Secrets of a Lady (26 page)
“He fits the general description and it’s a bit too much of a coincidence otherwise. His grandmother was a Carevalo, which would give him an added interest in the ring. We were saying that if the royalists wanted to make use of the ring they’d have to find a royalist Carevalo cousin to take possession of it. Velasquez would be the perfect choice.”
They had reached the mouth of the alley. Villiers Street was empty in the immediate vicinity. Charles drew her forward into the yellow glow of a street lamp and glanced up and down the street. “Our best chance of a hackney is probably—”
A report ripped through the air. It was only when Charles collapsed against her and she smelled the cloying sweetness of blood that she realized the sound had been a gunshot.
I
nstinct took over, honed by years of dodging snipers’ bullets in the Spanish mountains. Mélanie dragged her husband out of the telltale circle of lamplight, back into the concealing dark of the mouth of the alley, and pushed him against the support of a lime-washed wall. “Charles? Where are you hit?”
“My leg. Right. Upper thigh.” His voice was hoarse. “Where did the shot come from?”
“I can’t tell.” She scanned the sliver of street behind them. Light shone behind several first-floor windows, but all the curtains seemed to be drawn. She glanced down at his leg. She could see a rent in the fabric, but not much more in the cloaking darkness of the alley. She put her hand over the wound and felt the sticky warmth of blood. Still flowing, but not spurting. He wasn’t likely to pass out. She pulled up her skirt, tore a strip from her chemise, and bound it round his thigh. “Can you walk to the far end of the alley if I help you?”
“You’re in no shape to support me, Mel. Look after yourself. I’ll manage.”
“You’re a bloody awful liar, Charles. I got you this far, I can manage the rest. Put your arm across my shoulders.”
He had the sense not to protest further. He walked, after a fashion, with his arm across her shoulders and hers about his waist and his right leg dragging awkwardly. Her side didn’t seem to hurt as much as it had before. Perhaps the chill of the rain and wind was making her numb all over.
They passed the closed side door of the Gilded Lily and made their way agonizing step by step to the far end of the alley and the next street over. She got Charles into the shelter of the first doorway and scanned the street. No carriages. A cluster of brothels or taverns or gin mills to the right. The lights of what might be a lodging house to the left. A few women with shawls thrown over their low-cut gowns, leaning in darkened shop doorways, looking for custom despite the weather. A trio of boys trying to roast potatoes over a smoldering fire in a doorway on the opposite side of the street.
“Wait here,” she said to Charles, and darted across the street before he could protest.
The boys looked up at her approach, wariness writ in their expressions. Mercifully, she had managed to hang onto her reticule. She fished out three half crowns. “One for each of you, and another for the first one who can bring me a hackney.”
The boys stared at her for a moment in the light of their fire. Then all three grabbed the coins and were off like a shot.
“They may use the money to buy themselves a place by a warm fire instead of looking for a hackney,” Charles said when she rejoined him. He was breathing erratically between the words.
“They’ll come back. They’re old enough to know that two half crowns can buy a lot more than one.” She leaned against him for warmth, though they were both so frozen she doubted it would make any difference. Tremors wracked his body, but he wrapped his arms round her and rubbed her shoulders.
After an interval that was probably only ten minutes, though it felt like thirty, she was proved right. A mud-spattered hackney came trundling down the street with the smallest of the three boys running beside it. When she and Charles stepped out of the doorway, battered and bedraggled, the driver nearly took off again, but he stopped when she waved a pound note in his face. “Berkeley Square. As quickly as possible.”
Charles made a protesting sound. “We have to have someone look at your leg,” she said. “Besides, we can’t hope to find Jemmy Moore until past midnight. And we should see if Addison and Blanca learned anything.” She half pushed him into the carriage with the help of the young boy who had found the hackney. She pressed another pound note into the boy’s hand, climbed into the carriage after Charles, pulled the door shut behind her, and collapsed on the dry seat.
“Has your wound started bleeding again?” Charles said from the opposite end of the seat.
“I can’t tell. It doesn’t hurt too badly.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it could have been a great deal worse. “Do you think the bullet broke a bone in your leg?”
“No.”
She shot him a sideways glance. She couldn’t make out his features in the dark, but his breathing sounded even more labored than before. “You’d say that anyway. I don’t know why I bother asking.” She folded her arms and realized she was shaking. Cold or delayed fear, she couldn’t say which. Her gown was plastered to her skin and she thought her half-boots were soaked through, though she couldn’t quite feel her toes. “If Victor Velasquez is Iago Lorano, how do you think he found us? I’d have sworn no one followed us from the Marshalsea. I thought we could trust Hugo Trevennen not to talk.”
“Perhaps someone else at the Marshalsea told Velasquez about Susan. She visits her uncle. She must be known there.”
She rubbed her arms. The trembling wouldn’t stop. “Victor Velasquez is no fool, but he’s a soldier turned diplomat, not an intelligence agent. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the skills to organize all these attacks so quickly.”
“Quite. Which is why I still wonder if O’Roarke’s behind the attacks.”
“Charles, I told you Raoul wouldn’t—”
“Attack
you
.” He drew a rasping breath. “You didn’t say anything about me. Perhaps he wants you back.”
She managed a laugh. “My darling Charles, if Raoul wanted me back, he wouldn’t let anything as conventional as a marriage tie stand in his way. He also knows me well enough to realize he wouldn’t have a prayer of getting me without my cooperation. Besides, Raoul rarely wastes energy on anything as mundane as personal relationships.”
She felt Charles’s gaze on her in the gloom of the carriage, hard and direct. “Mel, I may be blind to a lot of things, but it’s obvious that the man’s still in love with you.”
She jerked and stared at him, but she could only make out the outline of his profile. “Don’t be stupid, Charles. If Raoul’s ever been in love, it wasn’t with me. He keeps a lock of some woman’s hair in a fob on his watch chain. But it’s certainly not mine—he had it before I met him and anyway it’s blond. That’s the closest I’ve ever seen him come to showing any sentimentality.”
Charles made no reply and said nothing further until they pulled up in Berkeley Square. The sight of the twin filigree lampposts spilling light onto their own portico was a blessed relief. She paid off the driver and helped Charles up the steps, arms shaking, half-boots squelching on the stone. The second footman, Michael, opened the door in answer to her ring, stared open-mouthed for an instant, then made haste to take Charles’s weight from her shoulder.
“Thank you, Michael.” She stepped into the welcome warmth of the entrance hall, dripping rainwater all over the black-and-white marble of the tiles. Her legs seemed to have turned to jelly. She gripped the console table for a moment. “Is Captain Fraser here?”
“Yes, madam, he’s in the library.”
“Good. Help Mr. Fraser in there. Then go to Dr. Blackwell in Hill Street. If he’s out for the evening, find where he’s gone and go after him. Tell him I’m sorry to disturb him, but Mr. Fraser’s been shot and it’s an emergency.” Geoffrey Blackwell could be trusted to come quickly. He was an old friend, and his wife was Charles’s cousin.
Mélanie ran ahead to open the library doors. Inside she found not only Edgar but the children’s governess, Laura Dudley. Edgar was pacing before the fireplace, while Laura sat bolt upright in a chair, twisting something that looked like it had once been a piece of mending in her hands.
“Mélanie.” Edgar came toward her. “I was starting to worry—Good God.” He caught sight of Michael staggering under Charles’s weight and ran to their side.
“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Charles’s voice was remarkably steady, but now that they were inside Mélanie could see a sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Give me your arm, brother, so Michael can be off on his mercy mission.”
“Warm water and clean cloths,” Mélanie said to Laura. “And blankets and a dressing gown. Are Addison and Blanca back?”
“Blanca is. She didn’t learn anything. She’s in the nursery with Jessica. Addison’s still out.” Laura hurried from the room without further questions. Edgar helped Charles to a high-backed chair in front of the fire.
Mélanie dropped down beside him, unknotted the strip of linen—which took longer than it should have because her chilled fingers wouldn’t cooperate—and got her first proper look at the wound. The bullet had entered the fleshy part of his thigh, thank God. He was probably right that no bones were broken. The wound was still bleeding, but not profusely. “Geoffrey will have to dig the bullet out, but I can clean it,” she said. “Can you manage to get your trousers off or shall we cut them away?”
“I can manage if Edgar helps with my boots.” His rib cage shook with each breath. “Intercept Laura and bring me my dressing gown.”
Mélanie met Laura at the door and took the things from her. Between them, she and Edgar got Charles wrapped in the dressing gown. She cleaned the wound as best she could while Charles sipped from a large glass of whisky Edgar had pressed into his hand. Laura hovered in the background, managing to be near when necessary yet not violate decorum.
“Stop fussing at it, Mel.” Charles tossed down the last of the whisky. “I won’t die before Geoffrey gets here. Go up and see Jessica and put on a dry gown before you catch a chill.”
The reminder of their daughter convinced her. Her gown was half dry and she had stopped shivering, so she went to Jessica’s room first. She found Jessica curled up on the sofa beside Blanca, listening to a story. The moment Mélanie stepped into the room, Jessica jumped down, ran across the room, and hurled herself at her mother’s legs.
Mélanie knelt beside Jessica and hugged her with a tightness that even she recognized as desperation.
Jessica wrapped her arms round Mélanie’s neck and buried her face in Mélanie’s shoulder, the way she did when she’d had a nightmare or when she’d been frightened by the guns at a military review or on a memorable occasion that involved smugglers, excisemen, and a particularly treacherous stretch of the Perthshire coast. Mélanie drew her daughter over to the window seat. She and Charles didn’t exactly have a perfect record for keeping their children out of danger, but at least whatever happened they’d managed to protect Colin and Jessica. So far.
“Have you got Colin?” Jessica asked, her face squished against Mélanie’s skirt.
“Not yet,
querida
.” Mélanie sat down on the window seat and settled Jessica in her lap. How to offer reassurance without lying? “But we know what we need to do to get him back.”
Jessica drew back and looked at her. “Your dress is wet and your hair’s all crooked.” She stared at Mélanie for a moment. Her eyes seemed bigger than usual and her face thinner. She picked at embroidery on the falling collar of Mélanie’s gown. “I don’t want to go away like Colin did.”
Mélanie looked into her daughter’s face. Charles’s eyes and jaw, her own nose and mouth, and something about the cheekbones that was pure Colin. “You won’t, love.” Her voice shook with the fierceness of it. “I promise.” As she spoke the words, she heard an echo of a similar promise made to another little girl, a sister, not a daughter. The taste of bitter failure welled up on her tongue.
“Jessica—” She stroked Jessica’s tousled hair. “What happened to Colin was very bad and it shouldn’t have happened, but we’re going to get him back and make sure it never happens again.”
Jessica nodded with a simple, breathtaking trust that closed round Mélanie’s heart like a fist. Eyes smarting, Mélanie reached for the storybook to finish reading the story Blanca had started. Jessica slithered down and sprawled against her, feet stretched out on the window seat, head flopped against Mélanie’s arm, in that boneless way that made it difficult to tell where her body left off and one’s own began. Her wide, sleep-tinged gray eyes were fixed on Mélanie’s face with that same terrifying trust. When Mélanie finished the story, Jessica let her tuck her into bed. She did not even protest too vigorously when Mélanie said she had to go back downstairs. “Bring Colin,” she murmured, her eyes drifting closed.
Mélanie shut the door of her daughter’s room and leaned against the cool panels. Even if—when—they got Colin back, the children’s lives would not return to normal. She could not imagine circumstances under which Charles would want to continue with their marriage. The best she could hope was that they could establish some sort of truce for Colin and Jessica’s sake. A fiction of a marriage within which they led separate lives, as did many couples in the beau monde. The worst—
Charles had every right to throw her out of the household in which she had been living under false pretenses for seven years. It would not be in his character to do so. And yet she had never pushed him this far. They were on uncharted ground.
She drew a breath and walked down the corridor to the room she and her husband shared, unlike most couples in their set. The bed where they had made love only two nights ago loomed before her. Their dressing gowns lay together in an untidy heap on the chaise longue. Berowne, whom she and Charles had rescued from the streets as an orphaned kitten, was curled up on top of some notes for a speech she was supposed to give on women’s education.
She took a step forward and found her vision blurred and her cheeks damp. Tears were streaming down her face. A sob tore through her, squeezing her chest, pulling painfully on the wound in her side. She gripped the bedpost, her face pressed into the fluted wood, her body wracked by shudders.
