Secrets of a Lady (59 page)
Roth returned the smile. “I’m glad to hear it, Mr. O’Roarke. It seems neither Spain’s government nor our own need be troubled with the ring’s discovery.” He sat forward in his chair as though to rise, then tapped his pencil against his notebook. “Oh, there is one more thing. Meg Simmons gave me this.” He drew a sealed paper out of his coat. “Apparently Carevalo left it with her to give to Bow Street if anything happened to him.”
It was as though the fire had been extinguished and the lamps turned down. Charles felt Mélanie go still beside him. “How interesting,” he said. The red seal on the letter appeared unbroken. He stared for a moment at the impression of the Carevalo crest. “A confession?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t read it.” Roth leaned forward in his chair, the letter dangling from his fingertips. His gaze moved from Charles to Mélanie to O’Roarke. “I can’t imagine what a twisted mind like Carevalo’s could have to say that’s worth my time. Perhaps you have more use for the letter than I would.” He got to his feet, held out the letter, and placed it in Mélanie’s hand.
The vellum trembled between her fingers. She looked down at it, then raised her gaze to Roth. “Thank you, Mr. Roth.” She drew a breath. She was nearer to tears than most people could have guessed. “Thank you for everything.”
Roth looked into her eyes. Charles thought perhaps he could tell how fragile her control was. “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Fraser. Though I fear this was not one of my more brilliant cases. I did little more than follow your lead and your husband’s.” He coughed and glanced at the mantel clock. “I’d best be on my way. I have to meet with the chief magistrate about this Velasquez business.”
Mélanie and Charles walked to the door with him. They both shook his hand. “I hope you will dine with us one day soon, Mr. Roth,” Mélanie said. “And bring your sister. And perhaps your sons could visit Colin and Jessica.”
Roth looked down into her eyes, a friend addressing a friend. “I’d like that, Mrs. Fraser. We all would.”
The door closed behind him. Mélanie leaned against the door panels and put her hand to her mouth. Hysterical laughter burst between her fingers. “Dear God, what have I done to deserve such generosity?”
“Don’t question it,
querida,
” O’Roarke said. “Just be grateful.” He picked up Carevalo’s letter from the sofa where she had left it and held it to the light. “Steamed open. Crafty devil, Roth. Crafty and damnably generous.”
Charles crossed the room and took the letter. He glanced down at it for a moment, then looked at Mélanie. At her nod, he held the letter to the fire.
He felt O’Roarke’s gaze upon him. “I’m sorry about your brother, Charles. That can’t have been easy.”
“None of this has been easy on any of us.” Charles dropped the burning missive into the flames.
“No. But some things are more easily mended than others.” O’Roarke’s gaze was understanding without being intrusive. “I didn’t know Edgar well, even as a boy. But—He was your brother. And he was Elizabeth’s son.”
Charles said nothing. He didn’t trust himself to speak.
O’Roarke regarded Charles in silence for a moment. “Do you think that was why Captain Fraser told you the truth of your parentage last night? To distract you?”
“I suspect so.” Charles watched the flames lick at the cream-colored paper. “We’d just found Helen Trevennen’s body. He was probably desperate for anything to buy himself time.”
O’Roarke nodded. “I must confess, I’m not entirely sorry for it.”
Charles looked into the gray eyes of the man who was his father. Who had lied to him and used him but perhaps had had more of an impact on him than Charles had ever guessed. Certainly far more than Kenneth Fraser had had. “You gave me a copy of
Rights of Man
once, O’Roarke. I don’t know if I ever properly thanked you for it.”
O’Roarke returned his gaze. “I’ve read your speeches, Charles. That’s thanks enough.” He turned, a little too quickly perhaps, and picked up his gloves from the sofa table. “I’m sure you’re eager to get back to your children. I’ll see myself out.”
Mélanie was still standing by the door. She hesitated, then went to O’Roarke and pressed his hand. “Thank you, Raoul. We wouldn’t have got him back without you.”
O’Roarke looked down at her. “It was, to put it mildly, the least I could do.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips with a formality that could not be mistaken for flirtation. “Take care of yourself,
querida.
”
Charles crushed the ashes of Carevalo’s letter with the poker, then crossed the room to stand beside his father. He took out his watch chain, unhooked the Carevalo Ring from it, and held it out to O’Roarke. “I trust you’ll do what’s best with it, O’Roarke.”
O’Roarke looked down at the dull gold and gleaming rubies. “I’m flattered that you trust me in any way at all, Fraser.” He took the ring and pocketed it. “We’ll see if it means as much to the people of Spain as it has meant to us.” He met Charles’s gaze but did not attempt to offer his hand. “You’ve been a much tried man these past days. Don’t think your forbearance has gone unnoticed.”
Charles swallowed, aware of Mélanie’s gaze on the two of them. “O’Roarke?”
“Yes?”
Charles stretched out his hand. “Thank you.”
O’Roarke clasped his hand, inclined his head, and moved to the door. But he turned back at the last minute, gripping the brass doorknob. His gaze moved from Charles to Mélanie. “I only spent a few minutes with him last night, but he’s a remarkable little boy. He couldn’t have better parents.”
He opened the door without waiting for a reply and strode from the room. Charles released his breath, though he hadn’t known he’d been holding it. He stood still for a moment, listening to the retreating click of booted feet in the hall, the murmur of Michael’s voice, the muffled thud of the front door.
Charles turned to his wife. She looked more or less herself, the cinnamon-striped stuff of her gown falling gracefully about her, her hair looped and curled and pinned, her pearl earrings gleaming beside her face. But her face itself was marked by indelible shadows.
She rubbed her arms. As usual, she knew what he was thinking without him putting it into words. “It’s one of those clichés of life that it’s hellishly easy to make promises in a darkened bedchamber. And then one wakes up and has to put them into practice.”
His gaze flickered to the hole in the plaster where he had smashed his fist a scant seventy-two hours ago. “Constructing a thesis is often easier than testing it.”
She stared at the rumpled sofa cushions, and then at the painting of her and the children on the overmantel. “It’s never going to be the same.”
“No.” He watched her. The sunlight shot through the stiff lace of her high-standing collar and dappled her collarbone. A loose ringlet fell against her cheek. A scrape showed on the back of her left hand, a relic of one of their brushes with danger. In seven years, there was not a moment when he had felt he knew her so completely.
“It might be better,” he said.
She looked at him, her eyes wide and bruised and tinged with something desperate—hope, relief, fear perhaps. “Oh, darling. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“One step at a time.” He closed the distance between them and held out his hand. “‘What’s past is prologue.’”
“Yes, but prologue to what?”
“What we make of it.”
She hesitated a moment, then she gave a smile that drove the shadows from her eyes. She reached out and put her hand into his own.
House of Commons
December 1819
Sweetheart,
It’s just past ten. I can hear the crack of walnuts from the back benches and shells crunching underfoot. Someone’s opened a flask of brandy. Debate will resume in another quarter hour. God knows when we’ll get out of here. I wanted to get this to you as soon as possible, so I’m sending it with Addison, who I think will not at all mind the excuse to get home to Blanca.
You were quite right about the opening of the speech. Much better to start with a description of the villagers we met in Lurcia (odd now to think of our differing perspectives when we met them, but that’s another matter). Quoting Luis Coria’s account of the Spain he wanted for his children was a stroke of genius. The House went gratifyingly silent. Mallinson and Lydgate instructed me to tell you it was my best speech of the year, which I do only because you wrote half of it.
Castlereagh is present, as you predicted. I could feel the chill of his gaze on me the whole time I spoke. He must have heard by now about Felipe Carevalo having the ring, but he hasn’t said a word. We haven’t spoken in private since that afternoon he summoned me to the Foreign Office and in faultlessly polite language expressed his condolences over Edgar’s death. To do him justice, his concern sounded quite genuine. But I still can’t help but wonder how much he knows. In that, as in so many things, all we can do is wait.
Roth was in the gallery for the speech as well, as he promised he would be when he dined with us. And I had the strangest sense I saw another familiar figure at the back of the gallery. Perhaps it was a trick of my imagination. I thought O’Roarke had gone to Ireland after he left Spain.
I stopped by Hatchards on my way to the House and found the Robin Hood stories we were looking for for Colin for Christmas (you’ve realized, haven’t you, that we have a son who’s fascinated by an outlaw who defies the crown in the name of justice and the common man?). I also got the toy theatre for Jessica. Do you know, it was a relief to hear them quarreling when I left this evening. Reassuringly normal (I of course can say that, having been spared hours of arguments over the dinner dishes, though I suspect you talked them out of it before you’d finished the soup.).
I must go. Addison’s standing by patiently, and Mallinson and Lydgate want me to come rally votes. I’m being slow coming to the point, because I still don’t do well framing such words. You told me when we were working on the speech that I’m better at saying what I think than what I feel. You’re quite right (and, my darling, there’s a great deal to be said for rational thought, as I think you’d be the first to agree). We’ve said a number of things to each other, one way and another, these past weeks. Some things we haven’t said, and I doubt we ever will. Perhaps some truths are best left unvoiced. But there’s one truth I don’t think I’ve ever committed to writing. As we’ve learned we never know what lies in store, this seems an appropriate time to do it.
I love you with all my heart,
Charles
M
élanie and Charles and the other principal characters in this book are entirely fictional, but I have endeavored to make the London in which their adventures take place and the Britain and Europe against which their story is set as accurate as possible. For this, I am indebted to the Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, libraries for keeping a wonderful collection of early-nineteenth-century letters and diaries (some of which hadn’t been checked out in years), and to U.C. Berkeley for its invaluable microfilm copies of the
Morning Chronicle
.
The Carevalo Ring and its history are also fictional, but had such a ring existed, I think it is not entirely implausible that the British, French, and Spanish would all have sought to make use of it during the Peninsular War and its aftermath.
A
profound and heartfelt thank-you to my agent, Nancy Yost; to my editor, Lucia Macro; to Carrie Feron; and to Marion Donaldson, for believing in this book, understanding what I was trying to do, and helping me do it better.
Thank you to Monica Sevy, John Lampe, and Carol Benz for telling me the story was worth telling, when it existed largely in my head and publication seemed a distant dream.
Thank you to Ross Sevy for helping me understand early-nineteenth-century weapons. If I’ve made any mistakes, the fault is mine entirely.
Thank you to Jim Saliba for brainstorming character motivations, helping me dream up the history of the Carevalo Ring, searching out Shakespeare quotes, and making me laugh when I needed to.
Thank you to Penny Williamson for endless plot discussions over lattes and glasses of red wine; and for helping me trace Charles and Mélanie’s steps across London (even if we did get thoroughly lost round Covent Garden). Thank you to Paul Seaver for inspiring me to study history and teaching me to love primary-source documents.
I would not have been able to take the time to write this book without the generosity of my parents, grandparents, great-aunts, and great-uncles. Most writers do not have that luxury, and I am very grateful.
Finally, thank you to my mother, Joan Grant, for introducing me to Jane Austen, Shakespeare, and the magic of creating worlds and characters. And to my father, Doug Grant, who taught me about ambiguity tolerance and truth by approximation.
TRACY GRANT
studied British history at Stanford University and received the Firestone Award for Excellence in Research for her honors thesis. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she is on the board of the Merola Opera Program, a training program for professional opera singers, coaches, and stage directors. For more information about her books, please visit her website at www.tracygrant.org.
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ECRETS OF A
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ADY
Portrait of Elizabeth Campbell, Marchesa di Spineto, c. 1812 (oil on canvas) by Raeburn, Sir Henry (1756-1823) / Philip Mould Ltd., London / Bridgeman Art Library
