Beneath a Silent Moon by Tracy Grant Page A

Father, and Father lost his temper and ordered him from the house. Then Father stormed over to Glenister House and reminded Glenister that Honoria has two guardians and he wasn't about to agree to the match, whatever Glenister said."
    "What changed his mind?" Charles asked.
    "Honoria. She said she was of age and if Father wouldn't give his consent she'd marry Mr. Fraser anyway. He could withhold her dowry, but given your father's fortune that was hardly much of a threat. By the time I was sent for, Father had calmed down a bit, but he kept asking Honoria if she wanted more time to consider. She laughed and said she was three-and-twenty and it was high time she got off the shelf."
    "Old wishes die hard."
    David raised his brows.
    "David, I'm not blind. Your parents have always wanted you to marry Honoria."
    David took a turn about the small room. He always moved as though holding himself slightly in check, as though he carried the weight of the earldom he would one day inherit. "Honoria never showed the remotest interest in me as anything but a cousin. They couldn't have had any serious hopes that we'd make a match of it."
    Because they'd expected her to marry Charles
. Mélanie stared at a splotch of dried Wood on the braided cuff of her gown.
    "Whatever her reasons for marrying your father, it's difficult to see what it could have to do with the Elsinore League," David continued. "In fact it's impossible to see what Honoria could have to do with intrigue in postwar Paris. Except—"
    He looked at Charles. Charles looked back at him. "Honoria's father," Charles said.
    "Yes. There is that."
    Charles turned to Mélanie. "Honoria's father, Cyril Talbot, had Bonapartist sympathies. Of the romanticized, undergraduate sort. He liked to make shocking pronouncements round the dinner table or in the coffee room at Brooks's." . "It drove his father and his brother—the current Lord Glenister—and my father mad," David said.
    "Which I suspect is the chief reason he did it." Charles stared at a jeweled mask on the wall. "But I suppose it's possible that the same motivation led him to get entangled with a Bonapartist organization. The secret society bit would appeal to a young man thirsting for adventure. But even if he had been linked to the Elsinore League, why would his former associates be afraid for Honoria so many years after his death?"
    "He died when Miss Talbot was quite small, didn't he?" Mélanie said. "What happened?"
    "He had an accident with a gun during a shooting party. A shooting party my father was hosting at Dunmykel. Honoria was three."
    Mélanie drew in and released her breath. "You're sure it was an accident?"
    "No one's ever suggested otherwise."
    "Good God," David said. "You're not suggesting Cyril Talbot was murdered?"
    "I'm only asking questions in an attempt to arrive at some sort of answer. Whatever the circumstances of Lord Cyril's death, if—and it's still a big if—he was involved with the Elsinore League, perhaps some of his comrades promised to protect his daughter."
    "While someone else is threatening her?" David said.
    "The papers we decoded last night imply that someone was threatening to reveal the past. Perhaps part of the threat was for Miss Talbot to learn the truth about her father." Mélanie kept her voice even. She knew full well how great a threat the revelation of the truth could be.
    "And you think there's some unknown Bonapartist who feels so great a debt of friendship to Cyril that his primary concern is Cyril's daughter all these years later?" David asked.
    "One can accumulate a lot of debts in the course of a friendship," Charles said.
    David returned his gaze for a long moment. "Point taken."
    "It's still just supposition," Charles said. "But at least it's one theory that links the pieces together." He pulled his watch from his pocket. "It should be safe for us to leave the theater now."
    Mélanie waited until they were in a hackney bound for South Audley Street before she voiced the