The Mask of Night (40 page)

“Mummy!” Colin and Jessica tumbled into the hall as Mélanie and Raoul stepped into the Berkeley Square house.

“Miss Simcox was telling us a story. About a milkmaid and shepherd, only he’s not a shepherd he’s really a prince, but the milkmaid doesn’t know that yet.“ Jessica glanced toward the library doors through which Bet, Trenor, and Laura had emerged. “But everyone was worried. About you. They wouldn’t say so, but they were.”

“And that was silly. You see.” Mélanie scooped her daughter up and bit back a cry at the stab of pain through her wrist.

“Is Daddy all right?” Colin asked.

“I’m sure he is. He’s with Mr. Roth.” Mélanie smiled at her son and rubbed noses with Jessica. “I daresay they’ll be back presently.”

“Are
you
all right, Mr. O’Roarke?” Colin took a step toward Raoul. “You were hurt last night.”

“I’m doing very well, thanks to your mother.”

“Mummy knows how to fix people,” Jessica said, hooking her arm round Mélanie’s neck.

“We were telling Colin and Jessica that the best thing we could do is keep watch from the schoolroom windows,” Laura said. “Miss Simcox and Mr. Trenor have promised to help. Mrs. Erskine is sending up some jam tarts.”

“What a splendid idea.”

Jessica scrambled out of Mélanie’s arms and caught Bet’s hand. “Will you finish the story? Is the milkmaid cross when she finds out the shepherd lied to her?”

“We’ll have to see.” Bet had brightened a trifle, her cheeks lightly flushed with color.

Colin cast a sharp look over his shoulder as he followed the others upstairs.
I’ll tell you when he’s home safe. Promise,
Mélanie mouthed. Colin gave a solemn nod.

She and Raoul went into the library where the lamps were still lit and a fire burned in the grate.

“It must be a constant challenge,” he said. “Caring for the children and—everything else.”

“Quite. Sometimes I think if I were a really good parent I’d find a way to give up everything else. But for one reason and another I can’t. Or won’t.”

“I’m not sure they’d be the better for it if you did. Colin told me this morning that he has nightmares sometimes. I took it as a good sign that he volunteered the information.”

“Because I never did?”

“The circumstances weren’t precisely the same. They’re remarkable children, Mélanie. You and Charles should be very proud.”

She felt herself smile, then wondered why the devil his approval still meant so much to her.

“I asked Michael to send in some ice,” Raoul continued. “You need to treat your wrist.”

“Oh, for God’s—“

“Before it swells up like a grapefruit.”

She regarded him for a moment in the warm lamplight. “Now I know where I learned how to fuss.”

A rap sounded at the door. Raoul answered it and returned with a towel full of ice.

She pressed it over her wrist. The cold was a blast of comfort. “How’s your wound?”

“Tolerable. You can look at it when you’ve seen to yourself. Are you all right?”

“It’s a sprain at most.”

“I was thinking of Oliver Lydgate. I take it you didn’t know he'd been working for Carfax?”

“No.” Her fingers dug into the towel. "Oliver’s one of Charles’s oldest friends. He’s my friend.”

Raoul raised his brows.

“I’ve got in the habit of trusting my friends in recent years.”

“That habit can be fatal,
querida
.”

“I know.”

“It’s not an easy thing, learning someone you care about has been duplicitous.”

“I’ve grown soft. As you said.”

“I said such reactions could be fatal. I didn’t say they were avoidable. I’ve had to face similar revelations and it’s not pretty. I don’t think I’d have born up as well as Charles has done if I’d ever had to face betrayal from you. You have my thanks for never putting me through that.”

“That you know of.”

“Quite.”

She stared down at the snowy towel against the black velvet of her pelisse. “Oliver and Charles and David and Simon—they’ve been close since they were scarcely more than children.”

“You haven’t heard Lydgate’s side of it.”

“And I of all people should wait to do so?” The ice bit into her skin under unconscious pressure from her fingers. “You’re right. Let’s decode Hortense’s papers.”

Raoul took the papers from her reticule and spread the ones with the sheet music out on the library table. "I recognize the code. It was in fairly common use in French Intelligence in the nineties. First we convert the notes to numbers—no, I'll write, you keep the ice on your wrist."

By the time Raoul had the musical notes converted into a series of numbers, Mélanie was able to put aside the towel-wrapped ice without comment from him and sketch a table. In a little over an hour, they had enough to break the code, and then she read while he wrote out the decoded text.

After a couple of lines, she broke off. "Good God. What—"

"Questions later. Let's get the rest of it down."

She went on reading in a careful monotone. When they were finished, she stared down at the decoded text in Raoul's slanted writing. "Hortense lied to me."

"Or St. Juste lied to her about what the paper contained. And it looks as very much as though Lord Carfax was committing treason.”

The decoded text was nothing to do with Hortense and Flahaut's child or with Hortense at all. It was a letter from a French Intelligence agent named Renaux. Mélanie remembered him as a Colonel in Salamanca. Sandy hair, mid-forties, fond of puns. But at the time of the letter he'd been a lieutenant. This letter was in regard to information he had received—information he had paid for—about the disposition of British troops in the Baltic.

"Good God, why?" Mélanie said.

"Didn’t you learn anything working for me,
querida
? There are as many different reasons for committing treason as there are traitors."

“Did you know?”

“About Carfax? Of course not. I’d have told you.”

“Would you?”

“At this point.”

“But if Carfax was being paid by French Intelligence—“

“I wasn't formally in French Intelligence when this occurred. It’s not surprising I didn’t know of it.”

“But St. Juste worked for French Intelligence at this time.”

“Yes. That could be how St. Juste knew about Carfax’s past."

"I can't imagine Hortense wanting these on her own. St. Juste must have been using her to get them. Though if she believed they were to do with her child, surely she'd have burned them, not given them to him."

"He may have told her he'd decode them for her, with the idea that they'd destroy them together. Or he may have blackmailed her into getting them for him."

"Why?"

"Because Hortense could go to you and you could get into Carfax House."

"So he knows I'm living in England as Charles's wife."

"It looks that way."

"Then he could have gone straight to me and threatened to reveal the truth of my past."

"But you might have defied him. Hortense is far easier to manipulate.”

Mélanie looked sideways at him. A mere morning. It was amazing how quickly hidden clusters of memories sprang to life. “I’ve missed you,” she said before she could think better of it. “No, not in that way. Mostly not in that way. I’ve missed being able to talk to you. There are some things—“

“What?” he said.

She drew a breath. Even indoors, the air was heavy with the promise of rain. “I can exchange a glance with Charles and we each know what the other is thinking. I can look into his eyes and swear he can see straight through to my soul. Or nearly so. Because there are parts of me Charles will never understand. I don’t want him to. I don’t want him ever to see the world in that way. But you do.”

“And so I understand?”

“Yes.”

He nodded slowly.

Michael rapped at the door and stepped into the room. “This was just brought round, madam.”

Mélanie stared down at Oliver Lydgate’s handwriting. The note was addressed to Charles and her. She slit it open with her nail, too impatient to go to the desk for a letter opener.

Come to St. James Place as soon as you. I have something I must relate to you.

O.L.

She looked up at Raoul. “Oliver wants to see us.”

“Us?”

“Charles and me. But we don’t know when Charles will be back, and you already know enough to be asking questions. You’d best come with me.”

Chapter 27

At the risk of turning maudlin, without you and David and Simon, I don't expect I'd have survived the past three years.

Charles Fraser to Oliver Lydgate

25 May 1808

John, the Lydgates’ footman, once again admitted Mélanie with no surprise. His gaze flickered briefly when he realized the greatcoated, beaver-hatted man who accompanied her was not Charles, but he merely took their outer garments and said that Mr. Lydgate was in the study.

In this apartment they found not only Oliver but Isobel, David, and Simon. Conversation stopped abruptly at their entrance. Oliver stood behind his desk. David and Simon were seated on the sofa. Isobel sat in a wing-back chair, shoulders very straight, face drawn.

Oliver went still at the sight of Raoul.

“Charles is in Chelsea with Mr. Roth,” Mélanie said. “Mr. O’Roarke has been assisting me with the investigation.”

“But if this is a personal matter, I can make myself scarce,” Raoul said.

“No.” Oliver’s hands curled on the ink blotter. “That is, yes, but you’d best stay. Simon’s been telling us about the attack on you last night. It seems you’re in the middle of this.”

“I told them about the pamphlets,” Simon said. “It seemed best.”

“But that isn’t why I asked you all to come here today.” Oliver straightened his shoulders and unclenched his hands. “I have something to tell you. To explain. To confess. No, not murder. Though in its own way you may think it just as bad.”

David’s gaze moved over his brother-in-law, grave and wary. “You don’t want to wait for Charles?”

“I don’t think I can afford to. I want you to hear this from me before you hear it from anyone else.”

Mélanie moved to the matching armchair beside Isobel. Raoul pulled a straight-backed chair away from the wall. Coals snapped behind the satin stitched fire screen.

Oliver clasped his hands behind his back, paced to the fireplace, turned to face them. Claudio repentant, Hamlet at Ophelia’s graveside. “When we all met—when David and Simon and Charles and I met at Oxford. It’s no secret that I didn’t have any fortune. I was there on a scholarship lucky to be able to attend university at all.”

“And obliged to be far cleverer than the rest of us to do so,” David said.

“The rest of you could have had scholarships if you’d needed them. But— It wasn’t always easy. Letting my friends pay for tavern meals and hackneys, sending my clothes home to my mother for refurbishment instead of ordering news ones, listening to conversations about sports I’d never been able to play and places I’d never visited. I expect I took it harder than I should have done.”

“That’s all ancient history,” Isobel said.

“But unfortunately relevant.” Oliver turned his head. The firelight caught the tangled emotions in his eyes. “Times were unsettled then, though I fear one can’t say much better for the present day. The French Revolution was fresh in everyone’s memory, Bonaparte was running amok on the Continent, we were battling the French. All too many people were ready to believe that any quarrel with the way the world was ordered was an incitement to revolution. I don’t think it will come as a surprise to any of you that Lord Carfax was receiving reports on Radical activity.”

David grimaced. “You mean Father had spies at home as well as abroad?”

“Yes.”

“For what it’s worth,” Simon said, “he wasn’t the only member of the Government to do so. Everyone knows Sidmouth has had a network of informants for years, not to mention agents provocateurs. Not that I’m excusing it.”

“How do you know?” Isobel asked, watching her husband. “About Father having informants?”

“He told me,” Oliver said. “He told me one afternoon my first year at Oxford when he came upon me leaving a lecture. He took me to dinner in a nearby tavern and asked me to work for him.”

A coal fell from the grate behind the silk and canvas of the fire screen and hissed against the wrought metal.

“Work for him?” Isobel was on her feet. “Do you mean spy for him? On whom?”

“On us, I presume.” Simon’s voice was light and pleasant, but his gaze had turned to tempered steel. “My God, I never knew what a damnably good actor you are.”

“You were spying on us,” David said. The words seemed to stick in his throat. “My father was
paying
you to report on our activities?”

“Yes,” Oliver said.

“Why would you—“

“Because he wanted to marry Sylvie de Fancot,” Isobel said.

Oliver met his wife’s gaze. “Quite.”

“But—“ David said.

Simon gripped his arm. “You’ve never been poor, David.”

“Neither have you if it comes to that.” David jerked away from him. “Are you saying you condone this?”

“No. I’m saying I understand how it could have happened. Perhaps.”

David pressed his fingers over his face. The signet ring on his left hand caught the candlelight. “In God’s name why did Father care? He couldn’t have thought we were plotting revolution.”

Oliver swallowed. He was very pale but had yet to look away from his friends. “Some of your—our—pamphlets called for radical change. There was that one Charles wrote advocating universal suffrage and the abolition of the House of Lords.”

“Quite cogently argued, that one,” Simon said. “Eventually he even brought David round.”

“Yes,” Oliver said. “But I kept trying to tell Lord Carfax—“

“That is was all theoretical and we really didn’t mean anything?” Simon asked.

“In a nutshell.”

“So you saw through us.”

“I didn’t—” Oliver tugged at his neckcloth. “I didn’t
not
believe in liberty and equality and a just world and all the other things we talked about.”