Beneath a Silent Moon (40 page)

"I'm not sure Honoria knew what love was. But even if she had cared for me, love is notoriously unreliable as a guarantee of happiness."

Mélanie stared at the blood-red claret in her wineglass, willing her inward flinch not to show in her eyes.

"How could she?" David took a turn about the room. "How could she degrade herself like—"

"Like Glenister, Quen, and Val?" Simon said in a voice as dry as the best
fino
.

"No. Yes. Damn it, you know it's different with girls."

"Because we don't want to do those sorts of things?" Mélanie looked up from the glass. "Or because we're not supposed to?"

David drew a breath and ran a hand over his hair. "You're kind to defend her, Mélanie. But you know you'd never do such things yourself."

Mélanie took a sip of wine, gaze fixed on the gilt-edged rim of her plate. She could feel Simon watching her.

"Can you be sure?" David said to Charles. "Of the whole story? We only know bits and pieces and we only have Val's word for it. Suppose he's making it up about Honoria and him playing these games—"

"And some other man dared Honoria to slip into my bed?" Simon said.

David rounded on his lover. "You haven't been any help, either. If you and Charles had both been honest with me at the time—"

"You'd have suggested Honoria marry me? That would have created some interesting family gatherings."

"If you're going to talk like one of your damn plays, then shut the hell up."

"Only trying to be honest, old boy."

"I don't know where to begin to look for honesty. Honoria's whole life was a lie."

"She wasn't what you thought she was," Simon said. "Which of us would be, put under a microscope? Christ, you and I live a secret every day of our lives—"

"If you're going to put my loving you on a par with conducting love affairs for sport—"

Simon brushed his fingers against his lover's cheek. "No. Fair enough."

"She was surrounded by romantic intrigue and yet expected to remain under glass," Mélanie said. "Like Ophelia at Elsinore. 'The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she unmask her beauty to the moon.' I'm quite sure Lord Glenister and Mr. Fraser would have been quick to second Laertes's opinion." She thought of the Fragonard paintings that were littered about the house. Young lovers in a rose-strewn garden, watched over by Venus and Cupid. A world of sugar-coated romance with carnality pulsing just beneath the surface. "Miss Talbot had an enviable position in life—far more so than most women. She had an old family name and a fortune and all the pin money she could spend. But there wasn't much she was allowed to do with her life beyond looking decorous until she married. I don't think much of how she tried to use Simon. And Charles. But I think I'm coming to understand her. She wanted to be more than a pretty ornament."

She could feel Charles's gaze upon her as she spoke, but he said nothing. David pushed aside his untouched plate. "Women don't have many choices in life. I'm not—I do understand that. But she could have written or painted or composed music—"

"She grew up in the Glenister House set," Charles said. "Sexual intrigue was the currency of power."

"It's a pity she couldn't have gone into the army or politics," Mélanie said. "She'd have made an admirable general, and I imagine she'd have been quite lethal at steering a bill through the House."

David shook his head. "It seems so—joyless."

Simon took a sip of wine. "Joy comes in many different forms. As I'm sure Lady Frances would say."

"Oh, God, Lady Frances," David said. "I still can't believe—"

"That she was Father's lover?" Charles said. "Surprising, I'll grant you. More surprising, perhaps, than the thought of Father and Glenister as lovers."

A look of revulsion crossed David's face, as though he couldn't bear the thought that Kenneth's and Glenister's amorous intrigues were remotely similar to his own love life. "Surely if they were lovers—"

"They'd have behaved more like you and Simon?" Mélanie said. "Not necessarily. Mr. Fraser and Lady Frances didn't behave a bit like Charles and me."

A rap sounded at the door. Addison and Blanca stepped into the room. "Sorry to interrupt," Addison said, "but I thought you'd like a report on our questioning of the staff."

"Very much so," Charles said. "Come in. Have you eaten?"

Blanca wrinkled her nose and cast a glance at the scarcely touched plates that littered the room. "They had food set out in the servants' hall like they do abovestairs. None of us was very hungry, either."

Blanca and Addison sat side by side on one of the cream silk sofas, a very correct three feet apart. The affection between them was obvious to one trained at observing, but Mélanie could only guess at the exact state of their relationship. If it was up to Blanca, she suspected the two would have been lovers years ago, but Addison took the gentleman's code every bit as seriously as Charles and was every bit as guarded about his feelings.

"We've talked to all of them, at least a bit," Blanca said, smoothing her skirt. "Some of the maids were inclined to look down their noses at me because I'm a foreigner—either that or they were jealous because I know all the latest styles from Paris—but I did very well with the footmen."

"Hardly surprising on either score," Mélanie said.

"Except for Miss Talbot's maid, most of the staff and the visiting servants have been at their posts for some years," Addison said. "That doesn't, of course, preclude their having been employed by the Elsinore League, but it does make it less likely."

"And with all the visiting valets and ladies' maids, most of them are sleeping three and four to a room," Blanca added. "It is not an easy thing to slip from one's bed or do anything remotely interesting at night when conditions are so crowded." She cast a sidelong glance at Addison.

"Quite." Addison kept his gaze fixed straight ahead. "The one young lady Blanca spoke with, Morag, who had slipped out to meet her young man, had sworn the other three maids who shared her chamber to secrecy."

"One of them, Marjorie—Miss Eraser's maid—seemed very nervous about the whole thing," Blanca said. "But all I could get her to admit was that she was afraid of getting Morag in trouble."

"It was difficult to get any of them to admit to anything," Addison said. "But men discretion is a vital attribute when one is in service."

"As we have cause to be extraordinarily grateful for in your case," Charles said.

Addison gave a brief, warm smile that made him look quite five years younger. "Your father's and Lord Glenister's valets were particularly reluctant to say anything about their masters. But I did gather that Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister and their friends have had many gatherings here through the years. Shooting parties, I understand. Not the sort of parties at which—"

"Women were present," Charles finished for him. "At least not wellborn ladies."

Addison nodded. "Lord Cyril Talbot met his death at one of those shooting parties. An accident with a gun, apparently. A few of the current staff were present on that occasion—Hopetoun was a footman at the time and Mrs. Johnstone was an upstairs maid—but it was a bit difficult to get the exact sequence of events straight. Apparently none of the staff was allowed in the room after Lord Cyril shot himself."

Charles leaned forward. "Are you saying my father deliberately kept them out?"

"No one put it in so many words, but that was the impression I received," Addison said. "Also—"

"Lord Cyril didn't die immediately, but they didn't send for a doctor," Blanca said.

Addison swung his gaze to her. "We don't know that for a fact."

"No, but we can jolly well put the pieces together, as you're always saying. Mrs. Johnstone was sure she heard Lord Cyril's voice inside the library after he was injured. And no one remembers anyone sending for a doctor."

"Do any of them remember seeing Lord Cyril's body?" Mélanie asked.

Addison met her gaze for a moment. "No. Hopetoun doesn't remember any of the footmen being called upon to transport the body to the chapel or to arrange for the coffin. Mr. Fraser and Lord Glenister and their friends must have done it themselves."

Evie cracked open the door to the Blue Saloon. She wasn't sure why she had thought she might find him here, save that Honoria had once said it was her favorite room at Dunmykel. The room was in shadow, lit only by the glow from the windows. The sun was just beginning to set. The rays of light slanting through the windowpanes picked out his golden hair, so like Honoria's. He was hunched on a settee by the fireplace, back to the door, shoulders shaking.

Evie slipped into the room and pulled the door to behind her. "It's all right to cry. She was your cousin. Not to mention that she was carrying your child."

Val went completely still, then looked round to stare at her through the shadows.

"Oh, for God's sake, Val, I'm not blind. Or deaf. Surely you don't think I could have lived in Glenister House all these years and not known?"

"You never—"

"What on earth was I supposed to do?" Evie crossed to the lapis lazuli-inlaid writing table behind the settee, found a flint in one of the drawers, and lit a pair of tapers in Sevres candlesticks. "Tell you and Honoria that what you were doing was deplorable and dishonorable and likely to get all sorts of people hurt? It was, you know, but neither of you has ever listened to a word I've said. I tried to get Honoria to talk when I suspected about the baby, but she wouldn't discuss it with me. I couldn't even get her to return my earrings. How the devil was I supposed to control her in this?"

Val continued to stare at her over the back of the settee. The candlelight glistened off streaks of damp on his cheeks. "How can you talk about it so calmly—"

"Why not?" Evie put the flint away and pushed the drawer shut with a snap. "You can."

"Yes, but—"

"Oh, I see, you don't usually discuss this sort of thing with virgins. Unless they're the virgins you take to bed?"

He flushed claret-red. "Evie—"

"I know, the rules are different when it comes to girls who might be your sisters. Only with Honoria they weren't."

"For God's sake, you shouldn't even know—"

She walked round the settee and dropped down beside him. "It's a little late, Val. I grew up in Glenister House."

Fear flashed in his eyes like a signal fire. "Oh, Lord, you haven't—"

"No, I'm still distressingly pure. I'm not quite sure why, except I have these absurd delusions that I'm supposed to wait for love and marriage."

"You are," Val said, with an earnestness that under other circumstances might have been funny. "I mean—"

The pain of the past four-and-twenty hours bubbled up inside her. She laid her hand over Val's on the silk damask of the settee. Cerulean blue. Honoria's favorite color. "It's all right, Val. There's no sense in recriminations now. I didn't understand her. God knows, at times I hated her."

His gaze swung to her face, wide with surprise.

"Don't look at me like that. You know how maddening Honoria could be. I wouldn't be human if I hadn't hated her on occasion. I suppose that gives me a motive, but then everyone else seems to have one."

Val grimaced. Evie squeezed his hand. She hadn't come here to talk about motives. "But I do miss her. As you must."

He opened his mouth as though to speak, swallowed, and nodded.

She laced her fingers through his own. "Tonight I keep remembering the good things. The way she'd slip into my room and hold my hand when I first came to Glenister House and I'd wake crying for home. Those wonderfully silly theatricals she organized the summer we were in Argyllshire and it rained a fortnight straight. The Christmas she decided to knit us all presents and gave us those horribly lopsided scarves. It was rather endearing that there was something Honoria wasn't good at."

Val gave a choked laugh and tightened his fingers round her own.

They sat in silence, surrounded by the glow from the two candles. They'd sat like this on the schoolroom hearthrug, in the long-ago days when she'd first come to Glenister House and had thought her cousins could do no wrong. Before she'd understood the darkness that lurked in all of them. Even her.

If London had stirred unwelcome memories, Scotland chilled him to his very bones. The heavy damp in the air was worse than London's soot and grime. The tiny hold of the boat that had brought him up the coast made the fishing boat that had ferried him across the Channel seem as spacious as a yacht. His drafty room in the London lodging house had been exquisite luxury compared to this granite hut with cobwebs in every corner and the smell of peat soaked into the stones and rafters.

Still, he'd known worse. Mud huts in Spain. Caves in the Pyrenees. A burned-out farmhouse in Russia with ice crusting the roof and snow falling through the charred ceiling.

But he hadn't felt such a fool in any of those locations. His failure in London lingered at the back of his throat, like the taste of rancid meat. He shouldn't have allowed Soro's mistress to escape him. Even then, he might have been able to put things right had not this abrupt journey to Scotland prevented him from searching for her. He wouldn't make the same mistakes here. He tugged open the string on his powder bag and began to load his pistol for the night's work ahead.