Beneath a Silent Moon (45 page)

"Crystal, Mr. Fraser."

"Good. Wait in the cottage for a quarter-hour after we leave. After that I don't care where you go, so long as—"

"Don't worry, I'll be gone at first tide."

"On the contrary. I insist that you stay in the vicinity until the matter of Miss Talbot's death is resolved. We may have need of your evidence. Do I have your word?"

"Does my word mean anything?"

Tommy gave a derisive snort, but Charles merely said, "You're a businessman, Wheaton. I assume you know the dangers of reneging on a bargain. Do I have your word?"

"For what it's worth, yes. You can reach me through your friend Drummond at the Griffin & Dragon."

Charles nodded and turned to the corner of the room. "Andrew? Do you think you can walk?"

"Of course." Andrew lurched to his feet, staggered, and would have fallen if Gisèle hadn't caught him about the waist.

"Here." Tommy took Andrew's weight on his shoulder. "Let me, Miss Fraser. I'm a bit taller than you."

"I'm stronger than I look," Gisèle said, draping Andrew's other arm round her shoulders.

Tommy and Gisèle helped Andrew from the cottage. Charles handed Mélanie to her feet and they followed. The five of them stood still for a moment after Charles closed the door to the cottage. The events inside the cottage reverberated in Mélanie's mind like the click of the latch. The moon was cool and ghostly in the smudged gray of the sky. The air outside seemed to have grown colder in the past—what had it been—an hour? She could feel it pressing against all the sore places in her body.

Andrew detached himself from Tommy and Gisèle, drew a deep breath, and then looked at Tommy as though realizing for the first time that he didn't know him.

"His name's Tommy Belmont," Gisèle said. "Officially he's in Paris right now, but he's here doing something mysterious."

Andrew accepted this with a celerity that indicated both a keen knowledge of the workings of Gisèle's mind and a clearing brain. He shook Tommy's hand. "My thanks for your help. But what the devil—"

"We should talk," Charles said. "But not here. The lodge?"

Andrew nodded.

"You can't walk all the way to the lodge," Gisèle said.

"Of course I can. I've suffered worse taking a tumble from my horse." He touched Gisèle's arm, bare below the puffed muslin sleeve of her frock. "Good God, Gelly, you're shaking like a leaf."

"I lost my shawl."

"Here." He struggled out of his coat.

"Andrew—"

"I had a blow to the head, I'm not coming down with pneumonia. Don't fuss. I have sleeves. You don't." He put the coat round her. Gisèle let him do so and took his arm, which seemed to satisfy her as to ensuring he could walk. Tommy glanced at Charles and then followed close behind the couple, conveniently close should Andrew stumble, pistol drawn in case of further disturbance.

"What about you?" Charles said to Mélanie. "Can you walk?"

"Of course I can walk." Not entirely steadily, but that would improve with fresh air and exercise.

"You're almost as bad a liar as Andrew. Put your arm round me."

She did and winced, which earned her a sharp look from her husband. But he merely adjusted his hold to a more comfortable position and helped her along the path after the others.

"I must say that was a very impressive performance in the cottage, Charles," Mélanie said when they had climbed to the top of the cliffs. "If I didn't know you so well I'd have thought you really were furious."

Charles stopped walking, spun to face her, and seized her by the shoulders. "What file hell did you think you were doing?" he said, his level voice gone as sharp as the wind.

Mélanie looked up at her husband. The moonlight fell over his face, sharpening his nose and cheekbones, accentuating the angry line of his mouth, deepening his eyes to blue-black. "Wasn't it obvious what I was doing? Obtaining information."

"A little more information and a few less bruises would speak better for your sense."

"If I hadn't been bruised, Mr. Wheaton wouldn't have talked to you."

"Even you couldn't have foreseen how that would play out, Mel."

"Not exactly. But I knew playing along was our best chance of getting information. For God's sake, Charles, I wasn't in any real danger. You know me, I never let myself get trapped. I had the bonds on my wrists loosened and I knew exactly where the windows were. I could always have run."

"And taken Andrew with you?"

"Andrew did complicate things, but—"

"But what?" His gaze sliced into her own. "Even if you'd told them who you were, they might have decided it had gone too far and they were better off killing you."

"It wouldn't have—"

"Come to that? You can't possibly know that." His grip on her tightened. Something had broken in the depths of his eyes, releasing a molten torrent from a part of him she rarely glimpsed. "Jesus, Mel, you might remember that you have children."

"I never forget that I have children."

"No? Then you've got to stop thinking you can heap any abuse on yourself without fear of the consequences."

"I'll stop whenever you do."

"What the devil's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Charles. You got shot the night we met Francisco, you nearly got knifed in Covent Garden, and then you were shot at again last night. And that's just the past fortnight."

"Are you suggesting we should have ignored Manon's message?"

"No. I'm saying you didn't have any choice. Just as I didn't have a choice tonight."

"There's always a choice."

"Not one I'd ever have made. I'm not Honoria Talbot. I never will be."

"Don't bring Honoria into this."

"She's already in the middle of it. One way or another she's been at the heart of everything that's happened for the past fortnight, and you wouldn't be human if you weren't thinking about the life you might have had with her—"

"Damn it, Mélanie, don't try to change the subject. I never wanted a life with Honoria."

"I know, you never wanted to be married at all or you never thought you deserved to be—"

"As you pointed out, I haven't exactly been a model husband."

"Charles—"

He released his grip on her. "Tommy's a bloody impertinent bastard," he said in a low, harsh voice. "But sometimes he sees too damned much."

"Too much of what?"

"The truth."

"About?"

"It doesn't matter." He glanced away and drew a long breath. "We make choices. We have to live with them." He turned, wrapped his arm round her again, and drew her after the others.

She made no reply, because to Charles's words there was really nothing to be said. That, after all, was what their marriage had been about from the first. Learning to live with choices. Or trying to do so.

They followed Andrew, Gisèle, and Tommy along winding paths past the birch coppice to the lodge. Andrew fished a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked a side door onto a vaulted kitchen filled with cool shadows and the smell of peat and lemon oil. He lit a lamp on the deal table in the center of the room, went to light another, gripped the edge of the table, and dropped down heavily into one of the straight-backed chairs.

"Sorry. 'Fraid I'd better sit down. Charles, there's some whisky on the sideboard."

Gisèle felt his forehead. "I'm not sure a drink would be good for you after that blow to the head."

"Fine, I won't drink. Offer some to everyone else."

"I'll make tea. We're all chilled." Gisèle shrugged out of Andrew's coat, draped it over a chair back, and went to the range. The iron doors squeaked and the embers hissed to life as she stirred them with the poker.

Charles pressed Mélanie into a chair and finished lighting the lamps. Tommy added some peats from a basket beneath the stove to the fire in the range.

Andrew stared across the table at Mélanie, his gaze moving over her wool coat and linen shirt and cloth cap. "You
are
dressed like a boy. I thought it was just the blow to the head playing tricks on me. What in God's name were you doing?"

"Trying to find out what the smugglers were up to." Mélanie tugged off her cap and shook out her matted hair. She looked from Andrew, sitting statue-still at the end of the table, to Gisèle, slender and straight-backed, her muddy white dress outlined against the black iron of the range as she filled the kettle. "I think I have it sorted out. Wheaton has a smuggling operation in the south. His men ferry goods up here, goods that men on the estate have been hiding in the caves and then distributing. But a couple of Dunmykel men started their own operation bringing contraband from the south. It got bad enough that Wheaton came up here to investigate. Last night the rogue smugglers had a run-in with his men. One of them was shot. He and his confederate—who they thought I was—got away and are hiding somewhere on the estate." She paused a moment. "The smugglers thought the two men must have had help last night."

Andrew regarded her with a steady blue gaze over the lemon-scoured deal of the table.

Gisèle turned from the range, a blue enamel tin of tea in her hand. "His name's Ian. He's Marjorie—my maid's—younger brother."

"Marjorie told you he was in trouble?" Charles struck a spark to the last of the lamps.

Gisèle set down the tin and reached for the teapot. The brown glaze gleamed in the lamplight. "Marjorie woke me last night in a panic. She said Ian had been shot and he was hiding in the secret passage. I woke Andrew. Ian couldn't be moved far, but we had to get him somewhere where he could be warm and dry and out of sight for a few days."

"The Old Tower," Charles guessed.

Gisèle's eyes widened in acknowledgment. "Yes."

"How badly hurt is he? We saw blood in the passage."

"It's only a flesh wound, but it's in his leg, so it's difficult for him to walk. We bandaged the wound and took him some blankets and food. Then Andrew saw me back to the house. That part of the story I told you was true."

Andrew looked up at her. "What story?"

Gisèle began to spoon tea into the teapot. "Charles found out you used the secret passage last night. He was suspecting all sorts of things and probably ignoring other things that might actually have to do with who killed Honoria, so I had to give him an explanation. I told him you were in the passage last night because you were seeing me back to my room because I'd gone to your room because I wanted to get your attention which of course I did—want to get your attention, that is, at least I used to—but even at my silliest, I'd never—"

Andrew's fingers clenched on the edge of the table. "Gelly, you didn't have to—"

Gisèle measured another precise spoonful of tea. "I know it sounds absurd, but I had to tell him something, and Charles actually believed me." She cast a sidelong glance at her brother. "You see why I had to wake Andrew last night, Charles. I knew I'd need help with Ian and I didn't have anyone else to turn to."

Charles leaned against the table, arms folded across his chest. "Some sisters would turn to their brothers."

Gisèle snapped the lid of the tea tin shut. "I knew Andrew would be sympathetic to Ian. He's always worrying about the tenants and he knows how difficult Father's Clearances have been for everyone—"