Secrets of a Lady

by Tracy Grant

  “Two thousand.”

  Fear and anger washed over Mélanie like a cold sweat.

  “That’s outrageous.” She felt Raoul funneling his outrage through Carevalo’s personality.

  “And hacking off that kid’s finger wasn’t?” The woman’s voice had a sting of anger.

  “That’s my business.”

  “And the money is ours.”

  Charles squeezed Mélanie’s shoulder again. They could not risk speech, but the message was clear. Stay here. I’ll see if I can discover where Evans is with Colin. He moved soundlessly toward the remnants of the doorway to the room that fronted on Salisbury Street.

  “You bloody bitch.” Raoul sounded on the edge of losing control. Mélanie suspected it was not entirely an act. “I don’t have that much with me.”

  “Get it.”

  Mélanie held herself immobile. She heard the faint scrape of the door behind her. Charles had gone into the street.

  “You give me the boy.” Raoul’s words sounded as though they came from between clenched teeth. “I’ll give you a thousand tonight and get the rest tomorrow.”

  The woman gave a harsh laugh. “Do you think I’m a blithering idiot, your lordship?”

  “I don’t see your options.”

  “Go to your precious banker and get the rest of the blunt. Meet us here tomorrow night. We’ll bring the brat.”

  “That does not suit my plans, madam.”

  “Too bloody bad, your lordship.”

  Raoul took a menacing step forward. An effective gesture, but the wind whipped up at the same moment, tugging back the hood of his cloak and parting the clouds over the moon. The light fell full across his face.

  “Look here—” The woman peered at him, then gave a scream followed by a piercing whistle. “Run, Jack. It’s a trap.”

  Raoul lunged at her. Mélanie turned and flung herself across the burned-out building, through the ruined doorway, and across the next room to the front door that gave onto Salisbury Street. The courtyard was irrelevant now. Jack Evans was somewhere in the streets beyond with her son.

  Salisbury Street was thick with shadows, but nothing moved. The Bow Street Patrol must have run into the passageway at the eruption of noise in the court. Mélanie scanned the street and saw what Charles must have remembered from their earlier scouting of the area. Almost directly opposite the passageway was a dark, seemingly empty house. She could make out boards nailed over the lower windows, but one of the attic casements gaped open. A perfect place to wait concealed with a six-year-old boy for a summons or a signal for flight from the court beyond.

  She ran to the door. It was unlatched. She pushed it open and stepped into a musty, unlit hall. A silent musty, unlit hall. No whisper of breathing, no footsteps, no telltale creaks. She moved toward the dark outline of a staircase, then saw the door at the back of the hall. That must be how Evans had brought Colin in. If they’d used the front door, the Bow Street Patrol would have seen them. Perhaps he had fled through that same door. If a struggle was in progress above, surely she would hear it.

  She went the length of the hall in a handful of steps and pushed the door open onto a narrow alley that stank of mildew and rotting food and stale urine. Shafts of moonlight pierced the slabs of shadow and gave the grimy cobblestones the sheen of marble. A clatter from above pulled her out into the alley and drew her gaze upward. The house next to the one she had just left was slightly lower and its roof slanted up to a peak with a towering brick chimney at one end. A bent figure was inching up the slope of the roof. He seemed to be wearing a pack on his back. And then she realized that the pack was her son.

  She forced down the scream that rose up in her throat.

  “Give it up, Evans.” Her husband’s voice echoed down into the alley. He was half out of the attic window through which Evans must have escaped, hauling himself onto the roof where Evans crawled with Colin. “Carevalo’s dead. Hand Colin over and it will go easy with you.”

  At the sound of Charles’s voice, Colin jerked, loosed his hold on Evans, and went slithering across the roof at a diagonal, toward the alley.

  This time Mélanie could not contain her scream. She ran to catch her son. Colin slid to the edge of the roof overhanging the alley and stuck there, his coat caught on some blessedly placed nail. He gripped the coping with both hands, his upper body on the roof, his legs swinging free.

  The force of Colin’s action had knocked Evans’s legs out from under him. He flung his arms round the corner of the chimney to stop his slide and lay sprawled, legs flailing for a purchase on the roof tiles.

  Charles, halfway up the slope of the roof, began to crawl sideways toward the outer edge where Colin clung. Evans kicked out and struck Charles in the face. Mélanie heard the thud of a heavy boot connecting with flesh and bone.

  Charles slid down the slope of the roof, feet and hands scraping over the tiles. Evans pulled himself upright, clinging to one of the clay chimney pots, recovered his balance, and took a step down the roof toward Charles’s prone figure. Mélanie saw the glint of a knife in Evans’s hand. She shouted a warning to her husband.

  Charles sprang to his feet and launched himself at Evans. Evans drew back his knife hand. Charles caught Evans by the wrist. The two men grappled together midway up the slope of the roof, Evans trying to turn the knife on Charles, Charles trying to wrest it away from him.

  Colin was clinging to the edge of the roof in terrible silence. She couldn’t see his face, but he must be gagged. “It’s all right, darling,” she called, over the groans and thuds from above. “Just hold on.”

  She was standing where she could catch him or at least break his fall. She had her pistol out of her reticule, but she couldn’t shoot at Evans without risking Charles.

  Evans went for Charles’s throat with his free hand. Charles fell back, throwing Evans off balance, tightened his grip on Evans’s right wrist, which held the knife, and twisted. Evans gave a grunt of pain. The knife flew in a glittering arc, bounced off the roof, and clattered to the cobblestones in the street below.

  Evans clawed at Charles’s eyes. Charles ducked. Evans kicked Charles in the shins, then screamed as his foot slipped out from under him. He slid beyond Charles’s grasp and tumbled to the edge of the roof, lower down the slope than the point where Colin clung. His fingers scrabbled against the tiles for a moment. His legs swung wildly. Then the coping gave way in his hand. He fell with a cry that echoed through the alley, slammed into the cobblestones not a dozen feet from Mélanie, and lay still.

  “Colin.” Charles’s voice was level and conversational. Mélanie nearly sobbed in relief. “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. All you have to do is hold still. I’m coming to get you.”

  It looked as though Colin nodded his head. Mélanie glanced at Evans, but he had plainly broken his neck in the fall. “Charles?” she called. “Shall I come up?”

  “Stay there until I have Colin. Then meet us at the attic window.” Charles lowered himself to his hands and knees again and crept down the sloping roof, his bad leg dragging awkwardly, his hands sure and steady. The short expanse of roof tiles seemed to stretch endlessly, like a chessboard with the black and white of the squares blurred to gray.

  A wrench of fabric sounded through the night air. Colin’s coat had given way, but Colin still lay half sprawled on the roof, clinging to the coping.

  Charles stretched out his hand. “Colin? Don’t move quickly, but can you reach out to me?”

  Colin put up one hand. Charles closed his fingers round Colin’s own.

  Mélanie released her breath and clamped her jaw to hold back the press of tears. Footsteps sounded in the alley. She tore her gaze from Charles and Colin to warn the new arrival to be still, but he had already stopped. It was Edgar, his hat gone, his hair golden in the moonlight, his gaze trained on the roof where Charles was pulling Colin to safety. He didn’t seem to see her in the shadows of the overhang. She turned her gaze back to the scene on the roof. As she
did so, Charles dropped flat against the roof tiles, holding Colin against him. He shouted his brother’s name, not a warning but an anguished plea.

  Mélanie looked at Edgar and saw the gleam of a pistol in his hand. He leveled his arm and took aim at the roof, his intention written in the lines of his body.

  She had no time to think or plan. She raised her own pistol and shot her brother-in-law in the chest.

  Chapter 36

  T he report of the gun echoed through the narrow alley. Edgar collapsed onto the cobblestones with a thud. His fair hair and the pistol that had fallen from his fingers shone bright in the moonlight. The rest of him was a mass of blue-black shadows. Mélanie lowered her smoking pistol.

  The sound of booted feet came from the other end of the alley. Mélanie turned her head to see Raoul pull himself up short, his cloak swirling round his shoulders.

  Charles lifted his head from the roof tiles. “Mel?”

  “It’s all right, Charles. Just get Colin down.”

  She started toward Edgar, but Raoul ran forward. “Go up and help your husband with Colin,” he said. “I’ll see to Captain Fraser.”

  The need to hold Colin in her arms drove her back into the house and up three flights of sagging stairs at a run. A door was open on the attic level. She ran in, stumbling against the rotted wood, and flung open the casement to see the welcome sight of her husband’s now-grimy boots. He was crouched on the edge of the next roof, holding Colin in his arms.

  He handed Colin down through the window to her. She touched her son’s feet and then his waist and then she had him in her arms and his own arms closed tight round her neck. Her heart seemed to burst inside her.

  She kissed him and set him down. “Help me help Daddy, darling.”

  Charles already had his feet on the window ledge. She and Colin guided him down. Colin flung an arm round each of them and they landed in a three-way hug on the dusty, splintery floorboards.

  Her chest shook as though she’d forgotten how to breathe. She was aware only of the solid warmth of Colin’s body, the reassuring clutch of his hands, the softness of his hair beneath her fingers. He smelt of mildew and grime and little boy. Laughter bubbled up inside her, as though any control she had left had split open and shattered.

  She wasn’t sure which of them drew back first, but she found herself looking into Colin’s face. The moonlight from the window slanted over him. Charles had got the gag off him. He was wide-eyed and pale, but he was smiling. “I knew you’d find me.”

  “I’m glad, darling.” Her voice stuck in her throat. She forced it past the knot of anger and regret. “I’m sorry it took us so long.”

  He looked from her to Charles. “I was brave, like you would have been. I cried a little bit, though.”

  Charles’s fingers trembled through Colin’s hair. “Sometimes crying is the bravest thing to do, lad.”

  “Mélanie? Fraser?” Raoul’s voice came from the stairs. Mélanie realized she could hear shouts and the tramp of boots from the street below.

  Charles got to his feet. “In here, O’Roarke.”

  Mélanie stood, her arms round Colin. At least Evans and the woman had dressed him in breeches, a shirt, and a thick wool coat and given him a pair of shoes.

  Raoul’s footsteps pounded on the stairs. He came through the door and checked on the threshold. His gaze went to Colin in her arms. His face went completely still save for his eyes. She couldn’t have put a name to what she saw in their depths. Relief. Regret. And something else that was suspiciously close to longing.

  Raoul turned to look at Charles. The two men regarded each other for a moment, gray eyes meeting gray. Even Mélanie could not completely read what passed between them. Charles cupped his hand over Colin’s head. “This is Mr. O’Roarke, Colin. You haven’t seen him since you were a baby. We wouldn’t have got you back without him.”

  Colin turned in her embrace to look at Raoul. “Thank you, Mr. O’Roarke.”

  A host of emotions flickered over Raoul’s face in an instant. “It was the least I could do, Master Fraser.” He looked at Charles and Mélanie. “We’ve got the woman in custody. Evans is dead. Roth and the men are downstairs seeing to him and—”

  “My brother,” Charles said.

  “Yes.” Raoul flicked a glance at Colin, then looked back at Charles. “Captain Fraser’s asking for you.”

  “Then we’d better go down,” Charles said.

  Colin turned his head to look up at Mélanie. “What happened to Uncle Edgar?”

  Mélanie looked into her son’s eyes and tried to find a way to tell the truth. “He was hurt, darling. We don’t know how badly yet. Daddy’s going to talk to him.”

  Colin insisted that he could walk, though he clung tightly to her hand and Charles’s as they descended the stairs. When her fingers closed round his own, she felt the stiff cloth of a bandage. Where his little finger had been. She swallowed an upwelling of rage.

  The alley that had been so empty only minutes before was now full of people. The Bow Street Patrols had lit torches that cast a molten glow over the dark stone and rotted wood. Two patrols were bent over Evans. Addison, Roth, and another patrol hovered over Edgar. Roth straightened up. His shoulders sagged with relief at the sight of Colin. The torchlight caught the smile in his eyes as he walked toward them. “Master Colin Fraser, I presume?”

  “Inspector Roth of Bow Street.” Charles bent over Colin. “He helped us find you, too.”

  Colin returned Roth’s smile. “Thank you, Mr. Roth.”

  Roth dropped down to Colin’s level and rested a hand on his shoulder. “I only wish we could have found you more quickly, lad.” He straightened up and cast a glance at where Edgar lay, then looked back at Mélanie and Charles. “Perhaps we should—”

  Charles gave a quick nod. He glanced at Raoul, hesitated, then touched Colin’s hair. “Listen, old chap, Mummy and I need to talk to Mr. Roth for a bit and see Uncle Edgar. Could you stay with Mr. O’Roarke? We won’t be out of sight.”

  Colin’s eyes went wide, but he nodded with a trust that squeezed Mélanie’s heart. Raoul crouched down beside him. “I knew your father when he was your age, Colin. He was a brave boy, though not as brave as you, I think.”

  Colin smiled and tucked his hand into Raoul’s own. Charles looked down at them for a moment, his face raw with fear and love. Then he, Mélanie, and Roth walked over the rough cobblestones to where Edgar lay sprawled across the alley with Addison kneeling beside him and the patrol holding a torch aloft.

  “The bullet went through his chest,” Roth said. “Mr. Addison stopped the bleeding as best he could, but my guess is he’s bleeding on the inside as well. It’s too risky to move him. I don’t know how long—He hasn’t said anything except to ask for you.”

  Addison had stripped off his cravat and was holding it over the wound in Edgar’s chest. Blood had spurted onto the cobblestones. Mélanie stared at the sticky, red-black pool. Like her sister’s eleven years ago in the Spanish village. She gagged on the sickly stench, though she could not have said whether the smell was real or a trick of memory.

  Dear God, she had shot Edgar. Charles’s laughing, lighthearted brother; Colin and Jessica’s affectionate uncle; the man who had teased her and danced with her and welcomed her into the family without a qualm. The man who had been about to kill Charles, for reasons she could barely begin to guess at. If the memory of what she had seen had not been imprinted on her senses, she would have sworn it could not have happened.

  Mélanie looked at her brother-in-law through the eye-stinging torch smoke. His face was pale, but his eyes were open and alert. Charles dropped down beside him and put his hands over the makeshift bandage Addison was holding to Edgar’s chest. Addison met Charles’s gaze for a moment, his cool blue eyes uncharacteristically soft. He shook his head slightly and got to his feet. The patrol with the torch drew back a few paces, leaving the brothers alone in a small circle of torchlight. Mélanie stood between Roth and Addison and watche
d her husband kneel beside his brother, the way she had once knelt in a filthy street and watched the lifeblood drain from her sister’s face.

  Edgar’s gaze fastened on Charles. “Don’t waste your energies, brother. I’ve seen death enough on the battlefield. I know I’m done for.” He stared at Charles for a moment. “How much do you know?”

  Charles’s face was as still and hard as Highland granite, but his eyes held the pain of a death blow. “Nearly all of it, I think,” he said.

  “Damn you, why couldn’t you have come into the Marshalsea two minutes later? I’d have had the ring and got rid of that wretched carnelian pendant and the letter that was wrapped round it. I suppose you recognized the pendant at once?”

  “I should have,” Charles said. “I bought it at a jeweler’s in Lisbon and gave it to Kitty a month before she died.”

  Mélanie stared from her husband to his brother. The pendant in which the ring was concealed had belonged to Charles’s mistress? Kitty had had the Carevalo Ring? Images shifted like fragments of mosaic in her head. She remembered the look Charles and Edgar had exchanged when Edgar pulled the pendant from its hiding place in Hugo Trevennen’s rooms. The pieces must have fallen into place for Charles then, but she could still not make sense of the whole picture.

  Edgar’s gaze was fixed on Charles with a pain that had nothing to do with his wound. “I never would have touched her. How could you? How could she? How could she cheapen herself so?”

  “People will do a great many things in the name of love.”

  “You call that love?”

  “Yes,” Charles said.

  Edgar’s face twisted. “She sought me out at that damned embassy party and said she was in need of help. She looked so sweet and artless. I’d have done anything for her. I thought perhaps she’d lost too much at cards or run up bills at the dressmaker’s. Or that she was desperate for news of her husband. Jesus, I was a fool. It never occurred to me—”