.’

‘Perhaps. But even I know the value of improvisation. I didn’t expect to marry again. My first experience hardly left me with a favorable impression of the institution. I certainly didn’t expect to marry my oldest friend’s niece. But I didn’t bargain on the woman Honoria would grow into.’ Kenneth spoke in the tone Charles had heard him use to describe a da Vinci drawing or a Fragonard oil he’d found to add to his collection. ‘I intend to make her happy.’

‘Most husbands do,’ Charles said, perhaps unwisely.

Kenneth raised his brows. ‘The voice of experience? Your own wife is a diamond of the first water. And as I’ve remarked before she seems genuinely devoted to you. Though I understand from amateur theatricals that she’s proved herself an excellent actress.’

Charles pushed himself to his feet, scraping his chair against the carpet. ‘You can say anything you like to me, sir. But if you’re going to insult my wife or my children I’ll take my leave.’

‘Sit down, Charles. I didn’t ask you here to enact a scene out of King Lear.’

‘There’s little fear of that.’ Charles put his hand on the chair back and let himself down against the hard wooden slats. ‘I won’t toady to you like Goneril or Regan.’

‘Or profess pure devotion like Cordelia. Gisèle didn’t, either. If nothing else, this family has always managed to avoid false sentiment.’

Kenneth surveyed Charles with a gaze as incisive as a scalpel. Charles forced himself to sit still beneath his father’s regard. ‘When you took yourself off to Lisbon,’ Kenneth said at last, ‘I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again. I doubted you’d have the guts to come back.’

The words carried a weight that went deep beneath the surface. Far deeper, surely, titan Kenneth could realize. ‘So did I,’ Charles said. ‘It seems I can surprise myself as well as you.’

‘And here you are following me into Parliament—if I may use the word ‘follow’ in its loosest sense.’ Kenneth picked up the ivory-handled penknife and tapped it against the blotter. ‘I have to admit you speak rather well, though I’d be the last man to agree with anything you say.’

. Charles fixed his gaze on the bronze sculpture, which appeared to depict a naked Triton ravishing an equally naked Nereid. He gripped her, either in conquest or supplication, while she looked away and yet curved her body into his own. ‘If you ever agreed with one of my speeches, I’d fear for my sanity. Or yours.’

‘Quite.’ Kenneth traced a line in the blotter with the point of the knife. ‘I don’t expect to argue you out of your Radical convictions. Or to attempt to convince you that the ideas you advocate would destroy our way of life and lead to the sort of disaster we’ve seen in France. It’s never been any concern of mine if you choose to make a fool of yourself. Suffice it to say, I believe I’m not overstating your views when I say you don’t believe in primogeniture?’

Charles stared at the point of the penknife. ‘You aren’t overstating my views.’

‘Good.’ Kenneth set down the knife and aligned it on the desk before him. ‘Then you’ll have no objection to agreeing to change the entail on Dunmykel.’

Charles had thought he’d armored himself against anything his father might say to him. But these words were like a dagger in the back when one has come prepared for a duel. For a moment he was robbed of speech or even breath. As with a wound, the pain would be sharper when he could fully comprehend it. ‘No,’ he said. Such a simple word, to carry away with it something he’d loved as long as he could remember.

‘Just like that?’ his father asked. ‘No objections?’

‘As you pointed out, sir, I could hardly object without looking like a hypocrite.’ Charles drew a breath. The air scraped against his throat and lungs. ‘I assume you want to settle the estate on your and Honoria’s first son.’

‘You’re quick, boy, I’ll give you that.’ Kenneth inclined his head. ‘Yes. I want Dunmykel to go to the first son Honoria gives me. You’ll still have this house and the Italian villa and your mother’s property in Bedfordshire, and your grandfather’s Irish estates.’

‘Far more than I have any right to.’ That was perfectly true. It was also true that none of the other properties meant to him what Dunmykel did. But that was his problem. ‘It’s your house after all, sir. You bought it.’

Kenneth’s head jerked up, and Charles saw that he had drawn blood. One wouldn’t think it to look at Kenneth Fraser now, but he had come from a minor branch of the Fraser family. Orphaned early, he’d grown up as a poor relation, shuttled between various relatives. Dunmykel had been the property of Kenneth’s godfather and distant cousin. Thanks to an unexpected legacy, judiciously invested, Kenneth had bought the estate after his godfather’s death.

‘I don’t know whether your equanimity is a sign of strength or weakness,’ Kenneth said. ‘Whatever your views on inheritance, you don’t want to pass the estate along to your own son?’

Charles looked into his father’s eyes and forced every muscle in his body not to betray him. ‘My son has enough of a heritage. As do I.’ He pushed his chair back with deliberation. The sound of the wood scraping against the carpet echoed through the room. ‘If that’s all, sir, I promised Colin and Jessica I’d read to them before supper.’ Not to mention the fact that he and Mélanie had a midnight rendezvous with Francisco Soro.

He walked from the room without sparing his father another glance. There was no way, he told himself, no way on earth, that Kenneth Fraser could have even a glimmering of the truth behind Colin’s birth. Just as there was no way Kenneth could know the exact story behind Charles’s sudden departure for Lisbon nine years ago or what had transpired between Charks and Honoria Talbot in that city three years later.

And yet the look in Kenneth Fraser’s eyes had told Charles that his father was aware of far more than he admitted.

The cobblestones gleamed blue-black in the moonlight. The glamour of night, Mélanie thought as she and Charles made their way on foot along the broad expanse of the Strand. They had directed Randall to set them down in Tavistock Street and were now proceeding on foot the rest of the way to ensure that they weren’t followed. .

It was close to midnight. The banks and shops and warehouses were shuttered and bolted, but the street was crowded with carriages and pedestrians. Candle and lamplight spilled out the doors of chophouses, taverns, coffeehouses, and brothels. Tobacco smoke and snatches of ribald songs and bawdy rhymes drifted through the air. She must have heard half the score of The Beggar’s Opera as they made their way along the street.

Instead of holding her elbow, as he would in Mayfair, Charles had his arm wrapped round her shoulders. Never let it be said her husband didn’t know how to play a part. He could be far more demonstrative in the service of some charade than in his own person. He turned his head, his lips brushing her temple. ‘Anyone following us?’

‘I don’t think so, and I’ve been watching carefully.’

They’d spent dinner discussing the best way to approach the meeting with Francisco. Charles had said nothing about his interview with his father, but she could read how difficult the meeting had been in the shadows in his eyes, the tension in the set of his jaw, the extra glass of wine he’d drunk with dinner. She’d mentioned Honoria Talbot’s visit but had said nothing of Miss Talbot’s cryptic hints about whatever matter Kenneth Fraser meant to broach with his son. Yet Charles’s failure to confide in her was as palpable as if he’d returned home from a journey of several days and failed to kiss her.

Last night’s rain had cleared the air. People were tossing dice and playing backgammon on chairs and benches pulled out onto the pavement. She was used to such scenes in Paris, Lisbon, or Vienna, but this was the first time she had been in this part of London at such an hour. The noise, the color, the smells, the need to use all one’s senses quickened her blood. She hadn’t realized how she’d thirsted for such activity.

They were wearing their plainest clothes, but Charles had already had to remove a quick-fingered lad’s hand from his pocket. They drew to the side as two men in corduroy jackets and homespun breeches staggered out of a tavern. A few paces on, Charles pulled her into the street to avoid a man who was relieving himself against the wall. From one of the dark courts off the Strand came grunts and murmurs strikingly like the sounds she had heard from the anteroom at Glenister House the previous night. The man involved might be little different from the gentleman at Glenister House, but the lady was undoubtedly one of those who plied her wares up and down the street.

At last they turned into the quiet of Somerset Place. The breeze carried the sound of lapping water and the rank smell of the river. Mélanie gagged and turned her face away. There was a time when she would barely have noticed the stench. She must be turning into a lady.

The river terrace was in shadow, a long, dark, seemingly empty hue. They’d debated having her hang back while Charles went to meet Francisco, but Charles had pointed out that Francisco wouldn’t be surprised to see them both and that there’d be more risk if they separated.

Mélanie drew another breath, recovering from the first gut punch of foul air. She and Charles descended the steps to the terrace. The crumbling, moss-covered stone stretched about them, empty of life save for a small rodent that scurried toward the balustrade.

She heard the slide of metal against fabric and knew Charles had reached for the pistol in the pocket of his greatcoat. He stood still for a moment, scanning the terrace. His gaze focused on a point in the far corner, close to the river’s edge. ‘Francisco, you bastard, come out of the shadows and tell me why we’re meeting like characters in a lending library novel instead of having a whisky in my library.’

His words were greeted by silence. Then a dark figure vaulted over the railing. Booted feet thudded against the stone. ‘Melly, my sweet, are you still following this madman into danger? I should have asked you to meet me instead of Charles.’

The voice belonged unmistakably to Francisco Soro. A tension Mélanie hadn’t been aware of eased from her shoulders. ‘I’m flattered, Francisco, especially as I’m now the mother of two. But you know Charles and I have a tiresome habit of looking out for each other. He wouldn’t have let me come alone.’

‘To meet Francisco? I wouldn’t have dared,’ Charles said.

‘Wise man, Fraser.’ Francisco strode forward, kissed Mélanie’s hand, and clapped Charles on the shoulder. ‘I think the last time we met I said I’d see you next in hell. It seems I was mistaken.’

‘Depending on one’s definition of London,’ Charles said.

Francisco’s gaze moved to Mélanie. His curly, coal-black hair fell over his forehead as it always had, but his face was thinner than she remembered, and his dark eyes held a wariness that was new. ‘With everything else, you’ve found time to produce another Fraser?’

‘A daughter, last December. Her name is Jessica.’ She scanned his face for clues to the past months. ‘I wrote to you after she was born.’

‘I know. That is, I don’t know. I haven’t been in Andalusia as I told you.’ He cast a swift glance round the empty reaches of the terrace. ‘We don’t have much time. I went to Paris last autumn. Why doesn’t matter now, but when I got there—’

A rifle report drowned out his words. He slumped against Mélanie. She caught him as he fell, staggering beneath his weight. His breath whistled against her skin, and hot blood spurted between her fingers.