Secrets of a Lady (22 page)

“I’m fine.”

He studied her face beneath the brim of her bonnet as they walked along the muddy pavement. She was paler than usual and the tension in the set of her mouth betrayed just how hard she was working to control the pain of the wound. But that she could control it, he had no doubt. He shook his head at his own certainty. The very fabric of her life was alien to him, yet he could still read the clues in her face as though it were his own.

In the space of a few hours, he had learned that everything about their marriage was a lie. And then an unknown assailant had stuck a knife in her ribs. If the blade had struck a few inches higher, he might well be a widower.

The possibility, not quite articulated before, slammed home in his mind. To all intents and purposes he had lost her when she told him the truth of what she had been and done and why she had married him. Yet the prospect of losing her to death brought a prickle of sweat to his skin and stripped his throat raw. He recalled the words a friend of his, a French journalist, had used in describing the Reign of Terror.
We’d nourished ourselves on the dream for so long, you see, that we couldn’t let go of it. Even when it had turned into a nightmare.

The rain had whipped up, a deluge that fell in sheets off the umbrella and blew icy drafts in their faces. Charles caught sight of a hackney up ahead and waved, but the driver took off without seeing him.

“Charles.” Mélanie’s fingers tightened on his arm. “We’re being followed. No, don’t look round. It’s better he doesn’t know we’ve spotted him.”

“Are you sure?”

“I caught his reflection in the window glass a moment ago. A man in a dark greatcoat with a hat pulled low over his face.”

He took a few steps in silence, weighing possibilities. “Are you up to a diversion?”

“Dearest, I’m up to whatever needs doing.”

“Stay in this shop”—he steered her into the nearest doorway, a tobacconist’s—“as though you’re waiting while I find a hackney. If he takes the bait and walks past, you can follow him. I’ll round the corner and see if I can lead him into a court or alley.”

“Don’t take unnecessary chances. We don’t know if he can tell us anything.”

He turned up the collar of his greatcoat. “I’m not a complete fool.”

“You keep the umbrella.”

“Mel—”

“Don’t be pigheaded, Charles. It will look odd otherwise. You’d keep the umbrella if I was waiting inside.”

He nodded, then hesitated a moment. “If it turns nasty, stay out of the fray. We can’t afford to have you bleeding all over the street.”

She put the umbrella into his hand. “I’m the last person in the world you ought to be worrying about just now, darling.”

He stepped out of the doorway, stopped as though scanning the street for a hackney, and walked on. The only other pedestrians visible were a cherry-seller pushing his barrow toward the shelter of an overhang and a rain-soaked errand boy laden down with parcels. Charles kept one eye on the window glass. He caught a flash of movement, but he could not make out anything more clearly.

He rounded the corner into Russell Street. Rainwater sluiced off the umbrella. Shop signs flapped overhead—the golden balls of a pawnshop, the striped pole of a barber, the gilded key of a locksmith. He quickened his pace and ducked beneath a low stone archway into a narrow court. Once there, he snapped the umbrella shut and flattened himself against the rotting wood of the nearest doorway.

Thirty seconds later a man in a dark greatcoat and a low-crowned hat appeared in the mouth of the court. The faint light from the street behind him outlined his form but left his face in shadow. He paused and scanned the court.
Come on, you bastard,
Charles thought.

Seconds ticked by. The man walked forward.

Charles lunged out of his hiding place and hurled himself on the shadowy figure. The force of the assault knocked them both to the slimy cobblestones. They landed in a tangle of damp wool and flailing boots. Charles sat up, gripping the man’s throat with both hands, and found himself staring into the blue eyes of his brother.

Chapter 15

C
harles slackened his hold and sat back on his heels amid the litter of rotting apple cores, moldy orange peels, and discarded sausage wrappers. He stared through the curtain of rain at the familiar face. The blue eyes, the guinea-bright hair, the features that were so like his own, save that Edgar was a handsome devil, with the gift of careless, unthinking laughter.

“What the hell are you up to?” Charles said.

“I might ask you the same.” Edgar pushed himself to a sitting position, then let out a yelp of pain. “Christ, Charles, I think you’ve broken my arm.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you, you damn fool.”

Footsteps pattered against the sodden cobblestones. “Charles—Edgar!” Mélanie hesitated a moment, then ran forward and bent over them. “Are you all right?” she said, addressing both brothers impartially.

Edgar brushed the decaying debris off his greatcoat. “No thanks to my brother. What’s he got you in the middle of, Mélanie?”

“We can’t talk in the rain.” Charles pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand to pull his brother up. “I saw a coffeehouse in Russell Street.”

Edgar stared at his brother as though he’d taken leave of his senses. “We can’t take Mélanie to a coffeehouse.”

Mélanie unfurled the umbrella, which she’d retrieved from the doorway. “It’s all right, Edgar, I’ve seen a lot worse today.”

Charles picked up his beaver hat and Edgar’s own, both of which had fallen to the ground in the struggle, shook the rain off them, and returned Edgar’s to him. Edgar frowned as he settled the curly-brimmed hat on his head, but in seven years he had learned better than to argue with Mélanie. They walked back to Russell Street, a motley trio, soaking wet and far from clean.

Steam and tobacco smoke clouded the air in the coffeehouse. The smell of coffee mingled with the stench of damp wool from the garments drying on a bench by the fire. The patrons were a diverse lot, as they would be anywhere near Covent Garden. Actors studying scripts; journalists scribbling in notebooks; merchants and lawyers, with charts and ledgers spread on the tables before them; a couple of young sprigs who looked as if they’d been sent down to rusticate from Oxford or Cambridge; and mixed in among the crowd, no doubt, a handful of men who might find themselves facing the magistrates in the Bow Street Public Office, should ever they have the bad luck to get caught.

There were no other women present. Heads turned in Mélanie’s direction. One of the young sprigs started to say something, but his companion grabbed his arm. The proprietor of the coffeehouse blinked once in surprise, then took Charles’s and Edgar’s greatcoats and Mélanie’s pelisse and showed the three of them to a table with high-backed benches, which afforded a small measure of privacy. At least they hadn’t been followed into the coffeehouse, Charles was sure of that much. He glanced briefly at the torn side of Mélanie’s gown. No sign the bandage had bled through.

Charles surveyed his brother across the table. He saw Edgar nearly every week, at their club, at balls and receptions, at dinners carefully orchestrated by Mélanie and by Edgar’s wife, Lydia. But it was a long time since Charles had talked to his brother about anything this serious. It was a long time since they had talked at all, in any but the most superficial sense. “You first.” Charles fixed his younger brother with a firm stare. “Why, Edgar?”

“Orders.” Edgar leaned against the high back of the bench. “You got some people in the government very nervous, brother. Sneaking off to meet with Spanish rebels in the early hours of the morning is hardly conventional behavior, even for you.”

Damnation. It was one possibility Charles hadn’t considered. “You were sent to trail us?”

Edgar nodded. “Lord Castlereagh summoned me to the Foreign Office this morning. He gave me one of those damned cold looks of his—no offense, Charles, but at times he reminds me of you—and asked me if I knew what the devil my brother and his wife were doing conferring with Raoul O’Roarke before dawn.”

“How did he know—” Charles scraped his hand through his damp hair. “The Foreign Office have spies watching Carevalo and O’Roarke?”

“Not spies exactly. But I think they engaged one of the clerks at Mivart’s to send them word of any suspicious behavior by Carevalo. Surely that doesn’t surprise you. It’s common knowledge that Carevalo’s trying to muster support for a rebellion against a government that our government consider an ally.”

“That our government are going to great lengths to prop up.” Charles dropped his hands to the rough wood of the table. “I don’t suppose anyone thought to follow Carevalo when he left Mivart’s?”

“No. The clerk who’d been hired to keep an eye on him couldn’t leave his post. No one expected Carevalo to leave the hotel. Isn’t he coming back?”

“I seriously doubt it. Go on. What exactly had the Foreign Secretary heard about Carevalo and O’Roarke and Mélanie and me?”

“That O’Roarke arrived at Mivart’s late last night, and Carevalo left unexpectedly in the early hours of the morning. That you and Mélanie then arrived at an hour when no self-respecting members of the polite world would be out of bed and spent some time closeted with O’Roarke. I said it was news to me, I didn’t even know O’Roarke was in England and I thought you’d spent last night at the Esterhazys’. Castlereagh replied that you had, that he’d been at the Esterhazys’ himself, as had Carevalo, who spent a lot of time talking to Mélanie.”

Mélanie opened her mouth as though to interject something, then appeared to think better of it.

“Why—” Charles broke off as a waiter approached their table bearing three mugs of steaming coffee liberally laced with brandy. He curled his fingers round the warmth of the mug. He hadn’t realized how numb they were. “Why was Castlereagh so interested in what Mélanie and I might have been discussing with Carevalo and O’Roarke?”

“Oh, admit it, Charles.” Edgar took a long swallow from his mug and clanked it down on the table. “Your friends at Holland House have been doing their damnedest to put the Spanish liberals in power for years. When a prominent Opposition politician pays a clandestine visit to a Spanish rebel, it’s bound to raise interest. You may disagree with Castlereagh, but it’s understandable that he’d be miffed at the Opposition carrying on a separate foreign policy behind his back.”

“So Castlereagh set you to spy on us?”

Edgar flushed in the murky light of the oil lamps that hung from the coffeehouse ceiling. “He didn’t put it quite so baldly. He said I should find out what the hell—devil you were up to. He said I was to consider myself on leave and he’d make it right with my superiors. I knew damn well that if there was any truth in Castlereagh’s suspicions and I asked you straight out, you’d refuse to tell me or fob me off with some story—”

“Thank you.”

“It’s true. If you thought you were doing something good for Spain, you’d hardly spill it all to Castlereagh just because I asked you.” Edgar took another deep swallow from his mug. “Castlereagh’d had a report that you were seen going into the Drury Lane. I must have got to the theater just after you left. I went in and made inquiries.” He shook his head. “Who the devil is Helen Trevennen and what does she have to do with O’Roarke and Carevalo?”

“Later.” Charles pushed his mug aside. “If you were making inquiries in the theater, you couldn’t have followed us when we left the Drury Lane.”

“No, but the porter had heard you direct Randall to the Marshalsea. Why—no, I’ll finish my story first. When I got to the Marshalsea, I saw your carriage waiting in front, so I waited, too. It was raining by then—of all the foul-smelling places to have to stand about. The things we do for our country.”

The coffeehouse door banged open and shut to admit two young men with books over their heads in place of umbrellas. A blast of chill wind tore through the heavy air. “Finally you came out of the prison and got into a hackney,” Edgar continued, “though I must say it was dashed hard to keep up with you. Did you know you were being followed?”

“We thought we might be.” Charles glanced at Mélanie. “So much for our subterfuge.”

Edgar wiped a trickle of liquid from the black enamel of his mug. “Your subterfuge very nearly worked. I almost went off after the first hackney, and if it hadn’t taken you so long to get the third one, I would have lost you for sure. I say, Mélanie, are you all right? You were walking rather oddly.”

“I daresay you would be too if you’d been wearing my half-boots.” Mélanie had been sitting very still beside Charles, her untouched mug clutched between both hands. “You followed the hackney to Bow Street?”

“Yes. I seem to have spent most of the day waiting on rainy street corners.” Edgar sat back, arms folded across his chest. “So much for my story. Any chance you’ll tell me the truth, brother mine?”

“As a matter of fact there is,” Charles said.

At the table behind them, a lawyer and his clerk were droning on about a contract. Charles took a sip of the coffee and brandy, mostly to give himself a moment to collect his thoughts, although the fiery jolt did not come amiss. Only the truth would ensure that Edgar stopped prying into their visit to O’Roarke. Though they were not as close as they had been as boys, he knew he could trust his brother. With all but the truth about Mélanie. It wouldn’t be fair to ask Edgar to keep that secret.

He set down the mug and recounted the story of Colin’s disappearance in brief, factual terms. He omitted only Mélanie’s revelations about her past as a spy and her links to Raoul O’Roarke.

Edgar’s expressive face went pale with shock, then dark with rage. “By God. Christ, Charles, I’m sorry.” He looked into his mug for a moment. Then he pushed his bench back, scraping it against the broken floorboards. “What are we doing sitting here? There’s no time to be lost.”

“Sit down, Edgar.” Charles gripped his brother’s wrist and forced him back into his seat before they had half the coffeehouse staring at them. “Of course there’s no time to be lost. Which is why we can’t afford to go blundering about without knowing what we’re doing.”