“You bastard. You can’t even say it without irony.”
“What was it you couldn’t bear?” Charles asked. “That Kitty wasn’t the chaste wife you thought her to be or that I’d taken her, too?”
“Both, damn you.”
“And so you killed her.”
Edgar drew a rasping breath. “I never meant to. I still can’t quite remember—”
“Strangling her?” Charles said in a cold voice.
“I didn’t—I know I reached for her. She was dead in my arms before I realized what was happening.”
Edgar’s eyes closed, his golden lashes spiky against his bloodless skin. For a moment, Melanie thought he had gone. Roth stirred at her side, as though about to speak. Then Edgar’s eyes flickered open again. “Jennings saw the whole thing from the shrubbery. I couldn’t—I wasn’t thinking very clearly. It was Jennings’s idea to push her into the water and make it look like an accident.”
“For which he made you pay,” Charles said.
“Greedy blighter. I didn’t know about the ring. I don’t think Jennings did at the time, either. She was wearing the pendant on a long chain tucked inside the neck of her dress. The dress got torn when—”
“You grabbed her.”
“It got torn,” Edgar repeated, as though he had had no part in the action. “Jennings saw the pendant and decided to take it. He must have found the ring later and realized what it was.”
“So Jennings set up the charade with the bandits to sell the ring to the British.”
“And it was my rotten luck you got sent to retrieve the ring. I was terrified you’d tumble to the whole thing. But you didn’t have the least idea, did you? Not then. For once I’d outwitted my clever brother.” Pride glinted in Edgar’s fading voice. “And Jennings managed to get himself killed. I’d have been safe if he hadn’t written to that bitch of a whore of his.”
Edgar’s eyes were beginning to cloud. Charles leaned closer to him. “You never tried to find Miss Trevennen and silence her.”
“She told me she’d entrusted Jennings’s letter to someone who’d reveal the truth if anything ever happened to her. I thought I was done for last night when you told me she was dead. But the bloody letter was just sitting in that idiot’s rooms in the Marshalsea the whole time.” Edgar’s fading gaze fastened on his brother. “When Castlereagh sent me to follow you and I learned you were looking for Helen Trevennen, I thought you must be onto the truth somehow. I knew I had to stop you. But when you told me about Colin—I’d never have let Colin be hurt, you have to believe that, Charles. I knew we had to get the ring back, but I couldn’t risk you finding the pendant and the letter. I was trying to delay you and Melanie so I could look for the ring myself.”
“A knife in the ribs and a sniper’s bullet are fairly strong delaying tactics.”
“I was careful just to give Melanie a flesh wound,” Edgar said, as though aggrieved Charles could have thought otherwise. “I wanted to stop the two of you long enough to find out what you were up to. Later I was trying to put you out of commission so I could take over the search. But I made sure the sniper knew only to shoot at your leg.”
“You weren’t aiming for my leg in the alley just now.”
“No.” Edgar’s voice was faint, but he stared back at Charles without flinching. “After you saw the pendant and the ring, I realized you’d put the truth together. It was one of us or the other.”
Charles drew in his breath. “How little you know me, brother.” His voice had a harsh, uneven rasp Melanie had never heard before. “I don’t know what I’d have done with the truth. But I wouldn’t have killed you.”
“But in the end you did,” Edgar murmured, the words slurred. “You always were damnably good with a pistol, but how the hell did you manage that shot from the roof?”
Charles opened his mouth to speak and then fell silent. Edgar’s gaze remained fixed on Charles as the life fled from his eyes.
Charles knelt staring at his brother in the guttering torchlight for a long moment, his eyes haunted by ghosts far older than the events of the past few minutes. Melanie stayed absolutely still, as did Roth and Addison and the patrol who held the torch. At last Charles leaned forward, closed his brother’s eyes, and brushed his lips across Edgar’s brow. Then he got to his feet and held out his hand to Melanie. When she put her own into it, his fingers closed round hers as though he was hanging on to his sanity.
Charles glanced down the alley. Raoul was crouched beside Colin, an arm round their son’s shoulders. He appeared to be speaking to Colin. It was too far away for the voices to carry, but Colin’s posture betrayed no fear or tension. He wouldn’t know what had just transpired with Edgar.
Charles turned to Roth. “I don’t know how much of that you understood. I’m sure you have questions. It will take a while to explain. I’d like—” He glanced at Raoul and Colin again. “I’d like to take my family home first.”
Roth nodded. “Take the boy home. We’ll see to Captain Fraser. I’ll call in the morning. We can keep this quiet until then.”
Melanie unwrapped her son’s hand from her collar. His eyes were shut, his face purple-shadowed but reassuringly at peace. She twitched the green quilt smooth. Beside her, Charles disentangled his fingers from Colin’s freshly bandaged right hand and pulled the quilt over his shoulders. He kissed Colin’s brow. She did the same.
They left the room and walked down the corridor without speaking. By the time they reached the door of their bedchamber, she realized she was shaking. By the time they got inside, she realized she couldn’t stop.
Charles’s arms closed round her. His breath washed over her skin. For a moment he simply stood holding her, anchoring her with the warmth of his body. “Three days ago,” he said into her hair, “I would have sworn nothing could change the way I feel about you.”
She tried to speak, choked, tried again. “And now?”
He kissed her temple. “Now I know it’s true.” He scooped her into his arms, carried her to the bed, and lay down fully clothed, holding her against him. The feather bed was deliciously soft beneath her aching body. The sheets smelled of starch and lavender. She and Charles smelled of soot and mildew and the grime of the streets and God knew what else. She wanted to burrow into him and never come up for air.
She didn’t want to talk, but there were things that had to be said, if only she could find the words. “Charles —I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.” It sounded pathetically inadequate, like a cloak too full of holes to provide warmth. “I know how you loved him.”
She felt Charles’s sharp intake of breath. “If you hadn’t shot him, I’d quite certainly be dead, and God knows what would have happened to Colin. You didn’t have any choice, Mel.”
She turned her face into his throat, above his crumpled collar and stained cravat. His skin tasted of stale sweat and sweet familiarity. “How long have you known?”
“I pieced the story together over the last twenty-four hours, but it was still speculation. There was nothing to be done until we had Colin back. Then I was going to give Edgar a chance to explain himself.” His voice sagged with exhaustion. “You said it yourself. Edgar was an Othello.”
“Kitty wasn’t his wife. But—” She thought back to the discussions about Kitty Ashford in the past days. She remembered the lines Charles had quoted earlier. “‘And when I love thee not, Chaos is come again.’ He put Kitty on a pedestal.”
“Pure and untouchable. A chaste wife. My brother’s view of the world leaves—left no room for ambiguity.”
“And Kitty had the Carevalo Ring.” This was still the incredible part. Melanie forced her exhausted brain to work. It was a sort of relief, a refuge from the tumult of feeling. “Perhaps we should have guessed. You said her grandmother was a Carevalo.”
“Yes, it should have occurred to me that there might be a connection. The exact time the ring disappeared is open to debate, but Kitty’s grandmother, Cristina Carevalo, could have witnessed the events. Various stories blamed Cristina’s father or uncle or one of her brothers for its disappearance. Perhaps the truth is that Cristina smuggled it away with her when she left the family to marry. Or her father or one of her brothers gave it to her to keep for some reason. It’s impossible to know, but she must have bequeathed it to her daughter, Kitty’s mother, who bequeathed it to Kitty. A sort of secret family trust. Whatever the reasons for the secrecy, Kitty would have valued that trust. I told you she took the family honor seriously.”
Melanie tugged at the rumpled folds of her skirt, which were tangled about her legs. “So Jennings ended up with the means to blackmail Edgar and with the ring as well. And he wrote an account of Kitty’s murder in the letter
