Fraser 03 - The Mask of Night

by Tracy Grant

  Mrs. Harris smoothed her crumpled black dress and patted her hair, sending her topknot slithering another inch to one side. “Forgive me. It’s been a difficult few days. Pray take a glass of sherry.” She bustled over to a cabinet without waiting for an answer, took out a decanter and a proceeded to pour out three glasses.

  She sank into a chair and gestured to them to be seated. "I never met Lord Carfax. My husband and I were married just before he left the army.”

  Charles took a sip of sherry. It cloyed on his tongue. "I wish I'd thought to look your husband up sooner. I had no notion he was ill.”

  “Ill?” Mrs. Harris gave a laugh that teetered on the edge of hysteria. “No, Fred had an excellent constitution. That’s why it came as a shock. He got into a brawl at the Green Lion and took a knife in the back.”

  Mélanie looked across the barouche at Raoul. He still appeared paler than usual, but she could detect no telltale perspiration or other signs of fever.

  “You changed the dressing half an hour ago, querida,” he said from his corner of the carriage. “I think I’ll live.”

  “I daresay you will. I was considering your abilities as a breaking and entering partner in the next few hours.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “No stubborn heroics. You’ll let me know if you start to feel light-headed?”

  “You’ll have fair warning to catch me before I faint.”

  “You wouldn’t find it so funny if it actually happened.”

  “You never used to fuss this much.”

  “Yes, well, being a mother’s changed me.”

  “Are you this bad with Charles?”

  “Worse. But he’s been known to fuss just as much over me. We both put up with it. It’s compromise that makes a marriage work.”

  Raoul turned his head to look at her. Perhaps it was the slanting light that made his gaze go sharp. “How much did you tell him about what transpired between you and St. Juste?”

  “More than I told you.”

  “Your husband’s a brave man. Trust is an impressive gift. And at times a heavy burden.”

  The curve of his mouth was at once sardonic and self-deprecating. His eyes crinkled at the corners. Familiarity was written in every line of his face. “Charles has always been generous with his gifts," she said.

  “I’m sorry. I had no intention of inflicting myself on you again so soon.”

  “For once the circumstances can hardly be said to be your fault.”

  “The past two months can’t have been easy.”

  “No. We’re relearning everything and making up new rules. Charles is extraordinarily forgiving.”

  “And forgiveness, like trust, can be a burden.”

  “Not a burden I have any right to complain of.” Her fingers curled inward. “But sometimes I wish he’d— Sometimes I wish he’d bloody well say what he thinks.”

  “Perhaps he does.”

  “He has to be angry. He wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t. If he’d yell at me—“

  “You could yell back and lessen your guilt?”

  “Damn you, do you have to understand everything?”

  “Querida, I can’t even come close.”

  “Charles keeps telling me I don’t have to pretend anymore. But I lived a pretend life for so long I can scarcely remember what it is to just be myself. Sometimes I’m not sure who the real Mélanie is. Or if Charles would like her if they were ever introduced.”

  “Don’t sell Charles short.”

  “I’m not. I’m trying to be clear-headed. For years, I lived by making myself into the person I needed to be to accomplish the mission at hand. The Mélanie I created for Charles is a better person than the real me.”

  “Perhaps you’re the one who’s changed.”

  “Seven years of living a pretend life could hardly have failed to change me. What really frightens me is that if one stripped away all the layers of pretense there might be nothing of me left. Two and a half years ago, when we learned about Tommy Belmont and the Elsinore League, I was afraid I was looking at a warped reflection of myself. I think Tommy had lost any sense of who he was at all, except a player in the game.”

  “From what I saw of Belmont, I don’t think he ever was much more than a game-player. Which makes it easy to change sides. St. Juste was the ultimate game-player.”

  Mélanie studied the master game-player opposite her. No matter how caught up he was in the intricacies of intrigue, he’d never entirely lost sight of himself. Or so she wanted to believe. “Do you think St. Juste ever believed in anything?”

  “If so, he ceased to do so in his early teens. I don’t think that will ever happen to you.”

  “Or I wouldn’t be so unsure about what’s the right thing to do.” She looked down at her clenched hands. “I was afraid that when we learned what you were doing in London, Charles would want to stop whatever it was and I wouldn’t.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know. Charles and I believe in the same things, but we don’t always we agree on the tactics for achieving them.” She looked sideways at him. “Whom do you identify with in Julius Caesar?”

  “It seems I should say Cassius, doesn’t it? No messing about with scruples, just a clean, lean, hungry charge at an objective.”

  “You have more scruples than Cassius.”

  “I just don’t let them get in my way?”

  “Oh, but you do. I’ve seen it happen.”

  “Don’t let it get about. I have a reputation to maintain. Querida— you’d tell me if you’d spoken with St. Juste at the ball, wouldn’t you?”

  “That would depend on what I’d spoken to him about. But as it happens I didn’t speak to him. Would you tell me if you’d spoken with him?”

  “I’m not sure.” He gave a smile that looked utterly direct and was incalculably dangerous. “What a good thing I didn’t speak to him either.”

  She tugged at a loose thread on her cuff. "St. Juste kept a ribbon he tore from my gown ten years ago."

  Raoul's eyes narrowed. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me."

  "Why the devil not? Don't tell me he mentioned me that afternoon you saw him at the Pig & Whistle."

  "Not directly.” Raoul shifted his position on the carriage seat. "I tried every gambit I could think of to get him to talk. Finally when we were two-thirds through the bottle of whisky, I started talking about the end of the war. How one could feel rootless. Question one’s place in the world. St. Juste laughed and said ennui was the curse of peacetime. Or at least that was what he’d used to think. ‘Until what?’ I asked. He smiled—with a sort of satisfaction I’d never seen on his face. He said that a month since he’d looked across a London theatre—while Figaro and Rosina were pulling the wool over Bartolo’s eyes—and that for the first time in his misspent career he knew what he wanted.”

  “Did you ask him what that was?”

  “Naturally. He twirled his glass between his fingers and asked me what I thought was the ultimate desire. Love? Power? Wealth? Revenge? Redemption?”

  “What did you say?”

  “That is depended on the person. St. Juste said, ‘Quite.’”

  Mélanie stared at her former lover. “For God’s sake, Raoul. You can't think he meant me."

  "He used to ask after you. Always in a casual tone, but the question itself was unusual for him.”

  “He spent one night with me.“

  “And weeks traveling with you later. Though for what it’s worth I can imagine one night being enough to render a man obsessed with you.”

  “St. Juste wasn’t the sort to say ‘let Rome and Tiber melt’."

  “I imagine that would depend on how much variety the queen in question had to offer. Did you go to a performance of Barber of Seville last month?”

  “Along with thousands of other people. You don’t even know I was there the same night as St. Juste."

  "But you might have been. "

  "You're starting to sound li
ke Charles. You think St. Juste looked across the theatre and saw me—“

  “And decided you were what he wanted.”

  “Because I could offer him what? Love? Power? Wealth? Revenge? Redemption?”

  “I’m not sure. But I know you meant something to St. Juste. I think I can guess what he meant to you.”

  “A failed mission.”

  “A bit more than that, judging by all the things you didn’t say when you came back.”

  “As I recall I never told you those sorts of details. I didn’t think you wanted to hear them.”

  “Thank you, no. But there are different kinds of silence. I used to be able to read your silences rather well.”

  She snapped off the thread. “So what do you think you read in this particular silence?”

  “That he was an unusual challenge. A cipher that still puzzled you. That he gave you a few hours of freedom.”

  She swallowed, her throat raw. “I never—“

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me, querida. You never did.”

  “It was the sort of temporary, dangerous freedom one finds in a bottle of whisky. I’d scarcely thought of him in years. You’re saying that he—“

  “He was a restless man looking for a focus to give his life meaning. He wouldn’t be the first man to think he’d found it in a woman. He wouldn’t be the first man to think he’d found it in you.”

  Her nails bit through the doeskin of her gloves. Before she could reply, they drew up before Carfax House, a Palladian building of pale stone with a half-moon forecourt closed by a wrought iron gate worked with roses and acanthus leaves from the Mallinson crest. She smoothed her gloves and tightened the ribbons on her bonnet. “Wait for my signal.”

  “Always."

  It was even easier than she’d expected. Lucinda ran into the hall as the footman was admitting her.

  “Mrs. Fraser. I was watching from the parlor windows. I hoped Bel would call, but it’s better that it’s you. May I speak with you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Lucinda dragged her into the blue-papered parlor at the front of the house. “I’m sorry. It’s just so awful and no one will tell me anything. Lord Castlereagh called half an hour ago looking for Papa. He glowered when I told him Papa had left the house early this morning. Has something else happened?"

  "Not that I know of.” Mélanie put her arm round the younger girl and drew her over to a peacock-striped settee. "Your father called on Charles this morning."

  Lucinda scanned her face. "Have they—? Has Charles figured out about what I overheard Papa talking about?"

  "They'll sort matters out, Lucy. This isn't the first time they've disagreed."

  "I know I shouldn't be asking questions, but it's impossible not to be curious. Mama’s still in her room. She has the curtains drawn and a cold compress over her eyes. I don’t know when Papa will be home. I often go whole days at a time without seeing him, but just now I do wish—” She twisted her hands together. “I don’t like being alone.”

  “You’re doing splendidly, love.”

  “Am I?” Lucinda’s eyes brightened.

  “Truly.”

  She was rewarded with a smile from Lucinda that eased her conscience a bit for taking her leave soon after.

  She returned to her carriage, waved to Lucinda, and stripped off her gloves and bonnet while Randall drove her round the corner to the entrance to the mews. She walked down the narrow cobbled expanse, past whickering horses and the smells of hay and axle grease and harness oil. She eased open the back gate to the Carfax House garden.

  A gust of wind ruffled the leafless trees and winter-clipped hedges. A robin fluttered to rest on the black spikes of the fence. A shadow flickered by a bare-branched apple tree and Raoul fell in beside her.

  “No one visible at the windows,” he murmured. “I even scanned them with my spyglass.”

  “Carfax is out,” Mélanie whispered. “But we don’t know for how long.”

  “One never does. That will keep things interesting.”

  They hoisted themselves over a stone balustrade to the narrow ground-floor balcony, elevated a few feet above the basement kitchens. Raoul didn’t grimace too badly at the pull on his wound. She unlatched with library window with one of her picklocks and pushed up the sash. They crossed the library, empty and smelling of wood polish and lemon oil, and she opened the connecting door to Lord Carfax’s study.

  It was a spacious room paneled in light cedar, filled with gilt, dark velvet upholstery, and the smell of expensive snuff. A globe, two pier tables, and a Pembroke table that held a set of decanters had an ornamental look, but the desk was solid and functional. A dispatch box and several sheaves of foolscap stood atop it.

  Raoul pulled a flint from his pocket and lit the gilt bronze lamp. "Anything in the desk or even the dispatch box will be cover documents or personal papers," he said. "The sort he could risk having discovered. Any self-respecting spymaster is bound to have the room honeycombed with hiding places.” His gaze swept the walls. “What do you think?"

  "There don't appear to be any false walls," Mélanie said. "Charles hollows out his books like you."

  "I showed him the trick when he was a boy. Carfax's books look far too tidy. The mats on the back of the paintings? A hidden drawer in the drinks table? Or— Ah, yes. The Globe, I think. So carefully set off to the side. The knob at the top slightly tarnished. As though it’s been much handled.”

  He crossed the room in two strides and unscrewed the brass knob at the top of the globe. The top section came away in his hand. He reached inside and drew out a handful of papers.

  “I forgot how good you were,” Mélanie said.

  “Years of practice. You’d have noticed in another minute or two.”

  He carried the papers over to the desk and began to skim through them. They were all in code—Roman numerals, Greek lettering, strings of numbers. And near the bottom, two sheets of music with the title Une Tournure Noire.

  Raoul handed the papers to her. "We have to take Hortense's, so we might as well take the lot instead of wasting time copying. Now where else—"

  He broke off in mid-sentence and gripped her wrist. Then she heard it as well. Voices from the hall, the tone raised enough to carry through the paneling, the words not yet distinguishable. Raoul re-screwed the top on the globe.

  Footsteps thudded in the passage. They darted through the connecting door to the library, only to see the door from the passage to the library ease open.

  Raoul dragged her back into the study.

  “I'm not sure I can do what you're asking, sir.” The voice coming through the door panels was hoarse but it unmistakably belonged to Oliver Lydgate.

  Chapter 26

  If I live to be one hundred, I will never make sense of my father.

  David Mallinson to Charles Fraser

  10 June 1806

  “I believe the assignment is well within your capabilities, Oliver.” Carfax’s voice sounded through the door panels, cool and crisp as pressed paper. “I want you to keep track of Charles. He's gone to Chelsea now, but I want to know where he goes when he comes back."

  "Why don't you trust Charles?"

  "I didn't say I don't trust him. I said I want reports on what he does. It's not the first time I've asked you to keep track of him."

  "This is different. He's working for you."

  Carfax drew an exasperated breath. Mélanie and Raoul darted across the room and slipped behind the velvet drapes seconds before the door from the library to the study was flung open.

  The door clicked shut. Carfax’s voice came from the center of the room, as though he’d taken up a stance in front of his desk. “This is no time for an attack of conscience, Oliver. There are Government issues at stake.”

  “You’re saying the dead man—St. Juste—worked for the Government?”

  “No.”

  “You’re saying he didn’t?”

  “St. Juste was involved in something very co
mplicated which wiser men than you will resolve.”

  “Don’t claim you want to keep track of Charles because he lacks sufficient understanding. Quite the reverse, I imagine.”

  A paper rustled. Mélanie drew a breath. One could never put everything back precisely as it had been.

  “May I remind you that there are a number of things which I think you would not care for Charles to know," Carfax said in a quiet voice that could have cut glass. "Not to mention my son and daughter.”

  “Is that at threat?”

  “It’s a statement of fact.”

  “I'm not happy about the things I've done. But I’m not going to make it worse—“

  “Worse—“

  “I’m not going to tell more lies.”

  “My dear boy, your life is so mired in lies you’d hardly know how to get free. I gave you an order.“

  “And if I refuse you'll tell my friends about our past dealings? Go ahead. We’ll see if my friendship with Charles and David can withstand it. Not to mention your relationship with your son. Good day, sir.”

  The door slammed shut. A choking breath filled the room. Mélanie shifted her position against the molding, which seemed to be carved with something prickly. Raoul was motionless at her side. Oliver’s words echoed in her head. She felt cold. And sick.

  Footsteps pounded the length of the room. A chair scraped against the carpet. A pen scratched against paper.

  Carfax was the sort of man who might take refuge in his study for hours. Once she and Raoul had been trapped in the upper reaches of a barn for the better part of a night while a party of English soldiers bivouacked below. They’d ended up making love in the straw.

  After what might have only been a quarter hour, though it felt like four times as long, the chair scraped against the carpet again. Footsteps sounded in the direction of the door. A stir that might be the door handle, and then the definitive scrape and thud of the door opening and closing.

  They stayed still for another minute, a habit ingrained from inconvenient experiences with people coming back into the room for something they’d forgot. Then without looking at each other they darted across the room, through the study, and out the window and dropped over the balustrade to the lawn. Mélanie landed off balance, caught herself on one hand against the wall of the house, and bit back a cry at the stab of pain through her wrist. Raoul steadied her.