The Mask of Night (23 page)

Mont Blanc

August, 1811

The light from the stone fireplace flickered over the whitewashed walls and oak beams of the inn's common room, glanced off pewter tankards, warmed the roughened complexions of the farmers and tradesmen gathered at the trestle tables. It smoothed the shadows from Hortense's eyes and softened the pinched look her features had taken on in the seven weeks of their journey.

St. Juste took another walnut from the dish on the table. "Your mother would have me shot for bringing you to a place like this. Rightly so."

Hortense gave a half-smile, faint but real, the first Mélanie had seen her give him. "It doesn't seem so dreadful."

St. Juste cracked the walnut between his thumb and forefinger. "You don't belong in a common room, madame."

"That depends what part of my life we're talking about. At ten I was the daughter of an executed traitor. Besides the whole point of this journey is that I'm not myself."

St. Juste separated a piece of walnut meat from the shell and held it out to Hortense. "Rather nice, not to be oneself for a bit." He turned to look at Mélanie. "Don't you agree,
Mlle.
Lescaut?"

Mélanie took another sip of wine. "It's been so long since I've been myself for two weeks together that I can't remember."

"I have a feeling could make yourself at home anywhere," St. Juste said.

The door to the common room banged open, making the lamplight jump over the white walls. "I don't know," Mélanie said. "There are a number of settings I haven't tried."

St. Juste snapped the empty walnut shell in two. "You'd make a superb duchess."

"Oh, yes," Hortense said. "Or a politician's wife."

"Only in playacting."

St. Juste reached for another walnut. His fingers didn't falter, but Mélanie felt the change as his hand skimmed over the fluted cream lustre rim of the bowl. He leaned back in his chair and broke the second walnut in two.

Mélanie met his gaze.

"Have the carriage readied," he said. "I'll meet you in the inn yard."

Hortense's gaze shot between them. "What—"

Mélanie laid a hand on the other woman's wrist. "Yawn. Pretend we're retiring for the night."

Mélanie lifted her shawl from the back of her chair and tossed it round her shoulders. She let her gaze drift over the room and took in the man in the dun-colored coat who hadn't been there a few minutes before, the man whose arrival had caused such a change in St. Juste. Middle years, stooped shoulders (not his real posture), brown hair graying at the temples. She didn't recognize him.

"I'm quite exhausted," she murmured to Hortense as they threaded their way between tables to the door. "There's nothing more wearying than a day of travel."

"Not to mention two glasses of wine.”

Mélanie gave her a nod of approval. They went through the door into the inn's entry hall where two greatcoated men had just come through the double front doors, letting a blast of night air. Instead of moving to the newel staircase, Mélanie made for the passage that led to the back of the inn. They passed the doors to two private parlors and went out a side door into the cobbled yard.

Hortense released her breath, as though she'd only just realized she'd been holding it.

A light rain was falling. The glow of torches to the left showed the direction of the stables. Mélanie waited a moment, letting her senses soak up the sound of ostlers calling to each other in the front yard, the shod feet of restless horses on the cobblestones, a whicker from the stables. She reached for Hortense's wrist and stepped away from the wall. As she rounded the corner of the inn, she walked into a knife at her throat.

Mélanie released Hortense, went limp in her attacker's hold and twisted, catching him in the stomach with her elbow. Her attacker gripped both her arms. "We have your friend. Don't struggle. You're only the bait."

The ladder-back chair was hard and splintery. The twine bit into Mélanie's wrists, made worse as she'd worked to loosen it. Her neck smarted where the knife had cut her when she tried to get away. Across from her, Hortense was pale as bleached linen but her chin was high. An Empress's daughter indeed. With her arms jerked behind her, the fabric of her gown stretched taught over her belly. Her locked jaw told of the sheer force of will with which she was holding herself together. Mélanie met her friend's gaze with a silent message of hope. Raoul could have read it instantly. Surprisingly, Hortense seemed to as well.

They were in an attic room of a building only a stone's throw from the inn. The man left to guard them sat by the windows, tossing dice, a pistol in his free hand. He lifted his head and looked from Mélanie to Hortense. His dark eyes were not unkind. He was a stocky man with untidy brown hair who looked more like a farmer than a trained agent, but he handled the pistol with the air of a professional. "They plan to let you go. They don't want you. They want the Wanderer."

"I've never heard our friend called the Wanderer," Mélanie said.

"Not him, the—” The man bit back his words. "Just wait."

The door opened to admit the man who had first grabbed Mélanie. Dark-haired, wide-shouldered, slightly florid. He moved with the authority of command. "My apologies, ladies. You will not be detained much longer. Your friend is on his way. I'm glad to see I wasn't mistaken about his sense of honor."

Mélanie permitted herself a small, inward sigh of relief. She had one loop of twine loosened from her wrists. Only three to go.

Either their captors didn't have the remotest idea who Hortense was, or they were exceedingly good actors.

A few minutes later, a wrap sounded at the door. "I am here, as requested," said St. Juste, his accent—Norman this time—flawless as usual. "As a sign of good faith, I believe you should send one of the ladies out first."

"I don't believe signs of good faith are necessary when we hold all the cards. You have my word that once you surrender yourself, we will release the ladies."

"How comforting.” St. Juste stepped through the doorway. The leader lifted his pistol to St. Juste's head. "Always the gentleman. I'm impressed."

Mélanie let her gaze meet St. Juste's briefly and saw the response in his eyes. She snapped her bonds free and sprang from her chair, catching the leader with a kick to the groin. His pistol shot went wide, shattering the window. St. Juste sprang at the second man and sent his pistol spinning across the floor. Mélanie snatched it up. "I believe the cards are now ours."

St. Juste whirled round, the now unconscious guard's pistol in his hand, and shot the leader through the temple. He slumped to the floor, dead before he could utter a sound. Mélanie was already cutting the bonds on Hortense's wrists. Hortense seemed beyond speech, but she sprang to her feet. St. Juste had the door open.

They were in their carriage before anyone spoke. "I was sure they were after the baby," Hortense said. "But they scarcely seemed interested in us."

"I don't think they had the faintest idea who you were, except pawns. They were after me.” St. Juste turned his head against the squabs to look at Mélanie. "My thanks. I'd have thought you might simply take your freedom and abandon me to my fate."

"We need you," Mélanie said. It was the truth but not the whole truth. "What's the Wanderer?" she asked.

She was sure he was going to lie. Then his mouth curved slightly. "My dear girl. You're a thousand times better off not knowing."

Chapter 17

I'll say this for Julien St. Juste. The man is nothing if not efficient.

Mélanie Lescaut to Raoul O'Roarke,

22 October, 1811

London,

January, 1820

"The Wanderer?” Charles studied his wife's still figure, outlined against the brown velvet library curtains.

"St. Juste never told me what it meant. Given all the different masters he served, it could relate to anything. I don't even know if it's a person or an object. I asked Raoul the next time I saw him. He said he'd never heard of anything or anyone called the Wanderer."

Charles reached into his pocket. “I found this in the trunk in St. Juste’s room.” He held the peacock blue ribbon up so it caught the candlelight.

Mélanie's fingers tensed against the velvet for a moment. “I told you he liked blue.”

“Peacock blue. Apparently torn from a lady’s gown. You said he tore one of the ribbons from your gown?”

“I doubt it was a unique occurrence.”

“The color matches.”

“You can’t—“

“I remember the dress.”

She met his gaze. The memories between them were so thick he could feel the slithery silk ties that fastened the gown, taste the warmth of the creamy skin at the crook of her neck.

Mélanie moved to draw the curtains on the last of the windows. “It doesn’t necessarily mean—“

“It means he didn’t forget you. I wondered if O'Roarke was looking for you at the ball. Now I’m beginning to think St. Juste was.”

“That doesn’t make sense, Charles. I could have blown his cover.”

“Not if he held the threat of your past over you.”

“Raoul would have told him—“

“You think O'Roarke would have tried to protect you?”

She tugged the curtain smooth. “I don’t know."

"Why did Queen Hortense come to London?"

Mélanie picked up the tinderbox and lit the tapers on the mantle. In seven years, how had he failed to see how very good she was at employing delaying tactics? "To retrieve some papers concerning the birth of her son. St. Juste had warned her about them."

"St. Juste had— Start at the beginning, Mel."

The second taper flared to life. In the almost-undetectable pause he could tell she was still sorting out how much to reveal. She turned from the mantle and told him about the papers concerning Hortense and Flahaut's baby that Carfax had supposedly coerced or stolen from St. Juste. In the end, Charles thought she'd given him the whole story. Or very nearly the whole.

"Do you believe her?" he said.

"I don't see why she'd lie. And it fits with what we know about St. Juste."

"You've arranged to see her again?"

"In two days."

Charles watched his wife for a moment. "You're going to steal the papers from Carfax."

"I really think you're better off not knowing the answer to that, darling.” She set the tinderbox down on the mantle. "I almost didn't tell you. I wouldn't have if it didn't involve St. Juste."

"I'm not insensible of that. But what the devil are you afraid Carfax would do—"

"To him the child would be a piece to be maneuvered. Two months ago you were quite prepared to think your government might treat Colin as a pawn."

For a moment, the terror of Colin's abduction scalded him. "I'll get the papers for you."

"Charles—"

"We'll decode them and make sure they are what Queen Hortense says they are, and then you can return them to her."

"I wanted to keep you out of it."

"A noble aim, sweetheart, but a bit naïve. I'm in it now regardless. It will be easier for me to get access to Carfax's things."

"And you won't have to worry about an ex-Bonapartist spy riffling through his papers."

"That too. What does Flahaut know about this?"

"Nothing as far as I know."

"It's a bit too coincidental that St. Juste warned Queen Hortense about these papers, and quite separately Flahaut was following St. Juste on Tallyerand's orders."

"Not necessarily. Talleyrand could suspect St. Juste kept papers relating to the child but not know St. Juste gave them to Carfax."

"And then there's the fact that I found coded papers in St. Juste's rooms that appear to me to be in Talleyrand's hand. We only have Flahaut's word for it that Talleyrand wasn't working with St. Juste and O'Roarke. God knows it wouldn't be the first time O'Roarke and Talleyrand have been allies."

"But they've taken different paths since Waterloo. Raoul loathes the Bourbon government while Talleyrand's worked with it."

"Talleyrand is nothing if not flexible in his allegiances. And he hasn't fared as well under the Bourbon restoration as he'd have hoped.” Charles studied his wife’s face. “Does Talleyrand know who you really are?”