to Helen Trevennen that he used to conceal the ring. I suppose he thought he’d be safer if someone else knew the story.”
“But he didn’t tell her about the ring. Perhaps he was afraid of letting anyone, even his mistress, know he meant to swindle the British army.” Charles shifted his booted legs so he wasn’t lying on her skirt. “In the end it was a bloody mess of miscommunication and cross-purposes, like most of war. The French patrol blundered upon us, without the least idea that I was after the ring or that you’d been sent by their own side to retrieve it. You and I both wanted the ring and it was there tucked inside Jennings’s letter to Helen Trevennen the whole time we were tending to his wounds.”
“Until Baxter found the letter and sent it to Helen. At least now her reaction to the letter makes sense. She had a murderer in the palm of her hand—she knew she could blackmail him for a small fortune, but she must have feared he’d kill her, too, if he could get his hands on her.”
“So she disappeared.” Charles tightened his arms round her. “Helen Trevennen as good as admitted it was Edgar she was blackmailing, though I was too blind to see it. Remember Jemmy Moore said she told him she’d be well looked after thanks to ‘Poor Tom.’ You’re not the only one good at Shakespearean references.”
Melanie groaned. “
“Lear’s Edgar also happens to have an illegitimate half brother. Miss Trevennen couldn’t have known how spot on her reference was.”
Melanie sorted back through the events of the last three days. “According to Edgar, Castlereagh really did ask him to find out what we were up to.”
“That’s the only way Edgar could have tumbled to what we were doing. I think he was telling the truth when he said he was trying to put one or both of us out of commission so he could search for the ring himself.”
She forced her brain to work again, like the gears on a sluggish engine. “Edgar stabbed me at the Marshalsea and paid someone to shoot at you in the street outside the Gilded Lily. And he loosed the dog at the stables yesterday?”
“I’m sure of it. That’s what really convinced me he must be behind the attacks. Startling the horse was a mad enough scheme, but the only way it made a scrap of sense is if one could be sure of having the intended victim in the right place at the right time.” He turned his head on the pillow so she could look into his eyes. There was a jagged scrape on his cheek and a day’s growth of stubble on his jaw. His gaze was weighted with grief and an unexpected tenderness. “You remember what happened when the horse reared up? Edgar and I both reached for you like foolish, solicitous males and managed to get tangled up with each other.”
“Edgar and I fell to the side and you ended up under the horse’s hooves. Edgar pushed you?”
“Looking back, I’m sure of it. I think I knew it all along, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. At that point he must have been desperate. I don’t think he cared if I lived or died. And then once I saw the pendant and the ring, he knew he had to kill me.”
“He was bargaining that you hadn’t told anyone, that he could make murder look like an accident again.”
“Without my story, there’d have been no motive. I doubt even you could have worked it out. I only hope he really did mean to spare Colin, though we’ll never be sure.”
She laid her hand on his chest. His pulse pounded beneath her fingers. “Even Edgar may not have known how far he meant to go. You can’t know what you’re capable of until you actually commit an act.”
He was silent for so long she wasn’t sure he meant to answer. “I didn’t really know either of my parents,” he said at last. His voice was low and rough, as though he was feeling his way over unfamiliar ground. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand my mother, not completely, though occasionally I get glimmerings. God knows I didn’t know my father—Kenneth Fraser. To do him justice, O’Roarke made more of an effort to be a parent to me than Kenneth Fraser ever did. I missed half of my sister’s childhood because I ran off to Lisbon. But I thought I knew Edgar. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him. Even when things went wrong between us, I never realized—He must have hated me.”
“And loved you.”
“Perhaps. I’ll never know. In the end, it turns out I really didn’t know him, either.”
“Charles.”
He looked at her, his face inches from hers on the embroidered linen of the pillowcase. She felt him brace himself against any inadequate attempt at comfort.
She touched his unshaven cheek. “I love you.”
He pulled her against him and held her tighter than she could ever remember.
Forgiveness was in the force of his arms, the stir of his breathing, the brush of his lips on her brow. Tears welled up, ran down her cheeks, pooled onto his cravat. And yet…In the end, forgiveness was not all of it. “We’ll never be able to forget,” she said when she could speak.
“Then we’ll have to find a way to remember.”
“Carevalo’s letter to Bow Street is out there somewhere. Roth may find it, or someone may send it to him.”
He shifted against the pillows, settling her more comfortably against the curve of his body. “There won’t be anything he can prove.”
“It will be awkward, at the very least.”
“We’ll brazen it out. If necessary, we’ll leave the country. The children will still have our love and a secure fortune. It’s more than most children have.”
“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t miss—”
“Perthshire? The House of Commons? Of course. But if I have to choose between losing them or losing you, there’s no contest.”
It was a moment before she could speak. “You’re a much better person than I am, Charles.”
“Am I?” His mouth was against her forehead. “You put your talents to use fighting for something you believed in. I employed my energies in a war over which I had increasing doubts, for a government I opposed, who later did exactly what you feared for Spain.” His fingers moved against her arm. “Edgar accused me of not knowing what it means to be a British gentleman. You accused me of taking the gentleman’s code too seriously. In the end I think you were both right. At the same time I was rejecting the values of my world, I was bound by them in ways I didn’t even realize.” He kissed her hair. “Can you forgive me?”
She jerked in his arms. “My God, Charles, forgive you for what?”
“For judging you so completely. For viewing everything you’ve done as though it centered round me. Look, my darling. I realized I’ve been looking at this the wrong way round.”
“How?”
“I’ve been thinking of you as my wife.”
“I am your wife, Charles. That’s the point.”
“But you aren’t just my wife.” His breath brushed her skin as he framed the words. “You had your own loyalties, your own code before you met me. You put your loyalty to your allies and your cause first. Which is much what I might have done in similar circumstances.”
His words held an absolution she had never thought to find. She realized her fingers were clenched on the linen of his shirt. She forced a touch of lightness into her voice. “Charles, that sounds suspiciously like ‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov’d I not honor more.’”
“An apt sentiment.”
“Since when have you taken to quoting Richard Lovelace?”
“I didn’t, you did. But the man does have a point.”
She stared up at the leaf pattern on the damask canopy. “You wouldn’t have married someone knowing you would betray her.”
“No? I think you were right earlier. We never know what we’re capable of until we actually commit an act.” He stroked her hair. “You accused me of marrying you to pay a debt to Kitty and avenge myself on my father. The truth is, I can’t say where guilt and duty and wanting to replay my own childhood left off and love began. Yet surely—Sweetheart, after seven years surely why we got married matters far less than why we want to stay married.”
She turned her face into his shoulder. “I don’t deserve you, Charles.”
She felt him smile against her hair. “You’ll get used to it.”
