had more time for him.” He shifted the sketch in his hands. “The glamour of being a jockey, I suppose.”

Charles’s fingers tightened. Melanie almost fancied she could hear the scrape of bone against bone. “When will Fred be back?” he asked.

“In an hour or so.” Hopkins was pouring cider for Giles. “He’s just gone to give Lightning a brief gallop.” He paused, the mug clutched in one hand, and stared at Charles from beneath lowered brows. “Here now. This is more serious than I realized.”

“Yes.” Charles gave him and Giles the same version of the story that he had given Lady Frances.

Hopkins knocked over his mug. Giles let out another whistle, this one lower and sharper. “But that’s monstrous.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “It is.”

Hopkins righted the mug and mopped up the spilled cider with his handkerchief. “Is there anything else we can tell you? Before Fred comes back?”

Charles picked up his mug and turned it between his fingers. “You said she was a war widow. Did she talk about her past?”

Hopkins flicked a glance at his groom. “Giles?”

“Not really.” Giles took an apple from a basket on the table and tossed it in the air, as though it would aid his memory. “That is—It doesn’t do to ask a lady about her late husband, and she almost never mentioned him. But I remember once—she’d come to watch a training gallop and I brought her a flask of tea. It looked as though she’d been crying, so I asked her if anything was the matter. She said this was the time of year her husband had died.”

“What time of year was it?” Charles asked.

“Autumn. November, I think.”

The month Jennings had died. Charles met Melanie’s gaze for a moment, then looked back at Giles. “Did she say anything else?”

Giles turned the apple over in his hand. “I said she must miss her husband. And she got an odd sort of smile—as though she had a secret, but then she always had a bit that sort of a look.” Giles tossed the apple again. “Then she said he’d given her more than she’d ever thought possible, but sometimes a gift could also be a burden.”

“Do you remember her ever wearing a ring?” Charles said. “A heavy gold ring with rubies? Shaped like a lion’s head?”

“Good lord, no. She never wore anything that flashy. A wedding band and maybe a pearl here and there.”

“What about money?” Melanie asked. “Did she seem in want of it?”

“No,” Hopkins said. “She didn’t live lavishly, but she wasn’t dependent on her winnings at the track. She could snap her fingers at a loss.” He stared at his sodden handkerchief. “She obviously was living off more than an army pension. I don’t much care for gossip, but I know some people speculated that her husband’s family were paying her to stay out of their way. Or that he hadn’t been her husband at all.”

Charles sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “Do you think it’s possible she was blackmailing someone?”

The apple Giles had been tossing thudded to the floor. “Why should she need to blackmail anyone?” he asked.

“In order to have a steady income,” Melanie said.

Hopkins frowned. “There’s no way to prove it, but I suppose that could explain where her income came from.”

Giles stooped to retrieve the fallen apple. “She was so beautiful.”

“The most treacherous ones always are, lad,” Hopkins said.

“Thank you,” Lady Frances murmured.

Giles put the apple back in the basket. “There is one other thing. It may have nothing to do with all this, but—”

“What?” Melanie could not keep the impatience from her voice.

“She’d give me a few pence sometimes when I fetched her a glass of lemonade or placed a bet for her. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse inside her reticule when she took the coins out. Along with her handkerchief and scent bottle and coin purse, she always carried a pistol.”

“Good God,” Hopkins said.

Lady Frances raised her brows. “She sounds a decidedly interesting woman. I’m sorry we were never formally introduced.”

Melanie met Charles’s gaze again. Whatever Helen Trevennen had been afraid of, apparently she’d feared it would follow her to Brighton.

There was little more to be said and over half an hour left before Fred, the jockey, could be expected back. Hopkins offered to show Charles and Edgar the yard. Lady Frances said she was staying in the warmth of the kitchen and advised Melanie to do the same. Melanie welcomed the excuse. With the need for immediate action over, she was aware of a dull pain behind her eyes and a quivery feeling in her muscles.

“He’s a nice man,” she said as the door closed behind the gentlemen.

“Billy Hopkins? Oh, yes, he’s far and away the best man I’ve ever called mine. I haven’t spent so much time round the stables since my sister Elizabeth died. She loved horses.” Lady Frances picked up the mug of cider Melanie had been nursing for the past half hour, dumped the contents in the basin, and refilled it. “Drink that down, my dear. And it wouldn’t hurt to eat an apple. You’ll never get through this if you don’t keep your strength up.”

The briskly maternal words were so out of character that Melanie nearly smiled despite everything. She lifted the warm earthenware mug and took a sip of the fragrant cider. Apples and cloves. Harvest dances in the country. Colin and Jessica holding hands with the tenants’ children—“I’ve been saying much the same thing to Charles for the last twenty-four hours.”

“You’ve always had a healthy sense of self-preservation.” Lady Frances returned to her chair. “Charles is the one who’ll suppress everything until he cracks. It’s a good thing he has you to look after him.”

Melanie glanced down at her hands, curled round the mug. Her wedding band glinted with golden warmth. Perhaps it was a trick of imagination, but she thought she could feel the date inscribed in the metal against her skin. “It’s at least as much the other way round.”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Charles is more nurturing than most men, though one wouldn’t think it to look at him.” Lady Frances traced a knot in the worn wood of the table. “Was I wrong to talk to him and Edgar about their mother? I kept thinking they’d sort the matter out between themselves, but they don’t seem to manage it.”

Melanie blew on the steaming drink. “I don’t doubt they care deeply for each other. You should have seen Charles after Waterloo when he went out to the field to look for Edgar. I’ve never known him so frantic. Until now.”

“Being Charles, he’s no doubt got himself convinced he should have foreseen what happened to Colin and prevented it.”

“Of course. I’m sure he thinks he should be able to mend matters with Edgar, but he doesn’t understand what went wrong himself. They don’t seem to have quarreled about anything in particular. It’s as if a curtain dropped between them. And apparently it was Edgar who dropped it.”

“Which is odd. Edgar was always the one who wore his heart on his sleeve, while Charles buried everything so deep I doubt even he knew what he was feeling.”

“But it was Edgar who saw their mother kill herself.”

A spasm crossed Lady Frances’s face, anger as much as distress. “Damn Elizabeth. Oh, I was very fond of her, but if she had to take her own life why the devil did she have to do it in such a way as to inflict this legacy on her children?”

Despite the warmth of the range, Melanie hunched her shoulders to fight off a shiver. However she and Charles resolved matters, the legacy she had inflicted on her own children would not be an easy one. And it could be argued that she had had more control over her actions than Lady Elizabeth Fraser had done.

Melanie looked at Lady Frances. She had probably been as close to Elizabeth Fraser as anyone. She had also, Melanie knew, shared Kenneth Fraser’s bed on more than one occasion. Apparently the affair hadn’t troubled

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