by Tracy Grant
"You seem well acquainted with it." Julien made no move to grip her arm again, but he positioned himself leaning against the wall where he could easily block her if she moved in any direction.
Sylvie adjusted the gold bandeau that matched her bracelet. "I was as intrigued by the fuss as everyone else in the supper room. If I’d taken the bracelet I’d have disappeared by now."
"Oh, no, you’re much too clever to have done that."
"None of which explains why I’d have taken it."
"How better to create a diversion?"
Sylvie’s eyes widened. "Why on earth would I have wanted to do that?"
"You tell me."
"Darling Julien. If I’d wanted to create a diversion, surely I’d have taken advantage of the commotion rather than remaining in the ballroom."
"Not if you were creating it for someone else. Are you still working for Fouché?"
"Don’t waste time with rhetorical questions, Julien. Not that I particularly want to help you, but for old times’ sake I’d advise you not to waste time with me at all. Your real culprit is getting away."
Julien folded his arms across his chest and regarded his former comrade and lover through narrowed eyes. Every so often Sylvie had a point.
Just possibly, this was one of those times.
"Any luck?" Raoul stopped beside Mélanie on the edge of the ballroom floor.
"Not yet." Mélanie looked at her former spymaster. "I’m looking for Addison. Blanca said he was talking to the footmen. And Cordelia was talking to Dalton. I didn’t want to interfere."
He gave a quick smile. "Always hard to wait."
"Ghastly."
"You missed all the fun." Kitty slipped through the crowd to join them.
"Did Dalton try anything else?" Mélanie asked. "I thought Cordy had him."
"Not Dalton. Someone planted Lady Derby’s bracelet on Sam Lucan. Presumably to create a distraction. It’s all right. Everything’s smoothed over. But I’m wondering who wanted the distraction. And why. Julien thinks it was Sylvie. But I’m not so sure."
"Interesting," Raoul said.
"It’s someone who wants the papers. Or—" Mélanie looked from Raoul to Kitty.
"Quite," Raoul said. "Obviously an attempt at distraction. But given that someone has the papers—"
"How much help would that really be?" Kitty said. "It wouldn’t distract the person who’d taken the papers—"
"Mélanie. Kitty. Raoul." Nerezza Russo, who was the beloved of Lord Beverston’s younger son Benedict, swept up to them. Her gaze was controlled, but she had an air of suppressed excitement. And yet she and Ben didn’t know about the letters. At least, not as far as Mélanie knew.
"It’s Lord Beverston," Nerezza said. "He slipped out of the ballroom about ten minutes ago. Ben and I followed him because it seemed odd. He didn’t see us. We were careful. But we saw him go into Lord Carfax’s—Julien’s—study. We thought about confronting him. Well, Ben wanted to. But I pointed out that he had no authority here and his father would just defy him. So Ben’s keeping watch near the study door, and I came to get you."
Kitty exchanged quick looks with Mélanie and Raoul. "Quite right. Thank you, Nerezza. It seems I need to have a word with Ben’s father. Because I do have authority in this house."
Benedict Smythe had concealed himself in the shadows behind the long-case clock in the hall. Excellently done. Even Kitty didn’t notice him at first, and yet if one did notice him, he wasn’t obviously hiding.
"Well done." Kitty stopped beside him. "You’re learning."
"Trying." Ben flashed her a brief, concerned smile. "Father hasn’t come out."
"Good." Kitty squeezed his arm and swept up to the study where she had met with her former spymaster, the room that was now her husband’s sanctum. She approached the door as silently as possible and flung it open abruptly.
Lord Beverston spun round. Something clattered to the Turkey rug. "Lady Carfax—I was just—"
"Going through my husband’s things." Kitty swept forwards with the speed with which she would retrieve a dropped weapon in a fight and snatched up the fallen object. "And apparently taking"—she glanced down at the object in her hand—"a snuff box?"
Lord Beverston met her gaze, his blue eyes cool despite his earlier blunder. "It’s a particularly fine one. I noticed it and had picked it up to look at the enamel when you surprised me by opening the door so suddenly."
"Into my husband’s study." Kitty stared at Beverston standing beside Julien’s desk. Hubert Mallinson’s former desk. She and Julien had indulged in some activities more suited to the bedchamber than the study on that desk on one memorable evening. Part of making the room and the house their own.
"I came down here to leave a message for Carfax," Beverston said.
Kitty folded her arms, the snuff box securely closed in her fingers. "Do let’s stop playing games, Lord Beverston. We both know perfectly well you came here to take something on Elsinore League business."
Beverston, to his credit, did not shy away from her gaze. "I think we both know one can’t simply talk about Elsinore League business anymore, Lady Carfax."
"Very well. Business for your faction in the Elsinore League."
"Which makes us closer allies than you might think."
"Then do you want to tell me why you took this snuff box?"
"Surely you of all people realize allies don’t—can’t—share everything." Beverston’s gaze was hard but level.
Kitty returned the gaze like the challenge it was. "Then surely you’ll understand why I ask you to leave this room at once."
19
"Courage, querida," Raoul said. "There’ll be something for you to do before too long."
Mélanie pulled a face at him. "I’m not that bad."
"I’ll own to considerable frustration myself." Raoul leaned against a convenient column. "I’m just more used to it."
"I didn’t see you for much of the night."
"I was making a circuit of the rooms," he said in an easy voice. "Trying to draw attention on the periphery. Especially since Laura had a more important role to play."
It made sense and Malcolm had been doing much the same. But something still did not ring quite right. She opened her mouth to question him, when Cordelia came hurrying up to them, dragging Addison. She was breathing quickly and one of her curls had escaped her bandeau.
"I startled Dalton into talking," Cordelia said. "I think he’s telling the truth. I have a list of who he danced with. Also, someone jostled him and spilled port on his coat in the cardroom earlier in the evening. We didn't know because it must have been when Archie wasn't in the room. Dalton couldn’t see who jostled was. He went into the gentleman’s retiring room to sponge off his coat, and he removed the coat to attend to a stain on his neckcloth. He says no one else was in the room. But if there are curtains someone could hide behind—"
"There are," Raoul said. "If he was distracted, that could serve. Does he remember who was nearby when he was jostled?"
"He wouldn’t tell me. He may believe I don’t have the letters, but he knows we have different agendas for recovering them. But Addison questioned the footmen." Cordelia turned to Addison.
"One of them was nearby when the incident occurred." Addison pulled a list from his shirt cuff. "He was hired on for tonight and didn’t know the names of many of the guests, but I was able to put his description together with my knowledge of the guests and identify most of them." He glanced down at the list. "I believe Mr. Tarkington is a member of the Levellers."
"He is," Mélanie said, even as she heard Raoul draw in his breath. She looked at him.
"I suggest we talk to Sofia Montagu," Raoul said. "I didn’t realize it at the time, but thinking back, I suspect she may have papers concealed in her bodice."
Mélanie watched her former spymaster for a moment. He didn’t elaborate on how he knew. She didn’t think he’d danced with Sofia tonight, though she might have missed it. Raoul returned her ga
ze levelly, with no hint that he’d explain later. Which was interesting, but not something to examine just now.
"I’ll get Malcolm," she said. "If anyone can make Kit and Sofia see sense, he can."
"I believe you have something, Sofia," Mélanie said. "Something we desperately needed to retrieve but that is rightfully the property of Lady Wilton."
Sofia raised her brows in perfect surprise. Just as Mélanie would herself in the same circumstances. "I don’t even know Lady Wilton."
"I make you my compliments," Mélanie said. "In many ways, your plan was cleverer than ours. And you got to Dalton first."
"You’ve lost me." Kit was almost as good at dissimulating as Sofia.
Malcolm braced his hands on the table behind him in the antechamber off the yellow salon. "We don’t expect you to admit it. Neither of us would do so in the same circumstances. And it was crucial to get the papers away from the League and Carfax both. But you must see that we can’t use them or give them to anyone who would." Malcolm looked from Kit to Sofia with a hard gaze. "We can’t let anyone else see those letters, certainly not the general public."
"But the information—" Kit bit back his words just short of an admission.
"Could destroy a woman’s life," Malcolm said.
"It could save Queen Caroline," Sofia said. She looked at Kit. "They know. There’s no sense denying it."
"At the cost of damaging a woman who did nothing save confide things to a man whom she had fallen in love with," Malcolm said, "with no thought of being part of this public circus."
Uncertainty shot through Kit’s gaze. He was no stranger to scandal, and he was usually keenly sensitive to a lady’s reputation. But there was also a hardness beneath the uncertainty that hadn’t been there when Mélanie first met him in Italy. And he was committed to the Levellers, a group of young Radicals dedicated to bringing about change. Much-needed change. Mélanie knew a great deal about how far the desire for change could push one.
"Malcolm," Kit said, in a voice somehow at once entreating and imploring, "you know what it could mean if the queen triumphs. If the king loses power, so do his allies. Who knows how it could shift the balance in Parliament. Imagine the bills that might pass. Repealing the corn laws and enclosure, Catholic Emancipation, abolition, your capital punishment bill—"
"My God, you think I don’t imagine that?" Malcolm’s voice cut with unexpected force.
"And?" Kit’s gaze was like the flat of a sword blade.
"You’re always saying you don’t trust Parliament."
"And you’re always saying one has to work within the system as well as outside it."
"This is your idea of working within the system?" Malcolm countered. "Ruining a woman’s life?"
Kit flushed.
"It’s not Lady Wilton’s life that’s the issue," Sofia said.
"No," Mélanie agreed. "Lady Wilton could become collateral damage. Because of private letters she wrote to a man she cared about."
"They’re only letters—"
"They could destroy a marriage."
"Which is probably already damaged." Kit knew all about damaged marriages, having grown up in one.
"Perhaps," Malcolm said. "It’s her choice if she wants to remain in it. My God, Kit, you know what it’s like to grow up separated from one of your parents. And very few men would follow your father’s lead and leave the children with their wife. She could lose her children."
"Like the queen lost Princes Charlotte," Sofia said. "I met the queen when she lived on Lake Como. She kept saying how fortunate my mother was to still see her children after she separated from my father."
"Ruining Alice Wilton’s life won’t right that wrong," Malcolm said.
Sofia spun away to look at Kit. After a long moment, they both dragged their gazes back to Malcolm and Mélanie. "So we cover up secrets?" It was Sofia who spoke first.
"We return the papers to the person who should have them," Malcolm said.
Sofia put her hand to the bodice of her gown. "Did you always make this sort of judgment in intelligence?"
"No." Malcolm touched her arm. "And I live with regrets I hope to God you never have."
"Julien." Kitty caught her husband’s arm as she came through the archway from the upstairs passage into the ballroom. "I just caught Beverston in your study."
Julien’s brows drew together. "For once, Sylvie may have been telling the truth. What was he doing?"
"Trying to steal this, apparently." Kitty put the snuff box in her husband’s hand.
Julien frowned down at it, rare surprise on his face.
"Is it your father’s?" Kitty asked.
"No." Julien studied the delicate enamel. "It’s my grandfather’s. Far older than the Elsinore League. Hard to imagine what the devil the significance could be—" He looked at it a moment longer, then glanced at the door from the salons. "Time to puzzle over this later. There are Malcolm and Mélanie. and from the looks on their faces, they have the papers. At least one of tonight’s missions is accomplished."
20
Cordelia stretched her arms over her head and took a sip of champagne. "Tonight was a triumph."
"On multiple levels." Mélanie curled her feet up under her in the armchair she was sharing with Malcolm and lifted her glass to Kitty and Julien. They had seemed relaxed all night, but if their experience was anything like her own, they were only just starting to actually feel so, now the guests were gone. Talking with friends after a party was always her favorite part of entertaining.
"It’s certainly a night a number of people won’t forget." Kitty lifted her glass to Mélanie in return and then smiled at the whole group gathered in the Carfax House library. All those involved in the search for Alice Wilton’s letters were present, and David and Simon, who had been brought up to date. "Though I can’t say we had anything to do with that."
"On the contrary." Lady Frances let her violet zephyr scarf slither down about her on the sofa where she sat with her husband Archie. "Even before the incident with Lady Derby’s bracelet, it was clear the night would be much talked of."
"Well, that should keep a number of them out of our hair." Julien was refilling whisky and champagne glasses.
"Not perhaps as many as you’d like." Frances tilted her champagne glass as he filled it. "You’re going to be an endless source of fascination to the beau monde."
"More fools them." Julien righted the champagne bottle just in time for the bubbles to rise to the rim of Frances’s glass. "No, I take that back. Kitty would be an endless source of fascination to anyone."
David stretched his legs out in front of him in an uncharacteristically relaxed pose and looked up at his cousin. "You’ve made an art of making yourself fascinating to people your entire life."
"I don’t know about art." Julien splashed more whisky into David’s glass. "But it can be useful, at times. Just as blending into the woodwork can be useful."
"It was very agreeable to have a mission again," Blanca said. She looked at Addison, who was perched on the arm of her chair. "Don’t deny it, Miles."
"I wouldn’t dream of it," Addison said.
"Progress, mi amor." Blanca reached for his hand.
Andrew was sitting on the settee beside Gisèle, quiet as he usually was when surrounded by a coterie of spies. "Do you think the League will know Gelly warned you?"
"Given that Sofia and Kit and Brougham all knew about the letters, I doubt it," Malcolm said. "The news was obviously out."
Gisèle nodded. "I was careful. I know not to give you information that would blow my cover."
Malcolm regarded his sister for a long moment. Mélanie could feel her husband’s concern. As much as they were now allies, there was a great deal about her relationship with the League—or rather, the faction in the League trying to take over—that she hadn’t shared with him.
"How did Kit and Sofia learn about the letters?" Laura asked.
"Sofia’s brother wrote to her," Mélanie said. "She says he g
ot word from some of his Carbonari contacts. I’m still not sure we have the full story of how they discovered all of it. But then, even though they’re allies and friends, we can’t expect them to share everything, just as we don’t share everything with them."
"Quite," Raoul said.
Mélanie looked at him for a moment, wondering yet again how he had determined Sofia had the letters. But then, it was understood that they didn’t share everything with their own family, either. And it was like Raoul to confront that head-on.
"And that whole business with Lady Derby’s bracelet had nothing to do with the letters, in the end?" Cordelia said.
"Apparently not." Julien paused beside the fireplace, champagne bottle in one hand, whisky decanter in the other. "Beverston seems to have set it up. To create a distraction so he could go into my study. Where his goal seems to have been to take my grandfather’s snuff box. I confess to being at a loss as to why, at present."
"I found him taking the snuff box," Kitty said. "He could have been after more."
"True," Julien agreed. "But the snuff box obviously has some significance."
"Your grandfather died before the League was founded," Frances said.
"Yes." Julien moved to refill Malcolm’s glass. "The snuff box would have gone to my father. It’s a bit small to contain a hidden code or any sort of message. I shall certainly examine it, though."
"There’s one other thing I don’t understand," Edith said. "Was it just coincidence that Lewis Thornsby—befriended Alice Wilton? Or did the League set it up? Because it seems a lot of work, even for the League, to have set up their affair only to sell her letters to the highest bidder."
"I was thinking the same thing," Laura said.
"Quite." Malcolm turned his refilled whisky glass in his hand. "The League seem to be up to something complicated in Italy, probably involving Princess Caroline—the queen. And I very much doubt we’ve heard the last of it."
