Beneath a Silent Moon (63 page)

Andrew drew a swift, hard breath. Gisèle moved to the sofa where he sat and placed her hand over his own.

"Kenneth arranged for Georgiana Talbot to have her baby in secret," Charles said, "probably somewhere in France."

"I think Aunt Georgiana did travel on the Continent at about that time," Quen said. "Before she made her debut. What about my fath—the current Lord Glenister? Did he help Kenneth Fraser hush up Cyril and Georgiana's affair?"

"I suspect so," Charles said in a tone that was classic Charles Fraser—cool, concise, all the facts marshaled, all feeling held at bay. "That would fit with what Gelly and Honoria and Evie overheard him say to Kenneth about involving the members in something personal. I'm quite sure
Kenneth turned to some of his fellow Elsinore League members for help in making the arrangements for Georgiana's stay abroad and her accouchement. A Frenchman named Coroux and another man who may or may not have been French but who later became known in France as Le Faucon de Maulévrier. Meanwhile, Kenneth arranged for Catherine Thirle, who was also pregnant, to go away from Dunmykel for her own delivery. After Georgiana gave birth—after you were born, Andrew—Kenneth brought you to Mrs. Thirle. Mrs. Thirle brought you back to Dunmykel as her daughter Maddie's twin brother."

"And Georgiana Talbot?" Andrew said.

"Returned to her family," Quen said. "Made her debut in society in due course. But though by all accounts she had a flock of suitors, she didn't marry for a long time." He looked at Charles. "You think she and Uncle Cyril resumed their affair?"

"Then or later. What seems certain is that whatever force held them together endured. Eventually Cyril married. Perhaps he was trying to cover up his affair with his sister. Or to find a refuge from it. Aunt Frances said she thought he chose Susan Mallinson because he'd made up his mind to marry and she was the most convenient choice. He continued to keep mistresses who strongly resembled Georgiana."

"My poor Aunt Susan," David said. "She wouldn't have understood any of it. And she died giving birth to Cyril's daughter."

Charles nodded. "Her death may have been the catalyst that drove Cyril and Georgiana back together. In any case, not long after Susan died giving birth to Honoria, Georgiana found herself pregnant. This time she took matters into her own hands. She eloped with Captain Ronald Mortimer, who evidently loved or wanted her enough to ignore the fact that she was four months pregnant with another man's child. Whether her father guessed the baby was really Cyril's or whether he thought Georgiana had been Mortimer's mistress, he washed his hands of her and cut off her dowry."

"A cold devil, my grandfather," Quen said.

"Quite." Charles's mouth tightened. "Georgiana and Captain Mortimer were left to live off his half-pay in the obscurity of Ramsgate. Meanwhile, Kenneth Fraser had done very well off the payment he received for covering up Georgiana's first pregnancy. He'd entered Parliament and bought Dunmykel and married my mother. The Elsinore League gatherings continued, though perhaps not as frequently as when the members had been younger. Some of the members had been caught up in the French Revolution and one had become Le Faucon de Maulévrier. Perhaps Cyril Talbot was involved in Le Faucon's revolutionary activities. Or perhaps he and the others didn't even know this man was Le Faucon. In any case, Le Faucon was present at the Elsinore League gathering Kenneth hosted at Dunmykel in the autumn of 1797. Colonel Coroux was there as well, as were Cyril Talbot and the present Lord Glenister, who by this time had inherited his father's title. Whatever role Glenister had played in hushing up Georgiana's first pregnancy, I'm quite sure he didn't know Cyril and Georgiana had resumed the affair or that Cyril was Evie's father."

"Until the house party?" David said.

"Yes." Mélanie took up the story. "Somehow Cyril revealed the truth—a slip of the tongue made in a drunken stupor, perhaps, or a desperate confession, or a bit of both. Glenister may have been able to forgive his brother for the initial affair with Georgiana when Cyril was eighteen, but he couldn't forgive him for resuming the liaison and for getting Georgiana pregnant again. He insisted on challenging Cyril to an impromptu duel and he killed him. With his dying breath, Cyril asked his brother to look after Evie."

"Glenister rushed to my grandfather's to see Honoria and repeated the promise," Charles said. "I heard him, though it wasn't until tonight that I understood what he meant. Kenneth tried to keep the duel secret from the others at the house party, but Coroux and Le Faucon must have overheard something. They knew about Georgiana's first pregnancy. They were probably able to piece together something very close to the truth."

"And then, after Waterloo, in the face of the White Terror, they realized how useful that truth could be," Mélanie said.

"Quite. Colonel Coroux found himself imprisoned in the Conciergerie as a Bonapartist officer. Le Faucon, whatever his original nationality, seems to have been living in France as well. We know that the current Vicomte d'Argenton was trying to uncover Le Faucon's identity. Both Le Faucon and Colonel Coroux needed to escape France and both tried to blackmail Kenneth Fraser and Glenister into helping them."

"So Francisco Soro was working for your father and Glenister?" David said.

"Indirectly. I think Kenneth and Glenister once again turned to their fellow Elsinore League members for help. According to Glenister, members of the Elsinore League wound up on both sides in the war in France. I suspect Francisco was hired by Royalist members of the Elsinore League in Paris who were acting as intermediaries between Kenneth and Glenister and Coroux and Le Faucon. Francisco and Manon were carrying messages to Coroux in prison as Coroux negotiated for his escape. Francisco may have been in communication with Le Faucon as well. The coded letter he gave me could have been from either Coroux or Le Faucon, threatening to reveal the truth about Cyril Talbot's death if Kenneth and Glenister didn't get him out of France. And who would Kenneth and Glenister most fear learning the truth? Cyril's daughter. Glenister's beloved niece, the girl Kenneth wanted to marry. Francisco must have heard the Royalist Elsinore League members he was working for say that the men Coroux and Le Faucon were blackmailing 'feared most for Honoria.' "

"So it was our fathers—Glenister and Kenneth Fraser—who had Colonel Coroux killed?" Quen said.

Charles nodded, his mouth hard. "They must have decided it was safer to have Coroux killed than to get him out of prison. I suspect it was his death that made Francisco turn on them and flee for England."

"And you think Tommy Belmont followed him and killed him?" David said. "How the hell did he get mixed up in all this?"

"We can only speculate. Perhaps his father or one of his uncles was a member of the league. They'd have been at Oxford with Father and Glenister. Perhaps after Castlereagh employed Tommy to investigate the league, Tommy decided it was more of a challenge to work with the league than to expose them. The closest he came to explaining himself was to say that with the war over he needed a new scope for his talents."

"My God," David said. "Belmont was always a cynic, but surely he had some sense of loyalty—"

"Tommy is addicted to risk," Mélanie said. "It's what made him a good agent And what made him restless in peacetime." She cast a glance at Charles. "It isn't easy, learning to live in a world that doesn't teeter constantly on the edge of chaos. There's a wonderful freedom in never having to think beyond momentary survival. Whatever drew Tommy to the league, I suspect he was caught by the challenge of a new game to play. He can't resist dangerous games. In that sense, he's very like Honoria Talbot."

Charles looked back at her for a moment, gaze steady with understanding, then turned back to the others. "I'm not sure when Tommy became entangled with the league, but I suspect he had something to do with Colonel Coroux's death and Le Faucon's escape to London. Tommy admitted that he followed Francisco to London and killed him. But meanwhile Le Faucon had decided Father posed a danger to him."

"Why?" David asked. "If they'd kept each other's secrets all these years and your father had helped him escape Paris—"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps because only Father knew where Le Faucon had gone to earth in Britain. We don't know that Glenister or any of the others knew the details of his escape. Glenister may have deliberately stayed out of it. Or perhaps because of the papers Tommy was at such pains to retrieve from the secret rooms."

"The papers Evie died for" Quen said. "What were they?"

"I only got the briefest glance," Charles said. "On top was a bundle of love letters from Georgiana to Cyril, which Father probably got his hands on when he was covering up her first pregnancy. But there were other papers that weren't part of that packet. Papers that I suspect hold the truth about Le Faucon's identity. It would have made sense for Father to keep all his various forms of insurance together."

"And Honoria found them?" Quen said.

"She must have done. We know she was looking for information about her father's death. And perhaps she thought it would be handy to know any secrets Kenneth Fraser possessed in the event he ever learned the baby she carried wasn't his. She must have learned about the secret rooms somehow—perhaps from one of the servants. Once she found them she would have been able to discover the papers."

"Which Tommy Belmont was also after," Simon said.

"Yes. As best I can guess, Le Faucon contacted Tommy after he reached Britain and engaged Tommy to kill Father and retrieve the incriminating papers."

"So it was Mr. Belmont whom you found in the library the night Honoria was killed?" Gisèle said. "He'd come to see Father? Was he planning to kill him then?"

"I believe so. He'd probably sent Father a message saying they needed to talk. Father went back up to his room after his—interlude—with Aunt Frances. No doubt he intended to change and then go down to meet Tommy. But instead he found Honoria and all thoughts of Tommy fled. Tommy arranged the meeting again for last night and—" Charles's eyes went dark. "We all saw what happened."

Quen stared at Charles, the weight of his family's past sliding over his face. "Do you think Tommy will come after my father—Glenister?"

"I doubt it. If Tommy had wanted to get rid of Glenister as well, I think he'd have asked both Father and Glenister to meet him and dispatched them at the same time. But we can warn Glenister of what we've learned. Then he'll have to decide for himself how to proceed."

David frowned as though he were trying to make sense of a complex set of Parliamentary maneuvers. "What now?" he asked.

"As I said, I expect Glenister will deny knowledge of any of this. So, I imagine, will Tommy's family, who will probably give it out that he's gone to India or Jamaica for a protracted stay. I'm quite sure Castlereagh will refuse to talk, and I'm not sure how much he knows in any case. The two agents who were supposedly infiltrated into the Elsinore League worked for Tommy. They'll probably disappear. If they even existed in the first place. We can confront Wheaton—in fact, it will give me great pleasure to do so—but I doubt even he knows more than he told us, save perhaps that Tommy was working for Father at one point."

"And Evie?" Quen said.

A shadow crossed Charles's face, though the candlelight didn't waver. "Glenister and David's father should know at least part of the truth about what happened to her and to Honoria. I leave it up to you and David to decide how much."

Quen exchanged a look with David and nodded slowly. "My Aunt Georgiana will have to know something as well."

Andrew, who had fallen to staring at the carpet again, looked up at him. "Miss Mortimer's mother? Oh, God, she's my—"

For the first time, he seemed to
realize
that the woman who had given birth to him and Evie Mortimer was not simply a name with a tragic history, but a very much alive human being. The full impact of what the evening's revelations implied about his own life seemed to break over him. He went completely still, his face drained of feeling, as though to feel or think anything at all would be to shatter in pieces.

Gisèle put her arms round him. Mélanie expected him to draw away. Instinctively, she braced for rejection on Gisèle's behalf. But instead Andrew leaned into Gisèle and clutched her tightly. Gisèle smoothed his hair. "It's all right, love. I'm here."

"I'm sorry," Andrew said. "I—"

"Don't talk, dearest. Not now." Gisèle glanced at Charles and then led Andrew from the room.

Quen helped Miss Newland to her feet. "We'll talk more tomorrow, Charles. I'm afraid—I can't think further tonight."

David gripped Charles's arm for a long moment. "It had to be done. We had to know. Thank you. And you, Mélanie."

Charles shook his head. "There's no thanks for this."

"There's always thanks for the offices of a friend."

David turned and touched Mélanie's arm. Simon squeezed her hand, and then they, too, left the room, Simon's arm round David's shoulders. The various lovers scattering to different parts of the house in a sort of dark version of the end of A
Midsummer Night's Dream
: "Jack shall have his Jill; Naught shall go ill."

Mélanie turned to look at her own lover. No, not her lover, as she had told Gisèle. Her husband. A tie at once closer and farther removed,
Charles was standing by the fireplace, one hand on the mantel, his head bent, his face hollowed out by the candlelight. There were soot marks on his cheeks and jaw. His shirt was streaked with dirt and blood. She was going to have to get him to let her examine the sword cut on his shoulder, which he'd been endeavoring to keep hidden from her.

Without looking up, he said, "I'm sorry I went to the secret rooms without you."

Her breath stuck in her throat for a moment. "I went to confront Evie without you."

"If we'd—"

"We can play it out a hundred different ways, Charles. I should have guessed Evie might have a pistol. We should have guessed Tommy might have a knife. But God knows what Evie might have done in desperation if she'd stayed in the house while we confronted Tommy. God knows what Tommy might have tried to disarm us if Evie hadn't been there. We can't ever be sure."