body, the reassuring clutch of his hands, the softness of his hair beneath her fingers. He smelt of mildew and grime and little boy. Laughter bubbled up inside her, as though any control she had left had split open and shattered.
She wasn’t sure which of them drew back first, but she found herself looking into Colin’s face. The moonlight from the window slanted over him. Charles had got the gag off him. He was wide-eyed and pale, but he was smiling. “I knew you’d find me.”
“I’m glad, darling.” Her voice stuck in her throat. She forced it past the knot of anger and regret. “I’m sorry it took us so long.”
He looked from her to Charles. “I was brave, like you would have been. I cried a little bit, though.”
Charles’s fingers trembled through Colin’s hair. “Sometimes crying is the bravest thing to do, lad.”
“Melanie? Fraser?” Raoul’s voice came from the stairs. Melanie realized she could hear shouts and the tramp of boots from the street below.
Charles got to his feet. “In here, O’Roarke.”
Melanie stood, her arms round Colin. At least Evans and the woman had dressed him in breeches, a shirt, and a thick wool coat and given him a pair of shoes.
Raoul’s footsteps pounded on the stairs. He came through the door and checked on the threshold. His gaze went to Colin in her arms. His face went completely still save for his eyes. She couldn’t have put a name to what she saw in their depths. Relief. Regret. And something else that was suspiciously close to longing.
Raoul turned to look at Charles. The two men regarded each other for a moment, gray eyes meeting gray. Even Melanie could not completely read what passed between them. Charles cupped his hand over Colin’s head. “This is Mr. O’Roarke, Colin. You haven’t seen him since you were a baby. We wouldn’t have got you back without him.”
Colin turned in her embrace to look at Raoul. “Thank you, Mr. O’Roarke.”
A host of emotions flickered over Raoul’s face in an instant. “It was the least I could do, Master Fraser.” He looked at Charles and Melanie. “We’ve got the woman in custody. Evans is dead. Roth and the men are downstairs seeing to him and—”
“My brother,” Charles said.
“Yes.” Raoul flicked a glance at Colin, then looked back at Charles. “Captain Fraser’s asking for you.”
“Then we’d better go down,” Charles said.
Colin turned his head to look up at Melanie. “What happened to Uncle Edgar?”
Melanie looked into her son’s eyes and tried to find a way to tell the truth. “He was hurt, darling. We don’t know how badly yet. Daddy’s going to talk to him.”
Colin insisted that he could walk, though he clung tightly to her hand and Charles’s as they descended the stairs. When her fingers closed round his own, she felt the stiff cloth of a bandage. Where his little finger had been. She swallowed an upwelling of rage.
The alley that had been so empty only minutes before was now full of people. The Bow Street Patrols had lit torches that cast a molten glow over the dark stone and rotted wood. Two patrols were bent over Evans. Addison, Roth, and another patrol hovered over Edgar. Roth straightened up. His shoulders sagged with relief at the sight of Colin. The torchlight caught the smile in his eyes as he walked toward them. “Master Colin Fraser, I presume?”
“Inspector Roth of Bow Street.” Charles bent over Colin. “He helped us find you, too.”
Colin returned Roth’s smile. “Thank you, Mr. Roth.”
Roth dropped down to Colin’s level and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I only wish we could have found you more quickly, lad.” He straightened up and cast a glance at where Edgar lay, then looked back at Melanie and Charles. “Perhaps we should—”
Charles gave a quick nod. He glanced at Raoul, hesitated, then touched Colin’s hair. “Listen, old chap, Mummy and I need to talk to Mr. Roth for a bit and see Uncle Edgar. Could you stay with Mr. O’Roarke? We won’t be out of sight.”
Colin’s eyes went wide, but he nodded with a trust that squeezed Melanie’s heart. Raoul crouched down beside him. “I knew your father when he was your age, Colin. He was a brave boy, though not as brave as you, I think.”
Colin smiled and tucked his hand into Raoul’s own. Charles looked down at them for a moment, his face raw with fear and love. Then he, Melanie, and Roth walked over the rough cobblestones to where Edgar lay sprawled across the alley with Addison kneeling beside him and the patrol holding a torch aloft.
“The bullet went through his chest,” Roth said. “Mr. Addison stopped the bleeding as best he could, but my guess is he’s bleeding on the inside as well. It’s too risky to move him. I don’t know how long—He hasn’t said anything except to ask for you.”
Addison had stripped off his cravat and was holding it over the wound in Edgar’s chest. Blood had spurted onto the cobblestones. Melanie stared at the sticky, red-black pool. Like her sister’s eleven years ago in the Spanish village. She gagged on the sickly stench, though she could not have said whether the smell was real or a trick of memory.
Dear God, she had shot Edgar. Charles’s laughing, lighthearted brother; Colin and Jessica’s affectionate uncle; the man who had teased her and danced with her and welcomed her into the family without a qualm. The man who had been about to kill Charles, for reasons she could barely begin to guess at. If the memory of what she had seen had not been imprinted on her senses, she would have sworn it could not have happened.
Melanie looked at her brother-in-law through the eye-stinging torch smoke. His face was pale, but his eyes were open and alert. Charles dropped down beside him and put his hands over the makeshift bandage Addison was holding to Edgar’s chest. Addison met Charles’s gaze for a moment, his cool blue eyes uncharacteristically soft. He shook his head slightly and got to his feet. The patrol with the torch drew back a few paces, leaving the brothers alone in a small circle of torchlight. Melanie stood between Roth and Addison and watched her husband kneel beside his brother, the way she had once knelt in a filthy street and watched the lifeblood drain from her sister’s face.
Edgar’s gaze fastened on Charles. “Don’t waste your energies, brother. I’ve seen death enough on the battlefield. I know I’m done for.” He stared at Charles for a moment. “How much do you know?”
Charles’s face was as still and hard as Highland granite, but his eyes held the pain of a death blow. “Nearly all of it, I think,” he said.
“Damn you, why couldn’t you have come into the Marshalsea two minutes later? I’d have had the ring and got rid of that wretched carnelian pendant and the letter that was wrapped round it. I suppose you recognized the pendant at once?”
“I should have,” Charles said. “I bought it at a jeweler’s in Lisbon and gave it to Kitty a month before she died.”
Melanie stared from her husband to his brother. The pendant in which the ring was concealed had belonged to Charles’s mistress?
Edgar’s gaze was fixed on Charles with a pain that had nothing to do with his wound. “I never would have touched her. How could you? How could she? How could she cheapen herself so?”
“People will do a great many things in the name of love.”
“You call
“Yes,” Charles said.
Edgar’s face twisted. “She sought me out at that damned embassy party and said she was in need of help. She looked so sweet and artless. I’d have done anything for her. I thought perhaps she’d lost too much at cards or run up bills at the dressmaker’s. Or that she was desperate for news of her husband. Jesus, I was a fool. It never occurred to me—”
“That she was pregnant by your brother. Your bastard half brother.”
The pain in Edgar’s eyes gave way to bitter, molten hatred, hatred such as Melanie would never have thought to see in that sunny gaze. “You don’t even appreciate it, that’s the hell of it,” Edgar said. “I think I could have borne your stealing my heritage if you’d had the faintest respect for what it means to be—”
“A British gentleman?”
