by Tracy Grant
Gisèle took another sip of whisky. "Arthur was Britain's savior."
"Yes, there's always been more than a touch of irony in the name. Even when I was a boy."
Gisèle set her glass on the table between the chairs. "I think it suits you." She regarded him for a moment. "Andrew and I came down from Scotland to be here tonight. Well, and to see the family. We were going to just come and enjoy the ball. But I received information this afternoon."
"I thought perhaps you did." Julien took a drink of whisky. "It's a bit of a relief. I'd much rather be an agent than an earl just now."
"Being an earl could be excellent cover for being an agent." Gisèle learned forwards. Her honey blonde hair was pinned up with cropped ringlets falling about her face, not streaming down her back, and it was held with pearl combs, not a pink hair ribbon, but she had the same intent expression she had worn from the time she was fourteen when they discussed a mission. "The League have got hold of papers. Letters, I think, that could have a bearing on the case against Queen Caroline."
Caroline of Brunswick, estranged wife of the former prince regent, who had become George IV on the death of his father at the end of the previous January, had recently returned to Britain after several years of living in Italy. She was now queen consort, though neither she nor her husband had been crowned. Her husband, who had been unhappy with the match from the start, was attempting to push a divorce through the House of Lords. Of which Julien was now a member. And the Elsinore League, a shadowy organization of powerful men in Britain and abroad dedicated to promoting their own interests, had been the target of Gisèle's mother and through her of Julien and Gisèle and the Rannochs and their friends. Gisèle had been working undercover with them for a year and a half.
"Damnation," Julien said. "Given how much the League have been operating in Italy, I should have suspected that. Don't tell me they're letters the queen wrote? Or Bergami?" Bergami was Queen Caroline's courier and—many claimed (probably with accuracy)—her lover.
"No." Gisèle smoothed her hands over her skirt. "I don't know all the details, but apparently they were written by an English lady abroad who was friends with the queen."
"And she reported salacious secrets the queen confided to her?"
"Not precisely. I gather the letters might help either side, depending on which parts of them were used. Though overall they seem to actually support the queen's cause rather than hurt it."
"Well, that's interesting." Julien sat back in his chair. "I'd rather have thought the League would support the king if they took sides."
"The League seem to be interested in what is most to their advantage. As usual. They're offering to sell the papers to the highest bidder."
Julien set his glass down beside Gisèle's. "Let me guess. Someone is buying them at the ball tonight?"
"Being an earl hasn't blunted your edge."
"Kitty wouldn't let that happen. So is Henry Brougham or Thomas Denman or some of the Radicals or Whigs who support the queen buying the papers to bolster her cause?" Brougham and Denman were the queen's lawyers.
"No." Gisèle reached for her glass but tightened her fingers round it instead of taking a drink. "They were outbid, it seems. If they were the buyers, I'd rather be inclined to leave the whole thing alone." She watched him for a moment. "Wouldn't you?"
"Support a neglected wife whose husband has philandered quite as much as she has, kept her daughter from her, and generally ill used her? Can you doubt it?" Julien reached for his glass and tossed down a sip. "Aside from the fact that I took my seat in Parliament as a Whig."
"And your maiden speech has you branded a Radical." Gisèle took a drink from her own glass.
"Mmm." Julien twisted his glass between his fingers. "I do like to shake things up. Who's buying the papers tonight, Gelly?"
Gisèle set down her glass. "Carfax. That is, the former Lord Carfax."
Julien clunked his glass down beside Gisèle's. "I might have known it. If anyone knows how to conduct secret meetings in this house, he certainly does."
"The things is, Carfax—your Uncle Hubert—what the devil am I supposed to call him? If I say Mallinson, it sounds like I mean David."
Julien sank further back in his chair. "You could always call him Father."
"No." Gisèle's fingers curved round the arms of her chair. "For any number of reasons."
"Better call him Hubert, then. Or if you need to be more formal in public, Colonel Mallinson. He was a lieutenant colonel when he became earl and left the military. Are you asking me to intercept the papers?"
"I'm sorry. I know how important tonight is for you and Kitty—"
Julien gave a whoop of laughter. "My darling Gelly. Can you know me so little you can think I wouldn't relish the distraction of a mission on this of all nights?"
"Well, when you put it that way—no." Gisèle grinned. For a moment she was the brilliant, lonely fourteen-year-old he'd met in the caves beneath Dunmykel, the Rannochs' Scottish estate.
Julien returned her smile. "We should tell Malcolm and Mélanie and the O'Roarkes. And Andrew. Probably the Davenports too. We could use their help."
Gisèle's brows drew together.
"Surely you don't think they won't all want to help," Julien said.
"No, of course not. But—"
"Trying to do everything on your own can be dangerous. I tried to teach you that, though I don't think I always set the best example."
"It's not that. If Malcolm gets too close to—"
Julien watched her steadily. "We're going to have to tell him, Gelly. Not just this. All of it."
"No!"
"Or he's going to work it out for himself. He did about me."
"That was different." Gisèle's fingers locked tight together. "This—"
"We're going to need his help." Julien leaned forwards. "And there could be more damage if he finds out the wrong way."
Gisèle folded her arms over her chest in a gesture that made her look very like Malcolm. "I was afraid of this. You and Malcolm have got to be friends and now you're not being sensible about the whole situation."
"That's a matter of perspective. I'd say I'm more aware of the damage we're doing. We can't contain this, Gelly. And I speak as one used to containing things."
"You think I don't know how hard it is to keep the secret? I keep it from Andrew every day—" She broke off and studied Julien, her gaze sharpening.
"No, I haven't told Kitty. We've both always known we were going to have secrets from each other. Though I'll confess, since Kitty and I've married—since we became a couple—I understand better what you've been going through with Andrew."
"It's not easy," Gisèle said. "But it's necessary."
"It was. Or it seemed to be." Julien let his gaze settle on her own. He was still conscious of an impulse to protect her, but she deserved to be treated like an equal. "The game is changing. We're going to need all of them. And if Malcolm learns from someone else, it could be worse."
Gisèle shifted in her chair. "We don't need to tell them about it to retrieve the papers."
"No. That debate can wait. But we're going to need the whole team tonight."
"Since when do you talk about teams?"
Julien pushed himself to his feet. "I may not be Arthur, but I'm not the man I was."
2
Kitty tugged at her gloves and ran her gaze over the long central supper table and the smaller dining tables scattered about it. The footmen—Kitty and Julien's own and the carefully vetted additions they had hired for the evening—had just lit the wax tapers. The light gleamed on the silver and the freshly pressed damask of the table linens. "I hope we have enough champagne."
Mélanie smiled. Kitty was nervous tonight in a way Mélanie had never seen before. They'd known each other less than a year, but they'd shared some particularly harrowing experiences in that time, and Kitty had shown herself imperturbable. "There was one particularly warm night when Valentin told me we were on our last case of cham
pagne while I was still at the head of the stairs greeting the guests."
Kitty's fingers froze on the silk of her gloves. "What did you do?"
"Asked Valentin to find Lady Frances and Cordy. They both sent home and had more champagne delivered. We can easily send to Berkeley Square tonight if you happen to need it. And Frances and Cordy will help as well."
Kitty adjusted one of the roses in the bouquet at the center of the supper table. "We're fortunate in our friends. It's the things going wrong I haven't thought of that concern me."
"Yes, there's always that." Mélanie tugged one of the gathered puffed sleeves of her gown into place. She had ordered the gown, a tawny gold silk with little adornment but an extravagant sweeping skirt, when she took Kitty to her modiste, Marthe Leblanc. "But then, improvisation is part of the challenge of a mission. And the fun."
Kitty turned from adjusting the flowers and gave a crooked smile. "I've gone undercover knowing I was likely to be shot if I was caught. I've been in skirmishes. I've been wounded. I've played a host of roles. I don't know why this one is bothering me so much."
"The beau monde will do that to you. Besides, you'd been going into danger since you were young. This is uncharted territory. At least, that's how it was for me when I married Malcolm."
"Being married to Edward should have prepared me. That was odd enough. Being an officer's wife. Getting used to the expectations and the rules that I suppose aren't any odder than the ones I grew up with, just—different. In some ways, at least. But the scale was smaller than"—she glanced round the long room, the Ionic columns, the classical busts set in niches, the French windows framed in gilded wrought iron leading to a balcony that overlooked the garden, the chandelier hung from an intricate plaster medallion, its crystals sparkling in the candlelight—"than this."
Mélanie pushed a vase a half-inch over on its table. "To be honest, when we first came to Britain and I realized the scale of the world Malcolm had been born to, I was shocked. But you haven't any need to care what any of them thinks of you. Just because you're Lady Carfax doesn't mean you can't be whoever you want. In fact, it gives you more freedom in a way. Unless, of course, you want a position in the beau monde."
Kitty laughed. "Can you imagine I would?"
"For yourself?" Mélanie studied the woman who had been Malcolm's first love, who was now her own friend. A better friend than she would have thought possible when they met. But there was still a great deal about Kitty she did not know. "It's hard to fathom. You might want what it could bring you."
"I'll confess I'm not immune to the advantages of being able to wield influence for Spain." Kitty adjusted the angle of one of the supper chairs. Like Raoul, she was deeply committed to the liberals in Spain rebelling against the restored Bourbon monarchy. "On the other hand, if I want to accomplish what I'd like to, I'm unlikely to be fully accepted."
"That rather depends on how much your goal is known. Though having a goal does make this world harder to navigate." Mélanie reached up to push a pin more firmly into her hair. It felt odd to be wearing it pinned into an elaborate knot instead of just pulling the front back and leaving the rest tumbling loose, as she'd taken to wearing it. "I never precisely had that."
"Mélanie, darling." Kitty turned from angling another chair. "As I understand it, when you married Malcolm you had a very clear goal indeed."
Mélanie met her friend's gaze. They had never really talked about how she had gone into her own marriage in order to spy on Malcolm. She wasn't even precisely sure how Kitty had learned the truth, though she assumed it had come from Julien. Kitty, who had been Malcolm's lover and on the opposite side from Mélanie in the Peninsular War, could be pardoned for having a less than charitable view of her behavior.
Kitty gave a quick smile. "I can't tell you how much I admire your daring. It must have been fiendishly uncomfortable. "
Mélanie kept her gaze steady. "It was."
Kitty tilted her head, her side curls stirring her citrine earrings. "I'd have probably done the same, if the opportunity had offered. Before I had children. Though I doubt it would have worked out so well. Oh, don't think I don't feel a qualm for Malcolm. But that's the risk we all accept as agents, isn't it?"
A tumult of feelings that would never completely go away squeezed Mélanie's chest, like the unfamiliar laces of the corset she was wearing tonight. "So I told myself."
"So, I'm quite sure, Malcolm tells himself."
"Malcolm is a master at understanding." So much so that she could believe, at times, that the divide between them was as easily repaired as Malcolm pretended it was.
"So he is. Though, oddly, I think he understood your actions better than mine. I assume he's told you about that—Don Ramón Castella's son."
Mélanie nodded. Kitty had wanted to turn the guerrillero's afrancesado son over to the former Lord Carfax, their spymaster at the time. Kitty had seen it as one more step in pushing for the Spain she wanted—a liberal Spain, but with the French driven out. Malcolm had seen it as a betrayal of trust. "I'm not sure what I'd have done in your place."
"I'm not sure what I'd do if I faced the decision again," Kitty said. "I wouldn't say I've softened, but being a mother I'd be more inclined to realize I was dealing with someone's son, I think. Or simply that it was the life of another human being."
She had never, Mélanie realized, spoken with someone who could understand her past actions on quite this level. "You said you might have done what I did. If someone else had done it to you, could you have forgiven them?"
Kitty gave a rueful, thoughtful smile. "I'm not sure. I don't like being outwitted. To own the truth, that was more than half the reason I got so angry with Malcolm when he went round me and warned Don Ramón's son. I saw it as being outwitted. He saw it as saving a life. Which I didn't properly appreciate until years later." She looked at Mélanie for a moment, her gaze at once warm and level. "Could you have forgiven Malcolm if your situations were reversed?"
Mélanie drew in a breath and felt her corset laces bite into her skin. "I've asked myself that a hundred times. I don't know. I'd have understood. I think I'm honest enough for that. I'm not sure about forgiving—I might have been too busy blaming myself."
"A sad waste of time."
"That's what Raoul says. But he does it as much as any of us."
"Oh, possibly more so. He's ruthlessly hard on himself. He's just better than most of us at concealing it." Kitty smoothed a wrinkle from her glove. "Perhaps the real question isn't if one can forgive, but if one wants to go on."
"That sounds like something Malcolm might say."
"And it's quite clear he wants to go on." Kitty was silent again, as though choosing her words with care, or perhaps uncertain about whether to speak at all. "I said I'd probably have done what you did, married a man to spy on him, and that I wasn't sure I could forgive a man who did the same to me. But I'm quite sure I couldn't do what you did later—give up my cause and stay in my marriage."
For a moment Mélanie felt as though her satin slippers were rooted to the polished floorboards. "I didn't give it up for a long time."
"But you did in the end."
Which had ended a conflict that had been tearing her in two. And yet, at the same time it had left a hollow void inside her. Not that she hadn't worked for what she believed in after she stopped spying, but mostly she hadn't done it on her own; she'd done it with Malcolm, largely in her role as a diplomatic and political wife. "We couldn't have gone on if I hadn't. Malcolm couldn't have lived with me, and I couldn't have lived with myself. And I love what we do together. But I did need something that was my own."
"And now you have your writing."
Which meant more to her than she could possibly say. Her first play that had premiered last January, the new one she was currently finishing. And God knows she put her ideas in her plays, ideas she'd been formulating for years. But she was a bit surprised that Kitty, so on the edge of trying to bring about change, understood that. Mélanie n
odded, choosing her words carefully. "It means a lot to have my own voice." She hesitated a moment, but Kitty was struggling with many of the things she had struggled with, so it seemed important to speak. "For a long time, I thought I had to do it all perfectly. Host parties. Accept the right invitations. Charm the right people. At first, to be brutally honest, it was because the better situated we were, the more I was accepted as the perfect wife, the better I could gather information. But I also thought Malcolm deserved that much. Deserved a wife who was at least an asset in all those public ways. Then I thought I needed to make the past up to him in some way. He never told me he wanted a beau monde wife, but he was part of the beau monde, so it seemed we had to fit into that world. It took running off to exile in Italy for us both to realize we didn't care. Even now, I juggle how much I need to play the game."
"I told Julien at the start that I wouldn't give up my work. Not that he'd want me to. But I suppose—" Kitty looked down at her glove and smoothed another wrinkle from it. "I want Julien to be able to make what he wishes of being Lord Carfax. I don't want my being his wife to stand in his way." She looked up and caught Mélanie's gaze. "Don't you dare ever tell him I said that."
"I wouldn't dream of it. Though I very much doubt Julien wants to be a conventional Lord Carfax. And I'm quite sure he'd be horrified by the thought of your being anything but who you want to be."
"That's precisely why I don't want you to tell him. And, of course, he doesn't want to be conventional. But—" Kitty glanced at a portrait of a sixteenth-century Mallinson that hung between two of the niches with classical busts. "It's his world. It's one thing for him to choose not to engage with it, but I don't want him to be pushed out or to feel he needs to remove himself. He can do a lot and still be Lord Carfax. He doesn't say it in so many words, but I know he's worried about my being like his mother. I don't want that to hold him back. Because of course, I'm not Pamela Carfax. I married my husband because I love him, not because I was pushed into an arranged marriage, and I'm four-and-thirty, not seventeen. I won't let myself be swallowed up by this. But I want him to have the life he wants."