have the ring to bargain with. You may be too spineless to take your revenge on this whore, but I hardly think you’ll risk your son’s life for her sake. I should perhaps tell you that the people holding him have orders not to let him live if more than twenty-four hours pass without word from me.”
Melanie heard a strangled sound and realized it had issued from her own throat. Charles’s gaze on Carevalo was steady and implacable.
“Besides,” Carevalo said, “I have the ring.”
Time seemed to slow down. Reality shrank to the open maw of the gun barrel, the heavy stillness of the air, the inexorable purpose in Carevalo’s eyes. Every decision she had made from the moment she stumbled down the mountainside into Charles’s arms seemed to have led up to this moment. She met Charles’s gaze. Difficult to put everything she felt into a single look, especially when so much was poisoned between them.
The click of the hammer seemed to echo in the still room.
“Charles, don’t,” Melanie yelled.
The smell of gunpowder, scorched flesh, and fresh blood filled her nostrils. She flung herself down beside Carevalo. Blood spurted from a charred hole in his brocade waistcoat, but his eyes were open and stared up at her. She pressed her hands over the wound and caught his gaze with her own. “Where’s Colin?”
His face was pale and twisted with pain, but his mouth curved in a grim smile.
Charles dropped down beside them. “You don’t want an innocent boy’s life on your conscience, Carevalo. Where is he?”
“Where you’ll never find him.” The words were hoarse.
Charles tugged off his cravat and pushed it into her hands. She pressed it over the wound. Hot, sticky blood spilled between her fingers.
“I’ll give the ring to your allies,” Charles said. “I swear it. Tell us.”
Carevalo’s gaze fixed on her rather than Charles. His eyes had begun to cloud. She had to lean close to his mouth to hear his words, so close she could feel the scrape of his breath on her skin. “You won’t get away with it.” The faint words had a hard glint of triumph. “Bow Street. Left a letter for them.”
Blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes froze. Melanie seized his shoulders. “Damn you, Carevalo, tell us.” She shook him, so hard that more blood spattered over her chest.
“Mel.” Charles’s arm came round her shoulders. “He’s dead.”
She released Carevalo and sat back on her heels. She felt as though all the strength had drained from her body.
Charles pulled her to her feet and gripped both her arms. “Are you all right?”
She stared down at the wreckage of what had been Carevalo. Blood and secrets spilled onto the Turkey rug. “He could have given us Colin back.”
“Some prices are too high to pay.” His grip on her arms tightened, forcing her attention to his face. His forehead glistened with sweat.
“I’m fine.” Really, he was making an extraordinary fuss about it. “The bullet just grazed me.”
He peered at her arm, released his breath in a harsh sigh, and pulled her tight against him. His mouth came down on her hair. His hands moved over her back and shoulders, as though to reassure himself that she was really there.
She pulled her head back. “He said they’d kill Colin if they don’t hear from him every twenty-four hours. We don’t know when they got the last message. Charles, you said it yourself. Carevalo’s life was more precious than our own.”
He took her face between his hands. “We’ll find out where he has Colin. There’ll be a way.” He drew back and glanced at her arm again. He tugged his handkerchief from his pocket, splashed it with brandy from a decanter, and pressed it to the wound.
Footsteps pounded in the hall. “Fraser?” Raoul called. “Melanie?”
Charles bound the handkerchief round her arm. “In here, O’Roarke.”
The door banged open. “We heard a shot. Good God.” Shock, such as she had rarely heard in Raoul’s voice, reverberated through the room.
“Christ, Charles.” Edgar followed Raoul into the room and froze on the threshold. “I thought you wanted to avoid bloodshed. Why the hell—”
Charles dropped his arm round her shoulders. “I took exception to Carevalo killing my wife.”
“He threatened to kill Melanie?” Edgar said. “Why?”
“He was quite mad,” Melanie said. “He took it into his head that I was a French agent.”
“Good Lord.” Edgar stared from Carevalo’s body to their faces. “He must have been mad.”
“Undoubtedly,” Charles said.
Raoul’s gaze moved over her face. “Are you all right?”
“Only grazed.” She realized Raoul was staring at her hands. She looked down. Her hands were smeared with blood and more of it had spattered over her gown, glistening against the black fabric in the lamplight. “Charles got his shot off before Carevalo did. Most of the blood must be Carevalo’s.” She drew a breath and went on speaking quickly. “Before he died Carevalo told us the people holding Colin have orders to kill Colin if they don’t hear from him every twenty-four hours. We don’t know when they received the last message.”
“There has to be a clue somewhere.” Charles sounded as though he would force that clue into existence by sheer power of will. He glanced from Raoul to Edgar. “You two look upstairs. Carevalo may have a manservant staying here with him. Possibly other guards, though I doubt he’d have trusted many with the knowledge of his whereabouts. It should be obvious which rooms he’s used—we’re looking for papers, letters, anything with writing on it, even if you can’t make sense of it. Stay together. Whoever else is in the house may be armed.”
Raoul nodded. “Right. Captain Fraser?”
Edgar hesitated, received a look from Charles, and strode from the room.
“Just a minute, O’Roarke.” Charles crossed the room to detain him by the door. “Carevalo knew about you and Melanie,” he said, the words low and rapid. “He may have left a letter somewhere for Bow Street.”
Raoul nodded without wasting time on further questions. Charles steered Melanie toward a chair that faced away from Carevalo’s body. “It’s most likely any papers are in here. Sit down for a minute. I’ll search the desk.”
“Charles, for heaven’s sake.” She wiped her hands on her skirt. “I admit it was a close call, but I’m not actually hurt.”
“You’d be pardoned for being in shock. I know I am.” His fingers were shaking where they gripped her arm. “I thought—” He sucked in his breath. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech. “I wasn’t at all sure I could manage that shot. I thought—” His throat worked, as though he was trying to force the words out.
She laid her fingers over his own. “You should have more faith in yourself, Charles. Though I confess I had doubts about my survival myself.”
He took her hand and brushed it with his lips. “I love you.”
The words were clipped, almost harsh. Before she could answer, Charles turned back to the desk. “Carevalo had to have a way to communicate with the people who are holding Colin.”
“A newspaper advertisement?”
“Too much like his instructions to us. He’d know we might think of it.”
She lit the lamp on the mahogany desk. An innocuous, solid, English desk. The Sheffield plate of an inkpot and penknife glinted in the spill of light. A recently mended pen lay beside the knife, and a wax jack and a small globe stood in the opposite corner. The cubbyholes and drawers were stuffed with papers, but these proved to be accounts relating to the property and correspondence by a J. Grafton, who presumably was the husband of Carevalo’s mistress.
