Chapter 4: : Chapter 3

A light drizzle was falling as the guests emerged from Glenister House. The flambeaux at the base of the steps let off puffs of acrid smoke, as did the pine torches carried by the linkboys to light the carriages. The departing guests huddled beneath the Ionic portico while their coachmen jostled in the street below to pull up close to the pavement.

Charles was quiet, scanning the street for their own carriage. The flickering light gleamed against the white of the handkerchief Mélanie had bound round the gash in his hand when he broke his champagne glass. He had said little since Lord Glenister’s startling announcement of his father’s betrothal to Honoria Talbot. Mélanie was holding his arm, but he seemed even more remote than he had in recent weeks. She had an impulse, an absurd echo of the naive romantic girl she had never been, to press her face into the warmth of his shoulder. Instead, she pulled the swansdown-edged folds of her cloak closer about her. The night was cool for mid-June.

Long practice made her adept at catching words in a crowd. Beneath the shouts for carriages and the stamping of horse hooves and the jangle of bridles, certain phrases echoed through the night air.

‘What a delicious surprise! It quite makes up for the Season being so sadly flat!’

‘Never thought he’d marry again.’

‘Always thought Honoria Talbot would end up married to a Fraser, but Kenneth wasn’t the one I had in mind…’

Charles tugged at her arm. Randall, their coachman, had drawn up their lacquered blue barouche a short distance down the street. They descended the steps and turned along the pavement. The other houses on the square were long since shuttered for the evening, lamps turned down and candles snuffed. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the street was dark between the pools of lamplight. Mélanie was concentrating on keeping her footing on the rain-slick pavement when a hand shot out from the area railings and gripped a fold of her cloak.

She jerked back and reached for her pistol, but of course this was England and she didn’t have a pistol with her. Charles whipped round and put himself between her and the assailant.

‘Please, I don’t mean any trouble.’ The voice was harsh and had the unmistakable hit of a French accent. A woman in a patched brown cloak sprang up from the area steps.

Charles wrapped an arm round Mélanie and reached for his purse.

‘I don’t want your money.’ The woman’s face was a pale blur beneath the hood of her cloak, but her eyes burned with the intensity of torchlight. ‘Are you Charles Fraser?’

‘I am. You have the advantage of me, madam. You know my name but I don’t know yours.’

‘Mine doesn’t matter. I have a message for you, Diego.’

Charles’s arm tightened round Mélanie. Diego was an alias he’d used in his days in intelligence on the Peninsula. ‘A message from whom?’

‘Francisco. Francisco Soro.’

Another name from the past. The name of a man Mélanie had last seen in Vitoria, face black from cannon smoke, eyes glinting with a reckless love of danger that ought to have lost him his life a dozen times during the war but somehow had helped him survive instead.

The sound of a man shouting to his coachman carried through the air from the Glenister House steps, bringing home the proximity of observers. The cloaked woman glanced round with the wariness of a frightened deer. Mélanie dropped her reticule with sufficient force that the silver filigree clasp snapped open, spilling the contents over the paving stones.

‘Oh, dear. How clumsy of me.’ She crouched down over the scattered objects. So did Charles. So did the woman, who seemed to understand Mélanie’s intention. Which she would if she’d spent any time at all round the sort of work Francisco Soro engaged in.

Charles picked up Mélanie’s scent bottle and handed it to her. ‘How do you know Francisco?’ he said. The war might be over, but the old instinct to trust no one was still in place.

The woman reached for an enamel box of lip rouge that had rolled toward the area railing. ‘We met in Paris.’

‘You’re lying.’ Charles gathered up loose coins as he spoke. ‘I was in Paris myself until three months ago. Francisco would have sought me out.’

‘It was too dangerous.’

‘And now?’

‘He has information for you.’ The woman handed Mélanie her silver nail scissors. Her hood had fallen back, revealing matted hair in an artificial shade of gold. Her face had the pert, heart-shaped prettiness of a Boucher painting, but her eyes had a hunted look and her mouth was set with fear. ‘He says it’s important. Not just for him. For you as well.’

Charles reached for a stray half crown wedged between two paving stones. ‘Why didn’t he come to see me himself?’

‘He couldn’t.’

‘Is he ill?’

‘No.’

‘Then why send you instead of coming himself?’

‘Because someone’s trying to kill him.’

The words should have sounded incredible, delivered on a neat stretch of Grosvenor Square pavement, with the cream of London’s haut ton climbing into their carriages just yards away. But in the world in which Mélanie and Charles had lived, such words were far more normal than a request for a dance or an invitation to take tea.

Charles dropped a handful of coins into the reticule in Mélanie’s lap. ‘Who?’

‘I can’t—’ The woman cast a sidelong glance up and down the pavement. A couple and two young girls in white were approaching on their way to their carriage. ‘He wants you to meet him tomorrow night at the terrace overlooking the river, off Somerset Place. Twelve o’clock.’

‘Take me to him now.’

‘No.’ She scrambled to her feet. The lamplight caught the blaze of terror in her eyes. ‘It has to be exactly like he said.’

Charles sprang up, ‘But—’

‘The Somerset Place terrace. Midnight.’ She whirled round and ran down the street in a swirl of dun-colored cloak and pale hair.

Charles took two steps after her, then stopped with a muttered curse.

‘Mr. Fraser?’ The gentleman with the wife and two daughters called out to them from beside his carriage. ‘Did that person accost you and your wife?’

‘No, Sir Hugh.’ Charles reached down to help Mélanie to her feet ‘My wife dropped her reticule and the lady was kind enough to help us retrieve the contents. A good evening to you.’

Randall had caught sight of them and jumped down to lower the steps of the carriage. Charles handed Mélanie up and climbed in after her. Randall closed the door, and they were encased in the artificial safety of watered silk and polished mahogany and plate glass.

Mélanie leaned back against the squabs. Images of Francisco Soro raced across her mind. Passing a stolen dispatch to Charles beneath the scarred wood of a tavern table. Bending over her hand with a friendly spark in his eye while rifle shots sounded not fifty feet away. Helping a wounded Charles up the steps of a ruined Spanish farmhouse. ‘Do you believe her?’ Mélanie said, settling the folds of her cloak.

‘I don’t see any reason not to.’

‘Charles!’ She swung her head round to stare at him in the shadows, as though he was one of the children and was sickening with something. Was this her rational, analytical husband talking?

‘Only someone who knew me in the Peninsula would have known to call me Diego.’

‘For God’s sake, darling, that includes French soldiers and spies of all stripes and Spaniards of every possible allegiance. They aren’t all friends.’

‘And it’s not an alias I used with everyone.’

‘The message could be a trap.’

‘Set by whom? A French agent angry because they lost the war? A Spanish Liberal who thinks our government abandoned them? An afrancesado who wishes the French were still in power in Spain?’

‘That doesn’t exhaust the possibilities, but it’s certainly a start.’

‘Don’t overdramatize, Mel. I admit there are plenty of people with cause to be angry at our government, but no one’s likely to come seeking revenge on me. I wasn’t important enough.’

Mélanie’s fingers closed on the velvet folds of the cloak. This was dangerous ground to be treading with Charles, but she should be used to it by now. She just had to remember to avoid the obvious traps. ‘Don’t sell yourself short, darling. You were more important than you’ll admit.’

‘I may have had my uses during the war, but the war’s over.’

She flinched inwardly. ‘The war isn’t over for everyone, Charles.’

‘I owe Francisco my life. I have to meet him.’

‘I wasn’t arguing that you shouldn’t. Only that we should take precautions.’

She felt the force of the glance he shot at her.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Charles. There’s not a chance in hell I’m letting you go without me.’

He laughed, a warm, genuine sound. ‘I’m relieved to hear it. Francisco was always more inclined to listen to reason from you than me.’

Mélanie released her breath. Danger had always been the common ground in their marriage. So much easier than negotiating the thorny briers of day-to-day life. ‘What do you think Francisco was doing in Paris?’ she said, falling back into the comfortable rhythm of investigation as though she had pulled on a pair of well-worn boots after days in too-tight slippers.

‘That depends on whom he’s working for at the moment. He’s always been a bit elastic about which side he’ll take. He’s the sort of man who thrives in war and doesn’t know what to do with himself in peacetime.’

‘When he wrote to us in September he said he was in Andalusia. Which doesn’t mean that’s actually where he was.’

‘Quite. Francisco wasn’t overfond of King Ferdinand. I could see him leaving Spain for France if excitement beckoned. If he got mixed up with Bonapartists he might have felt it wasn’t safe to tell me as a British diplomat. But as to what the devil brought him to England and why his life would be in danger—’

‘Whoever the woman is, she was terrified. You could see it in her eyes. And Francisco doesn’t panic easily.’

‘Quite the reverse. He’s absurdly confident in the most precarious of situations.’ Charles’s voice was thoughtful, but there was a hard edge underneath. ‘That’s one thing I’m sure of.’

‘What?’

‘If Francisco says someone’s trying to kill him, the danger is real.’

The carriage drew up before the house in South Audley Street that David Mallinson had hired for them before they returned to Britain. After three months, it still felt more alien than their myriad of Continental lodgings. Even the smell, a peculiarly English combination of lemon oil, lavender, and beeswax, jarred as they stepped into the entrance hall.

Michael, the footman, a boy from Charles’s grandfather’s estate in Ireland, was dozing on the settle by the door.

Charles touched him on the shoulder and told him to lock up. They lit candles from the Agrand lamp on the hall table, climbed the stairs, and peeked into their children’s rooms. Jessica, six months, lay on her back in her cradle, a tiny fist curled against the embroidered coverlet, downy head flopped to one side. Colin, almost four, was sprawled beneath his quilt, one arm flung above his head, the other stretched across the pillow. Mélanie straightened the covers. Charles patted Berowne, the family cat, who was curled up on the foot of the bed.

They closed the door softly and made their way to their bedchamber. Charles shrugged off his coat and loosened his cravat. Mélanie removed her cloak and dropped her lace shawl on a chair. The rattle of the crystal beads echoed through the quiet.

Neither of them had mentioned Charles’s father’s betrothal to Honoria Talbot. The fact of it hung over the room, a heavier burden than tomorrow night’s rendezvous with Francisco Soro. She could be no more certain of how Charles felt about the betrothal than she could of the reasons Francisco claimed his life was in danger. As for Charles, he was doing what he always did when he didn’t want to talk about something. Pretending it hadn’t happened.

‘Thank God,’ Mélanie said. ‘At least this proves you don’t expect me to dwindle into a conformable wife.’

‘I never wanted a conformable wife, and well you know it.’

‘Dearest,’ she said before she could think better of it, ‘you never wanted a wife at all.’

‘With my family history?’ Charles picked up a tinderbox to light the lamps. ‘I’d have been mad to do so.’

The air between them seemed to thicken, as though a host of unspoken words had rushed in to fill the silence. ‘I should look at your hand.’ Mélanie moved to the cabinet where she kept her medical supplies.

A flint sparked against steel. ‘Leave it, Mel, it’s only a scratch.’

‘Even scratches can fester.’ She crossed back to him, carrying a flask of brandy, scissors, and a roll of lint.

Charles grimaced but held still while she unwrapped the makeshift bandage. The handkerchief was matted with dried blood, and an angry red gash stood out against his palm. ‘I didn’t realize how bad it was,’ she said. ‘It must hurt.’

‘If you keep pulling at it.’ He winced as she dabbed at the cut with a length of brandy-soaked lint. ‘Quite like old times.’

‘If this were old times, I’d be more likely to be digging a bullet out of you. Hold still, Charles.’

His gaze shifted to a hunting print on the wall opposite, a relic of the previous tenant. She snipped off a length of lint. The ticking of the gilt clock on the mantel and the patter of drizzle against the windows sounded preternaturally loud. The weight of the silence was so heavy she could feel it pressing through the thin silk of her gown and reverberating through the hollowness in her chest. The room was filled with echoes of a conversation she wasn’t supposed to have heard, with ghosts of a past she didn’t understand and Charles wouldn’t talk about.

‘Father asked me to call round at five o’clock tomorrow,’ Charles said, so abruptly that she nearly dropped the bandage. ‘I mink it’s the first time he’s requested a private interview with me since I left Harrow.’

Mélanie placed the fresh bandage over the wound. ‘If he wants to warn you about his betrothal, he’s left it a bit late.’

‘I should have known he might remarry.’ Charles’s voice was matter-of-fact, but his gaze slid away. ‘I don’t know why the announcement took me by surprise.’

Mélanie knotted the ends of the bandage. ‘Perhaps it’s not the fact that he’s remarrying so much as who he’s marrying.’

He went still for a fraction of a second. ‘Honoria deserves better,’ he said in the same careful voice. ‘But she’s a grown woman. Presumably she knows what she’s about.’

Mélanie set down the scissors and the ends of lint and looked up at her husband. He returned her gaze, but his eyes had turned as impenetrable as the weathered rocks of the Scottish coast he loved so well.

At such moments, there was only one way she knew she could reach him. She wondered sometimes if such tactics cheapened what they had between them, but at the moment she hungered for any affirmation of their bond the way a battlefield amputee longs for laudanum. She curled her hand behind his neck and pressed a kiss against his throat.

A wall of flame shot up before him. Panic closed his throat. A woman screamed. He ran, stumbling through a dark, unfamiliar landscape, and caught her in his arms. She clutched him tightly, as though she was caught in an undertow. He thought it was his sister, but the hair he was stroking was a paler gold. Honoria. She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him, her eyes fevered with desperation, her face contorted with fear.

Someone grabbed his shoulder, trying to pull him away from her. He shook the attacker off and clutched Honoria more tightly.

‘Charles.’ The attacker grabbed him again. ‘Darling, wake up.’

He loosed one arm to strike his assailant, but some part of his brain registered that the voice belonged to his wife. He opened his eyes onto darkness. He was sitting up in bed, his heart pounding, his skin slick with sweat, his arms wrapped over his chest, his fingers digging into his bare flesh.

Mélanie touched his arm with cool, steady fingers. He flinched away from her all-knowing gaze. He couldn’t bear to have her understand something he couldn’t make sense of himself. Not to mention the risk of revealing secrets that weren’t his to share.

‘I’m all right.’ He hunched forward. He was chilled to the bone despite the sweat drying on his skin.

He pressed his shaking fingers against his temples. Usually Mélanie was the one with nightmares. Usually he held her. For the first time he wondered if she ever found being held an intrusion.

Mélanie said nothing and didn’t attempt to touch him again, but he could feel her concerned gaze on him. He turned his head and managed a smile. ‘Lobster patties and whisky. Always a fatal combination. It’s a wonder my nightmares weren’t worse.’

In the shadows, her gaze moved over him the way she checked for signs of physical damage over his protests that he was unhurt.

He touched his fingertips to her face. Difficult to believe he’d been kissing it only a few hours before. He flinched again, inwardly, at the memory. He might not be a paragon of a husband, but he’d like to think he was above using his wife to exorcise his own demons. He’d failed at that tonight. He’d buried himself in her heat and let the touch of her fingers and lips and the taste of her skin turn his blood to fire, seeking an oblivion that was all too temporary. ‘I’m all right, truly. Go back to sleep, Mel. Sorry I woke you.’

The Irish linen and Portuguese silk coverlet rustled as she lay back against the pillows. He lay down beside her, resisting the impulse to retreat to the far edge of the bed. The sliver of black between the curtains told that dawn was a long way off. He listened to the even sound of his wife’s breathing and tried to sort through the question of why he had been dreaming about the woman who was about to become his stepmother.