Sir William Collingwood inclined his head. "Violet. Gwendolen. Ladies. I came to inquire after Annabel."
"Of course. Very kind of you, Uncle William." Violet waved him to a chair and introduced the other ladies. Cordy, who knew everyone in the beau monde, it often seemed, had met him. Mélanie had not, though she knew him by reputation, and nor had Laura. Collingwood exchanged punctilious greetings and listened with seemingly genuine concern to Violet's account of Annabel's condition.
"I'm relieved to hear she's stable, at least. We must hope for the best." Collingwood's gaze moved to Mélanie. "I assume you and your husband are investigating the attack, Mrs. Rannoch."
Given their notoriety for investigating, it was not exactly a surprising conclusion, but Mélanie was a bit startled Collingwood had addressed it so directly. "We're assisting Bow Street, yes. We knew Annabel in the Peninsula."
"And you obviously have skills when it comes to investigation. I was relieved to hear you were involved. And relieved to find you here. I came to inquire after Annabel, but I also should speak with you. Perhaps we could have the use of one of the sitting rooms, Violet?"
It was a question, but he spoke with the assurance of a man who was accustomed to commanding and having the world arranged to his liking.
"Of course," Violet said. "You can use the small parlor."
Gwendolen was staring at Collingwood. "Papa—"
"I know you're concerned for your cousin, Gwendolen. So am I. I have some information I should impart to Mrs. Rannoch in private. I trust you will still be here when we are done."
"Of course." Gwendolen's voice was back under control, but the gaze she fixed on her father as he moved to the door shimmered with anxiety. Her gaze shot to Mélanie. Mélanie gave a faint smile, meant to be reassuring. She wasn't going to reveal Catherine Collingwood's secrets to her husband. At least, not until she learned what Collingwood knew.
Collingwood held the door open for Mélanie. "I'm relieved this hasn't been left to Bow Street," he said when they were in the parlor. "Relieved it's being handled by someone with discretion. For Annabel's sake. For the family's sake."
"Jeremy Roth is an excellent Bow Street runner," Mélanie said.
"I'm sure he is. But he's not—Better to have you and your husband involved, for any number of reasons. Your husband is a very capable man. I've regretted he's not a Tory. But when it comes to a lady's secrets, I imagine you have even more sympathy."
Mélanie kept her gaze steady. It was quite logical Collingwood would think one woman would be sympathetic to another's secrets. There was no reason to expect he was remotely sensitive to the ironic undertones in his words. Still.
"Of course, we don't wish to disturb Mrs. Larimer's life," she said, moving to a chair. "But protecting her life is even more important." She assumed it was Annabel's secrets he was talking about. Or she was going to pretend she did. Collingwood's having asked to speak with her alone raised all sorts of questions about how much he actually knew.
Collingwood gave a dry smile. "Your delicacy in trying to spare my feelings is commendable, Mrs. Rannoch. But quite misplaced, as it happens. I knew Annabel was my wife's daughter. More to the point, I knew Cathy went away to have a child in secret. And I knew, or at least strongly suspected, she had a lover long before."
Mélanie looked into Collingwood's sharp-featured face. It was set in impassive lines and the words were precisely spoken. He was a lawyer, after all. But she thought she caught something at the back of his eyes that was far from controlled.
"No," Collingwood said, "I was not a complacent husband. Far, far from it." He moved to a chair and let himself into it with the precision of one keeping himself under iron control. "If you knew how often I've asked myself what might have been different if I'd acted differently. If I'd told her I knew and would accept the child and she'd stayed in London, would she have survived the delivery? I'd have taken the child on those terms. Accepted Annabel as mine. Because what I wanted, more than anything, was my wife back."
The words were still precise. But the gnawing pain of betrayal underlay them. Something with which she was all too familiar. "And you thought—"
"It grows on you," Collingwood said. "The realization that your spouse has other interests. Cathy was young when we married. I don't believe she ever saw me in a romantic light. I worked hard. I was often away from her. I remember coming back from the House late one night, meeting her as she returned from a ball. There was something about the glow in her eyes. A glow I'd never seen before. That I realized wasn't for me. I could tell she was happy. In a way I'd never been able to make her."
"That must have been unbearable." Mélanie's voice was thick.
"It was a reminder of how much my wife meant to me. At the worst possible time. Until then, I don't think I'd admitted to myself that I loved her. And I certainly couldn't admit it to her then. I had worked diligently to move us into the beau monde. Catherine had supported my efforts and now she was behaving according to the tenets of that world. We had three children, two of them sons. It occurred to me that she might well believe I had lovers of my own. A number of my friends did. Many of the couples we dined with lived on those terms. I remember watching her take a candle and go upstairs that night, feeling she was moving out of reach. I told myself the best thing to do was wait. The affair would run its course, and I'd have my wife back. Perhaps then I could woo her, as I should have long ago. I told myself I was avoiding the unpleasantness that would ensue if I confronted her. But the truth is, from the glow in her eyes, I wasn't at all sure whom she'd choose if I gave her an ultimatum." He stared across the room for a moment, gaze fixed on a pastoral landscape on the wall as though it were a window into the past. "It was a difficult realization. That though Cathy may have married me, she wasn't really mine at all."
"Perhaps people never truly belong to anyone but themselves," Mélanie said. "I'm not sure I'd want to ask that of someone I loved. For him to belong to me. Or that I'd want the responsibility if he gave it to me."
Collingwood turned his gaze from the picture and regarded her for a moment, as though she had started speaking a foreign tongue. "You're a surprising woman, Mrs. Rannoch. Most women want to be worshipped by the men they love."
"I think what most women want, like what most men want, varies a great deal according to the person."
"Perhaps. I'd be the first to admit I probably never understood Cathy at all. At the time, I buried myself in my work and told myself eventually we'd be back to what I called normal. I flattered myself I was doing the sophisticated thing. The mature thing." He gave a rough laugh, pushed himself to his feet, and took a turn round the hearthrug. "When Cathy told me she was going away for few months with her cousin Letitia, I knew what it must mean. I almost—" He slammed his hand down on the mantel. "I was so close to telling her I'd raise the baby as my own and there was no need to go away. In truth, I think it was my fear of confrontation more than anything that stopped me. An absurd sense that somehow putting into words something we both knew would make it more real."
"Sir William—" Mélanie pushed herself to her feet and put out a hand. She found the urge to comfort welled up more and more during investigations, sometimes with unlikely subjects. "She was attended by a doctor where she was. You can't know that it would have made any difference had she been in London."
He looked up from the cold grate to meet her eyes. "You're a kind woman, Mrs. Rannoch. What you say is true. It's also true I can't know it wouldn't have made a difference either." His mouth twisted. "Letitia didn't tell me the truth afterwards. I still remember the tears in her eyes when she told me about the supposed fever that had taken Cathy. The tears were genuine if the story wasn't. But eventually I got Margaret—Cathy's maid—to give me an account of what happened. I've always felt guilty about Annabel."
"It would have been hard if your wife had to give her up. But as events transpired, she seems to have had a happy childhood."
"Yes. So I told myself. She resembles Catherine. More than Gwendolen does. Or perhaps in different ways." Collingwood straightened his shoulders. "I didn't think enough about what it would have meant to Cathy to give her child up. I didn't think enough about any of it. And then, afterwards, I shut it off because there was nothing to be done."
"A not uncommon response to tragedy."
"Perhaps. I haven't made much of a success of marriage. I realized my feelings for my first wife too late. And having gone through the disaster with her, I wasn't going to allow myself to risk such feelings for anyone else. Which, I fear, has been rather unfair to my second wife."
"Do you have any idea who her lover was?" Mélanie asked. "Forgive me, but the identity of Annabel's father could be of moment." Or rather, Collingwood's knowledge of his identity could.
"I wondered, of course," Collingwood said. "From that first night I suspected the affair. I started seeing possibilities in every man I knew, every man I glimpsed Cathy with. But if I learned his identity, I wasn't sure I'd have the ability to stay quiet. So I shut my mind to the possibility. As I said, once I guessed about the affair, I buried myself in work, so I didn't see Cathy in company with other men much. There's a limit to how much I would torture myself." He frowned. "Surely—you think Annabel was attacked because of who her father was?"
"It's possible there's a connection. We can't ignore it. She was fearful in recent weeks, and we're not sure why." Mélanie hesitated. It was one more secret, but he would need to learn it in any case. "She told your daughter the truth of her birth."
"She told Gwendolen—"
"Annabel wanted Mrs. Harley to know, for her children's sakes. Annabel's children's. Annabel was also most concerned that you not know, as she didn't want to tarnish your memory of her mother."
"My God." Collingwood's face twisted. "That's rich. And that's like Annabel. If only—"
"We have every hope that she'll recover. And I imagine she'd welcome talking to you about all of this."
Collingwood passed a hand over his thinning sandy hair. "My dear Mrs. Rannoch. Annabel is a straightforward and brave woman, but surely you can't imagine she'd welcome talking about her mother with the man her mother betrayed."
"No? You could tell her things about her mother that no one else could. And you loved her. I think that would mean a lot to Annabel."
"If she recovers, I will certainly attempt to answer any questions she has. But—do you think what happened to her has anything do with her parentage?"
"It's one possibility." She hesitated again. She didn't take anyone's secrets lightly, including Lord Glenister's. But Gwendolen and Violet knew about Glenister. And Collingwood knew Annabel was Cathy's daughter. That changed things. She was making the decision without Malcolm, but if she didn't tell Collingwood now, his daughter would probably tell him before she saw him again. If Collingwood was going to find out, she wanted to see his reaction. And if Collingwood already knew and was behind the plot against Glenister, she wasn't revealing anything. "How well do you know Lord Glenister?"
Something flickered through Collingwood's gaze, quickly veiled by caution. "We're acquainted. You could say we move in somewhat the same circles, but we're not—forgive me, Mrs. Rannoch, I know Glenister is your husband's godfather, but my life is very different from his."
Which made Collingwood's having been an Elsinore League member all the more surprising. Perhaps his joining the League had been part of his trying to be part of the beau monde. But as much as she was admitting, she wasn't going to admit she knew about the Elsinore League. Not yet.
"I imagine you and your wife moved in the same circles as he did thirty years ago." She kept her voice gentle. She found herself, disconcertingly, seeing Malcolm and Kitty, leaving the room together the day they had found Annabel.
"Yes, of course, we—" Collingwood broke off. His gaze fastened on her face as the pieces fell together in his eyes. "My God. Are you sure?"
"Lord Glenister admitted it to my husband. He was concerned because some letters Cathy wrote to him disappeared recently."
Not a flicker of recognition crossed Collingwood's face. His gaze seemed to have turned inwards, to his own younger self. "I don't know why I'm surprised. Glenister was always a handsome devil. A great success with the ladies. Far more romantic than I could ever hope to be. And that sort of wildness can be very appealing. It's what we always worry about our daughters being drawn to." His fingers curved into his palms. "I can't blame Cathy. I convinced myself long since that she was looking for something I couldn't give her. But Glenister—"
"I'm the last person to defend him," Mélanie said. "His behavior in a number of cases, including this one, has been far less than admirable. But from what Malcolm told me, I believe Glenister really did care for Cathy."
Collingwood's mouth twisted. "I'm sure he called it that. I'm sure he calls it that with all his women."
"And it's a not uncommon ploy for a man to say it's different with a particular woman."
Collingwood gave a harsh laugh. "Are you saying that's what Glenister said about Cathy? And you believed him?"
"According to Malcolm, he did say it. Malcolm wasn't sure whether to believe him or not. But he didn't immediately discount it."
"The bas—forgive me, Mrs. Rannoch." Collingwood ran a hand over his hair. "This isn't fit discussion for you."
"My dear Sir William, I could scarcely take part in investigations if I could not discuss such matters. For that matter, I could scarcely participate in the gossip at almost any beau monde entertainment."
Collingwood's gaze darkened. "Cathy was a girl fresh from the country when I married her. I was the one who aspired to the beau monde. I dragged her into that life."
As Lady Frances said, School for Scandal was amazingly accurate. "You can't blame yourself, sir. You wife made her own choices."
"My wife was a schoolgirl whom I brought to London and abandoned in an uncommonly vicious world. Glenister was a grown man who was at the heart of what makes that world so vicious. I swear, if I got my hands on him—"
"Sir William—" Mélanie put out a hand. She really did not want a duel on her conscience. "As I said, I'm the last to defend Glenister. But think about your family. Your children and grandchildren. Your present wife and your first wife's memory. Trust me, Glenister isn't worth the risk of hurting them."
Collingwood gave a twisted smile. "Don't worry. I wasn't the sort for pistols at dawn even thirty years ago. I'm certainly not now. And I'll do my best not to give way to my impulse to beat the man to a bloody pulp." His brows drew together. "You think Annabel's parentage—her being Glenister's daughter—has to do with why she was attacked?"
"We aren't sure," Mélanie said. "It may have to do with her life in the Peninsula. But Glenister's being concerned about the secret of her birth coming to light at the time she was attacked is interesting timing."
"Why the devil would Glenister be concerned about that?" Collingwood demanded. "I doubt she's his only by-blow, given the life he leads."
"He seemed to be concerned about how you would react."
"Me?" Collingwood gave a short laugh. "Thought I actually would challenge him to a duel? Glenister's probably a better shot than I am. He has more leisure for it. And he should know I'm not the sort for fisticuffs at White's, whatever my impulse. Or—" Collingwood's frown deepened. "Was he thinking of the common pleas suit? He doesn't know me at all if he thinks I'd use the law as an instrument of vengeance. I have a great deal of respect for the law. I've built my life on it. Perhaps at the sacrifice of other things, but all the more reason I won't change now. You aren't saying you think Glenister attacked her?"
"Whatever my opinion of Glenister, there's no reason to think that. But it's possible enemies of his are trying to use Annabel against him."
"Who the devil are Glenister's enemies? The man may lead a debauched life, but it's also a charmed one."
He sounded entirely sincere. Which made the question of what Glenister was really afraid of in the papers, what the papers really contained, all the more interesting, as Malcolm said. Unless of course Collingwood was lying. He was an Elsinore League member, after all. At least according to Glenister.
And if he was lying this convincingly, he was very dangerous indeed.