The Mask of Night (38 page)

Chelsea was only three miles from Charing Cross yet still a rural village, surrounded by pastures where cows chomped at the grass, orchards in bare winter dress, and frost-touched meadows sloping down to the river. Charles pulled his curricle up before the Harris house, a brick villa with door and window frames sorely in need of a fresh coat of paint and a front garden that looked as though someone had stopped caring about it some months since. A child’s wagon filled with rainwater lay forgotten beside weed-choked flowerbeds that hadn’t been pruned for winter.

A maidservant with tired eyes and a stained apron opened the door in response to their ring.

“We’re here to see Captain Harris,” Charles said, offering her his card. “Is he at home?”

The maidservant took the card and stared at it, then looked back at Charles. “You hadn’t heard? The captain’s dead. Three days since.”

Charles flicked a glance at Roth. “Our condolences. Is Mrs. Harris at home?”

The maidservant nodded and led them down a cramped passage to an overstuffed sitting room choked with the smell of cheap potpourri.

Roth looked at Charles when the door had closed behind the maidservant. “As a coincidence this strains credulity.”

“Quite.”

Roth studied a cavalry sword that hung over the mantle. "How did a soldier like Harris end up working for a civilian like Carfax?"

"Carfax used to be in the army himself."

"Carfax was a soldier? Surprising for an the heir to an earldom."

"Carfax wasn't born the heir. He was a younger son who went into the army and showed a talent for intelligence. His brother's only son died in a sailing accident in his teens, so Carfax—the present Lord Carfax—came into the title when his brother died a year or so later. David and I were at Harrow at the time. I still remember David's expression when he came back from his uncle's funeral as Worsley rather than Mallinson. You could almost see the weight of the earldom on his shoulders."

"Carfax left the army when he inherited the title?"

"Officially. He continued to run intelligence operations."

"Do you think—” Roth bit back whatever he had been about to say at the sound of footsteps in the passage. The door opened, admitting a child’s cry from the back reaches of the house and the person of Mrs. Harris. She was a women in her late thirties, with a rounded figure that might once have been trimly voluptuous, dark hair haphazardly dressed, and a face sunk into premature lines of disappointment.

Her gaze darted from Charles to Roth. “What can I do for you?”

“Mrs. Harris.” Charles inclined his head. “My name is Fraser and this is my friend Roth. We were hoping to have a word with your husband. We’re sorry to hear of his death.”

She pushed the door shut, rattling the sagging frame. “You can skip the pleasantries. How much did he owe you?”

“You are mistaken, madam. I knew your husband when I was a boy. Lord Carfax is the father of a friend of mine.”

Mrs. Harris smoothed her crumpled black dress and patted her hair, sending her topknot slithering another inch to one side. “Forgive me. It’s been a difficult few days. Pray take a glass of sherry.” She bustled over to a cabinet without waiting for an answer, took out a decanter and a proceeded to pour out three glasses.

She sank into a chair and gestured to them to be seated. "I never met Lord Carfax. My husband and I were married just before he left the army.”

Charles took a sip of sherry. It cloyed on his tongue. "I wish I'd thought to look your husband up sooner. I had no notion he was ill.”

“Ill?” Mrs. Harris gave a laugh that teetered on the edge of hysteria. “No, Fred had an excellent constitution. That’s why it came as a shock. He got into a brawl at the Green Lion and took a knife in the back.”

Mélanie looked across the barouche at Raoul. He still appeared paler than usual, but she could detect no telltale perspiration or other signs of fever.

“You changed the dressing half an hour ago,
querida
,” he said from his corner of the carriage. “I think I’ll live.”

“I daresay you will. I was considering your abilities as a breaking and entering partner in the next few hours.”

“I’ll manage.”

“No stubborn heroics. You’ll let me know if you start to feel light-headed?”

“You’ll have fair warning to catch me before I faint.”

“You wouldn’t find it so funny if it actually happened.”

“You never used to fuss this much.”

“Yes, well, being a mother’s changed me.”

“Are you this bad with Charles?”

“Worse. But he’s been known to fuss just as much over me. We both put up with it. It’s compromise that makes a marriage work.”

Raoul turned his head to look at her. Perhaps it was the slanting light that made his gaze go sharp. “How much did you tell him about what transpired between you and St. Juste?”

“More than I told you.”

“Your husband’s a brave man. Trust is an impressive gift. And at times a heavy burden.”

The curve of his mouth was at once sardonic and self-deprecating. His eyes crinkled at the corners. Familiarity was written in every line of his face. “Charles has always been generous with his gifts," she said.

“I’m sorry. I had no intention of inflicting myself on you again so soon.”

“For once the circumstances can hardly be said to be your fault.”

“The past two months can’t have been easy.”

“No. We’re relearning everything and making up new rules. Charles is extraordinarily forgiving.”

“And forgiveness, like trust, can be a burden.”

“Not a burden I have any right to complain of.” Her fingers curled inward. “But sometimes I wish he’d— Sometimes I wish he’d bloody well say what he thinks.”

“Perhaps he does.”

“He has to be angry. He wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t. If he’d yell at me—“

“You could yell back and lessen your guilt?”

“Damn you, do you have to understand everything?”

“
Querida
, I can’t even come close.”

“Charles keeps telling me I don’t have to pretend anymore. But I lived a pretend life for so long I can scarcely remember what it is to just be myself. Sometimes I’m not sure who the real Mélanie is. Or if Charles would like her if they were ever introduced.”

“Don’t sell Charles short.”

“I’m not. I’m trying to be clear-headed. For years, I lived by making myself into the person I needed to be to accomplish the mission at hand. The Mélanie I created for Charles is a better person than the real me.”

“Perhaps you’re the one who’s changed.”

“Seven years of living a pretend life could hardly have failed to change me. What really frightens me is that if one stripped away all the layers of pretense there might be nothing of me left. Two and a half years ago, when we learned about Tommy Belmont and the Elsinore League, I was afraid I was looking at a warped reflection of myself. I think Tommy had lost any sense of who he was at all, except a player in the game.”

“From what I saw of Belmont, I don’t think he ever was much more than a game-player. Which makes it easy to change sides. St. Juste was the ultimate game-player.”

Mélanie studied the master game-player opposite her. No matter how caught up he was in the intricacies of intrigue, he’d never entirely lost sight of himself. Or so she wanted to believe. “Do you think St. Juste ever believed in anything?”

“If so, he ceased to do so in his early teens. I don’t think that will ever happen to you.”

“Or I wouldn’t be so unsure about what’s the right thing to do.” She looked down at her clenched hands. “I was afraid that when we learned what you were doing in London, Charles would want to stop whatever it was and I wouldn’t.”

“What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Charles and I believe in the same things, but we don’t always we agree on the tactics for achieving them.” She looked sideways at him. “Whom do you identify with in
Julius Caesar
?”

“It seems I should say Cassius, doesn’t it? No messing about with scruples, just a clean, lean, hungry charge at an objective.”

“You have more scruples than Cassius.”

“I just don’t let them get in my way?”

“Oh, but you do. I’ve seen it happen.”

“Don’t let it get about. I have a reputation to maintain.
Querida
— you’d tell me if you’d spoken with St. Juste at the ball, wouldn’t you?”

“That would depend on what I’d spoken to him about. But as it happens I didn’t speak to him. Would you tell me if you’d spoken with him?”

“I’m not sure.” He gave a smile that looked utterly direct and was incalculably dangerous. “What a good thing I didn’t speak to him either.”

She tugged at a loose thread on her cuff. "St. Juste kept a ribbon he tore from my gown ten years ago."

Raoul's eyes narrowed. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

"Why the devil not? Don't tell me he mentioned me that afternoon you saw him at the Pig & Whistle."

"Not directly.” Raoul shifted his position on the carriage seat. "I tried every gambit I could think of to get him to talk. Finally when we were two-thirds through the bottle of whisky, I started talking about the end of the war. How one could feel rootless. Question one’s place in the world. St. Juste laughed and said
ennui
was the curse of peacetime. Or at least that was what he’d used to think. ‘Until what?’ I asked. He smiled—with a sort of satisfaction I’d never seen on his face. He said that a month since he’d looked across a London theatre—while Figaro and Rosina were pulling the wool over Bartolo’s eyes—and that for the first time in his misspent career he knew what he wanted.”

“Did you ask him what that was?”

“Naturally. He twirled his glass between his fingers and asked me what I thought was the ultimate desire. Love? Power? Wealth? Revenge? Redemption?”

“What did you say?”

“That is depended on the person. St. Juste said, ‘Quite.’”

Mélanie stared at her former lover. “For God’s sake, Raoul. You can't think he meant me."

"He used to ask after you. Always in a casual tone, but the question itself was unusual for him.”

“He spent one night with me.“

“And weeks traveling with you later. Though for what it’s worth I can imagine one night being enough to render a man obsessed with you.”

“St. Juste wasn’t the sort to say ‘let Rome and Tiber melt’."

“I imagine that would depend on how much variety the queen in question had to offer. Did you go to a performance of
Barber of Seville
last month?”

“Along with thousands of other people. You don’t even know I was there the same night as St. Juste."

"But you might have been. "

"You're starting to sound like Charles. You think St. Juste looked across the theatre and saw me—“

“And decided you were what he wanted.”

“Because I could offer him what? Love? Power? Wealth? Revenge? Redemption?”

“I’m not sure. But I know you meant something to St. Juste. I think I can guess what he meant to you.”

“A failed mission.”

“A bit more than that, judging by all the things you didn’t say when you came back.”

“As I recall I never told you those sorts of details. I didn’t think you wanted to hear them.”

“Thank you, no. But there are different kinds of silence. I used to be able to read your silences rather well.”

She snapped off the thread. “So what do you think you read in this particular silence?”

“That he was an unusual challenge. A cipher that still puzzled you. That he gave you a few hours of freedom.”

She swallowed, her throat raw. “I never—“

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,
querida
. You never did.”

“It was the sort of temporary, dangerous freedom one finds in a bottle of whisky. I’d scarcely thought of him in years. You’re saying that he—“

“He was a restless man looking for a focus to give his life meaning. He wouldn’t be the first man to think he’d found it in a woman. He wouldn’t be the first man to think he’d found it in you.”

Her nails bit through the doeskin of her gloves. Before she could reply, they drew up before Carfax House, a Palladian building of pale stone with a half-moon forecourt closed by a wrought iron gate worked with roses and acanthus leaves from the Mallinson crest. She smoothed her gloves and tightened the ribbons on her bonnet. “Wait for my signal.”

“Always."

It was even easier than she’d expected. Lucinda ran into the hall as the footman was admitting her.

“Mrs. Fraser. I was watching from the parlor windows. I hoped Bel would call, but it’s better that it’s you. May I speak with you?”

Without waiting for an answer, Lucinda dragged her into the blue-papered parlor at the front of the house. “I’m sorry. It’s just so awful and no one will tell me anything. Lord Castlereagh called half an hour ago looking for Papa. He glowered when I told him Papa had left the house early this morning. Has something else happened?"

"Not that I know of.” Mélanie put her arm round the younger girl and drew her over to a peacock-striped settee. "Your father called on Charles this morning."

Lucinda scanned her face. "Have they—? Has Charles figured out about what I overheard Papa talking about?"