Secrets of a Lady

So did Charles, but he made no comment other than a neutral “Go on.”

Edgar took a swallow of brandy. “And you were right that I’ve avoided talking about Mother’s death. I didn’t…She talked to me before, you see.”

“Before she killed herself?”

“Yes. I’d got to Scotland a few days earlier. You were still at Oxford and Father was in London—you know that. Gisele was in the schoolroom, of course, she was only eight. Mother was in one of her black moods. I’d scarcely seen her since I’d arrived. But that evening she sought me out after dinner. In the billiard room. She said she had to talk to me.”

His face twisted. Melanie understood. She knew all too well the horror of the moment when you opened the door onto the ugliness of the past and forced yourself to go through. The first step over the threshold was always the hardest.

Charles stood absolutely still, yet his body hummed with intensity. “And?”

“We went into the library. She poured us both—brandy.” Edgar looked down at the glass in his hand and set it on the nearest table, as though it burned him. “She said she had to tell someone and you weren’t there and Gisele was too young so it would have to be me. She said it was important that we understand.”

The words trailed off. Melanie had the sense that they’d got stuck somewhere between his brain and his lips.

“Understand what?” Charles said.

“She and Father…” Edgar’s gaze fastened on the plaster garlands on the mantel, as though they were a refuge. “You said it yourself this afternoon. Neither of them was faithful. I’m not sure which of them strayed first or how soon—”

Charles’s brows lifted. “From the moment of the betrothal, I should think, at least in Father’s case.”

“Yes. And Mother…she must have followed suit not long after the marriage, because she told me—” Edgar walked forward and gripped the mantel with both hands.

Silence stretched through the room, punctuated by the rattle of wheels in the forecourt outside and the crackle of the coal in the grate. “Edgar, are you trying to tell me I’m a bastard?” Charles said.

Edgar whirled round and stared at him. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

Charles ran his fingers through his hair. “Not a great deal. To own the truth, I’ve wondered for years, and I’ve been fairly certain since Father died. It explains much of his attitude toward me. I take it he knew?”

“Suspected, I think, the way Mother described it.”

“Of course he didn’t treat you much better. Unless—no, you’ve got the Fraser profile.” Charles studied his brother. “Why didn’t you tell me years ago?”

Edgar straightened his shoulders, as though facing up to an accusation. “I didn’t see any reason to burden you with it.”

“That was thoughtful if misguided.” Charles’s voice had that rare, stripped-to-the-bone gentleness it sometimes took on. “And no doubt a strain. No wonder you pulled away from me. In your place I’d have felt a share of jealousy. Everything I inherited—the estates, the Berkeley Square house, the Italian villa—should have been yours.”

Edgar flushed. “Charles—”

Charles moved to a chair and perched on its arm. “If you didn’t feel jealous, you’re more of a saint than I am.”

“I’m no saint. I—Yes, all right, I was jealous. A bit.” Edgar glanced at his top boots. “Maybe more than a bit at times.”

Charles’s eyes narrowed. “Did Mother tell you all this because she’d decided to kill herself?”

“I think so, yes, though of course I didn’t know it at the time. I was shocked. How could I have been otherwise? I ran from the room. I heard a shot behind me. When I went back—”

He turned his head away. The firelight caught the sparkle of tears on his cheeks. Charles got to his feet, walked forward, and clapped a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Did it ever occur to you that learning Kenneth Fraser wasn’t my father would hurt me much less than losing my brother?”

Edgar looked at him with the pained expression of one struggling to find a clear path across shifting sands. “I never meant for you to…You’ll always be my brother, Charles.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” Charles’s fingers tightened on Edgar’s shoulder for a moment. Then he pulled Edgar to him and put his hand behind Edgar’s head, the way he did with Colin. He held his brother for a long moment before he stood back. Melanie felt the prickle of tears on her own cheeks. “It shouldn’t really matter,” Charles said, “but did she happen to tell you who my father is?”

Edgar’s face drained of color, but Melanie was ahead of him. A second or so before, an idle part of her brain had linked up his story with the seemingly incongruous questions that had prefaced it. A horrid suspicion she could not quite articulate, even to herself, grew in her mind. She gripped the arms of her chair to keep from leaping out of it.

“That’s just it.” Edgar stared into Charles’s eyes, as though seeking a humane way to deliver a killing blow. “Why I had to tell you. Can’t you guess like you guess everything else? Mother spent half her time in Ireland in those days. He was a handsome devil. Still is, come to that.”

“He?” Charles said.

“Raoul O’Roarke.”

Chapter 30

The words reverberated in Charles’s head. He looked at his brother for a long moment. Then he turned on his wife. All the blood had drained from her face. He stared into the broken glass of her eyes while the pieces of his life once more disintegrated and re-formed round him.

He grabbed Melanie by the wrist. “Edgar, wait for Velasquez. Use whatever threats it takes.”

“But—”

“If Velasquez gets back before we do, wait here for us. If some emergency forces you to depart, leave word with the porter.”

“Where are you going?”

Charles jerked open the door. “To act on your information and find out what the hell else O’Roarke is hiding.”

He pulled Melanie into the corridor, down the stairs, across the columned portico, and into the forecourt. Two young men in evening cloaks and silk hats were staggering out of a hackney. Charles bundled Melanie into the hackney, directed the driver to Raoul O’Roarke’s hotel, and sat back against the squabs. “Did you know about this?”

“No.” A single word, low and numb.

“Melanie.”

“I’m not that good an actress, Charles.” Her voice shook like a sail battered by a storm. “I can’t believe it’s true.”

“I fail to see why Edgar would have made it up.” He stared into the gloom of the hackney, his vision filled with memories. A cold, chill morning, horses stamping their feet, liveried servants with sherry, ladies in velvet habits, gentlemen in hunting jackets and riding boots. His mother, eyes brilliant with life, tossed into the saddle by O’Roarke. An evening party, hanging over the stair rail with Edgar, his mother and O’Roarke crossing the hall below, his dark head bent close to her golden hair. Coming upon them once, walking together by the lake, her gloved fingers curled round O’Roarke’s arm.

Innocent enough memories. She had flirted as much or more with a score of men. But the images were suggestive seen through the glass of Edgar’s revelations. “It has a certain internal logic,” he said. “Mother spent a great deal of time on Grandfather’s Irish estates and O’Roarke would have been at university in Dublin about the time I was conceived. She had a fondness for dark intense types.”

He felt Melanie’s gaze fasten on him. “The eyes. I should have seen it.”

“What?”

“You have Raoul’s eyes. When you were pacing yesterday you reminded me of him, but I never guessed —”

“It would have been rather beyond even your powers of gathering information, mo