Beneath a Silent Moon (14 page)

"I'm not misled easily," Castlereagh snapped in the tone of one who had faced down monarchs. He gripped his hands together on the desktop. His knuckles were white. He couldn't abide being out of control, an attitude Charles could sympathize with. "Soro must have arrived in Paris when you were still there yourself. He never made any attempt to contact you?"

"No." For some reason, the admission made Charles feel like a traitor.

"That should at least confirm that he was involved in something he didn't want you to know about. He didn't say anything to you before he died? Or give you anything?"

The last question set off signal fires of alarm in Charles's head. "You think he meant to give me something?"

"Assuming we're right that he sought you out to give you evidence against the Elsinore League."

"He was shot before he could tell me anything," Charles said. That much was true. He neglected to add that Francisco hadn't died immediately upon being shot.

Castlereagh leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingers on the ink blotter. "We haven't always agreed, Charles, but you did us able service during the war. I know you understand what's due to your country. I know you'll understand what I mean when I tell you not to pursue Francisco Soro's death further."

Charles stared at his former superior. "Surely if what you've told me is true, there's every reason to continue to investigate."

"But you're not the man to do it."

"Sir—"

"Soro's assassin is no doubt halfway back to Paris by now. Where my agents are still in place. That's how we'll uncover what the Elsinore League are planning. Any questions we ask here will only reveal that we're on to them and put our people in Paris at risk."

"That assumes we can't investigate here without them getting wind of it."

"You're a clever man, Charles, but you're not infallible. Or invulnerable." Castlereagh pushed his chair back and got to his feet. He stared down at his desktop for a moment, then wandered over to the window and looked out into Downing Street. He seemed to be seeing something beyond the clutter of midmorning traffic. "I know it's difficult, believe me. Coming home after all these years. Leading a domestic life after living on the edge for so long." He cleared his throat. "I don't know the details, but I'm aware that your relationship with your father has not always been what one might wish. You're living in proximity to him for the first time in nearly ten years, and he's just announced his intention to marry again."

Charles stared at the Foreign Secretary's aristocratic profile, outlined against the light from the window. In all the years he had known and worked with Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary had never touched so directly on his personal life. "I left boyhood behind long ago."

"I don't know that one ever leaves one's childhood truly behind. But whatever the temptation, this is no time to go tilting at windmills. You have a family of your own now. For God's sake, you dragged your wife into this."

"I didn't drag her, she insisted on coming with me. Francisco was her friend as well."

Castlereagh turned to look at Charles. "I'm aware that Mrs. Fraser is a woman of somewhat unorthodox talents, but you can't wish to risk her life. This isn't your fight. Leave it to us. For her sake. For your children's sake. We'll learn the truth, and Francisco Soro's murderer will be brought to justice. You have a parliamentary career to think about. I can't say I agree with most of the things you stand for, but you obviously take your beliefs seriously."

"I knew Francisco," Charles said. "I understand the way his mind worked. Surely—"

"Damn it, Charles." Castlereagh strode forward and slammed his hands down on the desk. The ink jar rattled, and a sheaf of foolscap thudded to the floor. "This isn't about your friend or your theories or your damned need to fix everything. If you won't stay out of it for your family's sake, then have the goodness not to risk the lives of my agents."

Charles shifted against the hard wood of his chair. Castlereagh's words rang (rue and cut close to the bone. And yet—he looked up into Castlereagh's intent eyes. "The Elsinore League is an odd name for a group of French soldiers. Could they have any connection to people here in England?"

Something flickered in Castlereagh's gaze for an instant. Something Charles would have sworn was fear, a fear he had rarely seen the Foreign Secretary display. Castlereagh drew back and straightened his shoulders. "No," he said. "To my knowledge their activities are confined to France."

But the fear in Castlereagh's gaze belied his words. He knew more than he'd admitted. Perhaps he knew what linked the Elsinore League to Honoria Talbot and possibly her father. Charles gripped his hands together, assimilating the fact that the Foreign Secretary of Britain, a man he had worked with, a man he trusted, had just lied to him.

The question was where the truth left off and the lies began.

"Charles?" Castlereagh tugged his coat sleeve smooth. "Do I have your word that you won't pursue this matter further?"

Charles looked into the Foreign Secretary's eyes. "You do," he said, returning lie for lie.

"So the question," Mélanie said, "is whether Castlereagh's being fed misinformation or whether he's part of the plot himself."

"In a nutshell." The chintz cushions creaked as Charles dropped down on the nursery window seat beside her. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned his head back against the white-painted window frame. He looked like he had after the third day of cannon fire shaking their house in Brussels during Waterloo, his skin ashen, his gaze vacant.

He didn't agree with Castlereagh's politics, Mélanie knew, but he had trusted the Foreign Secretary. For all Charles's skepticism, betrayal hit him hard. He wasn't as familiar with it as she was herself.

She touched his arm. He jerked and turned back to her, leaving whatever had troubled him in some far-off region of his mind where she couldn't follow him.

Jessica stirred at Mélanie's breast and made a protesting sound at the disruption. Charles gave a half smile, his distancing, attempting-to-reassure-her smile, and cupped his hand round Jessica's head. "The story Castlereagh told me was perfectly designed to explain away what we've learned," he said.

"Except that whoever designed it didn't realize how much we know."

"Quite. The story doesn't explain why the Bonapartists would fear for a woman named Honoria, who may be Honoria Talbot." Charles frowned at Jessica's downy head. "When I asked if the Elsinore League have connections to Britain, Castlereagh looked frightened. He may not know the whole story. He may believe some of what he told me. But he knows the story he told me isn't the complete truth."

Jessica reached up to pat Mélanie's breast and released
her nipple. Mélanie rocked her in her arms. "Whether Castlereagh designed the story or someone fed it to him, it was structured to convince you to tell him anything you'd learned from Francisco and to hand over anything Francisco had given you."

"And to convince me to stop asking further questions." Charles handed her a flannel from the basket on the window seat between them.

Mélanie draped the flannel over her shoulder and lifted Jessica against it. "Did he believe you on either count?" She patted Jessica's back. "That you hadn't learned anything from Francisco and that you'd stop asking questions?"

"I'm not sure. I thought so at the time, but I was followed home from the Foreign Office."

Her arms must have tightened round Jessica, because her daughter made an indignant noise. Mélanie kissed Jessica's head, breathing in the milky sweetness of baby. "Did you get a good look at—him? Was it a man?"

"I think so. Brown coat, middling height, beaver hat. I could have given him the slip, but that just would have alerted him to the fact that I was on to him. They could find us here easily enough in any case."

Mélanie smoothed down a wayward curl on Jessica's forehead. "Is he still watching the house?"

"He was a quarter-hour ago. I glimpsed him across the street from the half-landing window."

They looked at each other, the extent of what they were involved in hitting both of them like a hammer blow. Of one accord, their gazes went to Jessica. She looked very small nestled in the curve of Mélanie's arm, her skin soft and translucent against the rose-striped lustring of Mélanie's dress, her tiny limbs wobbling slightly. Jessica looked from one parent to the other with bright, curious eyes and stretched out a hand. Charles held out a finger, and she clenched it tightly. "It's hardly the first time we've faced an unknown enemy," he said.

Mélanie nodded. "This means we can't trust anyone connected to the Government, doesn't it?"

"Including the Home Office," Charles said while Jessica examined each finger of his hand one by one. "We were right not
to
go to Bow Street. Word would be sure to get back to the Home Secretary."

Mélanie swallowed. Given her background, it was not so strange to think of the British Government as an enemy, but she had never thought to find her husband in this position. "Charles, how far do you think this goes?"

Jessica was fidgeting. Charles took her from Mélanie and balanced her on his lap, her fingers curled round his own. "Difficult to guess when we don't even know what it is."

Mélanie did up the buttons that closed the flap on the nursing bodice of her gown (designed to "enable Ladies to nourish their infants in the most delicate manner possible"). "Castlereagh wouldn't lie lightly."

"No, if he's involved he thinks the country's interests are at stake." Charles touched his forehead to Jessica's. Jessica giggled with glee. "The question is, what did the Elsinore League hire Francisco to do, what made Francisco turn against them, and what the devil does it have to do with Honoria?"

Mélanie took the flannel from her shoulder and carefully folded it. "Charles, I decoded the papers Manon gave us."

He swung his head round to look at her. "And?"

She put the flannel back in the basket and twitched it smooth. "I'm not sure what it means. It's a list of names with numbers next to each one that I realized were map coordinates. I worked out where each one is." She walked to the white-painted writing desk and lifted her notes from its rose-splashed surface. "Marseilles, Lyons, Calais. All French. All but the last."

She held the paper out to Charles. The last name on the list was British. The name of the place that, Mélanie well knew, meant more to her husband than anywhere else on earth.

Dunmykel.

Charles stared down at the deciphered list, a dozen new questions tumbling in his head.

"It's odd that Dunmykel is the only British place on the list," his wife said. "But considering we suspected the Elsinore League were connected to Britain and perhaps to Miss Talbot's father—"

"It's not Dunmykel. It's the name next to it."
Giles McGann
. Another piece of the past he thought he'd left behind, which seemed to be closing about him in an ever tighter web.

His wife was watching him with the gaze that often saw far more than he wanted. "Of course," she said. "You must know everyone at Dunmykel. He's someone you grew up with?"