The Mask of Night (35 page)

They finished undressing in silence and stumbled into their bed. The sheets were cold, but the feather bed felt like heaven.

“You're going to see Carfax in the morning?” Mélanie asked, pulling the covers closer against the chill.

"I can't put it off much longer."

"We could turn it to our advantage. If you could distract him or get him out of Carfax House—"

“No.” Charles blew out the candle and lay back against the pillows.

“You don’t know—“

His fingers closed round her wrist. "Mélanie, so help me God if you break into the Carfax House without telling me—“

"I wouldn't."

He released her. "Wouldn't you?"

"Not now."

Several seconds of silence followed. She could hear the wind lashing tree branches against the house and smell the smoke from the recently extinguished candle. “What are you going to tell Carfax?” she asked at last.

"I'm not sure. If he's been having me followed, he already knows some of what we know. I'll have to sound him out, see how much he's uncovered. When I told you I wouldn't expose any of your former comrades, I didn’t realize that nearly everything we'd discover would involve someone you'd worked with one way or another."

She rolled onto her side toward him and curled her feet up for warmth. "Would it help if we went over—"

"Thanks. I need to work this out for myself."

"I used to be rather good at helping you figure out how to approach Carfax."

"Thank you, my dear. I'm all too well aware that we've had entirely too many conversations about Carfax."

She pushed herself up on one elbow. She could see the the line of his nose and jaw, but she couldn’t read his eyes. "Charles. It's different now."

"Is it?” The pillow rustled as he turned his head. "Our divided loyalties are in the open. But they're still divided."

"Fair enough. But—"

“You’re on very thin ice here, Mel.”

"I can take it if you're angry."

"I'm not angry. I'm working through options."

"You have a right to be angry."

"I did that two months ago. All it got us was a hole in the salon wall."

"It isn't funny."

"I expect some people would find it hilarious. Go to sleep, Mel."

"I'm beyond being sleepy."

“So am I, but—“

“Good.” She leaned over and pressed her lips against his bare chest.

He caught her by the shoulders and held her away from him. “We’re done with that.”

“What?”

“Intercourse to defuse the situation, to distract me, to placate me—“

“Charles—“

“I’m not Julien St. Juste.”

She sat up, the air cold against her bare skin. “What the devil’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I know sex can be a very effective weapon but it’s not one I care to have turned on me.”

“Darling, I wouldn’t—“

“Oh, yes, you would. You’ve done it ever since our wedding night. But I didn’t know you were doing it. I do now. The rules have changed.”

Chapter 24

'Love' is a sadly over-used word. Of course, I love you, though don't let it get about that I resorted to such commonplace phrases. What is more, I trust you, which is something far more rare and precious…

Simon Tanner to David Mallinson,

11 June, 1809

Simon let himself into the flat in the Albany with his latch key, lit a candle on the table in the entrance hall, and made his way down the passage. Tim Marsden, who had been David’s valet since Oxford, would have gone to bed long since. Simon insisted he not wait up, and Marsden had eventually relaxed his standards enough to go along with him.

No light shone from the sitting room or the first bedroom, but a faint glow came from the back bedroom, theoretically David’s though in fact it was where they both usually slept.

Simon pushed open the door. His lover was sitting in an armchair by the dying embers of the fire.

“Simon?” David pushed himself to his feet. “For God’s sake where have you been?”

Simon closed the door. “Attending a secret meeting to plot illegal activities with dangerous subversives.”

David’s gaze flickered over his face. “Oh, Christ. You mean it.”

“More or less.” Simon took off his greatcoat and laid it over a chairback. “You’d better sit down, this is going to take a bit. I think I’ve told more lies in the past few days than in the entire time you’ve known me.”

David drew a sharp breath, but returned to his chair. Simon sat opposite him and told him about Raoul O’Roarke and the pamphlets smuggled out of France and Hapgood and Will Gordon and the events of the evening.

“No one’s hurt?” David said when he had done.

“O’Roarke has a knife cut, but it’s not serious.”

David stared across the room at an oil of the Seine in winter that had been painted by Simon’s father. “I know there’ve been times in the past you haven’t told me things. When you thought I was better off being able to deny any knowledge of your activities.”

“Occasionally. “ Simon touched his lover’s face. "We may not have made vows in a church, but I know what I owe you.”

“You wouldn’t take vows made in a church seriously anyway.”

“Probably not. That doesn’t change the general point.”

David put up his hand and covered Simon’s fingers with his own. “I trust you with my life. I think you trust me with yours.”

“But?”

David drew their clasped hands down to the chair arm. “But I know there’s a part of you that despises me for being part of a government that technically would hang us for what we do every night.”

“Every night may be a bit of optimistic exaggeration.”

“That doesn’t change the general point.”

“You aren’t part of the Government. You’re in the Opposition. And I don’t think I could ever despise you even if you turned Tory. Well, maybe then.”

David gave a faint smile, but his gaze remained serious. Simon tightened his grip on his hand, as though he could bridge the chasm David had alluded to. "In the interests of disclosure, I should tell you that Charles also told me about your father and what Lucinda overheard. And also about Bel and Oliver.”

David’s gaze darkened. “I could—“

“Strangle Oliver? So could I have done at various points through the years. But I don’t think he’s indifferent to her.”

“If he cared about her at all—“

“People can hurt people they care about. Worst of all, I sometimes think.”

“You don’t betray someone you love.”

“You think Bel doesn’t love Oliver?”

“I don’t— I don’t know.” David looked down at their clasped hands. “Last night on the terrace— Pendarves confronted you?”

“He accused me of corrupting Will. Politically speaking. Which may have a grain of truth to it, save that Will’s far too self-possessed to be corrupted by anyone.”

“So the reason you lied about talking to Pendarves was to protect the business with the French pamphlets?”

“Mostly. I was afraid Pendarves would let something slip if they questioned him. He’s never been a very good liar.”

“And?”

“And?”

“Did you know Oliver and Sylvie St. Ives were in the garden? Charles told me this evening when I was leaving Berkeley Square.”

“Yes, actually. I didn’t see what it had to do with the murder.”

“Because at that point you didn’t know the murdered man was Bel’s lover.”

“Quite.” Simon sat back on his heels. Past debts of friendship hung heavy in the air. “That does change things."

Charles woke with a thick head, a dry mouth, and eyes that refused to focus. Difficult sometimes to tell lack of sleep from a hangover. His wife was curled against him with one leg thrown over his knees and an arm draped across his chest, though he had a distinct memory of not making love to her the night before. It had been important, though he couldn’t remember why just yet. Oh, yes. The papers in Carfax House. His meeting with Carfax. Mélanie’s attempt to distract or placate him.

Or perhaps to find escape. He brushed his fingers over the hair spilling across his shoulder. Sometimes-especially in the weeks since Colin’s abduction—she would make love to him with a passion that sought oblivion in intensity. She would use fingers and lips and teeth with expert skill, dragging him with her into places that were as dangerous as they were seductive. To meet passion with passion was no difficulty, but afterwards as he held her in his arms, grateful that she was finally asleep, he would wonder if she wouldn't have preferred to go to bed with some anonymous stranger and was only making do with the husband she loved as a poor substitute.

A shadowy image of Julien St. Juste as he might have been in life hovered before his eyes. A dark room filled with books and trunks of Spanish leather. Glasses of cognac. Mélanie in a peacock blue gown. A torn ribbon tossed onto the coverlet or discarded on the floor beside satin slippers and a lace-edged chemise.

He shut his mind to the images and found himself seeing Raoul O’Roarke in their place.

Mélanie pushed herself up on one elbow and looked down at him with eyes blinking awake. “Do you remember how many guests we ended up with last night?”

“Six.” Charles forced his attention to the present. “No, five. Trenor and Miss Simcox arrived, but Simon went home.”

“I didn’t mean to sleep so late.” She pushed back the covers, letting in a draught of cold air, and reached for her dressing gown. Her dark hair tumbled over her creamy shoulders and the curve of her back.

She must have been aware of his gaze on her, because she turned, half wrapped in green silk and foaming white lace. A selkie emerging from the sea to mate with a mortal. “Charles—“

“What?”

For a moment he thought she meant to let it drop. Then she said. “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t wonder sometimes.”

“About?”

“Other men I’ve known. In the crudest sense of the word.”

Her gaze held scars that would never heal. He wanted to pull her to him, sweeping aside her words and his qualms. But that wasn’t any sort of solution. “I’ve said it before, Mel. I don’t care how many other men you’ve slept with. But what we’ve always had between us—even at the beginning, when neither of us dared think of anything more—was honesty. At least that’s what I thought.”

“Until I told you the truth.”

“Yes."

"We had pleasure, mutually exchanged. That was honest. It may have been the one honest thing in our marriage."

"It wasn't anything of the sort. It was one more game. I don’t like being used, least of all in my bed.”

“I never—“

“The woman I took to bed on our wedding night—the woman who hadn’t known anything but violence—that wasn’t you. Not the sum total of you.”

“Not the sum total, no. But it wasn’t all pretense. You can’t think—I’m not
that
good, Charles. I’ve never needed to pretend with you.”

He stared into her eyes, shutting his mind to a host of memories. “That doesn’t change the general principle.”

“What happened between us was never the same as—”

“As what you did with Julien St. Juste? Oh, but it was,
mo chridh
. It’s not making love, it’s using sex to distract me. Or yourself. Or both of us. Sometimes I think you prefer it that way.”

“It can’t always be sublime communion, Charles. Not for me. It’s been too many other things. A tool. A weapon. A defense. An escape.” She pulled her dressing gown tight about her. “I told you once that my acting abilities deserted me in the bedchamber. That was true when I was in the brothel. I was too young to put on more than a crude show. But later— Sometimes it was sordid. Sometimes it was mechanical. But sometimes—slipping into a fictional skin, making love to someone for the night, knowing it’s just that night. There’s no freedom quite like it.”

She got to her feet. “More honesty, perhaps, than you wanted. I’ll make sure someone’s organized breakfast.”

Ten minutes later Charles followed his wife into the breakfast parlor to be greeted by the welcome smell of freshly-brewed coffee, hot buttered toast, and various grilled and roasted dishes. And the sound of his children’s voices. Jessica was perched on Will Gordon’s lap, watching as he transformed a folded napkin into some sort of toy. Colin was sitting next to O’Roarke, peppering him with questions.

A sharp mew rose above the conversation. Berowne, on the floor by Hapgood’s chair, demanding more pieces of grilled kipper.

Mélanie walked toward Laura who was pouring out the coffee. “Thank you, Laura. What shockingly remiss hosts we are. I trust everyone slept well.”

“Laura said not to wake you,” Jessica said. “Mr. Gordon’s making me a boat.”

“Mr. O’Roarke’s telling me about Ireland,” Colin said.

Which, Charles thought, accepting a cup of coffee from Laura, was probably one of the safer stories O’Roarke could tell. He held out a chair for Mélanie. Her hair was pinned into a neat coil above the muslin handkerchief tied round her throat. She had put on pearl earrings and lip rouge, as though this were any ordinary day. He had done up the hooks on her gown, but they hadn’t spoken more than commonplaces after their first conversation. Fragments of that exchange swirled in his head. He couldn’t begin to sort out how he felt about them.