Beneath a Silent Moon (7 page)

"Charles doesn't make confidences easily. But I was sure—usually he'll confide in those he's closest to—but then you were abroad, away from the family. It must have seemed easiest to him to ignore it." Miss Talbot reached for her cup. "When I was a little girl, I thought Lady Elizabeth Fraser was the most beautiful woman in the world. I remember her coming into the nursery to say good night to us once during a house party in Scotland. She was wearing a dress embroidered with silver acorns and a diamond tiara. She looked like a fairy princess. But her marriage to Mr. Fraser wasn't happy. She used to have dreadful bouts of the blue devils and then at other times she'd be quite giddy and—well, I don't suppose the rest matters and I hate to repeat gossip." The little silver teaspoon trembled in Miss Talbot's fingers. "Lady Elizabeth didn't die of illness or an accident. She shot herself in the head a week before Christmas when Charles was nineteen."

Mélanie's images of her husband's childhood shifted and tumbled in her head. She'd guessed, from his careful reticence, that his mother's death was still a raw pain, but not the full extent of the reason. "Dear God."

"Charles's brother—Edgar—was in the room with her when she did it. I don't know the particulars, but I know that he and Charles haven't been the friends they once were since."

Edgar was one of the few members of Charles's family Mélanie had met in the early days of her marriage. A soldier in Wellington's army, he'd been in and out of Lisbon on leave, in Brussels before Waterloo, and now was stationed in
Paris, where Charles and Mélanie had lived themselves until a few months ago. Edgar had welcomed Mélanie to the family with laughing good humor and was a devoted uncle to Colin and Jessica, but he and Charles always treated each other with careful constraint. Mélanie, used to being able to read people, was baffled by the relationship between the Fraser brothers. Miss Talbot's revelations went some way toward explaining it. "It must have been hell for all of them."

Miss Talbot nodded. "Charles finished up at Oxford and then took a post as an attache and went off to Lisbon. Gisèle was only eight. She went to live with Frances Dacre-Hammond, Lady Elizabeth's sister. I suppose the last thing any of them dreamed was that Mr. Fraser would marry again one day."

"I'm sure they all want their father to be happy."

Miss Talbot's mouth curved with unexpected irony. "Now who's talking like a diplomat, Mrs. Fraser?" She set her tea down again. This time the spoon clattered against the saucer. "Does Charles despise me?"

"I can't imagine why he would do so."

"I don't think I've become the woman he thought I could be."

"Charles isn't one to pass judgment on anyone."

"No. That's what I—that's why his good opinion matters so much to me." Miss Talbot reached for her gloves and reticule. "You're a lucky woman, Mrs. Fraser. There aren't many men like Charles."

"And his father?" Mélanie said before she could think better of it.

Miss Talbot smoothed on her gloves, one finger at a time. "Kenneth Fraser is the choice I've made. For better or worse."

Charles paused beside the black metal of the Berkeley Square railing, beneath the spring-green late-afternoon shade of the plane trees. A nursemaid and two small boys were descending the steps from one of the houses, and a smart yellow racing curricle with a showy pair of bays was drawn up near the pavement. Otherwise, the square was empty, most of the residents no doubt out paying calls or making a circuit of Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five o'clock.

He stared at his father's house, to which he'd been summoned the evening before. The house of which Honoria would soon be mistress. Smooth walls of gray Portland stone, graceful ivory moldings, lacy filigree lampposts framing a polished front door. Despite the classical elegance of the pediments and columns, despite the delicate fanlight and the greenery spilling from the window boxes on the first floor, it had the look of a fortress.

He'd never thought of it as home, not like Dunmykel, the estate in Scotland, which had been in his blood since boyhood. The Berkeley Square house had been the mysterious place to which his parents vanished after their infrequent visits to their children in Scotland. On rare childhood stays in London he had felt like an unbidden guest, curious about the life in this mysterious place but under no illusion that he belonged and not quite sure he was welcome.

Which, of course, was completely irrelevant now that he was nearly thirty, a husband and father himself, gone from his father's roof for nearly ten years. Yet as he climbed the sand-scoured steps and rang the bell, he couldn't shake the sensation of powerlessness, as familiar and unchanging as cambric tea in the nursery. In a few hours, he and Mélanie were to meet with Francisco Soro, but in its own way the interview with his father promised as much danger as whatever Francisco was about to drag them into.

Most of the servants he'd known as a boy were long gone, but the footman on duty recognized him from his handful of visits in the three months he'd been back in Britain. "Mr. Fraser's in the study, sir. If—"

"Thank you." Charles handed the footman his hat and gloves. "I know the way."

"Yes, sir, but he's with—"

"Your sister." The cool tenor voice came from the hall beyond. A golden-haired figure rose from one of the velvet benches, a newspaper rustling in his hand.

"Hullo, Val." Charles walked toward Lord Glenister's younger son. "What the devil are you doing here?"

"I drove Gisèle round in my curricle. Your father wanted to see her." Val tossed the newspaper onto the bench. "Did you think you were the only one of his children he'd summoned?"

"I long since gave up trying to puzzle out what Father might or might not do."

Val regarded him, arms folded across his light blue coat and striped silk waistcoat. "Strange to think this farce of a marriage is going to make us—what? Stepcousins once removed? Of course, to all intents and purposes Honoria's a sister to me, which means to all intents and purposes I'll be your stepuncle. You'll have to start showing me some respect."

"What odds on hell freezing over?" Charles said with his pleasantest smile.

"A few days ago, I'd have given those same odds on the chances of Princess Icicle marrying your father. I swear, I think she accepted him because he's the one man in London we'd all be shocked at her getting herself leg-shackled to."

"Honoria doesn't do things simply to shock people."

A cold smile curved Val's mouth. "So sure you know her, Charles? After all these years?"

"Val, I'm—oh, Charles." Gisèle swept into the hall and stopped short, a pair of lilac kid gloves clutched in one hand, her gaze as still and cool as a Highland stream on a windless day in January.

"Hullo, Gelly," Charles said.

She tugged on her gloves and began doing up the buttons. "I suppose Father wants to talk to you about it, too."

"It?"

"This ridiculous marriage of his." She walked over to Val and tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. "Not that he really explained anything. He never does."

Charles looked down at her, seeking echoes of the little girl he'd built dollhouses for and scooped up for rides on his horse. The top of Gisèle's head still barely reached his shoulder, but the round-faced, bright-eyed child was gone, replaced by a modish young woman with plucked brows, sharpened cheekbones, and fashionably cropped hair. She looked as polished and frozen as one of the porcelain dolls she'd played with as a girl. "I know it's odd," he said, "for Father to be marrying one of your friends—"

Gisèle's chin jerked up, making the ribbons on her bonnet rustle. "You've been gone a long time, Charles. Honoria and I haven't been friends for years. If we ever were."

Her green eyes were as hard as glass. Nine years of mistakes and broken promises, unspoken words and unvoiced failures hung like dust motes in the air between them. "Childhood companion, then," Charles said.

"Assuming you call being odiously superior companionship. Whatever we once were, I don't imagine Honoria's any more eager to have me for a daughter than I am to have her for a mother."

"Don't worry, my sweet." Val smiled down at her. "Now when she really makes you cross you can call her 'Mama.' "

Gisèle tilted her head back to look up at him. For a moment, the reckless glint in her eyes was so like their mother's that Charles's throat tightened with fear. "Do you know, that almost reconciles me to the whole sorry business."

Val flicked his fingers against her cheek. "I'd give a monkey to see Princess Icicle's face when you try it."

"If you're good, perhaps you will." Gisèle tightened her grip on his arm and tugged him down the hall. "You'd better not keep Father waiting, Charles."

"Val's seeing you back to Aunt Frances's?" Charles said. Gisèle had made her home with their mother's sister since their mother's death.

"No, he's sweeping me off to Gretna Green to marry me over the anvil. And before you go all glowering, that was a joke."

"Oh, I don't know," Val said. "It would drive Honoria mad if we got married first and stole her thunder."

Charles bit back a number of blistering comments that would only have made the situation worse and suppressed the impulse to wrest his sister from Val's grasp and plant Val a facer.

Gisèle paused midway down the hall and looked back at Charles over her shoulder. "I'm sure this is harder for you than it is for me, Charles. I didn't even like Honoria. Let alone love her."

She dragged Val from the house with a swish of muslin skirts. Charles swallowed, counted to ten, and strode to face his interview with his father.

As infrequent as his visits to the Berkeley Square house had been, his visits to the study had been even more rare. Only when he or his brother Edgar did something so extreme that their father couldn't ignore it, as he did most of their actions, were they called into the study to feel the sting of Kenneth Fraser's tongue, sharper than any birch rod.

"Ah. Charles. Good." Kenneth Fraser looked up from behind the mahogany ramparts of his desk. A pen and penknife lay on the blotter before him, and a stack of papers rested at his elbow. A Renaissance bronze that had the look of Cellini served as a paperweight.

Charles closed the door and advanced into the room, negotiating the Axminster carpet as though it were a battlefield. "I saw Gisèle in the hall. And Val."

"I thought you might. I suppose Gisèle could do worse, though Val's not exactly the match I'd choose for her."

"You don't fancy the thought of your daughter marrying a younger version of yourself?"

Kenneth's gaze hardened. "Even at four-and-twenty I flatter myself that I had rather more finesse than Valentine Talbot."

"He hasn't offered for her, has he?"

"Not yet. Stop scowling, Charles, you've scarcely seen Gisèle for nine years. I shouldn't think you'd have much interest in whom she married."

"And you do, sir? I never thought you had much interest in any of us."

"On the contrary. I've always been very fond of Gisèle. Sit down, Charles," Kenneth added as Charles continued to stand before the desk.