Beneath a Silent Moon (29 page)

Charles dipped his fingers in the water in the ewer on the satinwood nightstand and brought them to his lips. "No laudanum. I would think it would have had to be in something stronger to disguise the taste in any case."

Mélanie went to the table on the opposite side of the bed. A book lay beside the crystal Agrand lamp. Byron,
Don Juan
. Hardly surprising reading matter for a young woman. She opened the drawer in the table. A stack of handkerchiefs and something else that rattled. She reached into the back of the drawer and retrieved a small, three-quarters-empty glass bottle filled with a clear liquid. She unscrewed the top and sniffed for confirmation. "Laudanum. Most definitely. I wouldn't exactly say it was hidden, though it wasn't in plain view."

"So perhaps she did take too much laudanum on her own. Or perhaps she took a small amount on her own and the murderer drugged her with more."

"Or perhaps she didn't take it at all and the murderer planted this in her room."

Charles's gaze swept the room. The pink-flowered basin and ewer on the nightstand, the silk-draped dressing table, the painted beech wardrobe and writing desk. "You look at the dressing table. I'll take the wardrobe and writing desk."

The dressing table was a stark contrast to the tidiness of the rest of the room. A dressing case fitted with gilded mirrors spilled open. A thin film of face powder dusted the tabletop, a perfume atomizer lay on its side, a thin ivory-handled brush was smeared with lip rouge. Mélanie held the silver-backed hairbrush up to the light of the window. Several blonde hairs were caught in the bristles. "She seems to have tended to her appearance before she left the room. I remember she was wearing lip rouge when she—when I saw the body."

Charles nodded without looking up. He was lifting papers from Miss Talbot's writing case. "Nothing so far but letters to girlhood friends and a bill from her dressmaker."

Mélanie opened each of the silver boxes in the dressing case, but they contained no more than the ribbons and hairpins and jewelry that might be expected. She tugged open the dressing table drawer. Another stack of embroidered handkerchiefs, gloves of net and kid and silk in white, ecru, beige, lavender, lemon yellow. She lifted out the handkerchiefs and found nothing beneath them, then did the same with the gloves. A folded sheet of paper fluttered to the ground.

She caught the paper and spread it open. Pressed paper, cream-colored and heavy, covered in a strong black scrawl. She held it to the light of the window.

My darling
—

It's no good, I'm bloody awful at pretending I don't care. I love you—surely you know that? If I haven't said it, blame it on pride, not lack of feeling. Shall I swear it by the blessed moon? I won't presume to swear by myself—I could scarcely hit upon a more profane object. Yet in this, believe me, love, I speak true. I can't believe you
—
of all women
—
would let fear of a society you laugh at stand in the way of our happiness
—

Mélanie turned the paper over. Nothing was written on the back. If there was a second page, it wasn't in the drawer. "Charles. I've found something. A love letter." He crossed to her side and stared down at the paper. "Do you recognize the hand?" Mélanie asked. He nodded. "It's Quen's."

According to Alec, the footman on duty in the hall, Lord Quentin had gone outside half an hour since, accompanied by Miss Mortimer. Alec believed he'd heard them say something about walking to the lake.

Mélanie followed her husband's swift strides from the hall to the drawing room and through the French windows onto the granite terrace. The air had a chill bite, but there was no immediate promise of more rain. The sky was a smudge of slate and indigo. Below the terrace, greenery and stonework and well-cut granite steps tamed the cliff. At the base of the steps, the gardens stretched in a riot of color. And beyond them, the restless blue expanse of the sea.

Charles took the steps two at a time. Mélanie tried to match her pace to his, but her skirt, a fashionably narrow column, caught about her ankles.

Charles stopped. "Sorry. I didn't realize I was walking so fast. A craven attempt to run away." His gaze moved over the garden below, the knotted parterre in the shape of the griffin and dragon of the Fraser arms, the hedged walkways, the reflecting pool, the sunken sundial surrounded by a tumble of roses. "I taught Quen to hold a cricket bat on that bit of lawn by the parterre when I was ten and he was five. He managed to knock the ball into the center of the sundial. It was a capital hit."

Mélanie, focused on the thought of Lord Quentin as
Honoria Talbot's lover, was brought up short by this image of him as a child.

Charles started back down the steps at a more temperate pace. "He was an engaging little boy. Restless, but not hard to entertain if you could find something that interested him."

"And Lord Valentine?" Mélanie asked.

"Val was determined to outshine his elder brother. When Quen was about eight he decided cricket was too tame and he tried to scale the Old Tower." Charles glanced over his shoulder at the thirteenth-century keep, which jutted out of the north wing. "Val followed him. Quen actually made it to the top. Val nearly did as well before he turned his ankle and got stuck. I had to go up after him."

Mélanie stared at the steep walls, with few handholds besides chinks in the mortar and an occasional arrow slit. "Somehow I doubt Lord Valentine thanked you."

"He gave me a bloody nose while I was bundling him onto the battlements. As soon as his ankle healed, he snuck out of the nursery at dawn and climbed the tower all over again. It's a wonder he and Quen survived to their majority without breaking their necks."

"What did Glenister think of the rivalry between his sons?"

"He encouraged it. Though he always tended to be harder on Quen and indulge Val more. Just as he prefers Val's more stylish brand of rakishness to Quen's out-and-out debauchery."

They reached the bottom of the steps and turned down a walkway bordered by a yew hedge on one side and a line of purple hollyhocks on the other. The damp grass squelched beneath their feet. The air smelled of rain-drenched leaves and freshly turned earth.

Images ran through Mélanie's mind. Lord Quentin sick with drink at Miss Talbot's betrothal ball. Lord Quentin slumped in the corner of the drawing room last night. Lord Quentin staring down at Miss Talbot's body this morning, his face set with cold rage. "In the letter Lord Quentin accuses Miss Talbot of letting society's opinion stand in the way of their being together," she said. "But surely whatever his reputation, a marriage between them would have been seen as eligible. If she loved Lord Quentin and was carrying his child, why insist on marrying your father?"

"Why indeed? Of course Quen might not have been talking about marriage, though, it's hard to imagine he'd have believed she'd run off with him without it."

"Perhaps she was convinced he'd make an unreliable husband."

"And so she decided she'd rather marry my father?"

"It fits the facts as we know them."

"It doesn't fit Honoria."

"It doesn't fit the Honoria you thought you knew. But then, neither does the fact that she was pregnant."

Charles swung round to stare at her. "Damn it, Mel, don't. Not you of all people. Don't use the fact that she wasn't a virgin to drag her into the gutter."

"You know me better than that."

"Then what are you suggesting?"

"That Miss Talbot had secrets. You have to face the fact that she may not be the woman you thought she was."

"Just what is that supposed to mean?"

She stared at the raindrops glistening on the petals of the hollyhocks. "No one is truly who we think they are. Not exclusively, not entirely. There are always corners we don't see into. In most cases we'd be better off not knowing what lurks in those corners, but in this case you have to know. You have to pick through her past and uncover all the messy bits."

"And you think I'm afraid to do that?"

"I think it's hellishly difficult to dig into anyone's past, especially the past of someone you cared for, most especially someone you cared for and lost."

He drew a breath and released it. "I'd be a fool to claim I'm entirely objective when it comes to Honoria or Father or any of the people here. But you have to allow that I'm rational enough to tell a hawk from a handsaw, at least when the wind is southerly. Or I assume you'd have objected to the idea of my investigating Honoria's death in the first place." He resumed walking. "I'm not going to assume Honoria is guilty of every conceivable infamy simply because she happens to have been with child. I don't think you want to assume that, either."

"Of course not. But—"

His gaze moved over her face, slate dark and unyielding. "What?"

She looked back at him without blinking. "Miss Talbot struck me as a woman who liked to be in control—of situations, of people, of her own life. She knew exactly the right words to pick to drive her point across." Such as the point that she knew Charles far better than Mélanie did herself. "One doesn't present an image as flawless as hers without a great deal of thought and effort. And that thought and effort usually mean that flawless image masks something a great deal more complicated."

"You scarcely knew her."

"She called on me shortly before we left London. One can learn a lot in half an hour over a tea table. I doubt she so much as unbuttoned her gloves without thinking through the consequences of the action."

"You've spent too much time round diplomats and agents, Mel. Not everyone is a master schemer. For God's sake, you're usually so good at seeing beyond the obvious. Looking at the facts from every angle. Not judging people or jumping to conclusions."

"Damn it, Charles, I am looking at the facts. And before you go into your litany about knowing her better than I did—"

"Obviously I didn't know her as well as I thought. If I'd understood her better, I'd never have—I'd have known what to do or what to say to her and perhaps this wouldn't have happened."

She put a hand on his arm. "Charles. You couldn't have prevented this."

"You can't possibly know that."

"I know you. I know you're thinking you should have been able to protect her, the same way you wanted to protect me. But you can't always fix everything."

"Stop it." He jerked away from her with a force like the recoil of a gun. "Stop being so bloody sure you know what I'm thinking better than I do myself. Jesus, in some ways you don't know me at all."

Four and half years of marriage. Uncounted nights spent in his arms, uncounted meals eaten together, uncounted moments of shared danger. Uncounted chambers in his mind she knew she'd never glimpsed. "That's just the point."

"That you don't know me?"

"That you can't expect me to carry on this investigation without knowing all the facts you do about Miss Talbot."

His gaze cut against her own like the press of cold steel. "What are you asking? If I was her lover? You should know me well enough to know that I wouldn't—"

"Seduce a virgin?" She parried his glance like a rapier thrust. "I wouldn't think so. But I can't be certain of what you might do under every possible set of circumstances. As you just pointed out, in some ways I don't know you at all."