by Tracy Grant
Charles regarded her, arms folded across his chest. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I suppose I assumed you enjoyed such activities because it was the life you’d been brought up to. If I thought about it at all, which I have a lowering feeling I didn’t. I was arrogant enough to think that the fact that I’d read Mary Wollstonecraft made me an egalitarian husband. I don’t know what’s more humiliating. The fact that all the time I thought our marriage was a model of equality and intellectual understanding, you were biting your tongue and catering to my every whim. Or the fact that I didn’t realize you were doing it.”
“I do a lot more than pour tea, Charles, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Acquit me of blindness, at least. You play the social game to perfection and you still manage to speak to reform societies and organize committees and write pamphlets. Not to mention writing half my speeches. That’s the woman I fell—” He glanced away. “You were wrong. You didn’t need to be some ideal of a perfect wife to hold me.”
She settled the folds of her scarf over her elbows, searching for the right words. Speaking the unvarnished truth was like picking her way through a foreign tongue. “It’s true, I tried to be what I thought you wanted in the beginning, because that was the way to succeed in my part and because that was the least I thought I owed you. But I’d never have stayed, I’d never have wanted to stay, if you’d wanted the sort of wife most men want. If I’d thought for one minute that all you cared about was having someone to plan your dinner parties and charm the opposition, if you hadn’t believed in so many of the things I believe in. I’d never have been able to survive for seven years if I hadn’t been able to be myself with you.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze dark and opaque. “My God, Mel. After seven years of lies, how can you have the least idea of whether or not you can be yourself with me? How can you know yourself at all?”
Her fingers clenched on the gauzy folds of her scarf. She stared back at him, unable to find an answer.
He reached for the walking stick that was leaning against his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “It’s nearly eleven-thirty. Let’s find Edgar.”
Chapter 20
T he street door of Mannerling’s gaming hell was half open, spilling lamplight onto the rain-black steps, a sign that play was in progress within. Charles swung down from the hackney after Edgar and Mélanie, leaning on his walking stick.
“It looks as though we gave our watchers the slip,” Mélanie said at his shoulder.
“Yes.” They had taken three hackneys and traversed two back alleys to reach Mannerling’s.
They went through the half-open outer door into a dank, narrow passageway. The lamplight revealed a second door at the end of the passage, solid oak, with a lighter patch in the middle that looked as if it might cover an eyehole. Edgar rapped at the door. A few moments later, the lighter piece of wood slid back. Wary eyes stared out at Edgar. After the first glance, the wariness eased a trifle. “It’s Captain Fraser, isn’t it?” The voice had a rough cast, like the scrape of the wood. The dark eyes peered beyond Edgar at Mélanie and Charles.
“Good evening, Simpson.” Edgar spoke with easy familiarity, as though he had been to the club regularly rather than once or twice. “I’ve brought my brother with me this evening. And—ah—a lady of our acquaintance. They aren’t Bow Street Runners in disguise, I promise you.”
Simpson gave a grunt that might have been a chuckle and slid the eyehole shut. After a few more moments, a bolt rolled back and he pulled open the door.
They stepped into an entrance hall dominated by a large gilt mirror and a red and black carpet that was a good imitation of an Axminster. Voices and footsteps and the smell of tobacco and brandy came from the rooms opening off the hall and drifted down the stairs.
Simpson proved to be a barrel-chested man with graying hair. He wore an evening coat and a showy pin in his cravat, but judging by the breadth of his shoulders and the bend in his nose, Charles suspected he had once been quite at home in the boxing ring.
Simpson took Charles’s and Edgar’s greatcoats and hats with an impassive face, but when he lifted Mélanie’s black velvet cloak from her shoulders, his eyes widened, like a pawnbroker who has stumbled upon a black pearl in a box of glass beads.
Mélanie was wearing a low-cut claret-colored silk that clung to her body. It was one of Charles’s favorites of her gowns, but normally she wore it with pearls and a black lace mantilla. Tonight she had draped a spangled scarf over her elbows. The pendant he had given her for their first anniversary nestled in the hollow of her throat, the diamond at the center of the gold knotwork twinkling provocatively. Diamond earrings swung beside her cheeks, twining with loose tendrils of hair. More diamonds sparkled on her white-gloved wrists and the combs in her hair. She had applied her rouge and eye-blacking with a heavy hand and splashed on twice as much scent as usual.
Charles had an impulse to take off his coat and throw it round his wife’s shoulders. Not so much to protect her from the knowing appraisal in Simpson’s eyes, as to protect her from the associations of their visit to the Gilded Lily and the horrors of a time before he had known her. Which was ironic, because any woman who had done what Mélanie admitted to doing in her years as a spy didn’t need any sort of protection.
Edgar led the way up the gilt-railed staircase. They could hear the rattle of dice, the whir of a roulette wheel, the whiffle of cards being shuffled. Through one doorway a linen-covered table was visible with a supper buffet, through another the corner of a gleaming mahogany billiard table. A waiter passed by with a tray of glasses. Pipe and cigar smoke hung thick in the air.
They went into the largest of the rooms, which had a faro bank at one end and smaller tables for games such as whist and hazard and écarté scattered about. The walls were hung with a pale green paper that was textured to resemble watered silk. A handsome chandelier hung from the ceiling, though the glint of the wax tapers showed that the silver gilt was peeling to reveal the brass beneath. The mantel, beneath which a log fire blazed, was papier-mâché painted to give the appearance of Siena marble. The overall effect was of the clever illusion and slightly tawdry glamour of a stage set.
Edgar glanced round the room. “That’s Julia Mannerling.” He nodded toward an auburn-haired woman in a green velvet gown. She was moving about the room, stopping to speak to various members of the company and to murmur instructions to the waiters, very much as Mélanie would be doing if they were entertaining at home. “The man presiding over the faro bank is Ralph Seton, her current lover.”
Seton was an angular, elegant young man with carefully combed light brown hair and an unexpected scar slashing across his cheek. “A soldier?” Charles asked.
Edgar nodded. “Sold out after Waterloo. Country squire’s son. Went to Winchester, though he’s not received in the best houses anymore.”
“See anyone you know, darling?” Mélanie asked.
Charles scanned the throng at the gaming tables, which ranged from obvious cardsharps to a number of gentlemen who looked as if they’d just come from the House of Commons or an evening at the opera and more than a handful of ladies, though most of the latter would not be found in Mayfair drawing rooms. “No, but I couldn’t swear there’s no one who’ll recognize us. I don’t see any yellow waistcoats, either.”
“The only ladies present definitely seem to be of a certain kind,” Mélanie said. “What a good thing I dressed for the part.”
Charles glanced at her for a moment. The glint in her eyes was as hard as the diamonds she wore. He cleared his throat. “Right. We’re clear on the plan. Look sharp, troops.”
They separated according to prior arrangement. Edgar went into another room to play roulette. Mélanie circulated about the various apartments. Charles sat down to play faro.
Ralph Seton greeted his arrival with a careless nod and a gaze that took in rather more than he let on. Charles played automatically, one eye peeled for yellow waistcoats. Wait
ers moved among the tables with bottles of claret and brandy. Someone sneezed, letting loose a cloud of snuff. Two of the men at the faro bank had their coats turned inside out for good luck, in imitation of Charles James Fox. Charles doubted it would do them any more good than it had done Fox. At a nearby écarté table a well-dressed young man of little more than one-and-twenty appeared to be doing his best to run through his entire fortune in the course of the night. A hot-eyed man in a threadbare coat was frantically scribbling his vowels.
Charles had seen similar scenes in a half-dozen London clubs, not to mention the card rooms at just about any ball. Yet beneath the showy elegance, he could feel an uneasy edge to the atmosphere, like a piece of glass run along his skin. Gazes were sharper than one would expect of mere gamesters. He suspected a number of the gamers had knives and pistols hidden beneath their flashy coats.
He hadn’t played cards much lately, but in Lisbon, cooped up for the winter, they’d all whiled away hours with games of chance. Kitty’s ghost hovered at the edge of his consciousness tonight. She had had quite a knack for faro and been quite brilliant at écarté. She’d liked the risk of it. He could see her bright eyes just beyond the green baize, hear her brittle laugh over the clatter of tokens, feel the texture of her honey-colored hair between his fingers as he calculated the odds of which card the dealer would turn up next.
He felt as though a scab had been stripped raw somewhere inside him, yet it had been a strange sort of relief to confide the story to Mélanie. She had given him, if not absolution, at least understanding. He hadn’t realized how much he craved it.
Mélanie had claimed to know the moment she’d realized she loved him. He couldn’t be sure he believed her—given how long she’d been playing a part, he wondered if she could be sure of what she felt at all or if she had merely begun to believe her own deception. On the other hand, while he had no doubt that he had loved her, he realized he could not pinpoint the moment he had first known it. He hadn’t let himself think in those terms when he married her, nor for a long time afterwards.
He remembered watching her sleep the morning after their wedding, the dark tumble of her hair, the sleep-softened line of her profile, the curl of her hand against the sheet. He had felt as though he was standing on the edge of a cliff, exposed to the scouring of the wind and the rain. It had been easy enough to pledge his fidelity, his fortune, the protection of his name. But what else did marriage mean? In binding his life irrevocably to someone else’s, had he also pledged a part of his soul? And was he capable of giving it even if he had?
In the end he had given it to her, of course, and much more besides. Though it was not until after his father’s death that the last of the barriers had given way.
Mélanie’s accusations this evening had had a kernel of truth. On some level, without ever articulating it, he had felt he was paying a debt to Kitty by doing what he could for Mélanie and her child. And Mélanie’s other accusation? That he had been thinking of his own relationship with his father when he offered to raise another man’s child?
The faro game ended and another began. Charles pulled in his tokens automatically. Gaming had been one of his father’s passions. He had a clear image of Kenneth Fraser at a baize-covered table, a glass of brandy at his elbow, cards held negligently in his hand.
He recalled, with uncompromising clarity, a fragment of conversation overheard in the card room during one of his parents’ evening parties. He’d been fourteen, paying a rare visit to his parents in London after winning a history prize at Harrow. You must be proud of the boy, one of the other card-players had said. And Charles had frozen, telling himself the answer didn’t matter, even as a treacherous hope squeezed his chest.
Kenneth Fraser had glanced over at Charles, and Charles had been sure his father knew he could hear. For a moment there had been something sharp and deadly in his father’s gaze. Oh, my dear fellow, Kenneth had said, turning back to his friend. I know better than to take credit for any of my heir’s achievements.
Charles hadn’t admitted it to himself at the time, but looking back now he knew that that was the first moment he’d questioned whether Kenneth Fraser truly was his father.
Charles smiled automatically at a joke one of the other gamers had made. Was Mélanie right? When he married her, had he wanted to prove it was possible to love another man’s child as one’s own? Had he seen a certain justice in leaving the inheritance that might not be rightfully his to a child who was not his by blood? Because in the world he had been born into, blood was the only thing that mattered in defining a son and heir. With one step, he had made a measure of atonement for failing Kitty and at the same time struck a blow against everything his father stood for.
He stared unseeing at the green baize before him, his thoughts like a slap to the face or a shock of icy rainwater. A few hours ago he would have said it was Mélanie who had entered their marriage under false pretenses. And yet in his own way he had been less than honest about his reasons for asking her to be his wife.
A moment later an unmistakable scent washed over him, and his wife draped herself over the back of his chair. “Nothing,” she murmured into his ear. “Of course we’re a bit early.” She glanced at the mother-of-pearl counters lying on the green baize cloth by his elbow. “Pity you aren’t fonder of games of chance, Charles. You could have made a second fortune.” She squeezed his shoulder as though in flirtation. “I’m going to circulate again.”
Her pendant swung against him. He remembered fastening it about her throat on their first anniversary. She’d been nursing Colin, then five months old. He turned his head and reached up to pull her closer, half for the illusion of dalliance, half so he could speak in a lower voice. “Be careful.”
“I’m armed, remember?” She had a pistol in her beaded reticule. He had one in the pocket beneath his coattails.
“I say, Fraser,” a voice called as Mélanie moved away.
Charles looked up to see a tall man with untidy brown hair making his way toward him.
Mélanie whisked herself off. Charles smiled and bowed to the inevitable. “Hullo, Bertie.”
Bertram Vance, Viscount Tilbury, came to a stop beside Charles’s chair. He was wearing an impeccably cut dark blue evening coat with an ash stain on one of the cuffs. “Must say, I wouldn’t have expected to find you in a place like this.” Bertram had always, from their days at Harrow, been superb at blundering into the middle of the wrong situation.
“Can’t spend all my hours in Westminster,” Charles said.
“Suppose not.” Bertram pulled up a spare chair and glanced at Charles’s winnings. “Doing rather well, aren’t you? Makes sense. You always were damnably good at figures and such. Suppose that comes in handy at the table. Maybe it explains my rotten luck, now that I think of it. Is your game finished? Care to have a drink with me?”
Charles hesitated, but he could keep an eye out for yellow waistcoats as well in Bertram’s company as at the faro bank, and it would keep Bertram from stumbling across Mélanie. He cashed in his winnings and they moved to a table against the wall.
Bertram signaled to a passing waiter. “What are you drinking? Whisky? Scotsman to the core, aren’t you? Think I’ll stick to brandy.” He glanced round the room and spoke in a lowered voice. “I say, old boy, who was the dusky beauty you were talking to?”
Charles achieved a creditable look of embarrassment. “Oh, did you notice her?”
“Caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. Very fetching. But I must say I never thought—not one to judge, of course. But if I were married to your wife—”
Charles drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “If you were married to my wife, you’d understand very well.”
Bertram’s brows drew together. “That way, is it? Always took you two to be unfashionably devoted, for all you don’t make a show of it.”
Charles could just glimpse the flash of Mélanie’s scarf through the archway into the supper room. Her back was safely to them for the
moment. “Devotion can prove tiresome, Bertie.” He sent a mental apology to Mélanie as he spoke. Then he swallowed a mouthful of whisky to wash the bite of self-derision from his tongue.
Bertram stared into the brandy the waiter had brought him. “Wouldn’t know about that myself. Never tried it. Always rather wanted to, if I could find the right girl.”
Through the archway, Charles glimpsed his wife again. She was leaning seductively on another man’s arm. A dark-haired man wearing a yellow waistcoat.
Mélanie had caught the gleam of yellow satin across the crystal and candlelight of the supper room. He was sitting alone at a table in the corner. She threaded her way toward him, warding off the attentions of a portly man with claret on his breath who managed to get his hand beneath the neck of her gown. When she was a half-dozen feet away, she collided with a waiter carrying a tray with a decanter of port and a half-dozen glasses. The glasses clattered. The decanter sloshed. The waiter staggered and clutched the tray. Her foot caught in the hem of her gown.
An old trick, but it worked. The man in the yellow waistcoat sprang to his feet and steadied her. “Thank you,” she said, making her voice go soft. She smiled up at him. He had coal-black hair that curled over his forehead and a face that retained a sort of youthful optimism, despite the lines of dissipation set into his features.
The man removed his hand, somewhat later than was necessary. “Always happy to oblige a lady. No damage to you? Or to your gown?”
“None, thanks to your quick thinking.” She let her scarf slither lower on her arms.
“Good, good.” He glared at the waiter. “Fetch the lady a glass of champagne, man. And a brandy for me.” He held out a chair. “Won’t you join me, Miss—?”
“West. Mary West.”
He swept her a bow. “James Morningham, at your service.”
Mélanie sank into the proffered chair at an angle that gave him a good view of her décolletage. “You’re sure I’m not keeping you from the faro table or the roulette wheel?”