Chapter 40: : Chapter 39

Mélanie looked into Tommy’s brilliant blue eyes. He was watching her with much the same flirtatious mockery as when he was about to ask her for a waltz. Damn it to hell, she’d liked him. But then she should know friendship was no guarantee of anything. ‘Drop your sword on the ground, Tommy. And step away from it.’

‘My dear Mélanie—’

‘Now. You know at this range I could choose between shooting you through the heart or between the eyes. Or in the stomach and watching you die slowly.’

Tommy uncurled his fingers from the rapier hilt and let the weapon clatter to the ground. With the leisurely grace of a man crossing a ballroom floor in search of champagne, he took a half-dozen steps away from the fallen weapon. Out of lunging distance. His gaze moved to Evie. ‘Quite a gathering. I didn’t realize you had a taste for intrigue, Miss Mortimer.’

‘Are you all right, Evie?’ Charles asked. Sweat dripped from his forehead and plastered his shirt to his chest, but he didn’t, to Mélanie’s sharp eyes, appear to be seriously hurt.

Evie nodded. She was standing by the door, hands clasped together. Charles shot a brief look at Mélanie. Mélanie flickered back an it’s-too-complicated-to-explain-now look.

Gun trained on Tommy, Mélanie set her candle on the table. It cast a small circle of warmth on the unbleached cloth. The four of them stood in the blue-black shadows on the edges of the light. Mélanie glanced at Tommy. He was standing quite still, but even unarmed she knew he was as dangerous as a lit cannon. ‘What exactly is Tommy’s interest in the matter?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Charles said. ‘He’s been working for Le Faucon and the Elsinore League. Or perhaps ultimately for one against the other. I’m quite sure he killed my father and Francisco and hired the man who attacked Manon in Covent Garden.’ Charles’s voice was cool, but his eyes sparked with molten rage in the darkness. Her fair-minded husband wanted nothing better than to run his sword through Tommy Belmont. ‘He came back here tonight for papers Father hid in these rooms. He has them tucked inside his coat.’

‘My, you have learned a lot, haven’t you?’ Tommy studied the pistol in Mélanie’s hand, like an archaeologist examining a potsherd he’d never seen before. ‘I must say, this is an interesting dilemma.’

‘There’s no dilemma at all.’ Evie pulled a pistol from the pocket of her gown. ‘The papers, Mr. Belmont.’

‘Evie—’ Mélanie said.

‘Put your pistol down, Mrs. Fraser. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but if what you suspect about me is true, you know I’ll use this.’

The room went still. Confusion, fear, and the dawning of understanding shot through Charles’s gaze. ‘Evie,’ he said in the quiet voice Mélanie had heard him use under sniper fire, ‘whatever else has happened, we’re all on the same side when it comes to Tommy.’

Evie spared him a brief glance. Memories flickered between them for a moment, the way they only can between people who’ve shared hobbyhorses and cambric tea in the nursery and first ponies. Then her gaze went hard in a way Mélanie would not have thought possible, even during their confrontation in the library. ‘We haven’t been on the same side since Honoria learned how to twist you round her finger, Charles.’

‘For God’s sake, Evie, this isn’t about Honoria.’

‘Oh, Charles, haven’t you learned anything? Everything’s about Honoria. Even in death. She always saw to that.’ Evie’s hand tightened on the trigger. ‘Mrs. Fraser.’ Her voice cut with insistence. Her fingers trembled. Her eyes glittered with the look Mélanie had seen on the faces of soldiers about to rush into the breach at the end of a siege.

Fear could make people do crazy things. Five years ago, Mélanie might have defied Evie’s ultimatum and played dice with her own life. Five years ago she hadn’t been a wife and mother. She looked from Evie’s shaking fingers to her overbright eyes and then set her own pistol down on the table.

‘Step away,’ Evie said.

‘Evie, we aren’t—’

‘I mean it, Mrs. Fraser.’

Mélanie moved away from the table, toward her husband.

‘Throw your sword down by Mr. Belmont’s, Charles.’

‘You’ve known me all your life, Evie,’ Charles said. ‘You must know I’d never—’

‘I think the past two days have proved we can’t be sure of what anyone might do. Throw the sword down, Charles. I know I could only shoot one of you, but you can’t be certain whom it would be.’

Charles stared at Evie a moment longer, as though measuring her resolve, then tossed his sword to clatter against Tommy’s.

Evie walked toward Tommy. ‘The papers.’

Tommy was staring at her, eyes dark with realization. ‘You killed her.’

‘You’re not exactly in a position to make accusations, Mr. Belmont.’

‘In God’s name, why? What petty, absurd jealousy—’

‘I’m not the jealous sort, Mr. Belmont.’

‘My God, all that life, all that brilliance—you blotted it out.’

‘You see, Charles,’ Evie said, her gaze not leaving Tommy’s face, ‘everything is about Honoria. I suppose I should have guessed you were in love with her, too, Mr. Belmont. Most men were.’

‘You coldhearted bitch, how dare you—’

‘I believe I asked you for the papers.’

Tommy regarded her for a long moment that seemed to stretch like a rope pulled to the breaking point. ‘Unfortunately, you leave me little choice, Miss Mortimer. You’re a more resourceful woman than I would have thought. Or, it seems, than Mélanie would have thought.’ He reached inside his shirt, drew out a packet of papers, and held them out to her.

Evie had to walk close to him to take the papers. Mélanie calculated how many seconds it would take her to snatch her pistol from the table and what would happen if Evie panicked with Tommy close enough to grab her gun.

Evie’s slippers whispered against the carpet. The papers crackled as her fingers closed round them. A second later, she collapsed on the floor, a knife hilt protruding from her chest.

Tommy snatched up Evie’s gun and pocketed the blood-spattered papers. ‘Careless. She should never have got so close to me.’ He backed toward the door, the pistol extended toward Mélanie and Charles. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Fraser, you wanted Honoria avenged as much as I did, but you’d never have had the guts to do it.’

Mélanie dropped to the ground and pressed her shawl over Evie’s wound, in a hideous repeat of their last moments with Francisco Soro.

‘What the hell’s in those papers?’ Charles said. ‘Whoever you’re working for, you aren’t just trying to cover up romantic indiscretions. There’s more, isn’t there?’

‘My dear Charles.’ Tommy put his hand to the door. ‘More than you’ll ever know.’

The door swung shut and the bolt slid into place.

Evie was struggling to draw a breath. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ Mélanie said. The endearment came to her lips as easily as if she were speaking to her children. ‘Don’t try to talk.’

‘Quen—Val—tell them—sorry.’

‘I will.’

Charles dropped down beside her. ‘Lie still, Evie.’ He touched his fingers to her cheek.

Evie’s clouding gaze fastened on his face. ‘Honoria—there wasn’t any other way.’

Charles’s face tightened with equal parts rage, grief, and guilt. But he merely said, ‘We’ll get you out of here.’

‘Have you got your picklocks?’ Mélanie asked. She pressed her shawl over Evie’s chest. She could feel the chill spreading through the girl’s body.

‘No. I came hideously unprepared.’

Mélanie pulled a pin from her hair. ‘Can you do it with this?’

‘Given time.’ He glanced down at Evie.

‘There isn’t time.’ Evie caught at a fold of his coat. ‘Stay.’

‘Of course.’ Charles settled beside her and folded her hand between his own.

A smile twisted her lips. ‘Look after them for me, Charles.’

‘Quen’s getting quite good at looking after himself.’

‘He shouldn’t be alone. He’ll make a shocking mull of things.’ Her gaze moved over the shadowy paintings—Hamlet and Ophelia; Romeo and Juliet; Olivia, Viola, and Sebastian. ‘What an odd place to die,’ she said, and went still.