“We still don’t know for a certainty that you weren’t,” Melanie Fraser said.
Roth swung his head round to look at her. “You and Mr. Fraser were already married at the time?”
“No.” She was worrying the narrow ruffle on her sleeve with her left hand. The lace had frayed between her fingers. “We met on his journey into the mountains. I’d been stranded. I couldn’t believe my good fortune when a gallant British gentleman came to my rescue.”
She looked at her husband. His eyes went dark with an emotion Roth couldn’t put a name to, save that for a moment there was nothing cold or self-contained in his gaze.
Fraser turned back to Roth. “We continued on to the rendezvous point. The morning we were to meet with the bandits we were ambushed by a French patrol.” He picked up the poker and jabbed it into the fireplace, though the fire was burning briskly. A puff of smoke gusted through the room. “When the bullets stopped flying, our whole party was dead, save Melanie and me, a sergeant, and our servants. The two bandits who had come to make the exchange must have been caught up in the crossfire. We found their bodies. The ring was gone. We thought one of the escaping Frenchmen must have made off with it.”
The firelight caught the stark weight of failure in his eyes. He returned the poker to its stand. “We made our way back to Lisbon,” he said after a moment. “Wellington’s forces were victorious in the spring campaign. The French were driven out of Spain altogether. Napoleon was crushed in Russia and forced to abdicate. The ring seemed irrelevant.”
“Until?” Roth said.
Fraser turned to look him full in the face. “Until three weeks ago. Antonio de Carevalo came to see me and demanded I hand it over to him. He said the ring was his family’s birthright.”
Roth frowned. “But—”
“But I don’t have the ring. I tried to tell Carevalo that. He refused to believe me. He said now the war was over he’d managed to track down one of the French soldiers who attacked us. The Frenchman claimed the ring never found its way into French hands.”
“The French never used it to rally support on the Carevalo lands?”
“No.” Fraser glanced down at the fire, his thick, dark brows drawing together. “We kept expecting them to. I rather suspect one of the French patrol appropriated the ring for himself.”
“Why wouldn’t Carevalo believe you?”
“I’m not sure, save that the war left him with little trust in anyone British. He was adamant that I must have kept the ring for myself. He refused even to consider other possibilities. You can see why he wants to get his hands on it. If Carevalo and the Spanish liberals rise up against the king, the ring could be just as valuable a symbol now as in 1812.”
“What did he say when you insisted you didn’t have the ring?”
“That I’d be sorry.” A muscle tightened along Fraser’s jaw. “I took it for bluster. He was half-drunk at the time, which isn’t unusual for Carevalo. When I saw him a few days later, he acted as though nothing had happened.”
Roth tapped his pencil against his notebook. “Has Carevalo ever seen your son?”
“Oh yes. Carevalo dined with us occasionally when we lived in Lisbon.”
“Alliances shift. Friends turn into enemies.”
Fraser was looking into the coals again. “Yes, but—”
“Honor among gentlemen?” Roth tried to keep the irony from his voice.
Fraser lifted his head. “The war taught me that men of all ranks can find honor elastic, Mr. Roth. I was going to say I knew Carevalo. I thought I knew him.”
Melanie Fraser stared at the unraveled mess she had made of the once pristine lace on her sleeve. “We saw Carevalo at the reception this evening.”
“Did he say anything that could relate to your son’s disappearance?” Roth asked.
“Not in the least. He flirted with me.” She shivered, as though the memory made her feel unclean. “Why didn’t you tell me he’d asked you for the ring, Charles?”
“I didn’t see any point in dredging up the past.”
Their gazes met. Roth couldn’t begin to guess at the memories that echoed between them, but the intimacy of that look went far beyond what he expected from husbands and wives or even lovers.
A rap at the door broke the stillness. Fraser turned from his wife. “Come in.”
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.” A slender man with straight fair hair and pale blue eyes stepped into the room. It was Addison, Fraser’s valet, who had shown Roth the footprints in the primrose bed. “Polly has something you and Mrs. Fraser and Mr. Roth had best hear.” He looked at Roth. “I told Officer Dawkins I’d bring her in. She’s a bit upset.”
It was a classic bit of British understatement. The girl who followed Addison into the room was pale with fright and red-eyed with weeping. Roth would swear her legs were shaking beneath the printed cotton skirt of her gown. Her arms were folded across her stomach as though she was going to be sick.
Her gaze went from Charles Fraser to his wife. “Oh, sir. Ma’am. I’ll never forgive myself. It was all my fault.”
Polly sank down on the sofa and drew a shuddering breath. She was scarcely more than a child herself, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. She looked at Mrs. Fraser out of wide, troubled hazel eyes. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Well, I was flattered, truth be told. And he was so…so…”
“He?” Charles Fraser’s voice was surprisingly gentle, though Roth could feel the force of his impatience.
Polly raised her anguished gaze to him. “I didn’t know him for a criminal, sir, truly. Well, I still don’t rightly know it. Only Officer Dawkins, he was asking us questions and I had this dreadful thought of a sudden—”
“And very clever of you to make the connection.” Melanie Fraser pressed a cup of coffee, liberally laced with milk and sugar, into the girl’s trembling hand. “And brave of you to tell us.” She paused for a moment. Roth applauded her technique. You never got far flustering a witness. “Who was he, Polly?” Mrs. Fraser asked.
“A deliveryman from Hatchards. I saw him in the mews when I was hanging out the laundry. He tipped his hat—ever so much the gentleman—and then he said wasn’t it a fine day and it would have been proper rude not to answer—”
“Just so.” Melanie Fraser’s hands were white-knuckled, but her voice was coaxing. Roth stayed silent. She was handling this interrogation much better than he could have done. “What then?” she said.
Polly took a gulp of coffee, sloshing it into the saucer. “He asked me was this a pleasant house to work in and how long had I been here and was the family large. Then he said he’d best be off, but—” She drew a breath and spoke in a rush. “He said did all the houses hereabouts have gardens because he was afeared the gate might be locked. I said—I said I couldn’t answer for the other houses, but our garden gate was always unlocked.”
“It’s all right, Polly.” Mrs. Fraser put her hand over Polly’s own. “All you did was tell him the truth. Did you see him again?”
“A week later. Just two days since. He said he was going a bit out of his way, but”—she colored—“he couldn’t help stopping in the hopes I’d be out with the laundry again. He said he’d had a hard morning, he’d had to take a load of books up to a schoolroom clear in the attics and why was it children were always packed away out of sight. And I said—Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry.”
Melanie Fraser swallowed, but her voice and gaze remained soothing. “You said it wasn’t that way in our house?”
“I said you and Mr. Fraser liked to have the children nearby. I—God forgive me, I pointed out Master Colin’s and Miss Jessica’s windows.”
Roth saw the full realization register in both Frasers’ eyes—one of the men who had taken their son had been so close they could have stepped into the garden and looked him in the face. Instead, he’d had all the information he needed handed to him on a silver salver.
Charles Fraser looked at Polly and smiled, the first genuine smile Roth had seen from him. It lit his cool eyes with unexpected warmth. “They’d have learned what they wanted one way or another, Polly. At least this way we
