Secrets of a Lady

by Tracy Grant

  “That she was pregnant by your brother. Your bastard half brother.”

  The pain in Edgar’s eyes gave way to bitter, molten hatred, hatred such as Mélanie would never have thought to see in that sunny gaze. “You don’t even appreciate it, that’s the hell of it,” Edgar said. “I think I could have borne your stealing my heritage if you’d had the faintest respect for what it means to be—”

  “A British gentleman?”

  “You bastard. You can’t even say it without irony.”

  “What was it you couldn’t bear?” Charles asked. “That Kitty wasn’t the chaste wife you thought her to be or that I’d taken her, too?”

  “Both, damn you.”

  “And so you killed her.”

  Edgar drew a rasping breath. “I never meant to. I still can’t quite remember—”

  “Strangling her?” Charles said in a cold voice.

  “I didn’t—I know I reached for her. She was dead in my arms before I realized what was happening.”

  Edgar’s eyes closed, his golden lashes spiky against his bloodless skin. For a moment, Mélanie thought he had gone. Roth stirred at her side, as though about to speak. Then Edgar’s eyes flickered open again. “Jennings saw the whole thing from the shrubbery. I couldn’t—I wasn’t thinking very clearly. It was Jennings’s idea to push her into the water and make it look like an accident.”

  “For which he made you pay,” Charles said.

  “Greedy blighter. I didn’t know about the ring. I don’t think Jennings did at the time, either. She was wearing the pendant on a long chain tucked inside the neck of her dress. The dress got torn when—”

  “You grabbed her.”

  “It got torn,” Edgar repeated, as though he had had no part in the action. “Jennings saw the pendant and decided to take it. He must have found the ring later and realized what it was.”

  “So Jennings set up the charade with the bandits to sell the ring to the British.”

  “And it was my rotten luck you got sent to retrieve the ring. I was terrified you’d tumble to the whole thing. But you didn’t have the least idea, did you? Not then. For once I’d outwitted my clever brother.” Pride glinted in Edgar’s fading voice. “And Jennings managed to get himself killed. I’d have been safe if he hadn’t written to that bitch of a whore of his.”

  Edgar’s eyes were beginning to cloud. Charles leaned closer to him. “You never tried to find Miss Trevennen and silence her.”

  “She told me she’d entrusted Jennings’s letter to someone who’d reveal the truth if anything ever happened to her. I thought I was done for last night when you told me she was dead. But the bloody letter was just sitting in that idiot’s rooms in the Marshalsea the whole time.” Edgar’s fading gaze fastened on his brother. “When Castlereagh sent me to follow you and I learned you were looking for Helen Trevennen, I thought you must be onto the truth somehow. I knew I had to stop you. But when you told me about Colin—I’d never have let Colin be hurt, you have to believe that, Charles. I knew we had to get the ring back, but I couldn’t risk you finding the pendant and the letter. I was trying to delay you and Mélanie so I could look for the ring myself.”

  “A knife in the ribs and a sniper’s bullet are fairly strong delaying tactics.”

  “I was careful just to give Mélanie a flesh wound,” Edgar said, as though aggrieved Charles could have thought otherwise. “I wanted to stop the two of you long enough to find out what you were up to. Later I was trying to put you out of commission so I could take over the search. But I made sure the sniper knew only to shoot at your leg.”

  “You weren’t aiming for my leg in the alley just now.”

  “No.” Edgar’s voice was faint, but he stared back at Charles without flinching. “After you saw the pendant and the ring, I realized you’d put the truth together. It was one of us or the other.”

  Charles drew in his breath. “How little you know me, brother.” His voice had a harsh, uneven rasp Mélanie had never heard before. “I don’t know what I’d have done with the truth. But I wouldn’t have killed you.”

  “But in the end you did,” Edgar murmured, the words slurred. “You always were damnably good with a pistol, but how the hell did you manage that shot from the roof?”

  Charles opened his mouth to speak and then fell silent. Edgar’s gaze remained fixed on Charles as the life fled from his eyes.

  Charles knelt staring at his brother in the guttering torchlight for a long moment, his eyes haunted by ghosts far older than the events of the past few minutes. Mélanie stayed absolutely still, as did Roth and Addison and the patrol who held the torch. At last Charles leaned forward, closed his brother’s eyes, and brushed his lips across Edgar’s brow. Then he got to his feet and held out his hand to Mélanie. When she put her own into it, his fingers closed round hers as though he was hanging on to his sanity.

  Charles glanced down the alley. Raoul was crouched beside Colin, an arm round their son’s shoulders. He appeared to be speaking to Colin. It was too far away for the voices to carry, but Colin’s posture betrayed no fear or tension. He wouldn’t know what had just transpired with Edgar.

  Charles turned to Roth. “I don’t know how much of that you understood. I’m sure you have questions. It will take a while to explain. I’d like—” He glanced at Raoul and Colin again. “I’d like to take my family home first.”

  Roth nodded. “Take the boy home. We’ll see to Captain Fraser. I’ll call in the morning. We can keep this quiet until then.”

  Mélanie unwrapped her son’s hand from her collar. His eyes were shut, his face purple-shadowed but reassuringly at peace. She twitched the green quilt smooth. Beside her, Charles disentangled his fingers from Colin’s freshly bandaged right hand and pulled the quilt over his shoulders. He kissed Colin’s brow. She did the same.

  They left the room and walked down the corridor without speaking. By the time they reached the door of their bedchamber, she realized she was shaking. By the time they got inside, she realized she couldn’t stop.

  Charles’s arms closed round her. His breath washed over her skin. For a moment he simply stood holding her, anchoring her with the warmth of his body. “Three days ago,” he said into her hair, “I would have sworn nothing could change the way I feel about you.”

  She tried to speak, choked, tried again. “And now?”

  He kissed her temple. “Now I know it’s true.” He scooped her into his arms, carried her to the bed, and lay down fully clothed, holding her against him. The feather bed was deliciously soft beneath her aching body. The sheets smelled of starch and lavender. She and Charles smelled of soot and mildew and the grime of the streets and God knew what else. She wanted to burrow into him and never come up for air.

  She didn’t want to talk, but there were things that had to be said, if only she could find the words. “Charles—I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.” It sounded pathetically inadequate, like a cloak too full of holes to provide warmth. “I know how you loved him.”

  She felt Charles’s sharp intake of breath. “If you hadn’t shot him, I’d quite certainly be dead, and God knows what would have happened to Colin. You didn’t have any choice, Mel.”

  She turned her face into his throat, above his crumpled collar and stained cravat. His skin tasted of stale sweat and sweet familiarity. “How long have you known?”

  “I pieced the story together over the last twenty-four hours, but it was still speculation. There was nothing to be done until we had Colin back. Then I was going to give Edgar a chance to explain himself.” His voice sagged with exhaustion. “You said it yourself. Edgar was an Othello.”

  “Kitty wasn’t his wife. But—” She thought back to the discussions about Kitty Ashford in the past days. She remembered the lines Charles had quoted earlier. “‘And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.’ He put Kitty on a pedestal.”

  “Pure and untouchable. A chaste wife. My brother’s view of the world leaves—left no room for ambiguity.”
/>   “And Kitty had the Carevalo Ring.” This was still the incredible part. Mélanie forced her exhausted brain to work. It was a sort of relief, a refuge from the tumult of feeling. “Perhaps we should have guessed. You said her grandmother was a Carevalo.”

  “Yes, it should have occurred to me that there might be a connection. The exact time the ring disappeared is open to debate, but Kitty’s grandmother, Cristina Carevalo, could have witnessed the events. Various stories blamed Cristina’s father or uncle or one of her brothers for its disappearance. Perhaps the truth is that Cristina smuggled it away with her when she left the family to marry. Or her father or one of her brothers gave it to her to keep for some reason. It’s impossible to know, but she must have bequeathed it to her daughter, Kitty’s mother, who bequeathed it to Kitty. A sort of secret family trust. Whatever the reasons for the secrecy, Kitty would have valued that trust. I told you she took the family honor seriously.”

  Mélanie tugged at the rumpled folds of her skirt, which were tangled about her legs. “So Jennings ended up with the means to blackmail Edgar and with the ring as well. And he wrote an account of Kitty’s murder in the letter to Helen Trevennen that he used to conceal the ring. I suppose he thought he’d be safer if someone else knew the story.”

  “But he didn’t tell her about the ring. Perhaps he was afraid of letting anyone, even his mistress, know he meant to swindle the British army.” Charles shifted his booted legs so he wasn’t lying on her skirt. “In the end it was a bloody mess of miscommunication and cross-purposes, like most of war. The French patrol blundered upon us, without the least idea that I was after the ring or that you’d been sent by their own side to retrieve it. You and I both wanted the ring and it was there tucked inside Jennings’s letter to Helen Trevennen the whole time we were tending to his wounds.”

  “Until Baxter found the letter and sent it to Helen. At least now her reaction to the letter makes sense. She had a murderer in the palm of her hand—she knew she could blackmail him for a small fortune, but she must have feared he’d kill her, too, if he could get his hands on her.”

  “So she disappeared.” Charles tightened his arms round her. “Helen Trevennen as good as admitted it was Edgar she was blackmailing, though I was too blind to see it. Remember Jemmy Moore said she told him she’d be well looked after thanks to ‘Poor Tom.’ You’re not the only one good at Shakespearean references.”

  Mélanie groaned. “Sacrebleu, of course. King Lear. Where Edgar disguises himself as Poor Tom.”

  “Lear’s Edgar also happens to have an illegitimate half brother. Miss Trevennen couldn’t have known how spot on her reference was.”

  Mélanie sorted back through the events of the last three days. “According to Edgar, Castlereagh really did ask him to find out what we were up to.”

  “That’s the only way Edgar could have tumbled to what we were doing. I think he was telling the truth when he said he was trying to put one or both of us out of commission so he could search for the ring himself.”

  She forced her brain to work again, like the gears on a sluggish engine. “Edgar stabbed me at the Marshalsea and paid someone to shoot at you in the street outside the Gilded Lily. And he loosed the dog at the stables yesterday?”

  “I’m sure of it. That’s what really convinced me he must be behind the attacks. Startling the horse was a mad enough scheme, but the only way it made a scrap of sense is if one could be sure of having the intended victim in the right place at the right time.” He turned his head on the pillow so she could look into his eyes. There was a jagged scrape on his cheek and a day’s growth of stubble on his jaw. His gaze was weighted with grief and an unexpected tenderness. “You remember what happened when the horse reared up? Edgar and I both reached for you like foolish, solicitous males and managed to get tangled up with each other.”

  “Edgar and I fell to the side and you ended up under the horse’s hooves. Edgar pushed you?”

  “Looking back, I’m sure of it. I think I knew it all along, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. At that point he must have been desperate. I don’t think he cared if I lived or died. And then once I saw the pendant and the ring, he knew he had to kill me.”

  “He was bargaining that you hadn’t told anyone, that he could make murder look like an accident again.”

  “Without my story, there’d have been no motive. I doubt even you could have worked it out. I only hope he really did mean to spare Colin, though we’ll never be sure.”

  She laid her hand on his chest. His pulse pounded beneath her fingers. “Even Edgar may not have known how far he meant to go. You can’t know what you’re capable of until you actually commit an act.”

  He was silent for so long she wasn’t sure he meant to answer. “I didn’t really know either of my parents,” he said at last. His voice was low and rough, as though he was feeling his way over unfamiliar ground. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand my mother, not completely, though occasionally I get glimmerings. God knows I didn’t know my father—Kenneth Fraser. To do him justice, O’Roarke made more of an effort to be a parent to me than Kenneth Fraser ever did. I missed half of my sister’s childhood because I ran off to Lisbon. But I thought I knew Edgar. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him. Even when things went wrong between us, I never realized—He must have hated me.”

  “And loved you.”

  “Perhaps. I’ll never know. In the end, it turns out I really didn’t know him, either.”

  “Charles.”

  He looked at her, his face inches from hers on the embroidered linen of the pillowcase. She felt him brace himself against any inadequate attempt at comfort.

  She touched his unshaven cheek. “I love you.”

  He pulled her against him and held her tighter than she could ever remember.

  Forgiveness was in the force of his arms, the stir of his breathing, the brush of his lips on her brow. Tears welled up, ran down her cheeks, pooled onto his cravat. And yet…In the end, forgiveness was not all of it. “We’ll never be able to forget,” she said when she could speak.

  “Then we’ll have to find a way to remember.”

  “Carevalo’s letter to Bow Street is out there somewhere. Roth may find it, or someone may send it to him.”

  He shifted against the pillows, settling her more comfortably against the curve of his body. “There won’t be anything he can prove.”

  “It will be awkward, at the very least.”

  “We’ll brazen it out. If necessary, we’ll leave the country. The children will still have our love and a secure fortune. It’s more than most children have.”

  “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t miss—”

  “Perthshire? The House of Commons? Of course. But if I have to choose between losing them or losing you, there’s no contest.”

  It was a moment before she could speak. “You’re a much better person than I am, Charles.”

  “Am I?” His mouth was against her forehead. “You put your talents to use fighting for something you believed in. I employed my energies in a war over which I had increasing doubts, for a government I opposed, who later did exactly what you feared for Spain.” His fingers moved against her arm. “Edgar accused me of not knowing what it means to be a British gentleman. You accused me of taking the gentleman’s code too seriously. In the end I think you were both right. At the same time I was rejecting the values of my world, I was bound by them in ways I didn’t even realize.” He kissed her hair. “Can you forgive me?”

  She jerked in his arms. “My God, Charles, forgive you for what?”

  “For judging you so completely. For viewing everything you’ve done as though it centered round me. Look, my darling. I realized I’ve been looking at this the wrong way round.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve been thinking of you as my wife.”

  “I am your wife, Charles. That’s the point.”

  “But you aren’t just my wife.” His breath brushed her skin as he framed the
words. “You had your own loyalties, your own code before you met me. You put your loyalty to your allies and your cause first. Which is much what I might have done in similar circumstances.”

  His words held an absolution she had never thought to find. She realized her fingers were clenched on the linen of his shirt. She forced a touch of lightness into her voice. “Charles, that sounds suspiciously like ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov’d I not honor more.’”

  “An apt sentiment.”

  “Since when have you taken to quoting Richard Lovelace?”

  “I didn’t, you did. But the man does have a point.”

  She stared up at the leaf pattern on the damask canopy. “You wouldn’t have married someone knowing you would betray her.”

  “No? I think you were right earlier. We never know what we’re capable of until we actually commit an act.” He stroked her hair. “You accused me of marrying you to pay a debt to Kitty and avenge myself on my father. The truth is, I can’t say where guilt and duty and wanting to replay my own childhood left off and love began. Yet surely—Sweetheart, after seven years surely why we got married matters far less than why we want to stay married.”

  She turned her face into his shoulder. “I don’t deserve you, Charles.”

  She felt him smile against her hair. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Charles,” she said after a long moment, her cheek pillowed on his chest, “do you think they were happy?”

  He was twining his fingers in her hair. “Who?”

  “Princess Aysha and Ramón de Carevalo. Do you think he abducted her or that they eloped because they’d been lovers all along?”

  “Who knows?” He tugged another lock of hair free of its pins. “Perhaps they were soulmates who shared a love of poetry. Perhaps he carried her off for purely political reasons. Perhaps she was an intelligence agent and she arranged the whole thing so she could spy inside his court.”

  Mélanie reached up and laced her fingers through his own. “Perhaps she told him the truth eventually.”

  “Perhaps he believed her.” Charles brought her hand to his lips and kissed her palm. “Perhaps, just possibly, they ended up being happy anyway.”