Secrets of a Lady

by Tracy Grant

  Charles picked up the decanter and refilled the glasses. “What sort of paper was the letter written on?”

  “Paper?”

  “Was it foolscap, pressed paper, scented—”

  “Oh, I see what you mean.” Moore closed his eyes. “Nice cream laid paper. Smelled like lavender. Not the sort of scent Nelly wore when I knew her. I suppose—that sounds as though she’s doing rather well for herself, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Charles said. “It does.”

  Mélanie set down her pencil and pushed her sketch across the table to him. “Does that resemble Miss Trevennen at all?”

  “Good lord.” Moore stared at the sketch. “I thought you said you’d never met Nelly.”

  “I haven’t. I based it on Susan Trevennen. Does it look like her?”

  “Quite a bit. Her eyes are a trifle wider set and her mouth curls up a bit more. And—” His fingers drifted over the drawing. “Her brows arch more,” he said, as though only just realizing it.

  Mélanie pulled the paper back, smudged out some lines, redrew them, and returned the sketch to Moore.

  He studied it for a long moment. “Yes, that’s Nelly. To the life.” His eyes misted. He put an impatient hand to his face. “Sorry. But it’s rather nice to look upon her face again.”

  Edgar rested his head against the greasy squabs of the hackney. “Christ.” His voice trembled, roughly equivalent to the way Mélanie’s insides were behaving. “I didn’t think we’d pull it off. I forgot you could throw like that, Charles.”

  “I’ve had a fair amount of practice of late.” Tossing a ball to Colin, but Charles didn’t add this last.

  The cracked leather of the squabs creaked as Edgar turned his head. “I had no idea you had a talent for portraits of people you’d never met, Mélanie.”

  “Parlor tricks.” Mélanie folded her hands round her reticule. The drawing was tucked safely inside along with her pistol. “Someone showed me once, a long time ago.” She felt Charles looking at her. He would realize, as clearly as if she had said the name, that she was referring to Raoul O’Roarke.

  “So we go to Brighton,” Edgar said into the silence.

  “As soon as we can pack.” Charles’s voice was matter-of-fact, conversational even, as though they hadn’t just been pulled back from the yawning precipice of failure.

  “Four years since Miss Trevennen wrote the letter to Moore.” Edgar drew a breath. “You sound so confident.”

  Charles turned his head. “My dear Edgar.” Mélanie could feel the force of the gaze her husband turned on his brother. “We can’t afford to be anything else.”

  “I’m coming to Brighton with you. You need at least one person who isn’t a member of the walking wounded.”

  Charles was silent for a moment. “You certainly won your spurs in that brawl tonight.”

  “Look, Charles, if you don’t want me—”

  “On the contrary.” Charles’s tone was warmer, the vocal equivalent of a hand clapped on the shoulder. “We’ll be glad of your help. Addison can go to Surrey and talk to Mrs. Jennings.”

  They pulled up in Berkeley Square, paid off the hackney, and climbed the steps. “Nothing definite,” Mélanie told Michael, who greeted them at the door, “but we have a promising lead. We’re leaving for Brighton as soon as possible.” She unfastened her cloak. “Ask Randall to ready the traveling chaise.”

  “I’ll send word to the stable at once, madam.” Michael lifted her cloak from her shoulders. “There’s a parcel on the table that came for you while you were out.” He gestured toward the console table beneath the hall mirror. A paper-wrapped parcel lay on its polished surface, beside the silver filigree basket for calling cards.

  “Who brought it?” Charles asked.

  “Scruffy-looking lad of no more than ten.” Michael took Charles’s hat and greatcoat. “He said a gentleman paid him a shilling to deliver it.”

  Mélanie walked to the table. Nothing was written on the parcel. It looked innocuous enough, yet she hesitated. Charles moved to her side, leaning on his stick. “Want me to open it?”

  “No, I will.” She tugged at the string wrapping. It got tangled, perhaps because her fingers weren’t steady. Edgar gave her his penknife. She sliced through the string and it fell away. The paper rustled as she unwrapped it. Inside was a box, a plain wooden box, about four inches high and six deep.

  A chill seemed to rise up from the marble floor and seep beneath the folds of her gown. She was vaguely conscious that Charles had moved closer to her. She opened the lid of the box, hands trembling.

  Inside was her son’s severed finger.

  Chapter 22

  M élanie choked, turned her head, and vomited onto the scoured marble tiles.

  Charles gripped his wife’s shoulders. A sour taste clogged his own throat. He held Mélanie, one hand on her shoulder, the other wrapped round her waist, until the retching stopped. In his years in the Peninsula he had seen shattered skulls, entrails spilling onto the ground, heads cut from the body with the mouths still twitching and grimacing. Mélanie had seen as much. He had never known her to react like this, nor had he reacted so himself.

  “My God.” Edgar’s voice came from behind him. “Are you sure—”

  Mélanie wrenched herself away from Charles, wiped her hand across her mouth, turned back to the open box. “It’s Colin’s.”

  Charles forced himself to follow her gaze. The branch of candles on the table cast all too much light on the contents of the box. It was a child’s pinkie finger, severed just below the second knuckle. Beneath the smears of blood, the skin was pale and creamy. Like Mélanie’s. Like Colin’s. But—“Are you certain?” he said. His voice didn’t sound like his own.

  “It’s the little finger of his right hand.” Mélanie’s voice was without expression. “There’s a scratch by the second knuckle from where he fell down playing knights with Jessica yes—” Her voice caught as though she suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Yesterday.”

  A cloud of rage darkened his vision. He ran his gaze over the box with deliberation. For the first time he noticed a white card tucked into the side. He picked it up by the corner. The writing on the card matched Carevalo’s letter this morning.

  Just in case you think I don’t mean what I say.

  He dropped the card on the table and snapped the lid of the box shut. “Michael. Go round to Mr. Roth at number Forty-two Wardour Street. If he’s not at home, try the Bow Street Public Office. Ask him to come to Berkeley Square as soon as possible. Tell Randall to ready the traveling chaise. We’ll leave for Brighton as soon as we’ve seen Roth. Is Addison back? Good. Have him and Blanca pack valises for Mrs. Fraser and me. Enough for a day or two. And tell Addison to pack some things for Captain Fraser as well.” He put his hand on the back of Mélanie’s neck. “Library.”

  “We’d better bring the box,” she said in the same expressionless voice. “And the note. Roth should see them. Edgar, perhaps you could—”

  “Yes, of course.” Edgar reached for the box, paused for a moment, then gathered up both it and the card.

  They walked the few steps to the library without speaking, Charles still with his hand on the back of Mélanie’s neck. Inside the room, she pulled away from him and dropped down on the sofa, hugging her arms round her.

  Edgar set the box and card on the table nearest the door and began to pace the carpet. “The bastard. The goddamned lily-livered, spineless, immoral—”

  “Edgar.” Charles tugged his handkerchief from his pocket and splashed it with water from the pitcher on the drinks table. “That’s not helping.”

  “I don’t think—” Mélanie spoke in a low, rough voice, her gaze on the carpet. “Part of me didn’t believe he’d go through with it until now.”

  “Yes.” Charles dropped down in front of her and wiped her face with the damp handkerchief.

  She jerked away from him. “Charles, we can’t—we don’t have time to wait for Roth,” she said, as though his words
in the hall had only just registered with her.

  “We can afford an hour.” He sat back on his heels, ignoring the twinge in his leg. “Roth should know about this. It may affect the search for the people who are holding Colin. And we should tell him we’re going to Brighton and what we’ve learned and how to reach us.”

  She retched again. She was shuddering, hunched over, as if fighting some private war with herself.

  “Do you want some tea?” Charles said. “Or—”

  “I’m all right, Charles.” The words slapped against his skin. “I don’t need cosseting. Colin does.”

  In two swift motions he was off the floor and on the sofa beside her. “Christ, Mel. You don’t have to do this alone.” He gathered her against him.

  “Goddamnit, Charles, what are we doing?” She flung his arms off her and sprang to her feet. “We’ve been running round London all day sipping tea and swilling brandy and all the time Colin was—”

  “Colin’s alive. We’re doing what we have to do to get him back. That’s all that matters.”

  “We’re not doing a very good job of it, are we?” She paced the length of the room, her hands pressed against her sides, as though she would either shatter from the force of her feelings or break her bones in the effort to contain them. “You can’t control this, Charles. You can’t think your way out of it. Sacrebleu, those jagged cuts—He’s always so brave about inoculations, but a knife—”

  “He needs you, Mel.”

  “Dios, Charles, that’s just the point.” She whirled round, claret silk skirts snapping about her legs. Her eyes glittered with rage, but tears shimmered on her cheeks. “He needs us and we—”

  Charles crossed to her side. “I need you.”

  The pain that filled her eyes was more than anyone should have to bear. “Don’t, Charles.” Her voice slashed at him. “Don’t try to manage me.”

  “I’m not.” He wrapped his arms round her stiff body. “I meant it.”

  For a moment she held herself rigid; then she made a choking sound and buried her face in his throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice muffled by her hair. “I’m fussing over you because I can’t fuss over Colin.”

  Her fingers gripped the cloth of his coat, tight with desperation. On the edge of his consciousness, he was aware of Edgar slipping from the room. He rested his chin on Mélanie’s head. Her ribs shook. He could feel the bandage beneath her gown. Something jabbed him in the shoulder. Her pendant. His anniversary gift to her.

  She felt the same in his arms tonight as she had yesterday. Every line and angle of her body was familiar. The scent of her skin, the silky texture of her hair, the hitch in her breathing as she struggled for self-command.

  Marriage was supposed to endow one with knowledge of one’s spouse, carnal and otherwise. So much about Mélanie was still alien to him, and yet he knew her in a host of ways. The exact amount of boiled milk she put in her coffee; the way she curled her fingers to hide the ink stains on her nails when she’d been at her writing desk; the precise chord in “Dove Sono” that always brought tears to her eyes.

  Whatever else she had been, whatever she had done, whatever the reasons for their marriage, she was his wife. He knew now that she always would be, though he could not say with any certainty what those words meant for the shape of their future life.

  “Why?” She spoke at last, her face still pressed into his cravat. “Why did he think he needed to do it?”

  “To convince us he was in earnest.” He smoothed her damp hair back from her temples. “It worked, too, damn his soul to hell.”

  “He—” She lifted her head to look at him. Her eye-blacking had smeared below her lashes. Beneath the stains were blue shadows of fear and exhaustion. “Charles, I’ve been deluding myself that we could fix this. That if we could only get Colin back we could somehow make everything right, at least for him. But we’ll never be able to do that—to put everything back the way it was before.”

  He put his hand against the side of her face and stroked her cheek. “He can learn to live without a finger, Mel.”

  She shook her head. “That’s going to be the least of the damage.”

  “Colin’s tough. He can learn to live with the other hurts as well.” He tucked her hair behind her ear. “You and I both did.”

  “Did we?” she said. He saw the scars of his own past reflected back at him in her gaze. “Haven’t we faced the fact over and over today that we really haven’t?”

  Before he could answer, the door swung open. Edgar came back into the room, carrying a tea tray. “Nursery lessons never fade.” His voice was as bright as the gleaming silver of the tea service. “When in a crisis, brew a pot of tea.” He set the tray down on the library table and began to pour. “Oh, damn,” he added in a different voice, as tea spattered into the saucer and sloshed onto the table. “I’m afraid my hands aren’t very steady.”

  “None of ours are.” Mélanie moved back to the sofa and peeled off her gloves.

  Edgar pressed cups of sweet, scalding tea into both their hands. The three of them sat in silence until Michael ushered Jeremy Roth into the room.

  Charles got to his feet. “Thank you for coming, Roth. I know it’s late.”

  Roth waved aside the apology. His coat was rumpled and his neckcloth looked even more hastily tied than usual. He scanned Charles’s face, then looked at Mélanie. “What’s happened?” His voice had a new sharpness.

  “Carevalo decided to show us he meant business. He sent us that box on the table by the door. It—” Charles swallowed and found his throat raw. “Colin’s finger is inside.”

  “His…Dear God.” Roth snapped open the lid of the box, snapped it shut, and put his hand to his mouth. “I see a lot of horror in the course of my job,” he said after a moment, “but…Not a pleasant man, this Carevalo.”

  “No.” Charles gestured Roth to a chair. “But we already knew that.”

  Roth dropped into the chair and fixed his gaze on Mélanie. “Carevalo still has every reason to keep the boy alive.”

  Mélanie nodded. Her face had the set pallor of wax. “Unless we fail to produce the ring by Saturday. We have less than four days.”

  Roth didn’t try to offer false reassurance, as he might have this morning. He was coming to know Mélanie. “True, I’m afraid.” He accepted the cup of tea Edgar was holding out to him. “You’ve learned more?”

  Charles returned to the sofa and told him of their visit to Susan Trevennen—glossing over the details of the gunshot, but mentioning his glimpse of Carevalo’s royalist cousin Victor Velasquez—and then recounted the news they’d received from Jemmy Moore.

  “Impressive.” Roth scribbled in his notebook, then flipped to an earlier page. “We’ve made a bit of progress ourselves. One of my men brought me a report not two hours ago. Harry Rogers was in full view of half of St. Giles at the Pig and Whistle from nine o’clock last night until well into the morning. A man who sounds astonishingly like Bill Trelawny held up a mail coach on Hounslow Heath at eleven last night. That means the man Polly saw is probably Jack Evans or Stephen Watkins. We haven’t been able to find any word of Watkins. Someone thinks they glimpsed Evans drinking in a tavern in Wapping earlier this afternoon.”

  Mélanie stirred her tea for the third time without drinking it. “Then it’s most likely Watkins who has Colin?”

  “Most likely, but it’s possible Evans has your son and was foolish enough to go out in public. He may not realize we have a description of him. I’ve got a patrol making inquiries in the vicinity of the tavern.” Roth reached for his cup and took a quick swallow of tea. “I’ll get a description from your footman of the boy who brought the parcel, see if we can trace him and the man who gave it to him. Though if they have any brains at all, the parcel changed hands several times before it got here.”

  Charles tossed down a mouthful of tea. It had grown lukewarm, but it eased the rawness in his throat. “Michael said Addison’s back, but we haven’
t talked to him yet.”

  “I have.” Roth set down his cup without looking up from his notebook. The cup tilted at a precarious angle against the side of the saucer. “He stopped by Bow Street on his way home. He got no news of the ring from his inquiries with the jewelers, and neither did Miss Mendoza. He gave me a list of the places they visited. They’re a very capable pair. I told Mr. Addison if they ever tire of working for you and Mrs. Fraser, I’d be happy to employ them. Two of my men talked with various fences this afternoon. Nothing there either.”

  “That doesn’t prove she didn’t sell the ring,” Charles said, “but it does make it less likely.”

  Roth nodded. “Quite. We’ve had no luck so far tracing Carevalo himself. For such a gregarious man, he played his cards close to his chest. He had a number of acquaintances, but no friends intimate enough to have any idea where he might have gone to earth.” He spun his pencil between his fingers. “This Victor Velasquez. You say you don’t believe any good would come of talking to him?”

  “None.” Charles eased his right leg straight. It had begun to throb.

  “I’ll take your word for it. But there’s no reason I can’t have one of my lads keep an eye on him. Make sure he doesn’t follow you to Brighton. Do you know where he lodges?”

  “The Albany.”

  Roth jotted down a note, then looked up at them. “Miss Trevennen is no doubt living under an assumed name in Brighton. You have a plan for trying to trace her?”

  Charles exchanged a look with Mélanie. They hadn’t discussed it, but the solution was obvious. “Aunt Frances.”

  “Oh, God.” Edgar, who had dropped his head into his hands, looked up with a groan.

  “She’s the logical choice.” Mélanie sounded almost like herself again. “Lady Frances has ruled Brighton society for years,” she said to Roth. “She knows everyone.”

  Charles got up and went to stir the fire, though it was blazing briskly. “She’s also my mother’s younger sister and my godmother. She has a sharp tongue, but she’ll help. You can contact us at her house on the Steyne, though there’ll always be someone here to relay messages.”