Secrets of a Lady (45 page)

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.”

Chapter 28

A
s they descended the front steps of the Constable house, Mélanie could feel the weight of failure pressing on her husband, as heavy as the soot-laden night air that seeped through their outer garments. When they reached the pavement, she put a hand on his arm. “You couldn’t have done anything else. All other considerations aside, shooting her wouldn’t have got us anywhere.”

Edgar stopped and looked up at his brother. The lamplight glowed in his wide eyes. “You really might have shot her, mightn’t you?”

“Possibly.” Charles scowled into the dark street.

“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that she might be telling the truth?”

“It could hardly fail to occur to me.” Charles started along the pavement toward Russell Square. “It was one of the most compelling performances I’ve ever witnessed.” He didn’t glance at Mélanie, but she felt him add,
Though no more so than the one you gave for seven years,
as surely as if he had said it. “But if Jennings didn’t put the ring in his letter to her, what the hell happened to it?”

Edgar’s boots clicked on the pavement. “Perhaps Jennings never had it at all.”

“One of the soldiers did, or at least told the bandits he did when he employed them. Jennings is the only one who had anything removed from his body.”

Edgar frowned at the paving stones. “Suppose Sergeant Baxter’s lying and he had the ring himself?”

“If Baxter had the ring, why didn’t he try to sell it again after the debacle with the French?” Mélanie said. “He had nothing to gain from hanging on to it.” She tried to sound as though she was analyzing chess moves, but the words came out with a tight strained sound, perhaps because her chest and throat felt as if they were being squeezed raw. “Helen Trevennen’s performance may have been grounded in truth, as all good performances are, but I think she has the ring. And what I want to know is why she’s so determined to keep it rather than sell it to us.”

“Perhaps she sold it already,” Edgar said.

“Then one would think she’d have admitted it when Charles held the pistol on her.”

“So what now?” Edgar asked.

Charles stopped walking and turned back to scan the street. “We burgle the house.”

His brother stared at him, digesting this statement.

Addison detached himself from the shadows by the square railing. His gaze flickered from Charles’s face to Mélanie’s to Edgar’s. “You didn’t get it?”

“No,” Charles said.

Addison gave a curt nod. “The kitchen door is locked but not bolted. The ground-floor windows round the back are sash windows with a simple latch. They open onto the breakfast parlor and Mr. Constable’s study, respectively. I knocked on the area door—I said I was a groom who’d got lost delivering a message—and had a brief word with the kitchenmaid. Mr. and Mrs. Constable’s bedchamber is at the front of the house on the second floor. The cook and kitchenmaid sleep off the kitchen. The rest of the servants sleep in the attics and the nursery is there as well. The manservant locks up at midnight. Mr. Constable is expected to stay in his chambers in the Temple tonight rather than return home.”

“Thank you, Addison. Well done.”

Edgar was still staring at Charles. “You were planning to break in even before we spoke to Mrs. Constable?”

“No, but I knew it might come to that. Which it has. We should return to Berkeley Square to make our plans. Addison, stay here. If Mrs. Constable or anyone else in the household goes out, follow him or her and send word as soon as you can. We’ll be back just after midnight.”

“Right, sir.” Addison said nothing more, but the gaze he exchanged with Charles had the warmth of a hand clapped on the shoulder.

In silence they cut through a mews, rounded two street corners, flagged down a hackney, and directed it to Berkeley Square.

“How would you do it, Mel?” Charles said when they were settled in the carriage.

“The back windows. There’s more chance of being spotted at the kitchen door and more chance of waking someone at the front of the house.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“You sound as though you’ve done this before,” Edgar said.

“I have,” Charles replied.

“But—Oh, I see. In Spain.”

“And Portugal. And once or twice in Vienna. Ask Castlereagh to tell you the story sometime. He was grateful for my somewhat unorthodox talents on that occasion.”

“Charles picked the lock on a wine cave the night I met him,” Mélanie said. “Of course, it wasn’t until later that I learned what an expert he was.”

“You mean you were there when he—Do you mean he dragged you along on these adventures?” Edgar asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mélanie said. It was quite true. She neglected to add that she had also done more than her share of breaking and entering on her own.

“Good God.” Edgar shook his head and looked at his brother. “Your ‘fetching and carrying’ went even further than I realized.”

“A great deal further,” Charles said. He flicked a glance at Mélanie. “Might as well call a spade a spade, brother. I was a spy.”

Mélanie opened the door of her and Charles’s bedchamber, carrying a bowl of warm water and a roll of lint. She found her husband alone in the room, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt. “Edgar’s changing in the guest suite,” he said. “He ducks out of sight whenever he realizes I have to change your bandages.”

“Poor Edgar. He has a delicacy of mind neither of us can appreciate.” She set the water and lint on her dressing table. “I sent Blanca to make coffee. She’s itching to be doing something. I had a hard time convincing her it would only complicate matters if she came with us. Are you going to be able to climb through a window with your leg in that state?”

Charles pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his dressing gown. “I’m going to have to.”

In truth, both his bullet wound and her knife cut had begun to heal, as was revealed when they changed the dressings. They didn’t speak of what lay ahead until the fresh bandages were in place and they had begun to don clothing appropriate for a burglary.

“If she has the ring hidden in the house, it’s probably in her bedchamber,” Charles said, buttoning a black waistcoat over a fresh shirt. “Have you ever broken into a room while someone was sleeping in it?”

“Once or twice.” Mélanie dropped a gown of jet-colored merino over her head. Most of the time she had managed to already be in a gentleman’s bedchamber before he fell asleep. She saw this realization dawn in Charles’s eyes as she thrust her arms into the long, tight sleeves. “Difficult and dangerous, but not impossible,” she continued, pulling the fabric over her shoulders with more force than was necessary. A stitch snapped in one of the shoulder seams. “But there’s a good chance she keeps the ring in a dressing room rather than the bedchamber itself. A lady’s boudoir is the one room she can keep inviolate.”