coldness, their mother’s bouts of giddiness and depression, their tutor’s strictures. Their sister hadn’t been born until Charles was almost eleven and Edgar nine. In the wilds of Perthshire, the Fraser brothers had had few companions but each other.
That had changed when they went to Harrow. Charles had still preferred the company of his books, but Edgar had quickly become the center of a circle of friends. Yet though their interests diverged, they had remained close. Until the December when Charles was nineteen and staying late at Oxford to finish an essay on David Hume, while Edgar went back to Perthshire by himself. The December Edgar saw their mother put a bullet through her brain a week before Christmas.
It was Edgar who had drawn away then, but now his eyes were pleading for the opposite. And he was right. They needed every scrap of help they could get. “Melanie and I would be grateful for any assistance you can give us,” Charles said.
Edgar’s shoulders relaxed beneath the smooth blue fabric of his coat. “Thank you.” He turned to Melanie. “Shouldn’t you see a doctor?”
“No.”
“She wouldn’t go, and there isn’t time anyway.” Charles took Melanie’s wrist between his fingers for a moment. “Still no fever, despite the drenching. You aren’t chilled?”
She removed her wrist from his grasp. “Charles, you seem to be forgetting I’ve given birth to two children. This is a minor nuisance in comparison.”
Her dry voice didn’t convince Charles, but it seemed to reassure Edgar, which perhaps was what she’d intended. “What’s the next step?” Edgar asked.
“A visit to Susan Trevennen,” Charles said.
“I thought you said the sisters were estranged.”
“But they were close once. If I disappeared from London, wouldn’t you have a fair idea of where to look for me?”
Edgar’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I expect I would,” he said, making no comment on the reference to estrangement. “And if she hasn’t heard from Helen, either?” he asked after a moment.
Charles fished some coins from his pocket to pay their reckoning. “There’s always Mrs. Jennings. But I don’t want to waste time traveling to Surrey while we have possible leads in London.” He tossed the coins onto the table. “You could be of help there, Edgar.”
“You want me to go to Surrey to see her while you look for the sister? It’s a bit late to leave tonight, but I’d be happy to do so if you think it would help.”
Charles glanced at Melanie. She shook her head. “Better to set off in the morning if you need to go at all,” she said. “But you could go back to Berkeley Square and see if Addison and Blanca have discovered anything.”
“Of course.” Edgar rubbed his hand across his eyes. “God. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. You realize that, don’t you? What if it can’t—”
He trailed off under the combined pressure of Charles’s and Melanie’s gazes. “It can be done,” Melanie said, “because there’s no alternative. One step at a time, Edgar. That’s the only way we’ll manage.”
Edgar swallowed. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
Charles got to his feet and held out his hand to Melanie. “Wait for us in Berkeley Square, Edgar.”
“Yes, all right.” Edgar stared at him as though the full implications of his words had just sunk in. “Charles, you can’t take Melanie to the Gilded Lily.”
“Dear Edgar,” Melanie said. “He’s not taking me. I’m going with him.”
Edgar tugged at his cravat. “Melanie, I don’t think you understand—”
“It’s a brothel, Edgar. I understand very well. They’ll just think Charles and I are there for an assignation. It’s amazing the places women of fashion go.”
Edgar stared at her as though he would be more shocked if he could take in the full import of what she was saying. “Suppose”—he coughed—“suppose you meet someone you know?”
Melanie picked her gloves up from the bench and tugged them on. “Then I suspect they’ll be more surprised than we are.”
They threaded their way through the tables and the rain-spattered customers, collected their outer garments, and walked to the door. “Go to the right,” Charles told his brother. “Take the second hackney that stops. Yes, I know it didn’t manage to shake you off, but it may work with Iago Lorano or his hirelings.”
Edgar shot Charles a look of concern as they parted. Charles ignored it. Edgar was extremely fond of Melanie, but like most people, he was deceived by the polished, decorous veneer. Charles had thought he himself was one of the few people who understood her. While her vulnerability had roused his protective instincts, it was her sheer guts he’d fallen in love with. The irony, of course, was that he’d been more deceived by her than anyone.
He and Melanie turned left outside the coffeehouse, rounded the corner back into Bow Street, and followed the same process of taking the second hackney.
“I’m glad you didn’t refuse Edgar’s help,” Melanie said when they were settled inside the hackney. “We can use it.”
“Yes, Edgar can be quite handy at fighting dragons. As long as we make sure he attacks the right ones.”
She shot him a glance. “He’s more straightforward than you, but he’s not a fool.”
“I never said he was.”
“And he loves Colin.” She rested her head against the worn squabs. “I remember when I first met him. It was just after I came to Lisbon, before we were betrothed. Some sort of embassy party—he looked very dashing in his dress uniform. You’d retreated to the library in one of your black moods. I told Edgar I was worried about you. He said it was only to be expected, considering all the men you’d lost on the trip into the mountains. I said I didn’t see why, you couldn’t have known about the ambush, and it was a miracle you’d got the survivors home in one piece. Edgar told me that just because you preferred to have your nose in a book, I shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking you didn’t care about people. Then he said”—she turned her head against the squabs to look at him in the gathering darkness within the hackney—“‘My brother decided years ago that the world is his responsibility. Every so often it proves a bit much even for him. He takes these lapses very hard.’”
Charles stared at a patch of damp on the hackney window. “Edgar’s no fool, but I’ve never considered him a particularly good judge of character. Nor have you, if memory serves.”
“No, but he has remarkably keen flashes of insight,” Melanie said. He could feel her gaze on the back of his head. “I don’t know what happened between you, Charles. I don’t need to know. But Edgar doesn’t just love Colin. He loves you.”
Charles swung his head round. “Damn it, Mel, you may be far more skilled at deception than I am, but I think I’m still a better judge of my own family.”
She watched him with those damnably all-seeing eyes. “Darling, you’ve every right to push me away, but I hate to see you push everyone else away as well.”
“Whatever the problems between my brother and me, they go back for years. As I recall, you and I were on remarkably intimate terms until this morning.”
“Yes. But—No, I’m sorry, I’m being just the sort of meddling wife I loathe.”
“Thank you.” He folded his arms across his chest. “For once we’re in agreement. As I thought we’d agreed that until we recover our son nothing else is of any moment.”
He heard Melanie’s intake of breath. When she spoke her voice was tight with fear, but she merely said, “That goes without saying.”
The hackney rattled on. Charles crossed his legs. The strong coffee and rough brandy, swallowed after a day with little food, had left a dull pain behind his temples and a nervous energy that thrummed through his veins. He glanced down at his hands, always the first part of his body to betray him. Even in the murky light, he noted a telltale tremor. Damnation.
“How much should we worry about Castlereagh?” Melanie said.
Charles clasped his hands together. “We’re safe for the moment. He thinks he has Edgar following us. He won’t put anyone else on the matter.”
Melanie gnawed on her finger. “I’m surprised Castlereagh called Edgar in. I thought he had his own agents in London. Not as many as the Home Secretary, of course, but he used to have quite a tidy little network in England as well as abroad. I suppose it’s closed down a good deal since the war.”
The reality of what she had been, what she had done, what they had both done, hit Charles again like a
