by Tracy Grant
"I said that about Malcolm for years. But my case was a bit different. I felt I had a lot to make up to him for. Which I certainly did. But one partner's trying to make up to the other for the past is a poor foundation for a marriage. Which it took me a while to see."
"Don't tell me you've stopped worrying about making Malcolm happy."
"No, of course not. After all, that's part of what being a couple means."
"But you don't want to let him see it."
Mélanie moved her fingers over the sticks of her fan, painted with a scene from Le nozze di Figaro. Malcolm had given it to her when they were at the Congress of Vienna, both of them caught up in the intricate diplomatic game, both of them keeping secrets that strained their marriage to the breaking point. "If he saw it, he'd worry."
Kitty's mouth curved in a smile. "Precisely. I complain when Julien fusses over me, so I can understand he'd feel the same about being fussed over."
"Yes, I can quite imagine it. Of course, looking at the guest list for tonight, I'd say Julien isn't the least worried about fitting in."
"There is that." Kitty twisted the emerald ring Julien had given her beneath her glove. "It's an odd thing, caring so much for someone else's happiness. I haven't before."
"You care for your children's."
"Well, of course; that's different."
"Not everyone does." Mélanie hesitated, wondering if she should say it. "And I think you cared for Malcolm's. More than you ever let him realize."
Kitty gave a quick smile. "A good thing for all of us that I did. We're all much happier as we are. And I'll own I've rebelled against the idea I should be nurturing."
Mélanie gave a sigh of understanding. "I know precisely what you mean."
"Though I will admit it can be rather agreeable to be fussed over on occasion. Don't let Julien hear I said that either." Kitty made a last adjustment to the roses. "There. It's always the hardest thing on a mission, or preparing for a ball. Knowing when to stop tweaking." She looked over her shoulder as Cordelia Davenport stepped into the room, her gown of figured ivory gauze over primrose satin catching the candlelight. The three of them had coordinated their gowns to go with the gilding in Carfax House and the peach roses they'd chosen for the ball.
"I'm so glad you're here," Kitty said, going forwards with a smile. "You can confirm if it looks all right."
"It looks splendid," Cordelia said. "Even better than what we envisioned. The ball is going to be a triumph."
"I'll be very happy if we just get through it. Should I go to the head of the stairs?"
"Not just yet. Julien asked me to see if you could both come to the library." Cordy looked between Kitty and Mélanie. "Apparently he and Gelly have something to tell us."
Silence hung over the library when Julien and Gisèle finished explaining about the letters the former Lord Carfax planned to buy from the Elsinore League at the ball.
"I should have known it," Malcolm said. "Carfax—Hubert—has seemed much too agreeable lately."
"Who's giving him the papers?" Raoul asked. He was leaning forwards on the sofa, hands clasped, face intent.
"Sir George Dalton," Gisèle said.
Looks shot among the group. Dalton was a minor Tory politician. Mélanie had been seated next to him at the Castlereaghs' once and had danced with him a few times in the days when they went out in society more.
"We knew he was a League member," Malcolm said. "From the lists we recovered in Italy. But hardly one of the leaders. Which I suppose makes him well situated to handle the papers. They'd think he wouldn't be suspected."
"Which faction in the League is selling the papers?" Mélanie asked. "The main one or the one trying to wrest control?"
"The one trying to wrest control," Gisèle said. "Assuming I understand correctly."
"Easier to get the papers before Carfax receives them," Mélanie said. "I mean Colonel Mallinson. Hubert. I'm never going to get used to this."
"My thoughts exactly," Malcolm said. "On both counts."
"No argument," Julien said. "Though I'd quite welcome the challenge of trying to get the letters away from Uncle Hubert."
"We have enough challenges tonight." Kitty reached for his hand. They were sitting side by side on a blue velvet settee. Mélanie could remember the former Lord and Lady Carfax sitting on that same settee, though not their ever holding hands. Or plotting a mission.
"Don't worry, my sweet." Julien lifted Kitty's gloved hand to his lips. "I've become positively prudent."
"Ha." Kitty tucked her arm through his. "I think Mélanie would have the best chance getting the papers."
"The League will be on guard with me," Mélanie said. "But then, that's true of all of us. Laura might do better—she managed to steal a paper from Carfax. The former Carfax."
"And he probably knows I did it by now," Laura said.
"We need to divert Carfax—Hubert—while one of you gets the papers," Malcolm said.
"Julien and I can help with the diversion," Kitty said. "Sadly, I don't think we can help with retrieving the papers."
"No, all eyes will be on you both tonight," Mélanie said. "You can help by distracting everyone. Fortunately, they'll be busy looking at you."
"Decoy's not my favorite role on a mission," Kitty said, "but we'll manage."
Julien scraped the toe of his polished shoe over the Axminster carpet. "I don't suppose—"
"No," Malcolm, Mélanie, and Raoul said in unison.
"You have a point. And I was just telling Gelly about the value of teamwork. I need to do better at following my own advice. I expect all this is making me a better parent. Not to mention a better person. I wouldn't have thought I'd admit to that mattering. Still—"
"Do stop piffling on, darling." Kitty gripped his arm. "We have work to do."
"I could—" Gisèle began.
"No." This time it was Malcolm and Julien who spoke in unison.
"You can't be anywhere near Dalton or Uncle Hubert or any of this, Gelly," Julien said. "Or you'll destroy the credit you've managed to keep with the League."
Gisèle nodded reluctantly. "So there's no role for me."
"On the contrary," Malcolm said. "You can look completely natural and as though you're doing nothing but enjoying the ball with Andrew. Believe me, it's one of the hardest roles on a mission. Not least because one feels sidelined."
Gisèle grimaced but nodded.
Andrew reached for her hand. "At least in this I can help."
Gisèle gave a quick smile and squeezed his fingers.
Cordelia's husband Harry was staring into his whisky glass with the look of one scouting terrain. "I don't suppose we could bash Dalton over the head? Like we did to get the Darlington letters?"
"Not a bad idea," Malcolm said. "I think we are going to need to knock him out. But something subtler is called for. Kitty, I hope you have a spare footman's uniform about."
"Certainly," Kitty said, "but even in the guise of a footman, any of us is likely to be recognized. More to the point, we'll draw suspicion if we aren't in the ballroom."
"Quite. That's why it's a very good thing Addison and Blanca will be here shortly."
Julien had been very insistent on inviting Addison, Malcolm's valet, and Blanca, Mélanie's companion, both also fellow agents, to the ball. He'd been very insistent on including a number of people, but Addison and Blanca had been among the most difficult to persuade to attend. Addison, far more a conventional valet than Blanca had ever been a conventional lady’s maid, was very careful to preserve the lines of master and servant. At least, he had been when Mélanie first met him. He had unbent remarkably in the intervening years. He even dined with them at times when it was just the family or the family and a few guests, and would go to casual parties at the homes of close friends like the Davenports. But attending a Mayfair ball was something very different. Finally, Blanca had said that it would be an insult to Kitty and Julien not to go and they deserved all the support they could get from their frien
ds. And Addison, who was as kind and as good a friend as he was conscious of the forms, had relented.
"Excellent," Harry said. "Very good you invited them, Julien."
"That wasn't why," Julien said. "Though their talents always make them an asset to have about."
"Do you always think about having guests who are intelligence assets?" Andrew asked with genuine curiosity. Julien, so close to Gisèle, still appeared to be something of a mystery to Gisèle's husband.
"I wouldn't say I'm accustomed to having guests at all," Julien said. "One has to have a home to have guests, and I've never really had a home. But any large gathering is potentially a mission. That's the way I've lived my life. And I don't see it changing."
"Not with the League to deal with," Cordelia said. "Not to mention the king and queen's divorce." She frowned. "I suppose we should have known the League would get tangled up in the divorce. And try to turn it to their advantage."
"Or, evidently, their profit," Raoul said.
Gisèle nodded. "I think they'd be inclined to side with the king, but mostly they're hoping to turn the spectacle to their advantage."
"Which gives them something in common with about ninety percent of those who'll be present tonight," Malcolm said. "It should be an interesting evening."
3
Julien paused beside Mélanie on the edge of the dance floor, where she had been scanning the growing crowd under cover of adjusting the clasp on her gold-and-garnet bracelet. "Dalton hasn't arrived yet, as far as I can tell."
"No, believe me, I'm watching carefully." Mélanie pushed the bracelet in place on her gloved wrist and took the champagne glass he was holding out. "Raoul and Laura are in the supper room, Harry's in the card room with Archie, whom he's enlisted, and Malcolm and Cordy are somewhere about the ballroom. I must say, it's agreeable to have a mission."
"Mmm. While I'm left to play the host." Julien cast a glance towards the open doors to the stairhead. "Kitty seems to have things in hand greeting the guests. I'd like to help, but not much I can do."
Mélanie smiled. "There are times when husbands are superfluous."
Julien grinned. "Only times?"
Mélanie touched her glass to his. "They have their uses."
"You're quite forbearing."
"About what?"
He took a sip from his own glass. "Not throwing it in my teeth what I've become."
Mélanie regarded the man whom Raoul, hardly a man one would call safe, had described as the most dangerous agent on the Continent, when she first met him. "What? A British aristocrat? A husband? A father? A Radical politician?"
"All of them," Julien said.
"You never claimed not to be an aristocrat," Mélanie said. "You always rather had the air of one."
"Don't tell me you think that's something one is born with."
"Not born, but bred. And you grew up as an aristocrat for almost sixteen years. Then, on our journey with Hortense you admitted you could feel the allure of a home and family. When I still scoffed at the very idea."
"Yes, I should have remembered I'd said that when I later marveled at your domesticity. Perhaps you read my envy even then."
"You've never been envious in your life, Julien."
"So you say, cara. But then, I've always had something of a knack for hiding my feelings."
"Along with a talent for massive understatement." Even two years ago, after she'd worked with him and relied on him on that mission with Hortense, she'd been terrified when he'd arrived in Britain, close to the safe world of her family. And yet—"But I wasn't quite so surprised to see you as a husband and father as you might think. Now, when it comes to being a Radical politician—you did rather have me convinced you didn't believe in anything."
Julien leaned against a column and took another sip of champagne. "Cynicism's a convenient pose. And not nearly as much work as your and O'Roarke's tiresome ideals. But there is something to be said for making oneself useful."
Mélanie fixed him with the gaze she gave her children when they were prevaricating. "You're a fraud, Julien."
He gave her a sidelong smile. "You've only just realized that?"
"I've had a glimmering for a while. But not as much with you as with others." Such as her former spymaster Raoul. Even he had kept his mask up for a very long time. And she had failed to see behind it far longer than she should have done.
"Survival technique. And a way not to disappoint people. Including myself."
Mélanie glanced through the open double doors to the head of the stairs. The crowd entering the ballroom thinned for a moment and she could see Kitty holding out her hand to a man with the distinctive hooked-nose profile of the Duke of Wellington.
"Kitty makes it look easy," she said.
"Yes. Easier than it is, I think." Julien's eyes narrowed.
"There are ways being a beau monde hostess can be fun. As long as one doesn't feel trapped in it. I don't think Kitty remotely feels trapped."
"I hope to God not." Julien's tone wasn't quite as mocking as usual.
"Even I never did."
Julien shot a look at her. "No?"
"Well, not precisely." Scenes from her past shot through Mélanie's mind. The first party she'd given in Lisbon as Malcolm's bride, the first time she'd acted as hostess for the ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart. Parties and elaborate social events in Vienna at the Congress, in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo, in Paris. Each time stepping onto a new stage. Precarious but exhilarating. After all, she had grown up in the theatre. She enjoyed trying out new roles. "But I was pretending."
"We're all pretending, to a degree." Julien's voice softened in that disconcerting way it sometimes could. "Hopefully less with the people we love than with others. But one likes to avoid placing undue burdens on anyone. And hopefully Kitty will never see the truth."
"The truth about what?" Mélanie asked.
Julien gave a twisted smile. "How very desperately her happiness matters to me."
Malcolm moved along the edge of the dance floor, one eye out for Sir George Dalton. He saw Gisèle waltzing with Andrew, giving a very good impression of doing nothing but enjoying a night out with her husband, and then stopped short at the sight of his friend David Mallinson, Julien's cousin. Who had grown up in this house. Malcolm could keenly remember the way becoming Viscount Worsley, on the death of his uncle shortly following Julien's supposed death, had seemed to almost physically weigh David down. Now David was David Mallinson again. The smile he greeted Malcolm with had his usual reserve, but also seemed easier than it had in years. Perhaps since they were children.
"It seems to be going splendidly," David said. "Kitty looks very at ease. I love what she's done with the house."
Malcolm knew how glad David was to have found Julien again, for a number of reasons. Still, it couldn't but be odd to be a guest in the house he had grown up in and to see his parents as guests. "It must be a bit strange being here."
"Less nerve-wracking. Mother's not throwing eligible girls at me. No need to play the host, just a minor cousin."
"Hardly minor."
"Julien has things well in hand. And once everyone gets accustomed to the fact that I don't mind, it will be even easier. I've been getting a lot of sidelong looks and people so pointedly not commenting on the situation it's a comment in and of itself. Truth to tell, that's been happening every time I've gone out in company ever since Julien's—Arthur's—return became public. It's enough to make one a recluse. If I didn't—Good God. Is that Sam Lucan?"
Malcolm glanced across the room. Sam Lucan and his wife Nan were near the door talking to Mélanie and Cordelia. Sam had been an agent in the Peninsula, supplying guns to the French and their allies and sometimes to the British as well. Mélanie had helped him settle in London after the war, in the days when Malcolm hadn't known the truth of her past. Sam had been engaged in some questionable activities in St. Giles, about which, Malcolm thought, the less he knew the better as an MP. But in the past year Sam had married
Nan and settled in new lodgings Malcolm had helped them find. "Yes, he's an old friend of Julien's."
"I know. I just—didn't expect to see him here."
Malcolm turned his gaze back to David. "You've seen him in Berkeley Square more than once."
"That's different. I mean, it wasn't this sort of a ball." David shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "With Father and Mother present."
"He was at Raoul and Laura's wedding. Along with your parents."
"I know, but that was—I'm not trying to be stuffy. I'm just—"
"Used to the forms." There was a certain unwritten code to a Mayfair ball. Which Malcolm and Mélanie had cheerfully broken with some time ago.
"No. Maybe. A bit. The wedding didn't surprise me so much. That was O'Roarke."
"This is Julien."
"Yes, in that sense it's very like Julien. But I'm not sure—Is he generally including his friends from all different parts of his life, or stirring up mischief, or making a statement—or does he have some other goal in mind?"
"You'll have to ask him."
David looked across the room at Julien, then shot his gaze back to Malcolm. "He didn't invite Billy, did he?"
Billy was Carfax's general dirty-tricks agent. "Not as far as I know. I think even Julien wouldn't risk Billy among his guests."
David watched Julien bow over Nan Lucan's hand. "I'm never sure which Julien we're dealing with. St. Juste, the agent from the Continent, whom even O'Roarke is afraid of, my cousin Julien, who plays with the children with an ease I envy, or my cousin Arthur, who liked to make mischief just for the fun of it."
"Not just for the fun of it, I think. Not even then."
"No, perhaps not. I don't think I ever realized how hard it was for him."
"You were child."
"Still." David's gaze went to his cousin, who had moved on from the Lucans and was now speaking to the Duke of Wellington. "I hope he knows he's playing with fire."
"I'm quite sure he does."