Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

Mélanie looked up at Charles, who had knelt beside her. Rage flared in his eyes, a fire quickly banked.

He looked from the pistol to the wound in Helen Trevennen’s chest. Scorch marks showed on the embroidered linen of her nightdress. “The bullet went in at an upward angle,” he said, “at close range.”

Mélanie glanced at the bed with its thrown-back covers, then looked at Helen. Her sheer nightdress was lavish with lace, but she wore no dressing gown and her feet were bare. The pistol was small and elegant, a lady’s weapon. “He was searching the room, she woke and jumped out of bed and grabbed her pistol—she must sleep with it beside her bed, which fits with Giles saying she kept a pistol in her reticule. They struggled and the gun went off.”

“Yes, that’s how it looks. The question is, did he find the ring?” Charles put out his hand as though to close Helen’s eyes, then drew it back. “Best not to disturb things more than we have to. But I think we can risk lighting a lamp.” He pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand to her.

Mélanie stood and glanced once more at the still face of the woman they had spent the past thirty-six hours searching for. Violet Goddard’s friend, Hugo Trevennen’s niece, Susan Trevennen’s sister, Jemmy Moore’s lover. A different woman to all of them, but in all their eyes she had been a creature of life and vitality. With a single bullet, all that life and vitality had been extinguished. Put out the light indeed.

Further speech was a dangerous luxury. They found a tinderbox on the mantel and lit a single lamp, then moved about the disordered room in silence, unscrewing finials, rummaging through already opened drawers, turning back the pastel carpets, glancing in vases and jewel boxes, under the mattress, inside the coal scuttle. It seemed obvious that the murderer had begun in the boudoir and only risked the bedroom when his search of the first room proved fruitless, but Charles checked the boudoir again while Mélanie inspected the porcelain on the bedroom mantel.

He came back into the bedchamber, shook his head, then went still. Mélanie heard it a fraction of a second later. A faint thud outside the door that was different from the normal stirrings and creakings of the house. She barely had time to call herself a fool before the door from the corridor was pushed open.

“Darling?” A man’s voice, questioning, not suspicious. More candlelight spilled into the room. “Are you awake? I decided to—”

He broke off and looked across the room at Mélanie. He looked to be in his mid-forties, a slight man with pleasant, unremarkable features, rumpled brown hair, and a rumpled black evening coat. His face twisted with bewilderment. He glanced down at the carpet, stiffened, and stared transfixed at his wife’s body. He opened his mouth, but before he could let out a scream, Charles’s fist connected with his jaw.

Charles lowered Mr. Constable’s crumpled form to the carpet. He moved to the door, cracked it open, and nodded at Mélanie. She extinguished the lamp and followed him into the corridor. His hand closed round her own. His fingers were cold and she could feel the pounding of his pulse, but he led the way back downstairs with a silent, measured tread. Down the corridor, into the study, out the window. Cold night air and the blessed relief of moonlight.

Edgar was waiting for them at the back of the house. “Are you all right?” he demanded in a low voice. “We saw someone go in the front door. We weren’t sure what to do.”

“Later.” Charles clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder and pushed him toward the garden gate. They returned to where Addison was waiting, but Charles merely said, “We can’t stop here,” and led them two streets over. Then he stopped and slammed his hand against a lamppost, so hard Mélanie thought she could hear the bones rattle.

“Darling.” She gripped his arm. “Not now.”

He jerked away from her and pressed his white-knuckled hand to his face. “Sweet bloody Christ, how could I have been such a fool?”

“Because your options were limited. We were both fools, though I don’t honestly see what we could have done differently and in any case it doesn’t matter. It’s done.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “We have to decide what to do next.”

“What happened?” Edgar asked.

She released her husband and turned to her brother-in-law. “Someone broke into the house before we did, and searched for the ring and killed Helen Trevennen.”

“Dear God.” Edgar blanched in the lamplight. His eyes seemed to jump from his face. “But who—”

“Who’s been dogging our heels since yesterday?” Charles’s voice was as sharp as a knife turned inward. “Victor Velasquez.”

Edgar looked as though he was going to be sick. “But how—”

“I don’t know.” Charles’s hand curled into a fist. “Damn it, I don’t know.”

“Does he have the ring?” Addison asked.

“We can’t be sure. Helen Trevennen seems to have awakened and interrupted him in the midst of his search.” Charles glanced at Mélanie. “He entered and left through the boudoir window. When I went back in I found that the latch was ajar, and there were traces of rope caught on the windowsill.”

He turned back to Addison and Edgar and gave the rest of the details of their discovery of Helen Trevennen’s body, their search of the rooms, and their encounter with her husband. “Addison, go see Roth. Try Bow Street first, then his house. Tell him what’s happened and what we suspect. Someone should get to the Constable house at once. I trust they will convey my apologies to Constable, though in the circumstances it’s likely to be the least of the poor devil’s concerns.”

“Right, sir.” Addison handed them their shoes and cloaks, which they had removed before they broke into the house. “You’re going to see Mr. Velasquez?”

“To begin with.”

Mélanie and Charles put their shoes back on and wrapped their cloaks round their shoulders, and then they and Edgar found a hackney and directed it to the Albany, where Velasquez had rooms. When they were settled inside the carriage, it was Edgar who broke the thick silence. “Did Constable see your face?”

“He saw Mélanie’s. I’m not sure about me.”

“He’ll think—”

“It can’t be helped. Roth will sort things out. Poor bastard. First his wife died. Now he’s going to have to learn far more about her than he ever wanted to know.”

Mélanie tried to read her husband’s expression in the dark of the carriage. His features were armored to reveal nothing. She wondered what would be worse for Mr. Constable, losing his wife or learning she had lied to him about everything in her past.

They turned off Piccadilly and pulled up in the forecourt of the Albany, a Palladian building of brown stone, once the home of the Duke of York, now transformed into bachelor’s chambers. Lord Byron had lodged there, as had Charles himself in a brief interval between Oxford and Lisbon. The porter, who remembered Charles, directed them to Velasquez’s flat, where they were greeted by a manservant in dressing gown and cap who said that his master had not been home since morning.

Charles seized the manservant’s arm. “Where is he?”

The manservant stared at him out of sleep-flushed eyes. “I don’t know, sir. But he’ll have to return before morning. There are papers here that are needed at the embassy.”

Charles slackened his hold. “We’ll wait.”

The manservant started to protest.

“You can go back to bed,” Charles told him. “We require no attention.”

The manservant hesitated, but Charles’s ducal voice won out. The manservant fussed about the fire, made an offer of tea, which they refused, and returned to his own chamber.

They were left alone in a small sitting room where Spanish silver candlesticks and a tooled leather chest jostled side by side with English walnut furniture. Mélanie glanced at the mantel clock. Ten minutes past one in the morning. It was already Thursday. Less than three days until Carevalo’s deadline. She perched on the edge of a ruby velvet chair and rubbed her arms. The image of the doll with yellow yarn hair danced before her eyes. Beneath the numb aftermath of the crisis, reality gnawed at her insides. “Two children lost their mother tonight.”

Edgar turned to look at her. He had found the decanters and was helping himself to a large brandy. “Because of us, you mean?”

“No.” Charles was prowling about the room. “Because Helen Trevennen was playing a dangerous and foolish game. Though what exactly that game was—” He brought his fist down on the mantel.

Edgar downed a quarter of the brandy. “We can’t be sure Velasquez has the ring.”

“On the contrary.” Charles drummed his fingers on the plaster. “There’s a good chance he doesn’t have it. He tore those rooms apart. If he found it, it must have been in the last place he searched.”

“Charles.” Edgar looked at his brother across the room. His gaze had an intensity that took Mélanie by surprise. “Are you sure Raoul O’Roarke is merely an innocent emissary in all of this?”

Charles rested his foot on the fender. “I’m sure of nothing, especially not where O’Roarke is concerned. Why?”

Edgar scowled, swallowed the rest of his brandy, refilled the glass, and took a turn about the room. “It oughtn’t to have anything to do with this. I can’t see how it could possibly have anything to do with this. I’ve been telling myself that since yesterday. But—”

“Edgar.” Charles crossed the room in two strides and seized his brother by the shoulders. “This is no time to be making judgments on your own. If there’s the remotest connection to Colin, you have to tell us.”

Edgar’s brows contracted. “It’s not that simple, brother.”

“It’s just that simple, as Mélanie said to me last night.” Charles’s fingers bit into the black cassimere of Edgar’s borrowed coat. “Scruples are nothing next to Colin’s safety.”

“It’s not just scruples, it’s—”

Charles slackened his grip. His mouth lifted in one of his warming half-smiles. “All I’m asking for is the truth of whatever it is.”

“The truth. Jesus.” Edgar tore away from Charles and stared at the dark red folds of the curtains. The lamplight shimmered against the velvet. “Be careful what you ask for, Charles.”

Charles’s gaze drilled into the back of his brother’s head. “Edgar, I haven’t got the least idea what you’re getting at, but after everything else that’s happened, I don’t see what you could possibly have to say that I couldn’t take in stride.”

Edgar crossed to the table where he had left his brandy glass. “You were right. The talk about Kitty—Mrs. Ashford. About her death. It did remind me of Mother.”

Mélanie, who had been doing her best to fade into the chair, stared at her brother-in-law at this non sequitur. So did Charles, but he made no comment other than a neutral “Go on.”

Edgar took a swallow of brandy. “And you were right that I’ve avoided talking about Mother’s death. I didn’t…She talked to me before, you see.”

“Before she killed herself?”

“Yes. I’d got to Scotland a few days earlier. You were still at Oxford and Father was in London—you know that. Gisèle was in the schoolroom, of course, she was only eight. Mother was in one of her black moods. I’d scarcely seen her since I’d arrived. But that evening she sought me out after dinner. In the billiard room. She said she had to talk to me.”

His face twisted. Mélanie understood. She knew all too well the horror of the moment when you opened the door onto the ugliness of the past and forced yourself to go through. The first step over the threshold was always the hardest.

Charles stood absolutely still, yet his body hummed with intensity. “And?”

“We went into the library. She poured us both—brandy.” Edgar looked down at the glass in his hand and set it on the nearest table, as though it burned him. “She said she had to tell someone and you weren’t there and Gisèle was too young so it would have to be me. She said it was important that we understand.”

The words trailed off. Mélanie had the sense that they’d got stuck somewhere between his brain and his lips.

“Understand what?” Charles said.

“She and Father…” Edgar’s gaze fastened on the plaster garlands on the mantel, as though they were a refuge. “You said it yourself this afternoon. Neither of them was faithful. I’m not sure which of them strayed first or how soon—”

Charles’s brows lifted. “From the moment of the betrothal, I should think, at least in Father’s case.”

“Yes. And Mother…she must have followed suit not long after the marriage, because she told me—” Edgar walked forward and gripped the mantel with both hands.

Silence stretched through the room, punctuated by the rattle of wheels in the forecourt outside and the crackle of the coal in the grate. “Edgar, are you trying to tell me I’m a bastard?” Charles said.

Edgar whirled round and stared at him. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Charles ran his fingers through his hair. “Not a great deal. To own the truth, I’ve wondered for years, and I’ve been fairly certain since Father died. It explains much of his attitude toward me. I take it he knew?”

“Suspected, I think, the way Mother described it.”

“Of course he didn’t treat you much better. Unless—no, you’ve got the Fraser profile.” Charles studied his brother. “Why didn’t you tell me years ago?”

Edgar straightened his shoulders, as though facing up to an accusation. “I didn’t see any reason to burden you with it.”

“That was thoughtful if misguided.” Charles’s voice had that rare, stripped-to-the-bone gentleness it sometimes took on. “And no doubt a strain. No wonder you pulled away from me. In your place I’d have felt a share of jealousy. Everything I inherited—the estates, the Berkeley Square house, the Italian villa—should have been yours.”

Edgar flushed. “Charles—”

Charles moved to a chair and perched on its arm. “If you didn’t feel jealous, you’re more of a saint than I am.”

“I’m no saint. I—Yes, all right, I was jealous. A bit.” Edgar glanced at his top boots. “Maybe more than a bit at times.”

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “Did Mother tell you all this because she’d decided to kill herself?”

“I think so, yes, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. I was shocked. How could I have been otherwise? I ran from the room. I heard a shot behind me. When I went back—”

He turned his head away. The firelight caught the sparkle of tears on his cheeks. Charles got to his feet, walked forward, and clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Did it ever occur to you that learning Kenneth Fraser wasn’t my father would hurt me much less than losing my brother?”

Edgar looked at him with the pained expression of one struggling to find a clear path across shifting sands. “I never meant for you to…You’ll always be my brother, Charles.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” Charles’s fingers tightened on Edgar’s shoulder for a moment. Then he pulled Edgar to him and put his hand behind Edgar’s head, the way he did with Colin. He held his brother for a long moment before he stood back. Mélanie felt the prickle of tears on her own cheeks. “It shouldn’t really matter,” Charles said, “but did she happen to tell you who my father is?”

Edgar’s face drained of color, but Mélanie was ahead of him. A second or so before, an idle part of her brain had linked up his story with the seemingly incongruous questions that had prefaced it. A horrid suspicion she could not quite articulate, even to herself, grew in her mind. She gripped the arms of her chair to keep from leaping out of it.

“That’s just it.” Edgar stared into Charles’s eyes, as though seeking a humane way to deliver a killing blow. “Why I had to tell you. Can’t you guess like you guess everything else? Mother spent half her time in Ireland in those days. He was a handsome devil. Still is, come to that.”

“He?” Charles said.

“Raoul O’Roarke.”