The Mask of Night

I’ve decided to give a masquerade of all things. Oliver teases that I’m becoming shockingly fast. You must come with me to choose the silk for the ballroom hangings.

Lady Isobel Lydgate to Mélanie Fraser

10 December 1819

Mélanie paused on the edge of the dance floor and stirred the candle-warmed air with her black silk fan. Ladies and gentlemen in costumes from all eras of history (and several that existed only in the imagination) crowded the red-and-gold brocade draped room. Yet the neat patterns of a country dance and the smell of ices from Gunter’s, scent blended at Floris, and snuff from Friburg & Treyer betrayed that this was the world of London’s beau monde.

A world she had lived at the heart of for three years, balanced as precariously as if she perched on the edge of a gilded teacup. A world in which invitations to her entertainments were sought after, the style of her gowns and hair was copied, images of her face were displayed in printshop windows. A world in its own way as perilous as that of Bonaparte’s court or the war-torn Peninsula. A world that would turn on her in an instant if they had the least idea of the truth of her past and her marriage to one of their own.

Simon Tanner, her waltzing partner, procured two glasses of champagne from a passing footman and pressed one into her hand. “Excellent vintage,” he murmured, clinking his glass against hers. “Though mulled wine might have been more appropriate for a Twelfth Night masquerade.”

Simon was costumed as Francois Villon in a tunic and boots. There was a red stain on his sleeve that Mélanie had thought for a moment was blood and then realized was red wine. A mishap or part of his costume? Probably the later. Simon, one of London’s foremost playwrights, had a keen eye for detail and a knack for framing his arguments in such dazzlingly witty language that he shot his verbal darts straight past the eye of the censor.

“I still haven’t figured out who half the people are,” Mélanie said, scanning the masked and costumed crowd. “I think that’s Caro Lamb as Cleopatra.”

Simon nodded. “Her sister-in-law said she supposed we should be grateful she didn’t come as Salome minus six of the seven veils.” His gaze shifted among the dancers. ‘You’d think the Regent could have come up with something more imaginative than Henry VIII. I’m sure the Don Juan is Val Talbot, and I think the Greek goddess draping herself all over him is Lady Frances Webster. Who’s the Lancelot? Is it the Comte de Flahaut?’

Mélanie nearly choked on her champagne. A shocking lapse, she was losing her edge. All she need do is make certain Simon had no notion of the circumstances of her past acquaintance with the Comte de Flahaut. She followed the direction of Simon’s gaze to a gentleman in a silver tunic and ornamental sword waltzing with a lady whose gothic ivory gown and jeweled tiara called to mind Guenevere.

“Yes, I think it is Flahaut,” she said in a steady voice. “And the lady is his wife.”

Simon studied the couple. “It’s an odd world we live in. At the time of Waterloo, I’d have never thought to see one of Napoleon Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp in the same ballroom as the Prince Regent.”

Mélanie took a careful sip of champagne. ”I imagine a number of people would prefer not to see Flahaut here. Including his father-in-law.” Flahaut’s bride’s father, Admiral Keith, had escorted Napoleon Bonaparte to exile on St. Helena. He’d disowned his daughter for marrying Flahaut.

“Because Flahaut fought for Napoleon Bonaparte?” Simons said. “Or—?”

“Because he was Hortense Bonaparte’s lover?” Mélanie finished, for all the world as though Hortense Bonaparte, now exiled from France, separated from her husband, and living with her two sons in Switzerland, was merely a name to be gossiped about. “Both I suspect.”

Simon watched Flahaut shepherd his wife to a gilt chair. “Rumor had it Flahaut was quite devoted to Queen Hortense. I wonder what happened.”

“Waterloo,” Mélanie said. “It changed everything.”

A trio of girls in clinging medieval gowns brushed past, followed by a gentleman whose Trojan armor was given an anachronistic touch by the red enamel snuff box he was flicking open. Simon was besieged by two young girls who wanted to ask about his latest play.

Mélanie moved toward the French windows in the hope that some cooler air would have leaked in round the glass. A hand closed on her arm. She turned and found herself looking into a pair of clear, bright blue eyes, behind a gilded half-mask. The rest of the woman’s face was covered in white paint, bright lip and cheek rouge, dark brow blacking. A remarkably realistic imitation of Queen Elizabeth completed by a red wig, a crown that glittered with real diamonds, and a stiff cloth of gold gown.

‘I must speak to you, Mélanie.’

Mélanie’s fan tumbled from her fingers.

‘It’s me.” The woman’s fingers bit into her arm. ‘Please.’

Mélanie snatched up her fan, fingers stiff with shock, and led the way through the crowd to the French windows. Flambeaux and blood-red Japanese lanterns illumined the terrace, but it was empty in the cold bite of the January air. Mélanie cast a quick glance about, nodded at her companion, and went down the stone steps to the garden below. Sleety air cut through the velvet of her gown.

Nothing moved in the shadows. By the light of the lanterns, Mélanie climbed the steps of the Temple of Diana that stood in the center of the garden. Far enough from the house to avoid being overheard, with a good view to afford warning should anyone else step onto the terrace.

Inside the temple, Mélanie put her back to one of the marble pillars. Her companion turned to face her. Even in the shadows, the blue gaze was unmistakable, as was the soft, crimson-painted mouth beneath the mask.

‘I know this sounds absurd in the circumstances,’ Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte said. ‘But it’s so very good to see you.’

‘You too,” Mélanie found herself saying. And she meant it, even as another part of her brain screamed that she was about to be sucked into a maelstrom. For a moment, she was thrown back ten years to their first meeting in Josephine’s salon at Malmaison. Little had she guessed then that in the course of her subsequent service to Josephine, she would come to think of the Empress’s daughter as a friend. For a spy, used to trusting no one, a friend was a treasure beyond rubies.

Hortense gave one of her sudden smiles. ‘Look at you. You’ve become an English lady.”

Mélanie shook her head. “You have to be born to this life to be an English lady. Your parents have to be born to it and their parents before them. Besides Charles is Scottish.”

“But you belong here now.”

Mélanie opened her mouth to protest and then bit back the words. A part of her would always be an exile, but to all intents and purposes, this was her home.

“You’re wondering what in God’s name I’m doing here,” Hortense said.

‘On the contrary. I can hazard a very good guess what you’re doing here.’

Hortense drew a shaky breath. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘I could scarcely avoid it. Though he hasn’t been in London much since his marriage.’

Hortense’s fingers tightened on the stiff folds of her gown. ‘I caught a glimpse of him in the ballroom. With his wife.” The words seemed to catch in her throat. “How is he?’

Mélanie recalled the Comte de Flahaut as she had glimpsed him in the ballroom a few moments before, waltzing with his bride, bending over her chair. Smiling the smile that had dazzled women across the Continent. ‘Trying to find his way in a hostile world. Like the rest of us who were on the losing side at Waterloo.’

‘They have a child.’

‘A little girl.’

‘I’m glad. I always knew he’d make a good father.” Hortense fingered a fold of her skirt, her gaze filled with ghosts. ‘His wife—does he love her?’

‘Oh, chérie.” Mélanie’s throat tightened. “It’s difficult enough to know if one’s in love oneself let alone if someone else is.’

‘His father pushed him into it. He never approved of me, and now he wants Flahaut as far away from the taint of Bonapartism as possible.’

Mélanie grimaced at the thought of Flahaut’s father, currently in Paris. Not his legal father (who had died some years before), but the man widely assumed to have fathered him, his mother’s former lover Talleyrand. Talleyrand had navigated the dangerous waters of the French Revolution to serve as Napoleon Bonaparte’s Foreign Minister and had survived Napoleon’s first exile to represent the French at the Congress of Vienna. He had managed to survive yet again after Waterloo.

‘M. Talleyrand’s own position is precarious,” Mélanie said.

‘As are all of ours. I know I was mad to come here.’

‘You want to see Flahaut—’

‘Oh, no. That is, yes of course I do, but I wouldn’t run such a risk for so selfish a reason. Not now.” Hortense sank down the circular stone bench. The gold gown fell in regal folds about her, gleaming in the shadows. ‘I’m not the girl you met at Malmaison ten years ago, who still nourished romantic fantasies. I’m not the girl who tumbled so blindly into love when I should have been old enough to know better. I told Flahaut it had to end after Waterloo. He had to protect himself. I had to protect my children.” She looked up at Mélanie with a gaze as raw as a saber cut. ‘I have no right to ask this, but I need your help.’

Mélanie’s fingers tightened round her fan. The plea had been inevitable from the moment she recognized Hortense, but that made it no easier to answer.

‘I know it goes beyond any call of friendship,’ Hortense said. ‘I know you can’t afford for your husband to know the truth about you—’

‘My husband does know the truth.’

‘Sacrebleu. How—’

‘I told him last November.’

‘You told him—’

‘That I’ve been a French agent since I was sixteen, that I married him to gather intelligence, that everything he thought he knew about my past was a lie.’

Hortense’s eyes widened. ‘Your husband is a remarkable man.”

Memories of Charles rushed through her mind. Unbuttoning her nightdress on their wedding night with a tenderness she had never known. Cupping his hand round their newborn son’s head. The wasteland of his gaze just after she told him the truth about her past. The pain and dawning understanding in his eyes as he tried to make sense of her revelations. That was the wonderful thing about Charles. He always tried to understand other people, even when they were his opponents. “He knows what it is—and what it costs—to deceive people.’

Hortense stared at her as though she’d claimed Charles Fraser was possessed of magical powers. ‘I can scarcely imagine what my husband would do in such a situation. He’d go into a rage—’

‘I didn’t say Charles wasn’t furious.” The sound of Charles’s fist smashing through the wall of their salon echoed in Mélanie’s head. ‘At first I couldn’t imagine we’d ever be able to carry on a civil conversation, let alone maintain any semblance of a marriage. Even now— It isn’t easy for him. It’s never going to be easy.’

‘Mélanie—’

‘I told Charles I stopped spying after Waterloo. Which is the truth. And I promised him I’d indulge in no more intrigues behind his back. Charles has a seat in Parliament. We have two children. We’ve made a life here. If the truth about my past came to light, he could be branded a traitor.”

And yet she could not deny the pull of that older loyalty, the plea in her friend’s eyes, so like her mother’s. A good spy shouldn’t care about anyone. Did any agent really manage that? She had broken the rule more times than she could count.

Hortense leaned forward. ‘I know how much I’m asking of you. But I don’t have anyone else to turn to.“

Mélanie forced herself to look straight into her friend’s familiar, pleading gaze. “I can’t help you, Hortense. Not this time.’

“Only listen. Two months ago—’

But before she could say more, a scream of horror cut the night air.