Beneath a Silent Moon (37 page)

"Damn you to hell," Glenister said, his face white.

"I've already seen to that on my own. I'm sure we shall meet there and find the company a great deal more convivial than in heaven." Kenneth looked back at Charles. "You've probably guessed what transpired next. Frederick went off to the Continent for four months. The childless married lady to whom I chose to lay siege was Frederick's lovely young bride."

Glenister was staring at Kenneth as though he'd wrest him limb from limb. Charles looked into the cool mockery of his father's gaze. "Quen."

"Precisely. By the time Frederick returned to Britain, his wife was more than a month gone with child. Quen is most probably my son. Unless of course she was playing her husband false with another gentleman as well."

Glenister jerked forward as though to strike Kenneth, then held himself back. "You bastard. Even now you show no remorse."

"What would be the point? And really, Frederick, you should have known what you were setting yourself up for when you went away for four months directly after leaving me such a challenge. Very careless."

Glenister snatched a Limoges casket from the console table and hurled it to the floor.

"My God," Kenneth said, "that was fourteenth-century."

"We've both got good at smashing things."

"Does Quen know?" Charles asked.

"No." Glenister strode through the ruined casket, grinding shards of porcelain beneath his boot heels. "No one does. Nothing would have pleased me more than to call Kenneth to account, but I couldn't do so without—"

"Making it obvious that you had horns on your head," Kenneth finished for him.

"And so we continued to go on as we had before. Though I need hardly say our friendship was never the same."

"Until you saw a way to take your revenge." Kenneth's gaze turned to ice. "What I want to know is, did you deliberately arrange for Honoria to be pregnant with your son's child when I became betrothed to her or did you simply take advantage of a fortunate accident?"

"I'd never—" Glenister's eyes went wide with outrage. "Good God, she was my ward."

"Whom you allowed your son to seduce."

"If I'd had an inkling of what was going on do you think I'd have allowed Val within a foot of her?" Glenister wiped his hand across his brow. "I wasn't happy when Honoria told me she wanted to marry you, but I could scarcely refuse without telling her the truth about Quen."

"It didn't occur to you to do so?" Charles asked.

"I—" Glenister strode to the far end of the room. "Honoria insisted it was what she wanted. Then, after the betrothal was announced, Val came to me and told me Honoria was pregnant with his child, that they'd been lovers for years—"

"And you saw your way to revenge," Kenneth said.

"All right, yes." Glenister spun round to face him. "Damn you, it was no more than you deserved."

"Dear Christ." Charles pushed himself to his feet. "She was little more than an object to either of you, was she? To be preserved like one of your paintings or statues and then used to make a point when you decided she was tainted."

His father's cold gaze raked his face. "What was she to you?"

"A friend. But I don't expect you to understand."

"She had to marry someone," Glenister said in the sort of tenacious voice used by the inebriated. "Whatever I think of Kenneth, she had a better chance of happiness with him than with Val."

"When were you planning to break the news to me?" Kenneth asked.

"I wasn't. I wouldn't have done that to Honoria. It would have been enough that I knew."

"And if I had found out?"

"There was no reason—" Glenister's gaze jerked to Kenneth's face. "Oh, my God. Did you? Is that why she died?"

Kenneth looked at him down the length of the study. "I gave you my word I didn't kill her."

"And I have cause to know just how reliable your word is, don't I?" Glenister glanced out the mullioned window. "For years—those damnable years of pretending we were still friends—I wondered why you'd done it. And then I realized you'd always hated me. You never got over the fact that I was the future marquis and you were the poor orphan who was sent to Harrow on your godfather's charity. You couldn't bear it, could you? Those months of making the Grand Tour and picking out the finest treasures only to see me buy them."

Kenneth's gaze flickered for a moment, then went still. "Your timing's a bit off, Frederick. By the time of my liaison with your wife I was quite comfortably situated."

"Thanks to a lucky legacy and an even luckier marriage. But it couldn't equal a marquisate. I have a position you'll never have and you couldn't bear it because you thought you were so much cleverer than I was. So you went out and proved it."

Kenneth's gaze remained steady, though Charles noticed his lips whiten slightly. "You overrate yourself, Frederick. You've never been that central to my thinking."

"That's why you wanted Honoria, isn't it?" Glenister said, as though the thought had only just occurred to him. "She was one more treasure you could take from me."

"My dear Glenister. Once again you've got it all backward."

"Not this time. I know you, Kenneth. Far too well." Glenister looked at his former friend as though he'd like to rip the truth from his throat. "The only thing I'm not sure of is if you smashed her the way I just smashed your precious casket."

Miss Newland regarded Mélanie without flinching. "I wish I could say that I would have come to you with all this information if you hadn't learned of my prior relationship to Lord Quentin. But in truth I can't tell you what I would have done. Self-preservation is a strong instinct."

And Honoria Talbot had had the power to threaten Aspasia Newland's security indefinitely.

"Mama." The exclamation from Chloe cut across the lawn. Lady Frances was sweeping down the stairs from the terrace in a swirl of lavender lustring. She paused to admire the toy boat, then crossed the lawn to join Mélanie and Miss Newland.

"Mélanie. I should have known I'd find you being a devoted mother. Miss Newland, will you excuse us for a moment?"

"Of course." Miss Newland smiled with no hint of the revelations of a few moments before and went to join the children.

"Admirable woman," Lady Frances murmured, looking after the governess's straight-backed figure. "I don't know how she does it, tending other people's children year after year. I barely manage with my own, though I think I'm doing rather better with Chloe than I did with the others. Mélanie, I need to talk to you." She spun round and laid a hand on Mélanie's arm. "I don't suppose Kenneth's given any further explanation of his whereabouts last night?"

"Only that he was in the library."

Lady Frances snorted. "How idiotic. And Charles is afraid his father killed Honoria. No, don't argue the point, one could see it in his face last night."

"He could hardly fail to at least wonder," Mélanie said.

"In the circumstances, I suppose you're right." Lady Frances removed her hand from Mélanie's arm. "But Kenneth couldn't have killed Honoria. You can take my word for it."

Mélanie studied Charles's mother's sister. "How can you be sure?"

Lady Frances lifted a well-groomed brow. "My dear, isn't it obvious? Because Kenneth spent last night with me."

Charles left the study with more questions than he'd had when he went in search of his father and Glenister. He paused at the bend in the corridor between the north wing and the central block and rubbed his hand over his eyes. If their story was to be believed, Quen was his brother. Probably. At the moment, he couldn't afford to consider the fact except as it might impact who had killed Honoria.

"Charles." His sister's voice came from the hall. From the note of insistence, he suspected it was not the first time Gisèle had called his name. "I need to talk to you." She came running toward him, muslin skirts rustling, kid slippers thudding against the marble tiles.

"Gelly." Charles forced his mind from the revelations in the study to the earlier revelations that involved the man his sister loved.

Gisèle clutched his arm. "Is it true? I know you talked to him."

Oh, Christ. Had Val gone to Gisèle and tried to make excuses for himself? Charles looked down at his sister, subduing the impulse to smooth her hair as he would have done when she was a girl. "Yes, I talked to him. Gelly, I don't know what you've heard—"

"You have to listen to me, Charles. I know you think you understand, but you've got it all twisted round backward." Gisèle glanced toward the hall, where Alec was still on duty, then dragged him through the nearest door into the old drawing room.

Charles looked at his sister's flushed face and determined eyes. Even before Vial's revelations about Honoria, he'd hated the thought of Gisèle spending the rest of her life with Valentine Talbot. But he hated, too, the thought of wounding the vulnerability that lay behind her fierce defense of the man she thought she loved.

Gisèle's eyes went dark with loathing. "Oh, God, you're doing it, too."

"What?"

"Looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you think I'm going to put a pistol to my head. It's what everyone does whenever I lose my temper. The legacy of being Elizabeth Fraser's daughter."

Charles flinched. Her words cut close to his fears both for her and for himself. He stared at the canvaswork chairs grouped round the rosewood table in the center of the room. He could picture his mother sitting there reading them a story during one of her fleeting visits to Dunmykel, her quicksilver voice weaving a magical tapestry. His gaze shifted to the Sevres vases on the mantel. One of the set was missing. He could still hear the crash when their mother had thrown it against the linenfold door.

"Mother didn't leave any of us an easy legacy," he said. "But I know you aren't her any more than I am."

"I sometimes wonder if you know me at all, Charles. No, don't." She put out a hand to stop him from speaking. "I shouldn't have said anything. The important thing is that you don't understand what happened last night. You have to—" She stopped as though the words had got caught in her throat and picked at the basket-weave embroidery on one of the chair backs.

Charles felt his way carefully, not sure how much Val had told her. "Gelly, I know you care for him—"

"You can't believe—" Gisèle looked up at him. "How on earth do you know I care for him?"

"You haven't exactly made a secret of it."

"I know you're quick at things, Charles, but I didn't think you paid that much attention to me."

"Of course I pay attention to you. You're my sister."

"That didn't stop you from—oh, poison, I'm doing it again. Look, I don't know exactly what you believe—"

"I don't know what exactly he's told you."

Gisèle blinked. "He hasn't told me anything. He's the last man on earth who'd come running to me because he needed help. You should know that. He's your friend."

"Val and I were never friends."

"You always—" She stared at him as he though he'd started quoting from the wrong play. "Val?"

"Val. Lord Valentine Talbot. The man you've been flirting madly with for the past two months."