Secrets of a Lady (40 page)

Lady Frances frowned and took another sip of chocolate. “The years have a way of running together. I do remember catching a glimpse of her when your cousin Cedric and Maria were paying their annual visit. One of the children was a baby. Ronald? No, I think it was Algernon, so that would make it four years ago. Cedric kept turning his field glasses her way. It was more life than I’d seen in him since he was a boy.”

“She’s not in Brighton anymore?” Charles said.

“I couldn’t swear to having seen her since that time with Cedric and I know I haven’t in the last year or two. People are always coming and going at Brighton.”

She got to her feet with a decisive sweep of her skirts. “I fear I can tell you no more, but I believe I know someone who can. Give me ten minutes to make myself presentable.” She swept from the room without waiting for an answer.

“Good God.” Edgar broke the silence in a soft, low voice. “Miss Trevennen actually was here.”

Mélanie unwound the strap of her reticule from her chafed hand and spread her sketch of Helen Trevennen out on the marquetry table beside the settee. “It sounds as though she lived in a rather different style here than she had in London.” She took a pencil from her reticule and darkened Helen’s hair.

Charles righted his chocolate cup, which was tilting toward the carpet. “The blackmail theory seems more and more likely.”

Mélanie lifted her pencil and studied the drawing. “We may actually—”

“Yes.” Charles was staring at a Turner seascape on the wall opposite. His voice shook with suppressed hope. “I know.”

In two minutes less than the promised ten—Mélanie tracked the time on the Staffordshire mantel clock—Lady Frances returned to the room, swathed in a violet pelisse trimmed in sable, a violet satin bonnet adorned with ostrich feathers, and an enormous sable muff and tippet. Her crested amethyst barouche awaited them in the street below.

She didn’t speak until they were settled in the silk damask interior. “Billy Hopkins,” she said, twitching her skirt smooth. “Runs Lord Hodge’s racing stable just outside of town. He knows all the comings and goings of the racing set. If anyone remembers this Helen Trevennen or whatever she was calling herself here, he will.”

“You know him well?” Charles asked.

A smile played about her lips. “Well enough. I am confident he can be trusted.”

Mélanie gripped the carriage strap to steady her nerves as much as her person. “Good. We can’t afford any mistakes.”

Lady Frances put a lilac-kid-gloved hand over Mélanie’s own. “I know what you must be feeling, my dear. I confess I grow quite alarmed when Chloe catches a simple chill, and I worry over the older children far more than I’d ever admit to them. Even Cedric. He may grate on my nerves after a three-day visit, but he is still my son.”

Mélanie looked beneath the ruched gauze brim of Lady Frances’s bonnet and saw genuine sympathy in the cool eyes. “One’s children always are,” she said.

“Quite.” Lady Frances nodded, then glanced across the carriage at Charles and Edgar. “It’s a mystery to me how my sister managed to raise the pair of you, while I produced Cedric. He’s entirely too like his father. That’s what I get for giving my husband a legitimate heir.”

Edgar flushed. “Aunt Frances—”

“Don’t you turn into a prude too, boy. Anyone who knew Dacre-Hammond would be relieved to claim just about anyone else as a sire.”

Mélanie met Charles’s gaze without meaning to. His expression gave nothing away, but surely he could not help but think of Colin, who was his son in every way but the biological. And of his own father, who might not be his father at all. Mélanie wondered, not for the first time, if Lady Frances knew the truth of Charles’s parentage. She knew Charles would never be brought to ask his aunt.

Lady Frances settled her muff and reticule on the seat beside her. “A sense of humor is an invaluable asset. If your mother had been able to laugh at the world more she’d have had an easier time of it.”

“Very true.” Charles’s voice was cool and level. “She took everything intensely.”

“She was the cleverest child.” Lady Frances traced a pattern in the mist-filmed window glass. “She could run rings about me when we did lessons—when she hadn’t taken to her bed with one of her fits of the blue devils. Too much brains to know what to do with. Marrying your father was about the worst thing she could have done with herself. You must have realized that by now, you always were intelligent boys.”

“It had occurred to me,” Charles said.

Lady Frances studied them. “She’d be pleased to see the two of you working together. Do I gather that this unfortunate business has made you friends again?”

Edgar, who had been staring at his hands, looked up at her, robbed of speech.

“Aunt Frances,” Charles said in a tightly clenched voice, “this is hardly the time—”

“On the contrary. We have another quarter hour before we get to the stables and silence will drive us all mad. I’ve been waiting for the right time since your mother died. If it hasn’t come in the past thirteen years, I have no faith in it coming in the next.”

“There are some matters,” Charles said, “about which there is nothing to say.”

“Perhaps.” Lady Frances tucked a strand of gold hair beneath her bonnet. “This isn’t one of them. I know Elizabeth wasn’t the best of mothers—she was rather poorer at it than I am, and God knows I’m no prize—but she was always very proud of how close her two sons were.”

“No doubt.” Charles sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “It eased her conscience for not being close to us herself.”

Edgar shot him a glance. “It’s true,” Charles said.

Lady Frances surveyed them like a governess searching for the right way to drive home the point of a lesson. “It’s never easy to lose a parent, and it must have been particularly beastly for you to lose her as you did. But it’s foolish and self-indulgent to let it govern your lives over a decade later. It isn’t as though you saw her that much when she was alive, after all.”

“Very true,” Charles said.

Lady Frances was treading on ground that Mélanie had not dared explore in seven years of marriage. Mélanie studied her husband. His face was closed, but the tension about his mouth was one step short of an explosion.

“And it’s sheer folly,” Lady Frances continued, “to let Elizabeth’s death interfere with what you have between you.”

“Who says it did?” Edgar demanded.

“No one,” said their aunt. “But I can’t think what else went wrong between the pair of you. And it’s plain something did.”

Charles said nothing, a trick of his when he couldn’t think of an appropriate retort.

Edgar rose to the bait. “Who says it’s plain?”

Lady Frances lifted her brows. “Anyone with eyes in her head, boy.” She gripped the strap as they rounded a corner. “At the risk of sounding appallingly sentimental, surely if a crisis such as this teaches us anything, it is that we cannot afford to waste time on petty quarrels.”

Charles smiled into her eyes with a sweetness that was as deadly as absinthe. “Or on idle speculation.”

That silenced even Lady Frances. But she had forced the Fraser brothers into presenting a more unified front than Mélanie had seen in seven years.

Which, Mélanie thought, might have been Lady Frances’s intention from the first.

Chapter 25

M
élanie caught the smell of horses as she descended the carriage steps to a brick-paved yard. A thick mist eddied in the breeze, like a muslin undercurtain, affording glimpses of low gray-stone buildings, slate roofs, leaded-glass windows.

A ferocious bark sounded. A streak of black and white came hurtling out of the mist, resolved itself into a border collie, and put its muddy paws up on Lady Frances’s pelisse.

“Down, Jasper.” Lady Frances patted the dog’s head. The dog subsided, danced round her in a circle, and went over to sniff Charles’s boots.

A towheaded young man of about twenty followed the border collie through the mist. “Your ladyship. I didn’t realize you were coming to the stables today. Is Mr. Hopkins expecting you?”

“Hullo, Giles.” Lady Frances gave him the same smile she would give to a young diplomat in her drawing room. “No, this is an unexpected visit. Is Mr. Hopkins in?”

“Out on a training gallop, but he should be back any minute now.”

As if on cue, the thud of horses’ hooves on damp ground echoed through the mist. Two men galloped into the yard, sending up a spray of muddy water.

“Fanny.” A lean, bearded man with silvery hair swung down off a sleek chestnut mare. A piercing smile crossed his face. Then he took in the others standing round her. His shoulders straightened, as though he had shrugged into a formal coat instead of his tweed riding jacket. “Lady Frances.”

“Hullo, Billy.” Lady Frances gave him an answering smile that spoke volumes about their intimacy, then introduced her nephews and Mélanie. “We’re in rather desperate need of information.”

Billy Hopkins’s bushy steel-gray brows rose, but he asked no questions, an action that went a long way toward winning Mélanie’s heart. “Best come in out of the damp, then.” He patted the chestnut mare’s neck and glanced up at the dark-haired young man who rode the other horse. “See them stabled and then take out Lightning. But be sure to lock Jasper up first.

“New horse,” he explained as he led them across the mud and straw of the yard. “Magnificent animal, speed like I’ve never seen. But he must have had a bad experience with a dog. He goes berserk round poor Jasper. Danger to himself, and not exactly safe for anyone else who happens to be in the area.”

He opened a door onto a stone-floored kitchen with gleaming copper pans on the wall and the smell of bacon and coffee lingering in the air. He waved them to seats at the long deal table, tossed his damp coat over a chair back, and went to the range. “Something to drive out the chill.” He lifted the lid from an iron pot, releasing the pungent, winey scent of spiced cider. “Have to admit I feel the damp more than I used to.”

Mélanie willed herself to more time spent sitting with what grace she could muster, drawing out information, nursing a cup of whatever hot beverage was served, clutching the remnants of her sanity.

Lady Frances sank into one of the ladderback deal chairs as though it were gilded brocade and began to unbutton her gloves. “We’re looking for a woman who used to frequent the races. Dark-haired, striking. Her name, at least at one time, was Helen Trevennen.”

“Trevennen? Never heard of it.” Hopkins took a mug from a hook on the wall.

Mélanie opened her reticule. “She almost certainly used another name here. Mr. Hopkins, have you ever seen this lady?” She held out the sketch as he set a mug of cider in front of her.

Hopkins held the sketch to the circle of light cast by the tin lamp on the table. His blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. “Good lord. Elinor Somersby.”

A name. An innocuous name that washed over Mélanie in a deluge of relief that left her trembling like a spent racehorse.

Hopkins smoothed the curling edges of the picture. “She was a war widow, or so she said. Lived quietly but loved the races.” He turned back to the counter and picked up the remaining mugs of cider. “Bet lavishly and with fair success. Used to stop by the stables every now and again to see the horses put through their paces. A good judge of horseflesh. Haven’t thought of her in years.”

“How many years?” Charles asked.

Hopkins hooked his foot round a chair leg, pulled the chair over, and sank down on it. “She was here the season Equinox won at Newmarket. And when Fenton’s Pride won at York. But not when Bellevigne pulled off the upset at Pontefract. So that would be—” He paused, doing sums in his head. “Three years ago.”

Charles leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers clenched beneath his chin. “Do you have any idea why she left Brighton? Or where she went?”

“Always fancied her leaving had something to do with a man.”

Lady Frances gave a most unladylike snort. “Just because a woman is attractive and cares for her appearance, men think her life revolves round them.”

Hopkins’s gaze slid to her. “I’d never assume something so cork-brained, Fanny. But Elinor Somersby was the sort who finds men useful to get her what she wants.” He pushed himself to his feet and flung open the door on the chill air of the yard. “Giles!” He looked back at the group at the table. “Giles has a memory like an encyclopedia. And he was more than a bit fond of Mrs. Somersby. All the lads were.”

Mélanie met Charles’s gaze for a moment. So close. Somehow that made the waiting worse.

A few moments later the towheaded young man scraped his boots on the rush mat and stepped into the kitchen. “You remember Mrs. Somersby,” Hopkins said without preamble, waving the picture at him. “Why the devil did she leave Brighton?”

Giles blinked, surveyed the picture, and let out a low whistle. “Sorry. But she was a stunner.” He looked up at Charles and Mélanie. “Is she a friend of yours?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Charles said. “We’re trying to find her. Do you have any idea why she left Brighton?”

Giles hitched himself up on the edge of the table, all the chairs being taken. “She got married again.”

And acquired another name, damn it all to hell. “To whom?” Mélanie asked in an even voice.

“Hmm?” Giles was looking at the sketch. “Oh, one of those respectable-looking chaps who hang about the track. Can’t remember his name. Fred might. He was quite taken with Mrs. Somersby. Well, we all were, but she had more time for him.” He shifted the sketch in his hands. “The glamour of being a jockey, I suppose.”

Charles’s fingers tightened. Mélanie almost fancied she could hear the scrape of bone against bone. “When will Fred be back?” he asked.

“In an hour or so.” Hopkins was pouring cider for Giles. “He’s just gone to give Lightning a brief gallop.” He paused, the mug clutched in one hand, and stared at Charles from beneath lowered brows. “Here now. This is more serious than I realized.”

“Yes.” Charles gave him and Giles the same version of the story that he had given Lady Frances.