"She left."
"Just like that?"
"All right, I made a fool of myself and tried to kiss her. Did kiss her. God knows why. To see if there was anything left? Because I thought it was my last chance?"
"Did she kiss you back?"
"Ah—yes, actually." Tommy coughed. "I asked her to marry me. I meant it. More than I did six years ago, though God knows what sort of a mull I'd have made of it if she'd actually said yes. Our work doesn't exactly fit us for marriage, as you used to say in the old days—" He looked up at Charles. "I suppose four and a half years of wedlock has changed your mind about that as well."
Charles wiped the dripping wax from the candle. It stung his finger.
"Shoe's on the other foot, is it?" Tommy said. "Can't say I'm surprised. Mélanie's a remarkable woman, but it can't be easy—"
"We were talking about Honoria."
"So we were. Say what you will, if she'd taken me, perhaps she wouldn't—Charles, so help me, did your father—"
"He seems to have an alibi. Was that the last time you saw Honoria?"
"Of course. Christ, are you asking me—"
"The same question I've asked of just about everyone."
The pew scraped against the flagstones as Tommy pushed himself to his feet. "You think I broke into the house, broke into your father's room, and strangled Honoria?"
"How do you know she was in my father's room?"
"Gossip travels fast. Charles, after Honoria left me yesterday, I asked some questions round the village, I went back to my camp, and I went to sleep. You have my word on it. I know that means absolutely nothing to you—"
"Not nothing." Charles glanced at the stained-glass window over the door, the blues and reds lit faintly by candlelight. What kind of religion venerated a virginal mother? "Just not a guarantee."
Mélanie hesitated in the shadows of the birch coppice. If she stayed still, Gisèle might decide the sound had been a deer or a badger. On the other hand, she might decide to return to the house instead of continuing on whatever errand she was in the midst of. Or she might already be on her way back to the house, in which case Mélanie would learn nothing by following her. While if she spoke, she might be able to persuade her young sister-in-law to talk.
Mélanie stepped out of the shadows. "Gisèle? Don't be alarmed. I'm sorry to have startled you."
"What—
Mélanie
?"
Mélanie crossed the open ground. "It's a little late for an evening stroll."
"I couldn't sleep. I often walk late at night in the summer. I like the Highland evenings." Gisèle's gaze swept over her. "What are you doing out? Good God, Mélanie, what are you doing in those clothes?"
"I think skulking's the term. Breeches are handier than a frock for clambering over rocks. I suggest trying it if you do this sort of thing often."
"I don't. I mean, I often walk, but I don't—"
"Do whatever else it is you're doing?" Mélanie studied Charles's sister in the meager light. Gisèle's pearl earrings and ringleted hair might seem out of place, but beneath the girlish softness was a strength Mélanie hadn't noticed before. "Look, Gisèle, I realize you don't know me very well, but I think you might be surprised at how helpful I can be."
"You don't—"
"Understand?" An image of speaking to her daughter in twenty years' time flashed into Mélanie's mind. "Try me."
Gisèle's gaze darted over Mélanie's face.
"I know I'm not Charles," Mélanie said.
"No, you aren't Charles." Gisèle gave a brief, hard laugh. "It's not really my secret to tell. It could put people in danger—"
Mélanie caught the sound of rustling in the underbrush. She seized Gisèle's wrist a half-second before three men rushed at them out of the trees.
"Run," Mélanie hissed, pushing her sister-in-law away from her.
"But—"
"Charles is in the chapel.
Go
."
Gisèle stumbled off just as rough hands caught Mélanie from behind.
Tommy strode down the length of the chapel, boot heels slamming into the granite like hammer blows. "Why the devil would I hurt Honoria? Because I was playing the spumed lover? Look, old man, I cared about her. I thought I'd make her a damned sight better husband than your father. But to be brutally honest, my feelings don't run that deep for anyone."
"That, I suppose, is why you nearly dashed my brains out against the chapel wall a quarter-hour ago."
"That was—" Tommy's hand closed on the back of a pew. "I could scarcely think straight. I couldn't believe she was dead. I kept worrying that something I'd done or not done had contributed to it."
The lash of self-hatred in Tommy's voice flicked against a raw wound in Charles's own mind. "Honoria played dangerous games. You've never been one to overindulge in guilt, Tommy. Don't start now."
Tommy looked at him, the usual reckless glint back in his gaze. "Unless of course I killed her."
"Quite."
Tommy lifted his hand from the pew back. "What sort of games?"
Before Charles could answer, the chapel door thudded open. "Charles." Gisèle stumbled into the chapel. "Thank God."
Charles caught his sister by the arms. She was breathing so hard she could scarcely stand. Her hair fell about her face in a tangle, and the flounce was torn half off her gown.
Gisèle gripped his shoulder. "They've got Mélanie."
Fear bit Charles in the throat. "Who does?"
"Men. They jumped out of the trees at us. I think they might be smugglers."
"Where?" Tommy joined them. "Where were you when they grabbed you?"
"The edge of the birch coppice. I think they think—" Gisèle pushed her tangled hair out of her eyes. "Who are you?"
"Thomas Belmont," Charles said. "My sister, Gisèle."
"Enchanted," Tommy murmured.
Gisèle tugged a yew leaf out of her hair. "You went to Harrow with Charles, didn't you? Aren't you stationed in Paris?"
"Theoretically that's where I am now. Do these men know who Mélanie is?"
"No, that's just it. I think they think she's a boy, because of the way she's dressed."
"Ah, yes, Mélanie's adventuring clothes. How could I forget, particularly when they show off her legs so well. Stop glowering, Fraser, surely when she tells them she's your wife, they'll let her go."
"If she tells them," Charles said.
"Why wouldn't she?"
"Because she'll think she can get more information out of them by playing along with the charade. The only problem is, this particular charade includes knives and guns." Charles shut his mind to a number of unpleasant possibilities. He was used to doing so where Mélanie was concerned.
Concern flickered in Tommy's eyes. "It's been too long since we've done this. I keep forgetting she's as mad as you are. Now would be a good time for one of your irritatingly brilliant plans, Fraser. For Mélanie's sake, I even promise not to raise objections."
Charles scowled, feeling anything but brilliant. "The smugglers have been using the cave at the end of the secret passage."
"Yes," Gisèle said, "they have, but that's not where they'll have taken her tonight."
"How can you—" Charles stared at his sister. Her face held fear and urgency, but no hint of surprise at the events of the night. "Gelly—"
"Don't look at me like that, Charles." Gisèle straightened her shoulders. The candlelight bounced off her cheekbones and hollowed out the girlish softness of her face. She seemed to have grown a couple of inches taller in the last five minutes. "For heaven's sake, you didn't really think that all I was doing last night was throwing myself at Andrew like a lovesick schoolgirl, did you?"
The grip on Mélanie's arms felt tight enough to dislocate her shoulders. Hot breath that smelled of garlic and sausages wafted over her. "Search his pockets," her captor said.
Another of the men moved to comply. Mélanie kicked him in the stomach as he bent over her. The man grunted in pain, staggered, and slapped her across the face. The blow sliced through her jaw and sent a wave of nausea into her throat. She decided she'd put on enough of a show of a struggle. She didn't want to do so much that they actually released her, for the same reason she hadn't pulled out her pistol in the few seconds before they'd reached her and Gisèle, for the same reason she didn't try announcing she was really Mrs. Charles Fraser. She didn't want them to let her go. She wanted to find out what they were up to.
"Hah." The man who was searching her pulled her pistol from her coat pocket. "Running about with a gun. Fancy silver thing, too. That just about proves you're him. Where's your friend?"
"Don't know," Mélanie muttered. She'd never actually attempted a Perthshire accent, but her effort was apparently believable enough not to undeceive her captors.
"Not bloody likely. You know. Probably sent your sweetheart off to warn him." The searcher drew back his arm to hit her again.
"There's no time, Bill." The third man, who had been hanging back, grabbed his aim. "We're late as it is. We'll have to take the boy with us. Here, tie him up."
The man holding Mélanie lashed her arms together with what felt like a piece of twine and pressed the cold metal of a pistol against her side. "Not a word out of you, mind. March."
Jaw still tender, Mélanie nodded.
They pushed and dragged her over the uneven ground. Her head was spinning, but the sound of the waves and the whiff of salt told her they were moving toward the coast. She slouched her shoulders and shifted her center of gravity low in her pelvis. Posture was more than half the work of masquerading as the opposite sex. Her captors said nothing as they walked, save to mutter once or twice about being late and "Mr. Wheaton" being angry.
The path snaked downhill. At last they came to a halt in front of a thatch-roofed stone cottage on an open bit of ground, exposed to the buffeting of the wind off the sea. A chink or two of light showed behind burlap nailed up over the cottage's windows. One of the men rapped at the door. A moment later it was jerked open by a thin man with straw-colored hair. He scanned the three men and Mélanie. "You're late."
"Bit of a disturbance," the one called Bill said. "We found one of them."
The thin man raked Mélanie with his gaze for a moment, then gave a brisk nod. Her captor pushed her into the cottage.
The air in the single room was clotted with smoke and the smell of close-pressed bodies, sour beer, and tallow candles. The greasy yellow light flickered over smoke-stained whitewashed walls, rough plank furniture, and a jumbled crowd of men. About a dozen of them, she decided, willing her vision to clear. The crowd went silent when they entered the room, and she felt the press of a multitude of gazes upon her. She was accustomed to making entrances, but not quite of this sort.
More than one face looked familiar from their visit to the
Griffin & Dragon, but she saw no spark of recognition in the gazes turned her way. A stout gray-haired man in an old-fashioned claret-colored frock coat sat in an armchair covered in stained blue canvaswork. A broad-shouldered man with close-set eyes and a pistol stuck in his belt stood on one side of the chair, a dark-haired man in a black coat holding a ledger on the other. The other men present appeared to be Dunmykel tenants, but the three in the center of the room had the mark of outsiders—something about the way they stood, the cut of their coats, the careful distance between them and the others.