Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

Of course. Of course. Of course. The obviousness of it pummeled him, a series of blows he should have seen coming. But he was so used to thinking of Colin as his son that he rarely considered who had performed the biological act.

The library was suspended in stillness. The sunlight burnished the oak and velvet and struck sparks off the gilded book spines. The smell of ink and leather hung in the air with pungent familiarity. Books had been his retreat since boyhood. Now even this haven proved to be one more chamber in the house of cards that was his home.

He looked at Colin’s mother. “I must be very slow. You were in the mountains to intercept me. The rest was a cover story. So of course you weren’t raped and that isn’t how you became pregnant.”

“No.” Mélanie’s gaze was steady, though her pulse was beating very fast just above the muslin at the neck of her gown.

Charles turned to O’Roarke. Colin could have inherited his dark hair and fine bones from Mélanie as easily as from this man. But the slanting, quizzical brows and the long, mobile mouth were unmistakable, now that one knew where to look. “Did you know Mélanie was pregnant?” Charles asked. His voice was a hoarse rasp, alien to his own ears. “Was marrying her to me part of the plan?”

The quizzical brows lifted. “I’m a good strategist, Fraser, but not that far-seeing. I didn’t know Mélanie was pregnant when I sent her after the ring. She didn’t know it herself. Nor did we bargain on the extent of your gallantry. We improvised from there.”

Gray predawn light, clinging mist. An unlooked-for shock of kinship. An unexpected whiff of a happiness he had never thought to find. “So you lost the ring but gained a French agent as a British diplomat’s wife. You can’t have considered the mission a complete failure.”

“On the contrary.” O’Roarke smiled briefly. “Mélanie was my greatest success as a spymaster.”

Charles pressed his hand to his temple. His image of the life he and Mélanie had built together—against all odds, with painstaking care—had been blasted to bits. There was no coherent picture to take its place, merely fragments which swirled painfully in his head, like bits of shrapnel in a wound. “How long?” he asked, without thinking, without planning.

“Since the start of the war, or very nearly,” Mélanie said. “It was 1809 when I met Raoul.”

Charles forced his gaze to focus. He stared into the blue-green depths of her eyes. “And you worked for him all through the war?”

“Yes.” She answered without hesitation.

“And afterwards? When we were in Vienna at the Congress? When we were in Brussels before Waterloo? During Waterloo?”

“Yes.”

He drew a breath that seemed to grate through him. “And now?”

She looked at him in that way that only she could, as though she was seeing straight into his soul. “It’s over, Charles. It ended after Waterloo. We lost.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

She swallowed. Lines he had never before noticed stood out against her finely textured skin. “I told you,” she said, with a control so tight it seemed to crackle through the air, “I no longer expect you to believe anything I say to you.”

“But it happens to be the truth,” O’Roarke said. “She told me after Waterloo that in the future she’d no longer act as my agent.”

Charles looked at his wife’s lover. He would have hit him, but that seemed a woefully inadequate response in the face of what had been revealed. “Shut up, O’Roarke. If I don’t believe Mélanie, I certainly won’t believe you.” He looked back at his wife. “Is Jessica mine?”

Mélanie sucked in her breath as though he’d slapped her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles. You can see it in her face.”

“Convenient.”

Her hands clenched at her sides. “I didn’t need to see her face to know that no one else could be her father.” She hesitated a moment. “There hasn’t been anyone else for a long time.”

“You’ll have to tell me more someday. I’m afraid there isn’t time now.” Charles wrenched his gaze away from her and spread his hands palms-down on the cold, uncompromising marble of the table. He couldn’t seem to stop them from shaking. “O’Roarke, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you want to get my—your—our son back. What else do you know about Carevalo?”

“No more than I told you at Mivart’s. Do you know whom he employed to actually take the boy?”

“Not by name. We have a Bow Street Runner looking for them.”

O’Roarke’s eyes narrowed. “The Bow Street Runners are in charge of ferreting out foreign spies.”

“Among other things. That should make Roth right at home in this mess. Tell me again that the ring never found its way into French hands.”

“If it had found its way into French hands, we’d have used it.”

Charles looked at O’Roarke a moment longer, then nodded. “If one of the British soldiers really had the ring, then it must have been on his person when he died. Unless Baxter had it. Baxter’s the next person to talk to.” He glanced at Mélanie. “Are you coming with me?”

“Of course.”

O’Roarke’s gaze flickered between them. “I don’t know where Carevalo is, but there are one or two places I can make inquiries. Mélanie can tell you I used to be rather good at tracking people. I’ll see what I can learn.”

“Tomás might learn more asking questions among the servants,” Mélanie said.

“I’m afraid my loyal valet left me last spring. My new man is decent at starching the linen but no earthly good as an agent. I’ll do my best on my own.” O’Roarke picked up his gloves. “I have no doubt Carevalo will be getting reports on events in London. I need hardly say that the less he knows about any connection between us, the better. For all our sakes—and the boy’s.”

Charles bit back the impulse to fling O’Roarke’s tacit offer of help in his face. He needed the man, damn his soul to hell. “You know where to find us. I presume you and my wife are experts at sending messages without detection.”

“We’ve done it once or twice.” O’Roarke tugged on his gloves. “How the two of you settle matters between yourselves is your own affair. But take care you don’t let Carevalo guess even a hint of the truth about Mélanie’s past. He’s been longing to wreak vengeance on the French ever since his own family were killed. The last thing you want is for him to realize he has the child of a French agent in his power.”

Mélanie tucked her disordered hair into the knot at the nape of her neck. “I’m not a fool, Raoul. By now you should know Charles isn’t, either.”

The three of them left the room in a sort of strange solidarity, like rival MPs forced into an uneasy alliance by parliamentary expediency. Charles retained no coherent memory of the next ten minutes. Somehow he must have said and done what was necessary. O’Roarke was shown from the house. The carriage was brought round. He and Mélanie settled themselves inside, wrapped in the appropriate outer garments. He directed the coachman to Covent Garden, then turned to Mélanie and spoke the words that most needed to be said. “Do you believe O’Rourke”

“As much as I believe anything. Raoul can be ruthless, but he has his own loyalties.”

He leaned back into his corner of the carriage. They were at opposite ends of the seat. “Was he loyal to you?”

She turned her head and met the full force of his gaze. “After a fashion. He never forced me to take a risk I didn’t understand.”

“Including marrying me?”

The pleated silk that lined her bonnet cast cool, blue-tinged shadows over her face. Her eyes were very dark, almost black. “He wanted me to accept your offer. But he left the decision up to me.”

“Kind of him.”

“Charles—” She reached out to him, then let her hand fall in her lap. “You’d better ask me whatever you need to ask now, or we’ll never get through this.”

They rounded a corner. He gripped the strap harder than was necessary. “No, I think I’d better not. Or we’ll never get through this.”

She watched him with that damned look that could always slash through his defenses. “I think Raoul cares about Colin more than he’d admit even to himself. But Colin’s your son in every way that matters.”

“Of course he’s my son.” His hand tightened round the strap. The leather cut into his bandaged palm. “I can understand that you used me. I was fair game. But you used Colin. Before he was even born.”

“Darling—”

His hand jerked, wrenching the strap from the carriage wall. “You bloody bitch, don’t you dare try to make excuses for yourself.”

She sucked in her breath. “What could I possibly say that would excuse what I did?”

“Nothing.” And yet even as he spoke, he knew that a part of him would clutch at any excuse she offered, as a drowning man clutches the flimsiest shard of timber. Christ, he was a fool.

He fixed his gaze across the carriage. The patterns on the watered silk squabs wavered and shimmered before his eyes. Questions he hadn’t meant to ask came unbidden to his lips. “Surely O’Roarke could have used your help even after Waterloo. Why the hell did you stop working for him?”

“Because I’m your wife.”

The carriage lurched over a loose cobblestone. He gave a laugh that was as rough as the scrape of the iron-bound wheels. “You’ve been my wife for seven years.” He swung his head round and met her gaze. “Or had you forgotten?”

“That’s something I’ve never forgotten, darling.” She drew a breath, as though she meant to say more. Then she checked herself, hands folded tight in her lap.

He looked from her still hands to her pale, shadowed face. “Where did you meet O’Roarke?” he asked.

She jerked her chin up a fraction. The ribbons on her bonnet rustled. “In a brothel.”

“You continue to surprise me. What was the Comte de Saint-Vallier’s daughter doing in a brothel?”

“I’m not the Comte de Saint-Vallier’s daughter, Charles. My parents were traveling actors.” She paused a moment but kept her gaze on his face. “I was in the brothel because I worked there. Before Raoul introduced me to a new game, I was a daughter of one of the oldest games of all. I was a whore.”

He was silent for the length of a heartbeat. “Of course. And O’Roarke suggested you sell your body for military secrets instead of a few paltry coins?”

“Why not?” Her voice went sharp. “If one’s been forced into the gutter, why not make the most of it?”

“Why not indeed. Though surely when it came to selling yourself in marriage, you could have done better than a mere attaché.”

“I told you, I never meant—” She slammed her fist against her mouth. “When Raoul sent me after the ring, seduction wasn’t any part of the mission.”

“No, apparently that was an added benefit.” He pressed his hands over his eyes, but a thousand memories deluged his senses. The whiff of roses and vanilla. The slither of a silk stocking. The taste of champagne in her mouth. The feel of her body clenched round his own and her lips against the hollow of his throat. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “On our wedding night I told you I wouldn’t rush you into intimacy. I said we could wait until after the baby was born. Why the hell didn’t you take me up on it? Who knew what the future held. You might never have had to sleep with me at all.”

She was silent. He dragged his hands from his face and stared at her. “Damn it, madam, you owe me an answer.”

“I knew I’d done an unspeakable thing to you, Charles. I thought—” She looked at him the way she looked at the children when she had to put a particularly harsh truth to them. “A real wedding night was the least I owed you.”

He had thought nothing she could say could sicken him further. He had been wrong. “I see,” he said, over the bitter bile of memories turned to ash. “So it was payment.”

“I prefer to call it reparations.”

“Dear Christ.” Moonlight shimmering through the linen of her nightdress. A hand trembling in his own. Eyes that shone with fear and trust. A communion that seemed absolute. A lie that cut deeper than any words. The fragile woman he’d held in his arms that night had staged the whole scene. It was a fitting start to their marriage.

“Charles—”

“Don’t. Whatever it is, don’t say it. We’re going to get Colin back. And then so help me God I never want to see you again.”

Her eyes turned as impenetrable as a fathoms-deep sea. “I didn’t expect that you would, darling,” she said.

He wrenched his gaze away. He didn’t let himself look at her again until they reached Covent Garden. He was shaking as though with a fever. Rage choked his throat, flayed his skin, clawed at his vital organs. He had a sudden image of his mother hurling a crystal scent bottle against a silk-hung wall. The memory of her scream echoed in his head.

No. Damn it, no. He wasn’t his mother. He could control this. He could control anything if he put his mind to it. His marriage might be over, but his son still needed him.

The coachman pulled up as close to the Thistle as he could. Charles jumped down and nearly skidded on a rotted cabbage leaf. The smell of overripe oranges and a babble of hawkers’ cries filled the air. Two women with liberal amounts of rouge on their cheeks and scant covering on their bosoms were leaning against the wall of the tavern. They moved toward him, then subsided against the wall as he handed Mélanie from the carriage. He kept hold of Mélanie’s arm and steered her past a trio of young men in grubby corduroy jackets who were warming their hands at a fire laid in the street. One man’s gaze slid sideways toward Mélanie’s shot-silk reticule.

The Thistle was a narrow brick building, with a wood-faced lower story and brightly polished brass lamps flanking the door. The air in the common room smelled of sour ale and freshly brewed coffee. Charles scanned the dozen or so customers who lounged about the tables. Two gray-haired men were bent over a backgammon board. A man in a green-grocer’s apron was gulping down a mug of coffee and eating a paper-wrapped sausage, one eye on the mantel clock. A woman in a low-cut gown and a tattered lace shawl was slumped at one of the tables, listening to the attentions of a stringy young man in a flashy coat as though she was too tired to shoo him away. A potboy threaded his way between the tables with a pot of foaming ale.

Charles signaled to the potboy, but as he did so, Baxter himself came through the doorway from the room beyond and let out an exclamation of pleased surprise. “Good God, it’s Mr. Fraser. And Mrs. Fraser. An honor, ma’am.”

Charles subdued his impatience and shook the tavern-keeper’s hand, pleased to find his own hand relatively steady. “Could we have a word in private, Baxter?”

“Of course, of course.” Baxter led them up a narrow staircase to the family quarters and opened a door onto a cheerful, floral-papered room with dried flowers on the mantel and a child’s building blocks strewn over the hearth rug. “Tea? Or a spot of ale? No? I suppose it is a bit early. Just let me light the fire.”

Mélanie sank down on a black horsecloth settee. Charles moved to a straight-backed chair several feet away from her. Baxter’s gaze flickered at the seating choice. He busied himself adjusting the cabbage rose fire screen. He had grown a bit thicker about the waistline, but otherwise he was unchanged since their days in Spain. “Well, now. Very kind of you to call, but it can’t be just to chat about the past.” He turned to face them. “What’s amiss?”

Charles told him, as succinctly as possible, omitting only Mélanie’s revelations. Baxter’s eyes went wide with surprise, then dark with anger. “By God, sir. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but Mrs. Baxter and I have three little ones of our own. What kind of fiend would do that to a child?”

“Someone willing to go to any lengths to achieve his objective.” Charles was relieved to find that his voice still sounded rational. He was putting to use every lesson he’d ever learned about self-control in a crisis, every trick mastered in boyhood to hold feelings at bay.

Baxter unclenched his hands. “Carevalo wants the ring that much?”

“Apparently. My mistake was not to realize it sooner.” “Mistake” was a woefully inadequate way to describe such a sin of omission. But there would be time, later, to curse himself for the fool he’d been. Time to remember that whatever sins Mélanie had committed, he was the one who had failed their son.

Baxter stared at Charles, a dawning realization on his face. “You think I’m the British soldier who had the ring all along?”

Charles watched him with an unwavering gaze. “We don’t know what to think. We’re investigating every possibility.”

“No, you’re right to wonder.” Baxter slicked his sparse dark hair back from his forehead. “It would have to be me, wouldn’t it. That would explain why the ring didn’t turn up on any of the dead men. But as God is my witness, Mr. Fraser—”

“‘Saint-seducing gold,’” Mélanie murmured. “It would have been a great temptation. After all, the British would still get the ring. Why shouldn’t you gain by the transaction?” She was tugging off her gloves, as though she couldn’t bear to be still. A pearl button snapped off and rolled to the floorboards.

Baxter bent down and retrieved the button. “I’m not a liar, ma’am. I don’t know how to prove it to you, save to say it plain out.” He held out his hand to her.

Mélanie leaned forward and took the button from him. “Truthfully, I never thought you were, Mr. Baxter.”

Baxter’s shoulders relaxed. He stared at his broad hands, smeared with soot from lighting the coals. “It’s odd, I don’t talk about the war much as a rule—don’t like to upset Mrs. Baxter. Don’t think about it much neither, truth be told. It was an ugly time. Hard sometimes to believe it really happened.” He looked at the children’s blocks on the hearth rug for a moment, then turned his gaze to Charles. “So that ring was the reason we were in the mountains. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe the gentleman who was here last week.”

Charles gave a jerk of surprise. “What gentleman?”

Baxter looked up at him. “A gentleman by the name of Lorano came to see me last week. He told me this same story about the ring. I assumed he’d have been to see you, too.”

Charles glanced instinctively at Mélanie. “What did the man look like?”

“Nothing very much to speak of, sir. About your years. Tallish. Dark hair. Not too heavy. Seemed to be a Spaniard. Leastways he had the coloring and a bit of an accent and the name sounds Spanish. I had no reason to think he wasn’t who he said he was.”

“No, of course not.” Mélanie scrunched her gloves in her lap. Her nails pressed into her palms. “What did this Mr. Lorano say to you?”

“That he was trying to trace the ring. I insisted the French must have got it, but he said he had doubts. Asked if there was a chance we buried it with any of the dead. I assumed he was a friend of this Marqués de Carevalo, though come to think of it he didn’t come right out and say so.” Baxter rubbed at the soot on his hands. “Do you think it was my answers made Carevalo decide you must have the ring yourself?”

“I doubt it,” Charles said. “Carevalo’s been convinced I have the ring ever since he talked to the French soldier. If he was going to make inquiries, he’d have come himself. I doubt this Lorano is his friend, or even working with him.”

“Who the devil is he, then?”

“I’m not sure. But we may have competition in finding the ring.” Charles leaned forward, hands clasped between his knees. “Is there any chance we buried it with the dead after the attack?”

“I don’t see how, sir. I went through their pockets careful as can be, in case there was anything to send on to their families.”

“What did you take out?”

Baxter frowned. “The Spaniard asked me the same thing. One fellow had a watch. Another had a lock of his sweetheart’s hair. I think that was all, except that Lieutenant Jennings had a letter on him.”

Charles straightened up. “What sort of a letter? How many pages?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, sir. But it must have been longish. It was a fair fat packet.”

“Fat enough for the ring to be tucked inside?”

Baxter’s eyes went wide. He nodded slowly. “Aye. More than fat enough.”

Charles regarded him for a moment. “You didn’t say anything about it at the time.”

Baxter glanced down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “Well, no, sir, I didn’t quite like to. It—ah—the letter wasn’t addressed to Mrs. Jennings at their house in Surrey. Seemed more discreet just to send it on to the lady quiet-like. If I’d known—”

“But you couldn’t have, of course. Did you tell Lorano about the letter?”

“I mentioned it, sir. Didn’t see any reason not to. I’m not sure he put it together that the ring might have been inside. I didn’t myself properly until just now.”

Charles sat forward in his chair. “Do you remember the lady’s name?”

Baxter’s face screwed up with concentration. Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw Mélanie twisting her gloves round her fingers.

“Ellen something,” Baxter said at last. “No, Helen, that was it.” His face cleared. “Helen Trevennen. Like Helen of Troy, I thought. I suppose that’s why it stuck in my head.”

Charles released his breath and gave thanks to a God he had long since ceased to believe in. “Did you mention her name to Lorano?”

“No. I said I couldn’t remember—which was true until just now. Seemed best to leave well enough alone.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you remember her direction as well?”

“Oh, I remember that right enough. She must have been an actress or a dancer or something of the sort. The letter wasn’t directed to her lodgings. It was sent to the Drury Lane Theatre.” He shook his head. “Fancy my remembering after all these years.”