Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

“You were right. Edgar was in love with Kitty.”

Mélanie turned from the mullioned panes of the inn parlor window to look at her husband. They were at the King’s Head in Cuckfield, waiting for a fresh team of horses. Edgar had been silent on the first stage of their journey and had once again taken himself off to the coffee room when they reached the inn. “He admitted it?” she said.

“When backed into a corner. That seems to be the only way my brother confides in me anymore.” Charles paced the narrow length of the room. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that I misread Carevalo, considering how blind I’ve been to those closest to me.”

Mélanie leaned against the casement. Her body ached with exhaustion and at the same time thrummed with the need for action. She felt naked and vulnerable, as though the layers of goffered linen and pin-tucked sarcenet and ruched velvet had been stripped from her body. Layers that constrained her but also defined who she was, who she had been for seven years.

That day on the Perthshire beach, when she realized what Charles meant to her, she had been sure he could see through to the truth of who she was. Perhaps he still could. The question now was whether she could see that inner core herself. Charles had accused her of lying for so long that she couldn’t know herself anymore, and he’d been more accurate than she cared to admit. Even with the lies stripped away, she wasn’t the woman she’d been seven years ago, before she met him.

“My father used to tell actors you can never get a character truly, definitively right,” she said. “You can only get your version of the character right, because you have to make choices and fill in the gaps the playwright leaves. Surely that’s even more the case with another person than a character in a play. You can never really know what another person is thinking or feeling. You have to make guesses and assumptions. The picture keeps changing with new evidence.” She studied her husband, thinking of all she had learned about him in the past two days. “Like looking at a faceted glass from different angles. Or stripping away layers of paint.”

“Except that with a character in a play there can be more than one interpretation,” Charles said. “With another person there is some core of truth, buried beneath all those layers.”

She looked into his eyes. It was a strange relief and an unexpected terror to be able to do so without trying to hide any part of herself. “But it’s difficult enough to know the truth buried within ourselves, let alone someone else.”

He returned her gaze for a moment. Then he crossed the room in a burst of restlessness. He’d left his walking stick leaning against the wall. “Edgar says we grew apart inevitably as we grew older. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps he was always more important to me than I was to him. God knows he’s always been able to form bonds more easily than I have.”

Tenderness washed over her, like the familiarity of a well-worn cloak. “Oh, darling, Edgar’s been measuring himself against you his whole life. In a lot of ways he must be fearfully jealous.”

“Edgar? Jealous of me?” Charles stared at her. “Try again, Mel, or I’ll start thinking you’re as lacking in perception as I am.”

“How could he not be jealous? His brilliant elder brother who thinks he can handle anything and who’s very nearly right. Who’s always known who he is and has never craved acceptance. Who’s maddeningly, infuriatingly self-assured. Because I expect Edgar sees the self-assurance but not the scars underneath. You don’t let very many people see the scars, Charles.”

“Don’t talk twaddle, Mel. All Edgar saw in me was a bookish elder brother who was all right when he was the only companion available but was a dead bore next to his school friends. Although he did admit he was jealous of our marriage.”

She fought the urge to look away from his eyes. “As I said, we can all form a picture that’s incorrect.”

Charles stood watching her, his expression unreadable. The pressure of his gaze was suddenly more than she could bear, like a wound ripped open. She crossed to the fireplace, blinded by a betraying onslaught of tears.

“Mel?” Charles said behind her.

She knew that voice. It was the tone he used when he thought she might need him but didn’t want to press her. To hear it now, when she had forfeited all right to his care, was like a knife cut.

She forced back the tears and turned to him with an attempt at a smile. His face held the bone-deep tenderness of her husband who loved her, who had forgotten for the moment everything that lay between them.

“We know where to find Helen Trevennen,” Charles said. “She has the ring or at least she had it once—Violet Goddard saw it. We’ll make her give us the ring or tell us what she did with it. We’re going to get Colin back.”

She nodded, because she couldn’t let herself believe anything else. It occurred to her that once they had Colin back, once the crisis was past, the enforced intimacy between herself and Charles would be at an end. The future was still uncertain terrain, set with mines. This might be her last chance to reach him.

She sought for the right words. She felt strangely unsteady, as though she’d been forced to abandon the script and improvise in the middle of a performance. She was still unaccustomed to talking to Charles without the ever-present voice at the back of her head critiquing everything she said lest she unwittingly give herself away. She almost missed the clear boundaries of her role. “After Waterloo, I had no faith left in anything,” she said, looking into his eyes, willing him not to turn away from her. “All those years of fighting and compromising and twisting ideals to meet necessity and what was the point? We’d lost. The monarchies I hated were restored in France and in Spain, foreign troops overran Paris, the very symbols of the revolution were obliterated. The one thing that kept me going was you.”

His brows rose. “Doing it much too brown, Mel. Don’t pretend—”

“Because no matter what, you still believed you were involved in mankind. You still believed in the future. You still believed you could make something better of the world than what you’d found.”

Charles gave a shout of bitter laughter. “Irony of ironies. Good God, we’re a pretty pair. Don’t turn me into a false ideal, Mel. If I believed in anything then—if I believe in anything now—it’s only because you helped me find that belief, my enemy agent of a wife.”

“That’s not true. When you were at Oxford—”

“I was filled with high-sounding ideals.” The bitterness was in his voice now, sharp as acid. “I wrote reams about the rights of the individual and the evils of inherited privilege and the horrors of the workhouse. I even made speeches when I had an audience who’d listen, which usually meant a tavern full of drunken undergraduates. But what did I do when I left university? Did I stand for Parliament or join a radical society or start a reformist newspaper? No. I ran away.”

“I’d hardly call joining the diplomatic service running away, darling.”

“I became a diplomat at least as much to get away from my family and everything in Britain as because I thought I could do any sort of good.”

“Your mother had killed herself, your father had made it clear he didn’t love you and never had, your brother had turned into a stranger. Of course you wanted to get away. But you can’t tell me you didn’t think what you were doing made a difference.”

“At first. I thought the French had no business in Spain, it’s true. I met Spaniards who didn’t support Bonaparte but who saw the war as a chance to change their country for the good. For a long time, I was fool enough to think our government would support them. But when I saw the brutality on all sides, when I saw the contempt many of our soldiers had for their Spanish allies, the goddamned reactionary entrenchment of the Foreign Office—” He shook his head. “You said you could become so caught up in the game you forgot the reason you were playing it in the first place. I realized, when you said that, how truly hollow my own reasons for playing the game had been. Like you, I could be caught up in the sheer challenge, but it was harder and harder to believe any good could come of the war. For a long time I told myself that as long as I had some sort of belief in myself, I could make a difference, at least on an individual level. After Kitty’s death—”

He turned his head, as though whatever his face might reveal was too intimate to share with her. She suppressed the impulse to take him in her arms. Kitty’s death was a scar too private for her to touch.

He looked back at her, his gaze a wasteland. “After Kitty killed herself, life seemed a farce without meaning. If I was destined to make any difference in the world, it seemed to be only to bring destruction on those I loved. I was going through the motions when I was sent after the ring. Then I found you.”

“And you couldn’t give up because you were needed. I know you, Charles. You’d never let down someone who needed you. If I hadn’t reminded you of it, something else would have.”

“Christ, Mel.” He took a quick step toward her, then checked himself. His eyes were angry. “Don’t cheapen what was between us. It may have been lies, but you can’t reduce it to something I could have found with anyone.” He scraped his hand through his hair. “I loved Kitty, but loving her scarcely brought out the best in me. You did. With you I found something in myself I thought I’d lost. How could I back away from life when you attacked it with every fiber of your being? How could I turn away from the future when the future was a legacy we’d bequeath to our child? Besides—” He paused for a heartbeat, his gaze steady on her face. “In a world where I could feel what I came to feel for you, anything seemed possible.”

For a moment she was robbed of speech or even breath. This was Charles talking, Charles who had not said “I love you” to her until they’d been married more than a year, whose feelings were more often expressed with a look or a touch than with words, who was more likely to quote someone else’s impassioned declaration than to frame one for himself. That he should make such a declaration now, when she had destroyed his trust, when the revelations about Kitty had made her question the very nature of his feeling for her, was at once so sweet and so painful it tore her in two.

He glanced into the fire. “You weren’t the only one who was disillusioned after Waterloo. I didn’t like the future Castlereagh and the others were shaping any more than you did. Even I eventually saw how futile it was to be—how did you put it? A lone voice arguing over a glass of port?”

“Charles, I didn’t mean—”

“No, you were right. That’s why I left the diplomatic service.”

“And you came home and you did stand for Parliament.”

“Where at least my lone voice is heard by the entire House of Commons, which gives me the illusion that my arguments might make a difference.” He looked up at her. The firelight sparked in his eyes. “But I’d never have had the courage to come home without you beside me.”

She closed the distance between them in one move and took his face between her hands. “You’re the best person I know, Charles. If I have any understanding of love or trust or compassion, I learnt it from you. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you thought I was. But however tainted your view of me has become, don’t let it taint the rest of life for you.” Her fingers trembled. She looked deep into his eyes. “I have no right to ask anything of you. But for God’s sake, try to love yourself.”

For a long moment he said nothing. Then he reached up and covered one of her hands with his own. “That’s a bit much to ask of anyone, don’t you think?” He squeezed her fingers. “I’m all right, Mel. Like you, I know how to survive. Colin’s the one who’s going to need us both.”

She said nothing, because to that there could be no answer.

Colin’s heart slammed into his throat at the approaching footsteps. He flung himself to the edge of the bed farthest from the door.

The door creaked open. “Brat? Are you awake? I’ve brought your supper.”

Meg came into the room, carrying a splintery wooden tray. No sign of Jack or of a knife. Colin was tempted to put his arm over his eyes, but that seemed cowardly, so instead he sat very still. If they grabbed him again, he’d bite.

“I got Jack to bring a meat pie and some lemonade back from the tavern,” Meg said. She set the tray down on the rickety, three-legged table by the bed.

The smell of the meat pie made him gag, but even if his stomach hadn’t been twisted in knots he wasn’t going to eat anything they gave him. “I don’t want it,” he said.

“See here, brat.” Meg folded her arms over the stained linen of her shirt. “You’ve got to eat something or you’ll make yourself sick.”

Colin pulled his hurt hand closer against his chest.

Meg grimaced. “Oh, poison.” She dropped down on the edge of the bed. The straw in the mattress crackled. Colin flinched. Fear shot up his spine like lightning.

Meg sat watching him. “Look, lad, I know it must hurt like the devil. But it’ll get better, I promise you. You’re lucky to still have the rest of your fingers. I know lots of children lost two or three fingers or even a whole hand to those new machines in the cotton mills. They learn to get on, one way or another.”

Colin drew his knees up to his chest. He wasn’t inclined to believe anything Meg said, but he’d heard Mummy and Daddy and their friends talk about how bad things were for children who worked in the mills. One evening when the grown-ups didn’t realize he was listening, he’d overheard a story about a little boy who’d got his scalp pulled off. So perhaps Meg was telling the truth. Daddy’s friend Fitzroy Somerset had lost his arm at the Battle of Waterloo, and he could do all sorts of things and even still be a soldier. Colin wondered how long it had been before Uncle Fitzroy’s shoulder stopped hurting where his arm had been.

“’Least you don’t need your hands to make a living,” Meg went on. “You can still hold a fork and ride a horse and fire a gun and all the sorts of things a gentleman does.”

She smiled at him, a real smile that made her eyes crinkle up and her mouth look less sour. Colin inched back against the iron headboard. She’d done something really beastly, like a bad fairy in a storybook, but when she smiled like that she didn’t look evil at all. And she sounded as though she was trying to be nice. It was very confusing. How was he supposed to know when he could trust her and when to be afraid?

“Anyways,” Meg said, “better eat up or you won’t grow. That’s what I used to tell my little boy.”

Colin was startled into speech, in spite of his determination not to talk to her. “You have a little boy?”

Meg’s face went pinched. “I had a little boy once.”

He stared at her in the flickering glow of the rush light. She looked like she was the one who’d just been stabbed. “What happened to him?”

Meg plucked at a thread in the frayed calico coverlet. “He died.”

“Was he sick?” Colin asked.

“He caught a chill.”

“Couldn’t the doctors make him better?”

“Doctors?” Her laugh was like sandpaper. “Christ, brat, do you think we could afford—” She shook her head. “No, no one could make him better.”

“How old was he?”

“Just past three.”

“I’m sorry.” It was true. Whatever he thought of her, he was sorry for her little boy.

Meg shrugged her shoulders. “I had ten brothers and sisters. There’s only two of us left and I can’t be sure about my sister. She went to work in a mill in Yorkshire and it’s close on two years since I’ve had word of her. Life’s cheap where I come from.”

Colin frowned, puzzled by this last. “But—”

“What the hell are you doing, Meggie?” Jack yelled from the other room. “Get back out here.”

“In a minute.” Meg stood and looked down at Colin. She started to lift her hand, then let it fall to her side when he jerked back against the headboard. “Eat your supper, brat. You don’t know how lucky you are to have it.”

She turned on her heel and left the room. Colin looked after her, mulling over the things she had said. He wasn’t sure how life could be cheap or expensive, since it didn’t cost anything to be born. He wasn’t sure why she was so worried about him eating when she’d helped cut his finger off. She looked as though she really missed her own little boy. So why didn’t she understand that he wanted his mummy and daddy back?

“Jesus, Meg,” Jack said. He clunked down something heavy, like a tankard. “What’re you doing talking to the brat? You trying to make this harder than it is?”

“We’ll be in a right mess if he stops eating and makes himself sick, won’t we?” Meg’s voice sounded harder than it had when she’d been talking to Colin.

“It’s only been a day,” Jack said. “Plenty of kids go two or three without a meal.”

“Not his sort. He won’t be used to it.”

“All right, have it your own way. But you’re making it that much harder for yourself if—”

“If what?” Meg said. Something in her tone made Colin’s stomach take a dip.

“Well, hell, we still don’t know how this is going to end, do we?” Jack said.

There was a long silence. A shivery sort of silence. Colin grabbed the coverlet and clutched it round him.

“No,” Meg said at last. “But then that’s always true, isn’t it? Don’t worry, Jack, I haven’t gone soft. If it comes to it, I’ll do what needs doing. Let’s eat.”

The sand-scoured steps and polished front door glowed in the lamplight, no different from the countless other front steps and doors in the row of brick town houses with white-framed sash windows and neat area railings that lined Bedford Place.

“It looks as if Helen Trevennen got the respectability she craved,” Charles said, turning up the collar of his greatcoat.

“Not the sort of place one would think the summit of her ambitions,” Mélanie said. “But perhaps by the time she came here she was looking for a haven.”

Charles glanced at his wife, wondering if there were undertones to the statement. Beneath the green satin brim of the fresh hat she’d put on when they returned to Berkeley Square, her face was unreadable. Difficult to believe it was only Wednesday night. Their trip to Brighton had taken less than twenty-four hours. Three more days remained until Carevalo’s deadline, though that time seemed scant enough, even with Helen Trevennen’s house before them.

Edgar moved to stand beside them on the pavement. Charles glanced up and down the street. It was empty, dark save for the yellow blurs of lamplight in the soot-sticky air and quiet save for the distant rumble of wheels and clop of hooves. They’d left their hackney three streets over and walked the rest of the way.

Charles’s gaze drifted toward Russell Square, where Addison was waiting. He and Blanca had returned from their visit to Lieutenant Jennings’s widow shortly before Charles, Mélanie, and Edgar reached Berkeley Square. Mrs. Jennings had apparently been all too willing to vent her frustrations with her late husband. She had known a great deal more about him than Jennings realized, including his affair with Helen Trevennen of the Drury Lane. She admitted to talking about Miss Trevennen to a man calling himself Iago Lorano, who had called on her a fortnight before. But any secrets Jennings had shared with his mistress in his last letter, he had seemingly not confided to his wife.

Edgar stared at the house. “What if she’s out for the evening?”

Charles started up the steps. He’d left his walking stick in Berkeley Square, though the stiff soreness in his leg told him this had perhaps been more wishful thinking than wisdom. “We’ll find out where she’s gone.”

“What if she refuses to see us?”

He rang the bell. “She won’t.”

A manservant with a stiff shirt collar and an air of self-importance opened the door.

“We’re here to see Mrs. Constable,” Charles told him.

The manservant’s eyes widened. “But—”

“We apologize for the late hour. If you take her my card, I think she will agree to see us.”

The manservant glanced at the card, blinked in recognition, then cleared his throat. “If you’ll wait in the hall a moment,” he said in a voice several degrees warmer, “I’ll inquire if Mrs. Constable is at home.”

His footsteps faded up the polished stairs. Charles glanced about, seeking clues in the surroundings. The table against the wall was mahogany, and a handsome Turkey carpet covered the floorboards. The vase of dried flowers on the table had the sparkle of crystal, and the silver salver for cards did not appear to be plated. He met Mélanie’s gaze in silent acknowledgment. Either Mr. Constable’s legal practice was doing very well or the former Helen Trevennen still had an outside source of income.

Edgar paced the carpet. “What do we do if she won’t come down?”

“Go up,” Charles said.

“Oh, Christ.” His brother stared at him. “You mean it, don’t you?”

“Can you think of an alternative?”

But the manservant returned with the news that Mrs. Constable would be happy to receive them. He conducted them up the stairs and opened a door onto yellow-striped wallpaper, a gleaming pianoforte, and chintz furniture. A world of secure respectability.

“Thank you, George. That will be all.” A dark-haired woman set her tambour frame on the settee beside her and got to her feet. She wore an apricot-colored evening gown, with a demure, ruffled neck and a skirt that did not cling too close. An amber cross hung from a black velvet ribbon round her throat. Beneath her curling fringe of dark hair, she was Mélanie’s sketch come to life. The heart-shaped face, the wide, light eyes, the finely arched brows, the full, soft lips.

But what Mélanie’s sketch had not caught, what none of those with whom they had spoken about Helen Trevennen had conveyed, was the sweetness that shone behind her eyes, in the curve of her mouth, in the tilt of her brows. Helen Trevennen, or Elinor Constable, radiated simple, artless charm. But then, if Charles had ever doubted that looks could be deceiving, his own wife had given him cause to know his folly.

“Mrs. Fraser? Mr. Fraser? Captain Fraser?” Her gaze drifted politely from one of them to the other. She smiled, a gentle smile that held no hint of the hard brilliance Charles had expected to find in Helen Trevennen. “Your names are familiar to me, of course, though I don’t believe we have ever met. Perhaps you have business with my husband? I’m afraid he isn’t in. He’s dining with a colleague in the Temple.”

Charles smiled at her, as though she was any lady in her drawing room, as though it was not past ten o’clock at night and his son’s life did not depend upon the outcome of the interview. “As it happens, our business is with you, Mrs. Constable.”

“Oh?” Her brows lifted, but she was too polite to blurt out a question. “Please sit down.” She gestured to chairs, returned to the settee, and bent down to retrieve something peeking out from beneath her worktable. A doll, Charles realized, with yellow yarn hair. “My daughter’s,” she explained with a smile. “My children like to play in the drawing room after dinner and I’m afraid we haven’t managed to teach them tidiness.”

Charles leaned forward in his chair. “I’ll come to the point, Mrs. Constable. We’re looking for a ring we believe you have in your possession. We’ll pay handsomely for it.”

The blue-gray eyes widened. The delicate brows rose in what Charles would have sworn was genuine puzzlement. “A ring?” She glanced down at her hands. On her left, she wore only a simple gold wedding band. On the second finger of her right hand was an aquamarine set in seed pearls. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. Fraser. I don’t have a great deal of jewelry.”

“This is a gold ring, a heavy gold band, wrought in the shape of a lion with ruby eyes.”

Charles could detect no false note in the bewilderment in her eyes. “I have no ring like that at all, Mr. Fraser. No rubies and nothing of such an old-fashioned design.”

“We believe it was sent to you by Lieutenant William Jennings.”

This time her face tensed beneath the look of confusion. “I don’t know a Lieutenant Jennings.”

“Not anymore perhaps. But you did once, Miss Trevennen.”

The words registered on her face like a slap. The blood drained from her skin, but she held her head high. “It’s a long time since I’ve heard that name.” She smoothed her hands over her lap, pulling the sheer fabric of her dress taut. “I think you’d better tell me the whole story, Mr. Fraser.”

Charles summoned a smile from his inner reserves. “You were born Helen Trevennen in Cornwall, near Truro. You came to London about fifteen years ago. You worked as an actress at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. I should say, Mrs. Constable, that we realize this is not quite the version of events you gave to your husband when you met him. We have no wish to disabuse him of the facts. That is a matter between you and him.” His voice was steady. He did not so much as glance at his own wife. “We are only interested in the ring that you received from Lieutenant Jennings in January of 1813.”

Helen Trevennen folded her hands in her lap with the grace of a trained performer. “It’s true I knew a Lieutenant Jennings once, a long time ago. I was—I was very fond of him. He was killed in the Peninsula.”

“And shortly before he died he wrote you a letter that you received after his death.”

She lowered her gaze to her hands. “Yes.”

“And enclosed in the letter was a ring. Come now, Mrs. Constable, your friend Violet Goddard saw it.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and compelling. “Mr. Fraser, I assure you—”

“We will pay whatever you ask for it.”

“Believe me, Mr. Fraser, when it comes to William Jennings it is not a question of money.”

“I understand the ring must have great sentimental value.”

Her hands clenched. “Mr. Fraser, he didn’t send me a ring.”

“Miss Goddard saw—”

“I’ll show you what Violet saw.” She sprang to her feet and ran from the room.

Edgar groaned. “She sounds as though she’s telling the truth.”

Charles stood and took a turn about the room. “She’s a very good actress.”

“Because she worked at the Drury Lane?”

“Because she sounds as though she’s telling the truth.”

“We’re threatening everything she has,” Mélanie said. “She’ll work hard to defend it.”

Charles looked at her, ignoring the echoes of their own life that reverberated through the room. “Then her defenses have to be broken.”

Helen Trevennen hurried back into the room, her color high and her breathing rapid, as though she had been running. “This is what Will—Lieutenant Jennings—sent to me with his final letter.” She extended her hand. In her palm lay a garnet brooch set in gold of a Spanish design. “Not very valuable, I believe, but I treasure it.”

Gold with a red stone. It fit Violet Goddard’s description. Charles could feel Mélanie’s certainty waver, as did his own. “Mrs. Constable, you don’t—you can’t—realize how important this is,” he said. He told the story of Colin’s kidnapping in the brisk outlines he now had memorized.

“Dear heaven.” Helen Trevennen put her hand to the cross at her throat.

“You have children of your own,” Mélanie said.

“Yes.” She picked up the yarn-haired doll that lay beside her on the settee. “Jane will be three in March and Benjamin’s just turned one.”

Mélanie leaned forward, in that attitude that could win confidences from anyone. “Mrs. Constable, as a mother—”

Helen Trevennen looked into her eyes. “I wish I could help you, Mrs. Fraser. I can’t.” She smoothed the doll’s yarn hair. “I’ve never seen this ring. If Will had it, he said nothing about it.”

“What was in the letter?” Charles asked.

The knots of gold ribbon on her sleeves snapped as she drew herself up. “Mr. Fraser. It was a letter from my—from the man I loved. It was not meant to be read by anyone else. Nor did it contain anything that others could find of interest. Nothing about a ring or a Marqués de Carevalo or even about Spain.”

“Sergeant Baxter said it was a long letter.”

A faint smile drifted through her eyes. “Will could be very ardent.”

“Do you still have the letter?”

“No, I—” She glanced at her hands, then looked back at him. “I’m embarrassed to say so, but I burned it before my marriage. I did not want to risk my husband finding it. My husband is the best of men, Mr. Fraser, but I don’t think he’d understand about Will.”

Charles leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Violet Goddard and Jemmy Moore said you were frightened when you left London seven years ago. Why?”

She drew a breath. He thought she might be sorting through her story, but he couldn’t be sure. “I’m not proud of my actions,” she said. “I was going to begin a new life. It is difficult to escape one’s past—particularly so for a woman. I knew that the only way to do so was to cut myself off from…from my former friends and associates. I thought saying I was afraid was the best way to assure this.”

“Where did you get the money to begin this new life in Brighton?” Charles asked.

“Will sent it in his letter. He said he’d recently come into a windfall and he wanted to share it with me. He didn’t explain further.”

Charles folded his arms across his chest and watched her for a long moment. “It’s a good story, Mrs. Constable. Now please tell us the truth.”

Her eyes widened with a perfect look of wounded outrage. She was almost as good an actress as Mélanie. “I have told you the truth, Mr. Fraser.”

“I think not, though you’ve told the lies brilliantly.”

“Mr. Fraser—”

“Mrs. Constable, I said we had no intention of telling your husband what we’ve learned of your past. That is true in and of itself. But if you persist in these denials, I fear we shall have no choice but to lay the whole matter before him.”

“That is blackmail, Mr. Fraser.”

“Call it what you will. The ring, Mrs. Constable?”

“Mr. Fraser.” In the light from the branch of candles beside the settee, her eyes were luminous with tears. “If I had this ring it would take no threats to make me give it to you. I would do so happily for the sake of your child.” She stood in one swift, fluid motion, hesitated, then moved about the room, adjusting the shade of a lamp, realigning the score on the piano. Mélanie had done much the same in the library last night. Laying claim to the home she feared losing?

“It goes without saying that you could do great—I fear irreparable—harm to my marriage.” Helen Trevennen stared at a framed silhouette on the wall with a faint, wistful smile. “I’m afraid my husband’s view of me is sadly idealized. I perhaps deserve that he should know the truth, but he does not deserve the pain it would cause him.”

“There is a simple way to spare him such pain,” Charles said.

Helen Trevennen turned to face him, with the tragic dignity of Desdemona refuting Othello’s accusations of infidelity. “All I can do is beg you not to speak to him of the past, for it will avail you nothing. I do not have the ring.”

Her eyes held a compelling plea, yet thanks to his wife, Charles knew something about resisting the pull of a pair of beautiful eyes. He stared at her for a long moment. He did not glance at Mélanie, but he felt her making the same calculations he made himself. “You’re a parent, Mrs. Constable. If you can understand my fear for my son, you must believe I will use this.” He reached inside his coat and drew out a pistol. “The ring.”

Helen Trevennen went very still. Her gaze fastened on the barrel of the gun. Fear radiated off her like waves of heat.

Charles pulled back the hammer. He heard Edgar gasp, felt Mélanie go tense.

Helen Trevennen lifted her gaze to his face. The flutter of the lace at her throat betrayed her trembling. “Mr. Fraser, I cannot help you. I don’t have it.”

Charles held the gun steady and measured the look in her eyes. The metal was cold and heavy in his hand. It would be so easy to pull the trigger and give vent to the scream of frustration that had been building inside him for almost forty-eight hours. So easy, so deadly, and so completely useless. If he shot, even a warning shot, the servants would come running into the room. Helen Trevennen, no doubt, would continue to deny she had the ring. And just possibly, she was telling the truth.

He lowered the pistol and got to his feet. Helen Trevennen let out a rough, gasping sigh.

Charles held out his hand to Mélanie. “You have my card, Mrs. Constable. If by any chance you discover you are mistaken and have the ring after all, send word to us at once. You can have whatever you ask for it. Otherwise, there seems to be nothing more to be said.”