Beneath a Silent Moon by Tracy Grant Page B

concern she hadn't wanted to mention in front of David. "You didn't tell me David and Miss Talbot visited you in Lisbon."
    "Didn't I?" Charles was looking out the cracked glass of the window. "There was no reason for it to come up, I suppose."
    Most people would have been deceived into thinking his tone was perfectly normal. Most people didn't know him like she did. "I thought you hadn't seen her since she was a child."
    "Does it make a difference?"
    "There's quite a difference between fourteen and seventeen." The difference between a girl and a woman.
    "David's father was sent to meet with Wellington and the ambassador. Honoria and David and Val came with him. They weren't in Lisbon long. I didn't see a great deal of them."
    "Charles, I'm stumbling in the dark if you won't tell me everything you know about Miss Talbot."
    Charles swung his head round. His gaze met hers, black and impenetrable. "I don't know anything about Honoria Talbot that could connect to any of this. Trust me."
    "It's not a question of trust, Charles. I think you're being blinded by—"
    He continued to stare at her, an aristocrat who wouldn't dream of being so ill bred as to suggest a commoner has been overly familiar.
    "Your feelings," she said.
    He gave a brief laugh. "A novel argument, considering a lot of people think I don't have them."
    "Don't talk rubbish, Charles."
    He turned his gaze away. "I know her, Mel. You don't." He didn't sound angry. It would have been better if he had.
    "You knew her once, Charles. You don't necessarily know her anymore. Unless you know her better than you've admitted."
    "I know her enough to know that whatever game she's involved in, she's a pawn."
    "Damn it, Charles." She caught his hand and gripped it. "We don't even know what the bloody hell the game is that's being played."
    He looked down at their hands. He didn't attempt to extricate himself from her grip, but nor did he return the pressure of her touch. "You're not sounding much like yourself either, Mel. You're not usually so quick to rush to judgment."
    Mélanie bit her lip and released his hand. "I'm not making a judgment, Charles. I don't know enough to do so. I'm trying to make sure we have all the facts at our disposal."
    "And I'm telling you that we do."
    She stared down at the hackney seat. Their hands were now inches apart on the water-stained leather. Only the night before last his fingers had moved over her flesh and she had licked the sweat from his skin and wrapped herself round him and taken him into her body. For a moment, when he shuddered in her arms, his self-control shattered like crystal, she had been able to delude herself that he was hers.
    But that was folly, of course. People didn't belong to other people. If one was lucky, one could touch a proffered fraction of another's soul, like fingers twining together across an expanse of cool sheet in the dark. But these days, no matter how tightly she gripped her husband, she seemed to touch less and less of him.
    They pulled up in South Audley Street and climbed the steps without speaking. Difficult to believe they had left the house a scant twelve hours ago. Colin would be upset that they had missed breakfast in the nursery, and Jessica would have had to make do with one of her silver feeding bottles.
    The pull of her bloodstained gown across her chest reminded Mélanie that she was still a nursing mother. If she'd known they'd be out all night, she'd have used her breast exhauster before she left the house.
    They'd faced danger before. They'd always been able to protect the children. Surely they still could.
    "You have a visitor," Michael said when he opened the door. "A Mr. Barrington. He insisted on waiting. I've shown him into the sitting room."
    She and Charles looked at each other, the constraint between them forgotten. The name was unfamiliar and that, coupled with the events of the past thirty-six hours, was enough to set them both on edge.
    Charles opened the sitting room door and cast