Secrets of a Lady (2 page)

The window they wanted was on the second floor, at the right-hand corner. A faint glow shone behind the curtains. They paused for a moment, staring up at the house. A staff of twelve lived behind those stone walls, not counting the coachman and grooms who had quarters in the stable. But the servants would all be snug abed now, save for one footman on duty in the hall, who had a tendency to doze at his post. The master of the house, Charles Fraser, and his lady were out for the evening. It would be near dawn before they returned home.

Charles Fraser was a grand nob indeed. A Member of Parliament. The grandson of a duke. This house, so quiet and still tonight, was the scene of some of Mayfair’s most glittering parties. Fraser’s wife was said to be one of the most beautiful women in London. They’d glimpsed her on the previous day, stepping out of her lacquered sapphire phaeton. A flash mort indeed. Even Jack’s eyes had sparked with an interest that could not be put down wholly to Mrs. Fraser’s pearl earrings and diamond brooch.

Jack unfastened his cloak and swung it off his shoulders. A shaft of moonlight caught the steel handle of the knife in his belt. Meg took off her own cloak and began to unwind the long rope that was wrapped round her waist. Her senses quickened with anticipation. If they played their cards right tonight, they’d end up with enough money to let them live like kings for months.

Provided, of course, that she could keep Jack’s temper in check. Their employer had made it clear that violence might become unavoidable. Meg was prepared for it. But dead bodies could be a damned nuisance.

Colin Fraser peered down at his sister in the tin-shaded blur of her night-light. A red mark spread across her forehead, like a big, ugly inkblot on smooth white paper. Colin’s neck prickled with shame. He wanted to run to the long-case clock in the hall and turn back the hands so that the last eight hours had never happened. But a traitorous part of him also wanted to shake his sister. It had been her idea to play with the new wooden weapons Uncle Edgar had given him. Jessica had grabbed the battle-ax and refused to put it down. To be honest, Colin hadn’t minded. Jessica was the only opponent at hand, even if she was not quite three.

The sword and ax hadn’t made a true clanging, like proper weapons, but the sound had been very satisfactory. Jessica had screamed with delight while their bare feet slithered over the nursery floorboards and the weapons met again and again.

Colin wasn’t sure what had happened next, except that instead of striking the battle-ax, his wooden sword had crashed against Jessica’s head. She’d fallen to the floor, screaming in earnest. Laura, their governess, had thrown open the door and gathered Jessica up. Mummy had come running, in her dressing gown, with her hair in curl papers, and Daddy, without any shirt at all and with shaving lather on his face.

They’d all fussed about Jessica, of course. None of them had seen the truth of what had happened. Finally Jessica had buried her head in Mummy’s sleeve, and Daddy had turned to him, his eyes as hard as the gray marble of the drawing room mantel. “Do you know what you’ve done, lad?” His voice had gone rough, the way it did when he was angry or upset, so that he sounded like the people who lived near their house in Scotland.

The memory gave Colin a sick feeling, like the time the milk in his chocolate had gone sour. It scared him to think that he had hurt Jessica without meaning to at all. He didn’t understand how he could be so sorry she was hurt and at the same time want to scream and jump up and down because everyone saw her side of the story rather than his.

Berowne, the family cat, stirred in his nest of quilt at the foot of the bed and opened one yellow eye. “I’m sorry,” Colin mouthed.

Berowne closed his eye and put a gray paw over his face. Jessica’s head sank deeper into the pillow. Her arm tightened round her stuffed rabbit. Colin bent down, careful not to touch the red mark, and brushed his lips against her forehead. “I’m sorry, Jessy.”

Jessica didn’t open her eyes. Colin watched her a moment longer. Then he scratched Berowne behind the ears, picked up his candle, and slipped out of the room.

The footmen had long since snuffed the candles in the wall sconces, except those in the downstairs hall, which was left lit for Mummy and Daddy. Colin hesitated in the corridor. He’d scarcely touched his supper, because his throat had been tight and his insides had been all twisted up, but now he was suddenly starving.

Michael would be on duty in the hall. Even though he often nodded off, Colin didn’t want to take any risks. Michael was a capital fellow, but he might think it was his duty to send Colin back to bed and Colin didn’t want to get him in trouble. So instead of walking to the big central staircase with the curving rail he liked to slide down, he went to the green baize door that led to the servants’ stairs.

His candle flickered when he opened the door. He shielded the flame with one hand and gripped the pewter candlestick tighter with the other. He made his way down three flights of stairs and pushed open the door to see the comforting glow of the coals in the kitchen range.

But for some reason he paused on the threshold. In the small circle of light from his candle, the room looked just the same as it always did. The big mass of the range against the wall and the smaller stewing stove beneath the window; the long outline of the deal table where he sometimes sat and licked the cake bowl; the blurs on the wall that were copper pans and enamel tins; the bell board with its row of bells for every room in the house.

Maybe it was something about the smell that didn’t feel right. Something he couldn’t put a name to, except that it was different from the scent of yeast and charcoal and the salt and lemon skins the maids used to clean the copper pans. For a moment, his throat went tight and he had the funniest impulse to run back up the stairs.

But that was silly. He was six years old and he wasn’t afraid of shadows or ghosts or ogres under the bed. He stepped into the room and pushed the door shut behind him.

The stone floor felt cold and slithery. He took a step forward. And then he paused, because his eyes had made out something else in the shadows by the doorway to the scullery. It looked like a person.

“Michael?” he said. Michael was the only person up at this hour.

He felt a stir of movement beside him. Something hard shot out and covered his mouth, driving the breath from his lungs. Something else gripped his arms behind his back. His candle fell from his fingers, fizzled, and went out. A scream rose up in his throat, but he couldn’t give voice to it. He kicked out with his feet.

Whoever was holding him gave a strangled yelp of pain. “Christ, you little bastard.” It sounded like a woman. “What the hell were you standing there for, Jack?”

“Didn’t have much choice, did I?” The second voice came from near the range. It was definitely a man’s. “Here’s where I was when I heard the door open. Talk about rotten timing.”

“No time for talk at all. Bloody hell, Jack, shut him up, so we can finish the job.”

The man crossed the room, a swift, shadowy blur. Colin screamed into the hand that was muffling his mouth. The grip on his arms tightened until it felt as though they were being pulled from their sockets.

The man hovered over him for a moment. Colin couldn’t make out his face, but he saw him draw back his arm.

A fist slammed into his jaw. He saw a blaze of light, brighter than all the candles in the drawing room chandelier. Then everything went black.

Chapter 1

“A
ll the world may be a stage, but sometimes the dialogue’s too bloody ridiculous for any self-respecting playwright.” Charles Fraser set down his candle and shrugged out of his evening coat, sparing a silent curse for the close-fitting fashions of the day. “What is it about diplomatic receptions that always brings on the most godawful lapses in tact?”

“Don’t tell me you expect diplomats to be diplomatic, darling.” Mélanie unwound the voluminous cashmere folds of her shawl from her shoulders and began to peel off her gloves. “That would be much too logical.”

Charles tossed his coat over a tapestry chair back, turned up the crystal Agrand lamp that had been left lit in readiness for them, and moved to the fireplace. They never had his valet and Mélanie’s maid wait up, but a fire was laid in the grate. He picked up the poker and stirred the coals.

“What particularly appalling dialogue caught your attention tonight?” Mélanie asked.

Charles turned from the fire to look at his wife. She was sitting at her dressing table, her feet drawn up onto the striped damask chair so she could remove her evening slippers. Her glossy dark ringlets fell about her face, exposing the curve of her neck. The pearl-embroidered skirt of her gown was tucked up as she unwound the ivory satin ribbons that crisscrossed her silk-stockinged ankles. Strange, when he knew every inch of her, that his breath still caught at the sight. “Lady Bury told Ned Ellison that his wife looked charming dancing with Peter Grantham and hadn’t they been dancing to the same waltz at the Cowpers’ only two nights ago?”

Mélanie looked up, one slipper dangling by the ribbons from her fingers. “Oh, dear. That would seem glaringly obvious on any stage. Though if Ellison doesn’t know his wife’s sleeping with Peter Grantham, he’s the last person in London not to be in on the secret.”

Charles moved to the satinwood table that held his great-grandmother’s Irish crystal decanter and glasses. “Poor bastard. One of those mad fools besotted with his own wife.” He shot her a glance. “Not that I’d know anything about that.”

She returned the glance, a glint in her eyes. “Of course not.”

He took the stopper from the decanter. Ellison’s gaze, as he watched his wife circle the floor with her lover, had stirred images of a past Charles would just as soon forget. He paused, the heavy cut-glass stopper in his hand, an uncomfortable weight in his memory.

Mélanie flexed her foot. “I rather think his adoration may be the problem. Too much can be smothering. Literally. Think of Othello.”

Charles jerked himself out of the past. “Ellison doesn’t strike me as the violent sort.” He poured an inch of whisky into two glasses.

“He’s a quiet brooder.” She dropped her slippers to the floor and got to her feet. “They’re the ones who snap.”

Seven years of marriage and her perceptiveness about people could still surprise him. He set down the decanter and replaced the stopper. “Am I the sort who’d snap?”

She turned from lighting the tapers on her dressing table, laughter in her eyes. “Controlled, dispassionate Charles Fraser? Oh, no, darling. Anyone who’s been to bed with you knows you aren’t nearly as cold as you let on.”

He walked over to her, carrying the glasses of whisky. “So I’m the perfect sort of husband to betray?”

“Not quite.” Her gaze was appraising, but her lips trembled with humor. “You’re much too intelligent, dearest. You’d be damnably difficult to deceive.”

He put one of the glasses into her hand. “Sounds as though you’ve considered it.”

She leaned against the dressing table and took a meditative sip of whisky. “Well, I might.” Her eyes, a color between blue agate and the green of Iona marble, gleamed in her pale face. “Except that it would be quite impossible to find anyone who’s your equal, my love.”

He regarded her, aware of a smile playing about his mouth. “Good answer.”

“Yes, I rather thought it was.”

He lifted one hand and ran his fingers down the familiar line of her throat. The puffed gossamer that was an excuse for a sleeve slipped from her shoulder. His fingers molded to her skin. The scent of her perfume filled his senses, roses and vanilla and some other fragrance that still remained elusive after all these years.

A lump of coal fell from the grate and hissed against the fender. He swore, shrugged his shoulders, and went to pick up the poker.

“You warned me about it,” Mélanie said from the dressing table. “The night you proposed.”

He pushed the coal into the grate. “Warned you about what?”

“That—in your words—you weren’t a demonstrative man. That you’d thought you’d never marry, your parents had set a miserable example, and you weren’t sure how good you’d be at it.”

He looked at her over his shoulder. “I didn’t really say that.”

“You did.” She curled up, catlike, on her dressing table chair. “You pointed out all the potential pitfalls with scrupulous care. It might have been a white paper you’d drawn up for the ambassador on the advantages and disadvantages of a treaty. You didn’t even try to kiss me.”

“I should think not. That might have risked biasing your judgment. One way or the other.” He returned the poker to its stand. “Of course, if I had, perhaps you’d have given me an answer straightaway, instead of going off to think about it for the most uncomfortable three days I have ever spent.”

“Charles, given what you’ve been through in your life, that has to be hyperbole.”

He kept his gaze on her face. “Not necessarily.”

She unfastened her pearl earrings without breaking eye contact. “Terrified I’d accept?”

“Mel, the most terrifying thing I can imagine is life without you.”

Mélanie looked at him a moment longer, her eyes dark. Then she gave one of her wonderful smiles. The smile she’d given him after their first, awkward kiss in a drafty embassy corridor, with a military band blaring in the street outside. The smile he’d opened his eyes upon when he’d recovered consciousness after a gunshot wound to find her sitting beside his camp bed, three months into their strangely begun marriage.

Charles returned the smile, then looked away, because sometimes, even now, what they had together was so miraculous it scared him. He stared into the leaping flames in the grate. Thinking about their betrothal made him think about their son and the scene that had been enacted earlier tonight. “Were we too hard on Colin, do you think? I hate to ring a peal over him to no purpose.”

“Is that what your father would have done?” Mélanie said.

His fingers curled round the glass. The Fraser crest, etched into the crystal, bit into his skin. “Hardly. Father wouldn’t have come to the nursery at all, unless Edgar or I were spilling our lifeblood onto the carpet. And even then he’d have taken care the blood didn’t seep onto his boots. More likely he’d have summoned me to his study when the dust had settled and told me if I must murder my brother could I have the decency to do it outside on the lawn.”