The Mask of Night (21 page)

“Far too easy Charles would say. One shouldn’t be able to buy one’s way into Parliament.”

“Yes, but the fact remains that at the moment one has little choice. He could and did. I couldn’t. Not until I married Bel.” Oliver continued pacing the Axminster carpet. “I like to dress things up with pretty speeches, but Bel made it clear where we both stood from the first.”

“Where was that?”

He scraped a hand through his hair. “I remember when I first saw her. David had invited me to stay at Carfax Court. Charles was already there. He and David picked me up in a gig at the inn where the mailcoach stopped. We came round a bend into view of the house and— There it stood, all that shimmering white stone on the edge of a lake. A bit overwhelming to a boy who’d grown up in a Devon village where the squire’s redbrick manor was the most imposing thing for miles.”

“I felt much the same when I first saw Dunmykel,” Mélanie said, thinking of her first visit to Charles’s family estate.

“I’d always known David was the heir to an earldom, but I don’t think I actually understood what it meant until then. When we pulled up to the house Bel was on the lawn with a couple of retrievers. She ran over the carriage with muddy paw prints on her skirt and said ‘You must be David’s friend.’ She seemed so very human in a place where everything was on an inhuman scale.” He ran his fingers down the crystal of his glass. “I got more at home at Carfax Court. And elsewhere. But I always felt particularly comfortable with Bel. After Sylvie and I— I knew if I were to have a prayer of achieving my ambitions I’d have to marry an heiress. I was fond of Bel. I thought perhaps she was fond of me. One evening at a party at Carfax House I began—“

“Making love to her?”

“In the conservatory. God, what a cliché. Bel stopped me. She said we were far too good friends for lies, but if I was making her an offer, she’d accept on one condition.”

“Which was?”

“That I never lie to her by telling her I loved her.”

Mélanie stared at the lamplight bouncing off the faceted crystal of her glass. She and Charles had been married over a year before he told her he loved her, and even then she doubted he’d have done so if they hadn’t been under sniper fire. For days she hadn’t been sure she’d heard him correctly over the report of the guns. And then she’d decided he’d only said it because he’d thought one or both of them was likely to be killed. “Bel’s always laid her cards on the table.”

“Quite.” Oliver moved back to the drinks table and refilled his glass. “So at last I had what I wanted. It wasn’t only— My ambition wasn’t just for myself. I really did listen to all those speeches Charles used to spout off when we were undergraduates. One can’t accomplish a hell of a lot without power. The damnable thing is it’s impossible to tell where wanting to do something left off and personal greed began.”

The rueful twist of his mouth brought her urge to comfort welling to the surface. She couldn’t help wondering if Oliver had known as much. “I can’t answer your question, but I’ve seen enough of your trying to do something to know the impulse hasn’t been swallowed up.”

“Thank you. That’s more than I deserve.” He crossed back to her with the decanter and splashed more sherry into her glass. His hand, like Lady St. Ives’s, was not quite steady. “We started out well enough. Carfax wasn’t thrilled with the match, but he was happy to see Bel settled. He preferred a son-in-law who was an MP to a plain barrister, so he found me a seat and financed my standing for it despite my Whig convictions. I knew what people said about me, but as it was more or less the truth, I tried not to let it bother me. It was worse with Bel’s family. Oh, they were always kind. Lady Carfax told me I made an admirable dinner guest because I could be agreeable to whomever she seated beside me and I never talked politics when it was inappropriate. But I remember a house party the autumn after we were married. We were in the drawing room on a rainy afternoon and everyone started talking about fox hunting. I thought a brush must be something one used to tidy a horse’s mane. It was quite amusing. Everyone laughed. Even Bel. I managed to laugh myself. But I’m afraid I didn’t find it as funny as the others did.”

“You can marry into this world and be accepted, but it’s never going to be the same as being born into it.”

“Quite.” Oliver dropped back into his chair. “I owe everything to Isobel. My career. This house.” His gaze went from the sherry glass in his hand to the brass lion’s head andirons and the Chinese vases disposed casually about the bookcases. “Bel brought my sisters out and helped them find husbands. Money from her jointure bought my brother’s commission. She’s done a thousand things for my parents without ever letting them realize quite how generous she’s been.”

“I sometimes feel the same about Charles. He’d say that what was once his is now ours.”

Oliver regarded her for a moment, head thrown back against the cream silk upholstery. “I used to wonder if Charles would ever marry. He doesn't give of himself easily. But watching the two of you last night— You both knew just what to do without having to ask each other. It was as though you read each other's thoughts."

Mélanie's fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. "We've been through a lot together."

"I can’t imagine being so sure of another person.”

“Until recently I’d have said the same about you and Bel.”

He gave a brief, hard laugh. Then his gaze narrowed. “The things good friends can fail to notice about each other. There was a night at Oxford when Charles and David and Simon and I had all been sitting up drinking in Charles’s rooms. David and Simon left to go home. As I was rousing myself to brave the cold, I found myself asking Charles if he thought there was something between David and Simon. I couldn’t quite put into words what I meant by ‘something’, and I’d never have asked at all if I hadn’t been three sheets to the wind. Charles looked at me as if I’d asked if the earth went round the sun.” He smoothed the glossy charcoal fabric of his lapel. “Given how long it took me to see what was happening between two of my best friends, I suppose it’s no wonder you were wrong about Bel and me. Though in a way I
was
sure of Bel. For years.”

“What changed it?”

He looked away. “She has moods. No, that’s not quite it. Moods would imply she has a burst of temper or a fit of the blue devils and Bel never does. She—“

“Withdraws,” Mélanie said.

“Yes. She goes through the motions of ordering dinner any paying calls and visiting the nursery, but it’s as though she’s encased in ice. I’m not sure how to reach her. And I don’t know that she wants me to. In fact, I’m pretty damned sure she doesn’t. That's how she was last autumn, when she suddenly announced she was taking Lucinda to the Continent. I thought it would be good for her to get away and when she came home she’d be back to her usual self.”

“And?”

“I knew something was different as soon as she got off the boat at Dover. I’d taken the children down to meet her. A surprise. They threw themselves on her. She crouched down to put her arms round them. But for a moment, I’d swear she wished we hadn’t come. Or at least wished I hadn’t come. Later that night when we were alone at the inn— I think she’d have gone to bed with me. But I wanted to talk. And all I got were polite monosyllables.”

“None of which means—“

“That she had a lover? That wasn’t my thought. Not at first. I thought she was fatigued, cross with me for some reason—” He took a deep draught of sherry. “Do you remember that night just before the holidays when we went to see
Abduction from the Seraglio
? The first time Bel and I saw it together she was four months pregnant with Billy. She took my hand during that bit at the end where the Pasha’s forgiving everyone and put it on her stomach so I could feel him kick. Ever since, we’ve always smiled at each other at that point. This last time, she didn’t so much as turn her head in my direction. I think that was when I began to suspect, though I didn’t admit it to myself until we were at Carfax Court for Christmas.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, a thousand small things. Lucinda made a joke about their visit to Provence and Bel snapped at her. I came upon Bel sitting in the library with a book and the oddest look on her face. I asked her what was the matter and she bit her lip, that way she does when she’s trying to keep from crying. I gave her an aquamarine necklace and earrings. She always wears any present I give her for weeks after. She hasn’t worn the aquamarines since Christmas night. I think she forgot to pack them when we left Carfax Court.”

He twisted his glass between his fingers. “By the time we returned to London, the suspicion was gnawing me in two. So I hired Phillips. That’s his name. He’s a Runner. Roth probably knows him. I’d overheard a couple of chaps at Brooks’s talking about him once. Apparently he does a fair amount of this. Following wives.”

“And he reported back to you?”

“Yesterday afternoon. The day of our ball. He'd seen Bel send her maid on an errand and then get into a closed carriage. He glimpsed a man inside the carriage when the door opened. They drove into Hyde Park at an unfashionable hour, circled about, and spent over an hour pulled up behind a stand of trees with the blinds lowered. Then the carriage let Bel off in Piccadilly. Phillips saw the gentleman kiss Bel’s hand.”

“And?”

“My God, isn’t that suggestive enough?”

“Who was the gentleman?”

“Mid-thirties. Dark hair probably, though he was wearing a hat."

Mélanie ran her finger over a tiny chip in the rim of her glass. “Was he at the ball last night?”

“How the devil can I be sure?” Oliver stood and began to pace again. “I thought he would be. I kept watching Bel. If she’d slipped from the room, I’d have followed. But after she left off greeting guests at the head of the stairs, she stayed in the ballroom. Until Lucinda discovered the body.”

“You’re sure she didn’t leave the ballroom?”

“I didn’t take my eyes off her last night.”

“And when you saw the dead man?” Mélanie asked.

“I wouldn’t have thought anything could distract me last night but finding a corpse in the garden came close.”

Mélanie took a sip of sherry, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of full disclosure. She set the glass down on the table beside her. “Lady St. Ives saw Bel sobbing in her writing room just after the body was discovered.”

Oliver stared at her for the length of several heartbeats. Then he drew a sharp breath and closed his eyes. An instinctive response in the face of a shocking revelation. Or a clever tactic to veil his expression. She had employed it herself on more than one occasion. “You think
St. Juste
was Bel's lover?”

"I think it's possible."

"Why in God's name—"

"If it's true, I doubt she knew who he really was."

“Christ. You think I killed him.”

“Of course not. I don’t know who killed him.”

“But if he was Bel's lover, I'd have a damned good motive, wouldn’t I?” His gaze went to the miniature of his children atop the cabinet beside his chair. “I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d come face to face with Bel’s lover. Planted him a facer perhaps. But as for exacting some sort of murderous revenge— I’ve never even fought a duel.”

“Dueling isn’t the same as a crime of passion.”

He took two steps toward her. “Mélanie, I swear to you I had no notion of the identity of Bel's lover. I didn’t kill St. Juste. My word on it.”

The firelight glowed in his eyes. She could imagine him looking at his mother with just such a gaze while he insisted he hadn’t eaten the last brambleberry tart or hit a cricket ball through the parlor window. She wondered how Mrs. Lydgate had determined whether or not her son was telling the truth.

“You’ve never struck me as a killer, Oliver.”

“But you can’t be sure?”

“What in life can we be sure of?”

He drew a breath to speak, but before he could do so, the door opened and his wife stepped into the room.

Isobel wore a black cloth pelisse cut along severe lines and trimmed with jet velvet. Her heavy fair hair was scraped back from her face even more severely than usual, but she was smiling, a cool, bright smile that betrayed no hint of demons lurking beneath. "John told me Mélanie had called. I'm sorry I—“ She broke off, her gaze going from her husband to Mélanie.

"You really should have told me the truth last night," Oliver said. "I'd have written out those lists for Roth myself if I'd known the dead man was your lover."

All the blood drained from Isobel's already pale face. She put her hand out and gripped the scroll back of a chair, then dropped into it, spine backboard straight. "I won't try to excuse keeping silent. It's obviously inexcusable. And, I presume, it is equally obvious why I did so."

Until that moment, Mélanie realized, she had been holding out hope that none of it would prove to be true. So, from his expression, had Oliver. "My God," he said in a low voice. For a moment Mélanie thought he was going to vomit on the carpet.

"Did you know your lover was Julien St. Juste?" Mélanie asked.

"Of course not. I'd never— I suppose I haven't much right to say what I'd never do just now. But I'd never—” Isobel pressed her hands over her face, then folded them in her lap, fingers locked together. "We met in Provence last autumn," she said in the flat monotone of an envoy reporting on trade negotiations. "Cecilia and Philippe had taken Lucinda and me to stay with friends of theirs. Gerard—that's the name I knew him by, Gerard de Rivière—was staying at the château of a friend. His friend was in Paris and he had the run of the house and grounds. I met him one morning when I was out sketching."

She put up a hand to jab a strand of hair behind her ear. "I thought it was over when I returned to England, but he followed me to London. I won't claim to have been sorry to see him.” Her lips tightened, as though to still any hint of emotion. "I was supposed to meet him on the terrace last night at midnight. Lucinda discovered his corpse before our rendezvous."

Oliver drew a breath that had the scrape of agony.

"Bel—" Mélanie said into the silence.