Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)
Secrets of a Lady: Chapter 25

Mélanie caught the smell of horses as she descended the carriage steps to a brick-paved yard. A thick mist eddied in the breeze, like a muslin undercurtain, affording glimpses of low gray-stone buildings, slate roofs, leaded-glass windows.

A ferocious bark sounded. A streak of black and white came hurtling out of the mist, resolved itself into a border collie, and put its muddy paws up on Lady Frances’s pelisse.

“Down, Jasper.” Lady Frances patted the dog’s head. The dog subsided, danced round her in a circle, and went over to sniff Charles’s boots.

A towheaded young man of about twenty followed the border collie through the mist. “Your ladyship. I didn’t realize you were coming to the stables today. Is Mr. Hopkins expecting you?”

“Hullo, Giles.” Lady Frances gave him the same smile she would give to a young diplomat in her drawing room. “No, this is an unexpected visit. Is Mr. Hopkins in?”

“Out on a training gallop, but he should be back any minute now.”

As if on cue, the thud of horses’ hooves on damp ground echoed through the mist. Two men galloped into the yard, sending up a spray of muddy water.

“Fanny.” A lean, bearded man with silvery hair swung down off a sleek chestnut mare. A piercing smile crossed his face. Then he took in the others standing round her. His shoulders straightened, as though he had shrugged into a formal coat instead of his tweed riding jacket. “Lady Frances.”

“Hullo, Billy.” Lady Frances gave him an answering smile that spoke volumes about their intimacy, then introduced her nephews and Mélanie. “We’re in rather desperate need of information.”

Billy Hopkins’s bushy steel-gray brows rose, but he asked no questions, an action that went a long way toward winning Mélanie’s heart. “Best come in out of the damp, then.” He patted the chestnut mare’s neck and glanced up at the dark-haired young man who rode the other horse. “See them stabled and then take out Lightning. But be sure to lock Jasper up first.

“New horse,” he explained as he led them across the mud and straw of the yard. “Magnificent animal, speed like I’ve never seen. But he must have had a bad experience with a dog. He goes berserk round poor Jasper. Danger to himself, and not exactly safe for anyone else who happens to be in the area.”

He opened a door onto a stone-floored kitchen with gleaming copper pans on the wall and the smell of bacon and coffee lingering in the air. He waved them to seats at the long deal table, tossed his damp coat over a chair back, and went to the range. “Something to drive out the chill.” He lifted the lid from an iron pot, releasing the pungent, winey scent of spiced cider. “Have to admit I feel the damp more than I used to.”

Mélanie willed herself to more time spent sitting with what grace she could muster, drawing out information, nursing a cup of whatever hot beverage was served, clutching the remnants of her sanity.

Lady Frances sank into one of the ladderback deal chairs as though it were gilded brocade and began to unbutton her gloves. “We’re looking for a woman who used to frequent the races. Dark-haired, striking. Her name, at least at one time, was Helen Trevennen.”

“Trevennen? Never heard of it.” Hopkins took a mug from a hook on the wall.

Mélanie opened her reticule. “She almost certainly used another name here. Mr. Hopkins, have you ever seen this lady?” She held out the sketch as he set a mug of cider in front of her.

Hopkins held the sketch to the circle of light cast by the tin lamp on the table. His blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. “Good lord. Elinor Somersby.”

A name. An innocuous name that washed over Mélanie in a deluge of relief that left her trembling like a spent racehorse.

Hopkins smoothed the curling edges of the picture. “She was a war widow, or so she said. Lived quietly but loved the races.” He turned back to the counter and picked up the remaining mugs of cider. “Bet lavishly and with fair success. Used to stop by the stables every now and again to see the horses put through their paces. A good judge of horseflesh. Haven’t thought of her in years.”

“How many years?” Charles asked.

Hopkins hooked his foot round a chair leg, pulled the chair over, and sank down on it. “She was here the season Equinox won at Newmarket. And when Fenton’s Pride won at York. But not when Bellevigne pulled off the upset at Pontefract. So that would be—” He paused, doing sums in his head. “Three years ago.”

Charles leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers clenched beneath his chin. “Do you have any idea why she left Brighton? Or where she went?”

“Always fancied her leaving had something to do with a man.”

Lady Frances gave a most unladylike snort. “Just because a woman is attractive and cares for her appearance, men think her life revolves round them.”

Hopkins’s gaze slid to her. “I’d never assume something so cork-brained, Fanny. But Elinor Somersby was the sort who finds men useful to get her what she wants.” He pushed himself to his feet and flung open the door on the chill air of the yard. “Giles!” He looked back at the group at the table. “Giles has a memory like an encyclopedia. And he was more than a bit fond of Mrs. Somersby. All the lads were.”

Mélanie met Charles’s gaze for a moment. So close. Somehow that made the waiting worse.

A few moments later the towheaded young man scraped his boots on the rush mat and stepped into the kitchen. “You remember Mrs. Somersby,” Hopkins said without preamble, waving the picture at him. “Why the devil did she leave Brighton?”

Giles blinked, surveyed the picture, and let out a low whistle. “Sorry. But she was a stunner.” He looked up at Charles and Mélanie. “Is she a friend of yours?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Charles said. “We’re trying to find her. Do you have any idea why she left Brighton?”

Giles hitched himself up on the edge of the table, all the chairs being taken. “She got married again.”

And acquired another name, damn it all to hell. “To whom?” Mélanie asked in an even voice.

“Hmm?” Giles was looking at the sketch. “Oh, one of those respectable-looking chaps who hang about the track. Can’t remember his name. Fred might. He was quite taken with Mrs. Somersby. Well, we all were, but she had more time for him.” He shifted the sketch in his hands. “The glamour of being a jockey, I suppose.”

Charles’s fingers tightened. Mélanie almost fancied she could hear the scrape of bone against bone. “When will Fred be back?” he asked.

“In an hour or so.” Hopkins was pouring cider for Giles. “He’s just gone to give Lightning a brief gallop.” He paused, the mug clutched in one hand, and stared at Charles from beneath lowered brows. “Here now. This is more serious than I realized.”

“Yes.” Charles gave him and Giles the same version of the story that he had given Lady Frances.

Hopkins knocked over his mug. Giles let out another whistle, this one lower and sharper. “But that’s monstrous.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “It is.”

Hopkins righted the mug and mopped up the spilled cider with his handkerchief. “Is there anything else we can tell you? Before Fred comes back?”

Charles picked up his mug and turned it between his fingers. “You said she was a war widow. Did she talk about her past?”

Hopkins flicked a glance at his groom. “Giles?”

“Not really.” Giles took an apple from a basket on the table and tossed it in the air, as though it would aid his memory. “That is—It doesn’t do to ask a lady about her late husband, and she almost never mentioned him. But I remember once—she’d come to watch a training gallop and I brought her a flask of tea. It looked as though she’d been crying, so I asked her if anything was the matter. She said this was the time of year her husband had died.”

“What time of year was it?” Charles asked.

“Autumn. November, I think.”

The month Jennings had died. Charles met Mélanie’s gaze for a moment, then looked back at Giles. “Did she say anything else?”

Giles turned the apple over in his hand. “I said she must miss her husband. And she got an odd sort of smile—as though she had a secret, but then she always had a bit that sort of a look.” Giles tossed the apple again. “Then she said he’d given her more than she’d ever thought possible, but sometimes a gift could also be a burden.”

“Do you remember her ever wearing a ring?” Charles said. “A heavy gold ring with rubies? Shaped like a lion’s head?”

“Good lord, no. She never wore anything that flashy. A wedding band and maybe a pearl here and there.”

“What about money?” Mélanie asked. “Did she seem in want of it?”

“No,” Hopkins said. “She didn’t live lavishly, but she wasn’t dependent on her winnings at the track. She could snap her fingers at a loss.” He stared at his sodden handkerchief. “She obviously was living off more than an army pension. I don’t much care for gossip, but I know some people speculated that her husband’s family were paying her to stay out of their way. Or that he hadn’t been her husband at all.”

Charles sat back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “Do you think it’s possible she was blackmailing someone?”

The apple Giles had been tossing thudded to the floor. “Why should she need to blackmail anyone?” he asked.

“In order to have a steady income,” Mélanie said.

Hopkins frowned. “There’s no way to prove it, but I suppose that could explain where her income came from.”

Giles stooped to retrieve the fallen apple. “She was so beautiful.”

“The most treacherous ones always are, lad,” Hopkins said.

“Thank you,” Lady Frances murmured.

Giles put the apple back in the basket. “There is one other thing. It may have nothing to do with all this, but—”

“What?” Mélanie could not keep the impatience from her voice.

“She’d give me a few pence sometimes when I fetched her a glass of lemonade or placed a bet for her. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse inside her reticule when she took the coins out. Along with her handkerchief and scent bottle and coin purse, she always carried a pistol.”

“Good God,” Hopkins said.

Lady Frances raised her brows. “She sounds a decidedly interesting woman. I’m sorry we were never formally introduced.”

Mélanie met Charles’s gaze again. Whatever Helen Trevennen had been afraid of, apparently she’d feared it would follow her to Brighton.

There was little more to be said and over half an hour left before Fred, the jockey, could be expected back. Hopkins offered to show Charles and Edgar the yard. Lady Frances said she was staying in the warmth of the kitchen and advised Mélanie to do the same. Mélanie welcomed the excuse. With the need for immediate action over, she was aware of a dull pain behind her eyes and a quivery feeling in her muscles.

“He’s a nice man,” she said as the door closed behind the gentlemen.

“Billy Hopkins? Oh, yes, he’s far and away the best man I’ve ever called mine. I haven’t spent so much time round the stables since my sister Elizabeth died. She loved horses.” Lady Frances picked up the mug of cider Mélanie had been nursing for the past half hour, dumped the contents in the basin, and refilled it. “Drink that down, my dear. And it wouldn’t hurt to eat an apple. You’ll never get through this if you don’t keep your strength up.”

The briskly maternal words were so out of character that Mélanie nearly smiled despite everything. She lifted the warm earthenware mug and took a sip of the fragrant cider. Apples and cloves. Harvest dances in the country. Colin and Jessica holding hands with the tenants’ children—“I’ve been saying much the same thing to Charles for the last twenty-four hours.”

“You’ve always had a healthy sense of self-preservation.” Lady Frances returned to her chair. “Charles is the one who’ll suppress everything until he cracks. It’s a good thing he has you to look after him.”

Mélanie glanced down at her hands, curled round the mug. Her wedding band glinted with golden warmth. Perhaps it was a trick of imagination, but she thought she could feel the date inscribed in the metal against her skin. “It’s at least as much the other way round.”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose that’s true. Charles is more nurturing than most men, though one wouldn’t think it to look at him.” Lady Frances traced a knot in the worn wood of the table. “Was I wrong to talk to him and Edgar about their mother? I kept thinking they’d sort the matter out between themselves, but they don’t seem to manage it.”

Mélanie blew on the steaming drink. “I don’t doubt they care deeply for each other. You should have seen Charles after Waterloo when he went out to the field to look for Edgar. I’ve never known him so frantic. Until now.”

“Being Charles, he’s no doubt got himself convinced he should have foreseen what happened to Colin and prevented it.”

“Of course. I’m sure he thinks he should be able to mend matters with Edgar, but he doesn’t understand what went wrong himself. They don’t seem to have quarreled about anything in particular. It’s as if a curtain dropped between them. And apparently it was Edgar who dropped it.”

“Which is odd. Edgar was always the one who wore his heart on his sleeve, while Charles buried everything so deep I doubt even he knew what he was feeling.”

“But it was Edgar who saw their mother kill herself.”

A spasm crossed Lady Frances’s face, anger as much as distress. “Damn Elizabeth. Oh, I was very fond of her, but if she had to take her own life why the devil did she have to do it in such a way as to inflict this legacy on her children?”

Despite the warmth of the range, Mélanie hunched her shoulders to fight off a shiver. However she and Charles resolved matters, the legacy she had inflicted on her own children would not be an easy one. And it could be argued that she had had more control over her actions than Lady Elizabeth Fraser had done.

Mélanie looked at Lady Frances. She had probably been as close to Elizabeth Fraser as anyone. She had also, Mélanie knew, shared Kenneth Fraser’s bed on more than one occasion. Apparently the affair hadn’t troubled Elizabeth, but then both the Frasers had been unfaithful to each other on a regular basis. “Why did Lady Elizabeth marry Kenneth Fraser?” Mélanie said. “Charles almost never talks about his parents’ marriage, except to say it was a disaster.”

“It was certainly that.” Lady Frances stared into her mug, as though she was trying to get the past into focus. “Father was worried by her choice from the first. He doted on Elizabeth, though he didn’t understand her any more than the rest of us did. With her looks and her fortune and the family name, she could have had any man she wanted. A lot of people were surprised when she chose a plain Mr. Fraser. Of course, Kenneth was an attractive man.”

“Was it infatuation, then?”

“Not romantic infatuation. I think she saw Kenneth as a sort of anchor of stability. Unfortunately, what she took as stability was lack of feeling.”

“And Mr. Fraser? Did he love Lady Elizabeth?”

Lady Frances snorted. “You knew Kenneth. I don’t think he was capable of loving anything, except possibly himself. He saw women as a challenge. Mastering a woman reinforced his sense of power.”

She frowned, as though of all her love affairs, the memory of this liaison with her sister’s husband still disturbed her. “Kenneth was proud of having won Elizabeth,” she said. “The way he was proud of a Renaissance masterpiece or a fine piece of porcelain or a prize thoroughbred. Though any good horseman has more feeling for his cattle than Kenneth displayed for his wife. He enjoyed parading her about for the first year or so. By the time Charles was born they cordially disliked each other. Elizabeth took to spending most of her time raising horses on Father’s Irish estates. Kenneth kept to London and Perthshire.”

Mélanie studied her husband’s godmother. “I think sometimes Charles wonders if Kenneth Fraser was really—”

Lady Frances’s face closed. “Oh, no, Mélanie.” Her voice was gentle but firm as iron. “I don’t doubt that he wonders, but some questions are best left just that. For everyone’s sake.”

“Charles is still trying to make sense of his relationship with his parents.”

“And always will be, I daresay, like most of us. For better or worse, Kenneth Fraser stood in the position of father to him. Nothing can change that.” Lady Frances fingered the pointed edge of the pelerine at the neck of her gown. “I’ve heard people say Charles is like Kenneth, but in truth he’s just the opposite. Kenneth didn’t care for anything but his own comfort and consequence. Charles feels things deeply—perhaps too deeply. In his case the coldness is an effort to keep all that passion under control. Quite understandable. Anyone who was Elizabeth’s son would be afraid of giving way to his emotions. He’s lucky to have you, my dear. Without you, I’m afraid, he’d have buried his feelings so deep he’d never have been able to bring them to the surface.”

“But that’s just the trouble.” The words burst from Mélanie’s lips with unintended force. “He’s got to find a way to care about things without filtering it all through me. Or he’ll never—” Or he’ll never manage without me. She bit the words back just in time.

She pressed her hands over her face. She had, she realized, considered what the ruin of her marriage meant for the children and for herself, but not for Charles.

However much she cared for Charles, she had begun by using him. She had taken advantage of his loyalty and trust for her own ends. The revelations about Kitty Ashford made the picture even more grim. She had taken unwitting advantage of what he felt for another woman and used it to bind him to her. Yet whatever their reasons for entering into the marriage, for better or worse they had come to depend on each other. She could scarcely imagine not waking up with his arm flung across her, not turning her head to find his gaze there to meet her own in unspoken understanding, not sitting beside him amid a litter of ink-stained papers and arguing over the way to frame a speech or the best approach to a cipher.

But she had learned through the years that the unimaginable came to pass entirely too often. What that might mean for her was something to be faced later, on her own terms. But whatever else happened, she owed it to Charles to see that he came through this as unscathed as possible. Even if that meant making sure he found a way to go on without her.

“Mélanie?” Lady Frances’s voice softened. “My dear, I’m the last person to advise anyone on marriage. But I can guess what a strain this must be on both of you. It would be only natural for you to take that strain out on each other. Natural and quite disastrous.”

Mélanie dragged her hands away from her face. “I know. Trust me, Aunt Frances, we’re doing our best.”

She was spared further speech by the sound of a horse’s hooves. They snatched up their pelisses and went back into the yard. Hopkins, Charles, Edgar, and Giles emerged from one of the buildings. The mist had lifted a bit, though the sky was still low and gray. Fred rode into the yard on a magnificent dapple gray, prancing and tossing its head after the gallop.

“He did well, Mr. Hopkins.” Fred swung out of the saddle. “More biddable than he was, though still plenty of spirit.”

Hopkins walked forward. “Good, good. Come into the kitchen for a bit, Fred. Fan—Lady Frances’s friends want a word about—”

An ecstasy of barking interrupted his words. A blur of black and white hurtled round the side of one of the buildings. The dapple gray let out a whinny of pure, shrieking terror, jerked out of Fred’s hold, and tore forward.

Mud sprayed in the air. Mélanie had an image of flailing gray legs and slashing hooves. The horse’s terrified shrieks and the barking of the dog pierced the air. Edgar and Charles both reached for her. They got tangled up, and Charles slipped to the ground. Edgar pulled her out of harm’s way. She saw the hooves flash over Charles. She screamed.

Giles flung himself over Charles. The thud of hoof striking skull and bone echoed through the yard.

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