Secrets of a Lady (30 page)

Charles tossed off the last of the whisky. “Even if it were true, whatever went wrong between Edgar and me started long before either of us met Kitty, when I was still at Oxford. When Mother died.”

“Then perhaps what happened with Kitty merely made it worse.”

He twisted his empty glass between his hands. She could see him turning the possibility over in his mind. Then he shook his head. “We’ve scarcely time to dwell on it at the moment. If this sordid story has convinced you there’s no good to be had from talking to Velasquez, it’s served its purpose. There’s no point in discussing it further.”

Mélanie hesitated, but instinct said she had pushed him as far as she could. She moved to the door. “Edgar must have forestalled Laura. I’ll see if the food’s ready.”

Charles pulled his dressing gown closed at the neck. He looked more weary than she had ever seen him. “You’re unfailingly practical.”

She gave a bleak smile. “I’m a mother.”

Colin shifted his position on the bed. His leg jerked. He sat up and disentangled the chain that ran from the metal cuff round his ankle to a similar cuff on the bedpost. It didn’t hurt, really, except when he pulled on it. But it felt very undignified.

He’d managed to sleep when they first brought him here, once his heart stopped pounding so loud he could hear it. But now he felt as though he’d been sleeping for hours and he didn’t think he could anymore, even if it was the only way to pass the time.

He hitched himself up against the thin pillow and kicked off the scratchy blanket. The air clogged his throat and tickled his nose. Maybe that was because of the dust motes dancing in the glow from the rush light beside the bed. The air had a sour smell, too, like his stuffed duck when he’d left it outside for days and it had got rained on.

He’d only been in a place like this once before, last year just before Christmas, when Mummy took him with her to give toys to children whose parents didn’t have enough money to buy them presents. Some of the places they’d gone then had been even dirtier and damper than this, but Mummy had told him it wasn’t polite to stare or make comments about people who were less fortunate than you were. He wasn’t sure if that still applied if the people were holding you prisoner. He thought maybe it didn’t.

A door opened and closed with a thud in the room outside. The man, Jack, coming back. Colin wondered if he’d brought food. They’d given him some bread and smelly cheese when he woke up, but he’d only been able to swallow a few mouthfuls.

“Christ, you took long enough.” Meg’s voice came from the other room. Colin squirmed against the pillow. He could see shadows on the wall through the crack in the door.

“I stopped at a tavern. Got to pass the time somehow. Didn’t think there’d be another message since he told us to sit tight this morning. Turns out I was wrong.”

“There was a message? Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Let me see.”

“Pipe down, woman, ten to one he’s just telling us to be patient. There’s no money with it. I checked.”

Colin heard the sound of a paper being ripped open. “There’s a card enclosed,” Meg said. “‘Just in case you think I don’t mean what I say.’ What the bloody hell—The rest is in that damned code. Got a pencil?”

“What the hell would I be doing with a pencil?”

“What indeed? It’s a bloody good thing for you I went to the parish school for a spell. His lordship wouldn’t’ve hired us unless one of us could read. Here we are.” The scratch of a pencil on paper followed.

“How’s the brat been?” Jack asked.

“Quiet. Someone taught him manners. Christ, Jack, you’ve had one too many pints.”

“You like me when I’m drunk.”

“No, I don’t. Damn it, Jack!” Meg gave a yelp of protest.

“Why not?” Jack said, in a funny, thick-sounding voice. “You must be bored out of your wits.”

“Your breath smells like stout.” A thud followed, as though Jack had fallen into a chair. “Anyway, the kid’s right next door.”

“So what?”

“You know I don’t like having an audience.”

“You turning into a mum?”

“Don’t be stupid, Jack.” Her voice was harsh, like sandpaper.

“Oh, hell, Meggie, I forgot about your own kid. I’m sorry.”

She was quiet for so long Colin thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew in her breath with an odd sort of hitch, but when she spoke her voice sounded flat and ordinary. “I forget myself half the time.”

They fell silent. Then the sound of the pencil on paper stopped. “Oh, Christ.” Meg sounded as though she’d lost her breath for a moment. “God, he’s a sick bastard.”

“What?” Jack said.

She muttered something in a voice too low for Colin to hear. Jack let out a low whistle. “Not turning squeamish, are you?”

“Course not. But I don’t see the point—”

“That’s his lookout.” Jack’s heavy boots thudded on the floorboards. “Come on, let’s get it done.”

“I’ve a good mind not to.”

“Don’t be daft, Meg. He’d find out soon enough. We won’t get the blunt we were promised, let alone more, if we turn soft. Get a move on, will you, woman?”

“This wasn’t part of the agreement.” Her voice faded, as though she’d crossed the room.

“Damn it, Meg, we do what it takes to finish the job, same as always.”

“No!” Her voice bounced off the thin walls. Something in it sent a prickle of fear down Colin’s back.

“Jesus.” The boots thudded again. “I’ll do it myself, then.”

“Wait a minute, Jack.” Meg’s lighter footsteps hurried after him. “Hell. Bloody, bloody hell.” She drew a rasping breath. “All right, if it’s got to be done, let’s make sure it’s done proper-like. Do we have any more laudanum? No? Then where’s the brandy?”

They appeared in the doorway a moment later. Jack had his hands behind his back, as though he was hiding something. Meg’s gaze moved over Colin’s face. She didn’t look angry, but something in her eyes made Colin want to crawl under the bed. He would have, if it wasn’t for the leg shackle. As it was, he inched back as far as he could against the spiky iron headboard.

Meg stood there for a long moment, long enough for his heart to start pounding again. Then she walked toward him. She had a bottle in her hand. She pulled out the cork. It had a strong, raw sort of smell. “Drink, brat. Bottoms up. Trust me, love, it’ll make what’s coming that much easier.”

Colin took a sip and gagged. It didn’t taste like the stuff they’d given him in the cart. It burned his throat like hot coals.

Meg tipped the bottle up and forced the rest down his throat. Then she looked over her shoulder at Jack. “Don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Let’s get the bleeding thing over with.”

Chapter 19

“C
olin is a sensible boy,” Blanca said. “He’ll know you and Mr. Fraser will come for him.” She was doing up the strings on Mélanie’s evening gown with trembling fingers that pulled at the silk.

“He’s always had such faith in his parents. I hope—” Mélanie swallowed, her throat dry, the supper she had forced herself to eat roiling in her stomach. “I hope his faith proves warranted.”

“Don’t be foolish, Mélanie. You and Mr. Fraser are ten times more clever than Señor Carevalo. I never thought he had much wit for all his—how do you say it?—for all his swagger. Oh,
Dios
.” This last was because one of the strings had snapped off in Blanca’s hand.

Mélanie shut her mind to images of failure while Blanca stitched the string back onto the frock and finished doing up the ties. Ridiculous to be fussing with evening dress at this of all times. But though Mannerling’s gaming hell might be raffish, proper attire would be expected. She had left Edgar downstairs in the library to help Charles dress, after the three of them and Laura Dudley had choked down mouthfuls of soup and coffee in uneasy silence. Edgar had made no further reference to Charles’s revelations about Kitty Ashford or to his own abrupt exit. Mélanie doubted that he would have even had Laura not been present, but the memory of Charles’s story had reverberated through the room nonetheless.

Blanca did up the last string and gave Mélanie’s shoulders a quick squeeze, then picked up the curling tongs and plunged them into the chimney of the Agrand lamp. Mélanie sat at her dressing table and began to brush French rouge, ordered every month from the best parfumerie in Paris, onto her cheeks and lips. The actions were mechanical. Her thoughts were on the revelations in the library. How could she have lived with Charles, have been his wife, scarce seven months after Kitty Ashford’s death and never caught a hint of his torment? She had known he battled his own demons, but she had put it down to his troubled relationship with his parents. Surely she should have been able to see it was something more recent.

She reached for her eye-blacking with fingers that were not quite steady. She’d never thought of herself as a romantic, but the truth was, she had fallen victim to her own fairytale version of what she had meant to Charles, as florid as any lending-library novel. She had let herself be seduced by the belief that he had opened his heart to her as he had to no one else before or since. She had deceived him, but she had thought that she knew every corner of his soul, that she had broken down every barrier, that he was wholly hers. She was well served for her folly.

The truth was that she was jealous. She had no right to Charles’s love, but she was jealous of what he had felt for a woman who had been dead before she met him.

Her hand jerked, smearing the blacking beneath her eye. She wiped it away, more viciously than was necessary, dusted a light film of powder over her face and décolletage, and forced herself to sit still while Blanca set to work on her hair.

A memory shimmered in her mind, sweet as hedgerow brambleberries, painful as a knife beneath her nails. She and Charles had been married less than two years and were visiting the Fraser estate in Scotland for the first time before going to the peace congress in Vienna. The French had been driven out of Spain. Napoleon had abdicated and been sent to Elba, but already plans to help him escape were brewing. Once they got to the congress, she would be in the thick of the plotting, but on that trip to Scotland, far removed from the world of politics, she had shut her mind to all thoughts of intrigue and luxuriated in the simple pleasures of a holiday.

Charles had woken her and Colin early to give them their first sight of the beach. They walked side by side along the sand, Charles carrying Colin on his shoulders. Colin laughed with glee, as though he knew he was home. She took off her stockings and half-boots and let the sand squish round her toes. She could still remember the shimmer of the sun striking gray stone and clear blue water and ivory sand. A sight so intense it hurt.

The quote she’d had engraved on the watch she gave Charles their second Christmas together echoed in her mind.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite.

She’d chosen the quote because she knew he loved the sea. But until that moment on the beach she hadn’t realized how much it meant to him.

Charles had been watching her watch the ocean. She turned her head and met his gaze. His eyes were steady, intent, a little questioning, more interested in gauging her reaction than imposing thoughts of his own. Something in his gaze pierced through the layers of lies and deceptions to an inner core she had almost forgotten existed. In that moment she realized that though he might not know her true name or any of the details of her life, he understood her as no one else ever had, not even Raoul. In a world gone mad, he was a constant she would never doubt.

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
But she couldn’t claim Juliet’s girlish naïveté. She’d walked into this with her eyes open. And it wasn’t his name she’d known too late, it was how she felt about him.

“Sorry.” Blanca unwound a curl from the tongs. “Too hot?”

“No.” Mélanie folded her hands in her lap. “It’s me. I can’t make my thoughts be still.”

Blanca pinned another coil of hair high on the crown of Mélanie’s head. “I know—Oh, the devil, as Addison would say, of course I don’t know, not really, not until—unless—I have little ones of my own. I can only imagine—” She coaxed a last ringlet to fall over Mélanie’s shoulder. “There. A bit wild, but that’s the sort of place you’re going.”

“Just the thing for a gaming hell.” Mélanie reached for her gloves.

Blanca set the curling tongs down on their stand and tidied the extra hairpins away in their porcelain box. Her lips trembled. “Oh, Mélanie, why can’t I—”

Mélanie got to her feet and gripped Blanca’s hands. “Waiting’s the hardest part. But there’s no sense in all of us going, and you need to be here to talk to Addison when he gets back.”

Blanca nodded, straightened her shoulders, and handed Mélanie her scarf and cloak.

Mélanie walked down the stairs, white gloves in hand, velvet cloak over her arm, skirt trailing behind her. On that first visit to Britain she’d been overwhelmed by the sheer scale on which Charles lived. She had always known that he was the grandson of a duke, that he was connected to half the British peerage, that he was the heir to estates in Scotland, England, and Ireland, a London town house, and an Italian villa. But in the relative simplicity of their lodgings in Lisbon—listening to Charles’s disparaging comments on rank and inherited privilege—his heritage had seemed more an abstract concept than the reality of who he was. Seeing him on his ancestral estate, surrounded by servants and tenants who had known him since he was a boy, there was no ignoring the world he had been born into. Whatever causes he espoused, that world would always be a part of him.

She paused at the base of the stairs. Michael, who was on duty in the hall, went to open the library doors for her. She smiled at him and he smiled back, concerned, yet mindful of his place. The servants knew she and Charles were looking for Colin, but only Addison, Blanca, and Laura Dudley knew about Carevalo and the ring.