Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

For a moment, all Mélanie could do was stare. The ring shimmered before her. The ring Princess Aysha had commissioned for her husband or her secret lover. The ring Ramón de Carevalo had taken as plunder or received as a gift of love. The ring that had been the cause of victory and betrayal and murder. The gold had a luminous sheen, perhaps because of its age or the fineness of the metalwork or perhaps because one saw it through layers of history.

Mélanie put her fingers to the cold metal to be sure it was really there. She looked into Charles’s eyes and saw a relief so profound it could not be put into words. For all that the ring had been coveted throughout the centuries, surely no one could have valued it as much as they did in this moment.

Edgar wadded up the paper wrappings and tossed them onto the fire.

“I take it you’ve found what you needed?” Trevennen said.

“Yes,” Charles said. “Oh, yes.”

“And to think I never knew it was there. Extraordinary. But why on earth did she think it necessary to hide it? The necklace is a pretty thing and the ring might have fetched her a tidy sum.”

“We may never know.” Charles unhooked his watch chain, strung the ring on it, and rehooked it.

Trevennen shook his head. “Nelly always was one for freakish starts. But I would never expect her to hide away something of value. She didn’t exactly agree with the Bard that ‘The purest treasure mortal times afford / Is spotless reputation.’ Quite the reverse, in fact.”

Edgar didn’t speak until they were back in the hackney. “I don’t believe it,” he said then. His voice was faint, as though he was still in shock. “To own the truth, I don’t think I really believed you’d find it.”

“You found it, brother,” Charles said.

“Only because I was there first.” Edgar’s voice shook with the remnants of disbelief. “So we now have to wait until morning to place an advertisement in the Morning Chronicle and then wait on Carevalo?”

“Damnable, I know. But I don’t think Carevalo will want to wait any more than we do. We should hear from him early tomorrow.”

“Will he give Colin back?”

Charles was silent for the distance between two street lamps. “He’ll agree to meet us. We’ll make sure he gives Colin back.”

Mélanie rubbed her hands over the velvet of her cloak. Her palms were damp. The first euphoric rush of the ring’s discovery had faded. The constant need to think and plan was gone, leaving a hollow void inside her. All the fears she had forced herself to hold at bay during the search crowded into that void.

Her legs felt unsteady beneath her as they climbed the front steps in Berkeley Square. Her arms quivered, as they did after she’d carried Jessica back from a long walk. She was conscious of aches in her muscles that she hadn’t been aware of before.

“Mr. O’Roarke arrived a short time ago,” Michael told them as he took their cloaks. “He’s in the library.”

They hurried into the library. Raoul was standing over the chessboard, a pawn in one hand. “Mélanie. Fraser. You’ll forgive me, but—” He scanned their faces. “You’ve found it?”

Charles paused just beyond the threshold. One gray gaze met another. In that moment, Mélanie thought that she was a fool not to have seen long since that they were father and son. Charles unhooked his watch chain and held out the ring.

Raoul stared at it. “My compliments.”

“It was Mélanie who steered us in the right direction, and Edgar who actually found it. You remember my brother?”

“Captain Fraser.” Raoul inclined his head.

Edgar returned the gesture with a stiff nod. “O’Roarke.”

Raoul’s gaze turned back to the ring. “I always thought all the fuss about a bit of gold and gems was foolish. Yet it does have a certain power, if only because so many generations have endowed it with that power. Where was it?”

Charles returned the ring to his watch chain. “In her uncle’s rooms in the Marshalsea.”

Raoul lifted his brows. “Remarkable. But why hide it?”

“Insurance against a bleak future, perhaps?” Charles said. “The truth is, we don’t know and perhaps never will.”

Mélanie walked into the room. “Why are you here, Raoul?” Belatedly, she remembered Edgar’s presence and realized she should have said “Mr. O’Roarke.”

Raoul set the pawn back on its black square on the chessboard. “I know where Carevalo is.”

Mélanie was at his side in an instant. “What?”

Raoul squeezed her fingers and detached her hand from his sleeve, a warning in his eyes. “Earlier today—yesterday, strictly speaking—I attempted to trace a lady of Carevalo’s acquaintance who plies her wares in Soho. She goes by the name of Corinthian Nan. She has no permanent address, so it was difficult to track her down, but I left numerous messages with offers of a generous reward. She arrived at my hotel shortly after you left tonight.”

Charles closed the distance between them. “She’d seen Carevalo?”

“Not for several days. But apparently he talks to her more than to anyone else—perhaps he feels free to do so because she’s so far removed from the circles in which any of us move. He seems to have enjoyed boasting to her about his other conquests, which is about the level of finesse one could expect from Carevalo in the bedchamber. According to Corinthian Nan, Carevalo’s been much preoccupied with a Mrs. Grafton, who possesses a convenient Thames-side villa in Chiswick to which she can escape while business keeps her husband in town. The villa is kept shut up, except when the family go there in the summer. Mrs. Grafton even gave Carevalo a set of keys—he showed them to Corinthian Nan as a boast of his powers.”

Charles frowned. “That doesn’t prove—”

“No. But after Nan left, I turned to last week’s editions of the Morning Chronicle—I had sent out for them earlier, thinking they might be of help. Which they were. According to that estimable paper, Mr. and Mrs. Grafton departed for Paris on Friday last. Leaving a conveniently empty house in Chiswick to which Carevalo possesses keys. I was going to wait for you another quarter hour, then set off for Chiswick myself.”

Charles nodded. “It’s not conclusive, but it’s definitely worth investigating.”

Edgar stared at Raoul from beneath drawn brows. “You’re being very generous with your help, O’Roarke.”

Raoul turned his gaze to him. “My dear Captain Fraser.” His voice was gentle. “The boy is my grandson.”

Edgar flushed and lowered his gaze.

Charles paced the carpet. “If you involve yourself, Carevalo will know you’re working with us.”

Raoul’s mouth tightened. “At the moment that seems of little concern. I find I’m rather averse to the idea of Carevalo surviving this business.”

Charles met his gaze with the force of one sword striking another. “We get Colin back before we even think of vengeance.”

“That goes without saying. I think we can safely take one of your carriages. There seems little risk of being followed.”

Mélanie saw Charles bridle at the word “we,” consider the value of help, and come to a decision. “I’ll order the carriage. We can leave in a quarter hour.”

“We’ll need to reload the pistols,” Edgar said. “I’ll fetch dry powder. You still keep it in your study?”

The Fraser brothers strode from the room. The heavy doors closed. Mélanie found herself alone with her former lover.

She felt his gaze on her. He could read her like no one else—except Charles, which was odd, as she’d kept so much from Charles. “Are you going to be all right, querida?” His voice had that cashmere softness that was so rare and so devastating.

She walked to the fireplace, arms wrapped round herself. “If we get Colin back, the rest of it doesn’t matter.”

He followed her with his gaze. “I don’t think even you believe that’s true, Mélanie. Getting Colin back of course comes before everything else, but I think your life with Charles matters very much to you.”

“Thank you, Raoul.” Her voice was so dry it cut. “I must be getting very slow. I keep forgetting that you know me better than I know myself.”

“Never that. But I may on occasion see things you miss.” He regarded her, his head tilted to one side. “It strikes me that Charles’s capacity for forgiveness and understanding is remarkable.”

Charles’s face, when the full realization of her betrayal had broken on him, was imprinted on her memory like a battle scar. “Some things are beyond forgiveness, Raoul.”

He wandered back to the chessboard and stared down at it. “Like marrying your mistress to your son?”

She watched him, the graceful hands, the loose, elegant limbs, the face that could hide more than that of any man she knew. “Among other things.”

“Most of which, no doubt, I’ve done in my life.” He picked up a knight and moved it. “Who was playing white, you or Charles?”

“I was.”

He reached for a rook and paused with the crenellated top between his fingers. “He had you quite neatly boxed in. You saw a way out?”

She stared at the board. Memory of that two-day-old game returned like the plot of some long-forgotten play. “I was going to use the pawn on the far left to block his bishop, then bring up the rook to put him in check.”

“Yes, that’s what I would have done myself. He could protect his king, but you’d have him on the run.”

She watched his elegant fingers hover over the board. Memories coursed through her with unexpected strength. Fingers brushing her cheek as she drifted into sleep. A steady hand teaching her how to fire a pistol and wield a knife. The glow of cannon fire reflected in his eyes. The feel of his hands tossing her into the saddle. The knowledge that only he could understand the way their work corroded the soul. The rush of one mind meeting another, as sweet as a caress, as intoxicating as champagne. “I knew you used me,” she said, “like you used everyone else. But I thought you were honest about it.”

He moved her rook to the attack, then moved one of Charles’s knights to protect his king. “If I’d told you Charles is my son, would you have made a different choice?”

She bit back an angry retort and forced herself to consider. “I don’t know. But I should have been able to decide for myself.”

He turned from the chessboard and looked her in the face. “Are you sorry you’re married to him?”

“Not for myself. But we did an unforgivable thing to him, Raoul. I don’t expect him ever to trust me again. I only hope he doesn’t lose his ability to trust at all.”

“Charles is too sensible a man to do that.”

“He has as many scars as the rest of us. Perhaps more. He’s just adept at hiding them.” She looked into his steady gray eyes. A painful truth burst from her lips. “Oh, God, Raoul, I probably would have married him even if I’d known he was your son. Part of me couldn’t resist the opportunity. Not just for liberty or the future of Spain. For the sheer challenge of it. What could be more difficult? To deceive my own husband.” And not just any husband. A man with whom she seemed to share her soul. With whom she did share her soul. “It was my greatest role.”

“And you played it superbly.”

“Because, as in all good performances, I found the truth within it. I learned to love Charles and that made it easier to betray him. You taught me well.”

Instead of meeting the challenge in her eyes, his gaze softened, most unfairly. “Even if Charles can forgive you, can you ever forgive yourself?”

“I don’t know.” She swallowed, aware of a bitter, empty place deep inside her. “I’ve long since faced the fact that much of what we did was unforgivable.”

He looked down at the chessboard again, the pieces frozen in the midst of plot and counterplot. “Betrayal has such a black-and-white sound, doesn’t it?” His fingers drifted over the squares of the chessboard. “But like most things, it really isn’t anything of the sort. Betrayal of a country, an ideal, a lover, a spouse, a friend. It’s often impossible to be loyal to all. Which loyalty comes first?”

She glanced at the Siena marble table, the Aubusson carpet, the silver candlesticks, the intricate fretwork on the walls. “I claim to believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity. And I live here.”

“A point. Though judging by those of Charles’s speeches I’ve read, his political ideals are remarkably similar to yours. Or mine, for that matter.”

“That’s true. And he wouldn’t let them be compromised by the challenge of a game.”

“He moves in a different world than we did. He plays within the system, which can be damnably difficult when the system itself is corrupt.”

“But at least it doesn’t force him to hide in the shadows.”

“You’ve hardly been hiding in the shadows these past years, querida.” Raoul watched her with a faint smile. “You help write his speeches, don’t you?”

“Is my style so obvious?”

“Only to someone who knows you.”

“Charles helps me when I address a public meeting or write a pamphlet. We—work well together.” The words seemed pathetically inadequate to describe the melding of minds that their marriage could be. “I’ve never tried to influence him to say anything he didn’t believe in. Nor has he with me.”

“No, that would be out of character for both of you.” Raoul was still watching her steadily.

She looked into his smiling, unreadable gaze. “You’ve followed Charles’s career more closely than I realized.”

“I could hardly fail to be interested.” He paused a moment. “I must admit that when I read his speeches I’m conscious of a pride I have no right to feel.”

“How could you bear it?” she said, thinking of Charles and Colin and what he had and hadn’t been to both of them. “You gave up both your sons.”

The smile faded from his eyes, replaced by the blankness of emotion held in check. “I was scarcely in a position to do much for either one of them.”

“Did it never occur to you that they might need you?”

His mouth twisted. “I don’t think I’d have made much of a father, querida. Colin has a far better one.”

“Charles didn’t.”

“No. Charles’s childhood was—unfortunate. I did try—When he was a boy, when I was still in Ireland, I spent time with him when I could, without rousing suspicions. But then after the Irish uprising it was a long time before I could comfortably go back to Britain.” He paused and drew a breath that did not sound entirely even. “His mother would send me news of him from time to time. I confess—I missed him more than I would have expected.”

Mélanie stared at him. At nineteen, she had been arrogantly confident that she understood him. Now she wondered if she had known him at all. “The lock of hair,” she said. “The lock of blond hair you keep in your watch fob. For a moment I thought it might be Elizabeth Fraser’s. But it isn’t a woman’s at all, is it? It’s Charles’s baby hair.”

Raoul returned her gaze, though she sensed he wanted nothing so much as to look away from her. “What a dreadfully sentimental thought.”

She took a step toward him. “If you owe me nothing else, you owe me an honest answer. We’re talking about my husband. It’s Charles’s, isn’t it?”

Raoul drew another harsh breath, then released it. “Elizabeth sent the lock of hair to me just after his first birthday. It’s hardly the sort of thing I could fail to keep.”

“You could have tucked it away in a drawer somewhere. Instead you carried it with you. Because—”

He continued to watch her. She would swear his color had deepened. “I may not have your parental instincts, Mélanie, but I’m not wholly devoid of them.”

She remembered, in a moment of foolishness after Colin’s birth, asking Raoul if he wanted to see the baby. Raoul had said No, I think I’d better not in the sort of detached voice that, now she thought about it, was just like Charles’s when he most wanted to hide his feelings. Later Raoul had seen Colin at a reception she and Charles gave in Lisbon. He looked at the child with the same carefully blank expression she had seen on his face a few moments ago. “That’s why you never wanted to see Colin, isn’t it? Not because you didn’t care, but because you were afraid of caring too much. Because in your own way you’d done your damnedest to be a parent to Charles and you knew how much loving a child can hurt.”

“Colin didn’t need another parent. Charles did.”

“And yet when you saw Charles again in Lisbon—”

A shade closed over the pain in his eyes. “He was a grown man and we were on opposite sides.”

She held him with her gaze, refusing to have her questions turned away. “You sent me after the ring knowing I’d meet your son. Did you expect me to seduce him?”

“I never asked you how you got your information. Though seduction would have been at odds with the role you were playing on that mission.”

“Damn you.” She whirled away from him, then turned back and said with reckless defiance, “Charles is mad enough to think you’re in love with me.”

Raoul went still for the length of a musket shot. “I told you he was a sensible man.”

She tried to swallow and found her throat constricted. “You never said it.”

“Don’t you go sentimental on me, querida. You never needed words to know what I was thinking or feeling.”

Her fingers closed on her arms, pressing through the merino of her gown. “I never had time to pay much attention to my own feelings, let alone anyone else’s.”

“Precisely.” He moved toward her, then checked himself a few feet off. She knew only one other pair of eyes that could be at once so cool and so intense. “Long before I met you I’d decided where my greatest loyalty lay. I consider regrets a singular waste of time. That doesn’t mean I don’t have them. But any good chess player knows one can’t change one’s mind after a piece is moved.” His gaze moved over her face. She felt it like a caress. “I remember when I realized I’d lost you. No, that’s melodramatic and unfair. You were never mine to lose. But I remember when I realized things would never be the same between us. You hadn’t been married long. We met in a park in Lisbon on a miserably cold January afternoon. You said—”

“That it wasn’t at all like I expected and I couldn’t control him.” It was what she had lain in bed thinking on her wedding night, while Charles slept in her arms. She’d known that he had a quick wit she admired, a keen mind that could prove dangerous, an integrity that put her to shame. But she hadn’t guessed at the emotional depths that lay beneath the cool, controlled façade.

Raoul moved to the fireplace and stood looking down at the coals. “Mélanie, if worst does come to worst—”

“You’d take me back?” She gave the words a bitter twist.

He looked at her over his shoulder. “I won’t insult either you or myself by taking that seriously. But I would make sure you and your children were never in want. I owe you that, at least.”

“Easing your conscience?”

“Say, rather, settling an old debt. Before today I’d have said that under the same circumstances you’d do as much for me.”

“That might still be true.” She watched his face in the firelight. She wondered how such a tumult of conflicting feelings could coexist inside her. “Raoul? Do you ever wonder if we were wrong?”

He smiled. “Oh, my darling girl. I rarely sleep well. As you know better than anyone.”

“Did you ever think about—”

“Giving it up? Walking away from the game? Yes, as a matter of fact. When you told me you were pregnant.”

She sucked in her breath and put a hand on a chair back to steady herself.

He continued to regard her with a steady gaze. “But in the end my love of the game was too strong. Or my belief in the cause. Or both.”

“Perhaps we never should have begun the game in the first place.”

“I rate my powers rather high, querida, but I didn’t begin the war. Would any purpose have been better served if I’d joined the French army and spent the war in straightforward butchery? If you’d remained in the brothel and sold your body to whichever army controlled the city?”

“We didn’t do very well as it was, Raoul. We lost.”

“We tried. That’s the most one can ask of one’s self.”

“That,” Mélanie said, “sounds exactly like something Charles might say. Only underneath he’d be cursing himself for his inability to win the war single-handed.”

Raoul’s mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile. “Then in some ways, he’s remarkably like me.”

The door opened on his last words to admit Charles and Edgar. Charles paused on the threshold and surveyed her and Raoul for a moment, then continued pulling on his gloves as though he had noticed nothing. “The carriage is ready. Shall we go?”