The Mask of Night (58 page)

"A mistake, Lady St. Ives, that I will never repeat. But I'm not sure that should comfort you."

"You'd cheerfully see me dead. But you're wise enough to know it's too great a risk. Charles now has the papers that prove Arthur's and my treachery. Should anything happen to me, I think I can count on Charles to get to the truth of the matter. Not because he feels any affection for me, but because, as I've heard you say, he has a surprising devotion to uncovering the truth. Your secrets will remain safe as will mine. I don't imagine either of us will sleep very well, but we'll both survive."

"Did you kill him?" Charles asked.

"Arthur?“ She lifted her brows. "Of course not. I don't expect you'll believe this, Charles, but I do have some loyalties.“ She reached into her reticule and drew out a paper. "Perhaps you would return this to Queen Hortense. I think Arthur would want her to have it."

Caroline Pendarves returned her cup to its saucer with a clatter. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Dowager Lady Pendarves was your godmother, wasn’t she?”

“I don’t see what on earth that has to say to—”

“And you visited the Pendarves’ in Kent as a girl.”

“Goodness, yes. So nice to have a country house within an easy distance of London. My father’s seat is in Scotland, like Charles’s. We scarcely went above once or twice a year. I still don’t see what that has to do—”

“So you also knew Arthur Mallinson.”

“Of course I knew Arthur. He was friendly with my husband and with Christopher—my husband’s brother. But I was still in the schoolroom when he died.”

“He died three nights ago at the Lydgates’.”

“When he died as far as I knew. I was a child.”

“You’d have been fifteen.”

“Would I? I’m dreadful at sums, but that sounds about right.” Lady Pendarves squeezed a wedge of lemon into her cup. “We were hardly more than children.”

“Just the age where romantic impulse overwhelms sense.”

“I’m far too timid to be a true romantic, I’m afraid. In any case, as a girl I was half-promised to Christopher Pendarves.”

“Of whom Arthur Mallinson was an inveterate, according to Lord St. Ives. Always trying to out do each other, always wanting what the other had.”

“It’s the way of young men. My son and Sylvie’s are always competing. But they’d never—“

“In my experience, as young men grow up competition often involves young women. You were all in Scotland the winter before Arthur supposedly died, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and if you must know both Christopher and Arthur were flirting madly with Sylvie. Men are always flirting with Sylvie. I confess I found it rather tiresome.”

“Sometimes flirting with one woman can be a cover for a true interest in another. And I think you were more Arthur’s type.“ For an instant, Mélanie could feel supple fingers running through her hair and hear his voice against her cheek. I could almost imagine I’m with my first love.

“You can’t know that,” Caroline Pendarves said.

“Perhaps not.”

“Even if Arthur had made advances toward me, I’m not the sort to give way to impulse.”

“Lady St. Ives says you warned her once that nothing but misery could come of an elopement.”

“And I daresay I was right.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“Lord Pendarves and I were married at St. George’s Hanover Square.”

“You and Arthur could have easily slipped off and got married in Scotland. All you’d have needed were witnesses, though I imagine there were documents or you wouldn’t have been so alarmed about the truth coming to light. It wouldn’t be so very difficult, you know, for me to make inquiries at all the churches within an easy ride of your father’s house in Scotland. The minister who married you may still be there. On the whole, I think you’d prefer I not stir the embers of the past.”

Lady Pendarves folded her hands in her lap. Her sapphire ring that caught the firelight. “Even if you could prove I’d been married to Arthur, I doubt you could prove he was the man who died in the Lydgates’ garden. He’s buried in the family crypt. I’d be surprised if anyone in the Mallinson family will say to the contrary.”

“No. I have no illusions I can prove it in a court of law. I’m not even sure I want to. But I have the strangest desire to know the truth. I think I picked it up from my husband. Did you see The Barber of Seville last month?"

"Of course. I told you I adore Rossini."

"Arthur saw it too. He said he looked across the theatre and for the first time in his misspent career he knew what he wanted. There's been considerable debate about what he meant. I wasn't sure myself for the longest time. Now I think he looked across the theatre and saw his first love."

Lady Pendarves gave a peal of laughter. "That sounds like something from a lending library novel. I can't believe Arthur has been alive these past twenty-five years, but if he had been, I assure you he made no attempt to contact me."

"I believe you. He was caught up in a life of danger and risk. But I don't think he forgot you."

"You can't—"

"He kept a ribbon of peacock blue satin. Blue is your favorite color, I believe?"

For an instant, Caroline Pendarves's lapis eyes were shot with truth. "I'm very fond of blue. But I'm hardly the only woman to wear it."

"He called one of his mistresses cara. I expect that was his pet name for you."

"Any man conversant in the Italian tongue might use it for a beloved. Why, after all these years—"

"The war was over. People like Arthur were left trying to make sense of where they stood when the music stopped playing. Arthur said that ennui was the curse of peacetime. Until he'd looked across a London theatre and for the first time knew what he wanted.“

"I wasn't—

"You were symbol of everything he'd given up. Everything he found himself wanting again, twenty-five years on, when adventuring was beginning to pall. He wouldn't be the first man to think a woman could give meaning to his life."

"You just said he was having a rendezvous with Isobel Lydgate."

"He needed her for his mission. He needed to wait until the mission was carried out. Then he'd be free to claim his heritage and you as well. I don't think he had any intention of seeking you out at the ball. But you overheard Isobel confront him. It must have been a great shock to realize your first husband might still be alive. Of course you ran down the terrace steps to see if it was really Arthur.“

“My dear Mrs. Fraser, do you seriously imagine I could have killed Arthur? Even as a boy he was brilliant at fencing and boxing.”

"But he was the sort of man who's at his most vulnerable when he loses control of the situation.“ Mélanie saw again the violence in his eyes that night in Paris when she'd got her hands untied. The one moment in their encounter when she thought she might have overpowered him. "I can only guess at what happened, but obviously you took Arthur by surprise. And it would have soon become clear to him that you had no desire to resume your first marriage. I don't know if you got close enough to him to reach for his knife or if he drew it first in anger and you struggled. Was it self-defense?”

“My dear Mrs. Fraser. It wasn't anything at all.”

“I can still make inquiries in Scotland.”

Caroline Pendarves tucked a dark ringlet behind her ear. “I’m very comfortably situated. I’m fond of my husband. I believe we will be able to work out an amicable arrangement for living our lives. But even as a girl I knew how very precariously lives such as ours are balanced. If I had a moment of folly in my girlhood, it only taught me that folly leads to madness and despair.”

“People who make love in gardens during masquerade balls can’t be said to have entirely put folly behind them.”

“I’d drunk rather too much champagne. I wasn’t myself that night.”

“Precisely my point.”

“I wouldn’t want to put Pendarves through a scandal. I wouldn’t want my children branded bastards. You’re a wife and mother. You should be able to judge how far a woman would go in such circumstances. Particularly when she feared for her own safety.”

It was more of a confession than Mélanie had hoped for. “Thank you,” she said.

Lady Pendarves broke off a piece of biscuit and crumbled it between her fingers. “You could go to Neil with your story. But that would be cruel. And I don’t believe you’re cruel.”

“Not without good cause.“ Mélanie reached for her gloves and reticule and got to her feet. “My regards to your husband. Tell the children I’ll bring Colin and Jessica next time.”

“Mrs. Fraser,” Lady Pendarves said as she moved to the door.

Mélanie turned back.

Caroline Pendarves stood facing her, hands at her sides, chin lifted. “He was the most exciting man I’ve ever met. Even as a girl I knew he was dangerous. That was what drew me to him. I always feared he’d be my undoing. And you see, I was very nearly right.”

Chapter 40

You and David must come to dine soon. I think I shall invite Oliver and Isobel as well. It's the only way we all have a hope of getting past this.

Mélanie Fraser to Simon Tanner,

15 January 1820

The Comte de Flahaut sat on the edge of the jade satin sofa in the small salon, gaze fixed on his clasped hands. "When I got the message from Hortense asking me to set up the meeting at Spendlove Manor, I should have come straight to you instead of going to Lord Carfax and my father.“ He lifted his head and looked at Charles and Mélanie and then at Hortense, an apology in his eyes.

"We didn't realize then that Talleyrand was in London and working with Carfax," Mélanie said. "That changed things for you."

Flahaut nodded. "Half the time I'm not sure whether or not he's telling the truth. I still don't fully understand the association between him and Carfax. But he is my father. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," Charles said. "Oddly enough I can."

Mélanie watched her husband, but his gaze remained on Flahaut.

Flahaut shook his head and reached for the paper Hortense had given him. "I can't believe Lady St. Ives returned this to you."

"Loyalty can appear in unexpected places," Mélanie said. "Lady St. Ives was loyal to St. Juste, and St. Juste was loyal to Josephine and therefore to her daughter."

Hortense moved to the sofa and touched the paper without touching Flahaut's hand. "I thought we could burn it together. Then the past will be behind us, where it should be."

Flahaut studied his former love across the paper that held the secret of their child's birth.

"I'm leaving for Arenenberg tomorrow," Hortense said. "Mr. Fraser has been kind enough to use his contacts to arrange for me to travel incognito."

"I didn't realize you'd be going so soon," Flahaut said.

"It's folly to remain here. We're none of us ever going back to where we were before Waterloo."

"No.“ Flahaut held the paper out to the candle flame. "But I'd like to think there'll be a time when we can be happy to remember."

An infectious melody drifted through the drawing room. From the opera of ten days ago, Charles realized. Mélanie was at the piano. Lucinda was on the carpet in front of the fireplace, organizing a game for Colin and Jessica, the young Lydgates, and Roth’s two sons. Isobel sat on the sofa with Roth’s sister Harriet. Roth, David, Pendarves, and O'Roarke were gathered by the windows. Simon, Bet, Trenor, and Will Gordon stood laughing round the tea table. To all outward appearances it was the sort of gathering they’d had countless times in the past. Yet there were discordant echoes in the room that it would take more than Rossini’s melodies to drive away.

Charles took a champagne bottle from its cooler and walked over to Oliver who was standing a little apart from the others. “I’m glad you could come today,” he said, refilling Oliver’s glass. “It’s good to see the children together.”

“They’ve been looking forward to it.“ Oliver took a long drink of champagne. "I didn't think you'd ever want me in your house again."

“Sylvie was right about one thing. We were all pawns in the same game.”

Oliver's fingers tightened round his champagne glass. "I used to think I didn't have any illusions about Sylvie. I knew she'd never be mine, but I thought we'd always have something between us. And God help me, I'm not sure the rest of her revelations would have changed that. But what she and St. Juste did to Bel—“ Oliver's gaze shifted to his wife. She was laughing at something Harriet Roth had said, but some elemental spark had drained from her the night of the murder.

“It can’t be easy,” Charles said.

“No. We occupy the same house. We spend time with our children. I don’t think we’ve treated each other so damn politely since our wedding day. But whenever she leaves the house I find myself wondering where she’s going. Whenever I say something I can see her wondering if I’m lying. I expect she looks over her shoulder in case I have someone following her again. One can apologize, one can even forgive, but one can’t rebuild trust.”

The melody shifted into a more plaintive key beneath Mélanie's skilled fingers. “Not all at once," Charles said.