Secrets of a Lady

by Tracy Grant

  It was Charles who broke the silence. “My compliments, Carevalo. Though I think we might have been spared the rough-and-tumble. Now that you have your precious ring back, I assume you’ll abide by your word and keep your part of the bargain?”

  Mélanie pushed herself back on her heels and glanced at her husband. He was sitting on the floor where he had fallen, a red mark on his forehead, his pistol in his hand.

  “Not so fast, Fraser.” Carevalo’s mouth curved in a smile fraught with danger. He glanced at the ring, as though to make sure it was really there, then looked back at them. “This isn’t the way this was supposed to happen. I was going to have O’Roarke here as well. But as we have reached the dénouement—”

  “I’d say you handled this very well without any help from O’Roarke,” Charles said, getting to his feet.

  “Help? From O’Roarke?” Carevalo gave a shout of laughter that sent a chill up Mélanie’s spine. “Oh, Fraser, how little you know.”

  Charles’s fingers tightened on his pistol. Mélanie felt his unspoken warning, though he did not so much as glance at her. “At the moment I couldn’t care less whether O’Roarke is your accomplice or your enemy or your long-lost brother, Carevalo. All that concerns me is my son.”

  Carevalo’s eyes glinted with mocking triumph, a cat who has been playing with a mouse and has just moved in for the kill. Mélanie felt a prickle of sweat break out on her neck, while at the same time her insides went ice-cold.

  Carevalo glanced at her, then looked back at Charles. “O’Roarke’s loyal—once loyal—valet Tomás came to see me just before I left Madrid.” He drew the words out, relishing them. “In a terrible state, poor man. He’d grown disgusted at the thought of what he’d helped his master accomplish. O’Roarke was a traitor. And so was your harlot of a wife.”

  Mélanie suppressed every possible reaction by holding herself stock-still. Charles didn’t so much as blink. “Have a care what words you use about my wife, Carevalo,” he said, his voice dangerously soft.

  Carevalo stared at him. “No surprise, Fraser?”

  “My dear Carevalo. A husband and wife have no secrets from each other.”

  “You knew?”

  Charles raised his shoulders in a gesture of supreme unconcern. “I have known for some time.”

  “Then you were an agent of Bonaparte as well.”

  “On the contrary.” Charles’s fingers shifted slightly on the pistol. “It was only after the war ended that I learned my wife and I had been adversaries.”

  “By God, Fraser, I knew you were arrogant, but I never thought you a damned fool.”

  Mélanie got to her feet. “Not a fool. Just supremely chivalrous. You mustn’t blame Charles, my lord. He’s every bit as angry with me as you are, but he won’t admit it to an outsider.”

  Carevalo turned to her with a gaze that singed her flesh. “You’re a Spaniard.” He fairly spat the words. “How could you betray your country?”

  When one could not decide which lie would serve one best, one fell back on the truth. “Betrayal is in the eye of the beholder, my lord,” she said. “I thought my actions best served Spain.”

  “To make it a vassal of a foreign power.” Anger dripped from Carevalo’s tongue.

  Charles drew the fire away from her. “To free it from the corrupt monarchy that you yourself would now overthrow.”

  Carevalo swung his gaze back to Charles. “This woman betrayed you. In every sense of the word, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “You are speaking of my wife, Carevalo.”

  Carevalo gave a snort of contempt. “That’s just the point.” He shook his head in amazement. “It never occurred to me that you could have known the truth and continued to live with her. When O’Roarke’s valet came to me, my plans for the ring fell into place. If by any chance the British didn’t have it, then the French did. Either you or your bitch of a wife was bound to be able to lay your hands on it. To employ O’Roarke as an emissary in the matter seemed strangely appropriate. I was going to have all three of you there when I exchanged the boy for the ring. Once the exchange was made, I’d reveal O’Roarke and Mrs. Fraser’s treachery. I did you the honor of thinking you would avenge yourself, Fraser.”

  “Revenge is a singularly useless response,” Charles said. “Give it up, Carevalo. You’re not going to produce the scene you wanted.”

  Carevalo’s mobile face turned as austere as marble in the lamplight. His eyes were filled with ghosts. “People died because of her.”

  “People would have died anyway,” Charles said. “Different people may have died because of her.”

  Carevalo looked at Mélanie. His gaze moved over her skin, as though he was stripping away her clothing. Not for the first time she wondered why some men had the impulse to ravish women they held in contempt. “A wife who turns whore has forfeited her husband’s loyalty.”

  “You’ve got the sequence of events backwards, my lord,” Mélanie said, though she knew as she spoke that it would have been wiser to keep silent. “I was a whore before I was a wife.”

  The flare in Carevalo’s eyes was like a slap. She could smell the brandy fumes coming off him, so strong surely a match would set fire to his breath. “By God, you soil the names of the innocent women of our country. I can only thank God my wife and daughters were never in your presence.”

  The pain in his eyes was all too familiar. For an incongruous instant, Mélanie felt her own anguish resonate with his, like two disparate voices that suddenly strike the same pitch. “I’m sorry for what happened to your family, my lord. Sorrier than I can say.”

  “Sorry.” Something shifted in Carevalo’s eyes, as though a shade had been stripped away. The unadulterated anger in his gaze was that of a man with no limits left. He leveled his pistol at her. “If your husband isn’t man enough to avenge your victims, I will.”

  Charles leveled his own pistol. “Pull that trigger and you’re dead, Carevalo.”

  “You haven’t got the guts, Fraser. I’m still the only one who knows where your son is, and you don’t even have the ring to bargain with. You may be too spineless to take your revenge on this whore, but I hardly think you’ll risk your son’s life for her sake. I should perhaps tell you that the people holding him have orders not to let him live if more than twenty-four hours pass without word from me.”

  Mélanie heard a strangled sound and realized it had issued from her own throat. Charles’s gaze on Carevalo was steady and implacable.

  “Besides,” Carevalo said, “I have the ring.”

  Oh, God, Mélanie thought, staring into Carevalo’s wild, exultant eyes, he more than half believes the myth. He really thinks that gold bauble makes him invincible.

  Time seemed to slow down. Reality shrank to the open maw of the gun barrel, the heavy stillness of the air, the inexorable purpose in Carevalo’s eyes. Every decision she had made from the moment she stumbled down the mountainside into Charles’s arms seemed to have led up to this moment. She met Charles’s gaze. Difficult to put everything she felt into a single look, especially when so much was poisoned between them. I love you. I’m sorry. Take care of the children. Take care of yourself.

  The click of the hammer seemed to echo in the still room.

  “Charles, don’t,” Mélanie yelled.

  Chapter 34

  T wo pistol reports ripped through the room. Pain tore through her right arm. The only man who knew where her son was hidden collapsed in a bloody mass at her feet.

  The smell of gunpowder, scorched flesh, and fresh blood filled her nostrils. She flung herself down beside Carevalo. Blood spurted from a charred hole in his brocade waistcoat, but his eyes were open and stared up at her. She pressed her hands over the wound and caught his gaze with her own. “Where’s Colin?”

  His face was pale and twisted with pain, but his mouth curved in a grim smile.

  Charles dropped down beside them. “You don’t want an innocent boy’s life on your conscience, Carevalo. Where is he?”

/>   “Where you’ll never find him.” The words were hoarse.

  Charles tugged off his cravat and pushed it into her hands. She pressed it over the wound. Hot, sticky blood spilled between her fingers.

  “I’ll give the ring to your allies,” Charles said. “I swear it. Tell us.”

  Carevalo’s gaze fixed on her rather than Charles. His eyes had begun to cloud. She had to lean close to his mouth to hear his words, so close she could feel the scrape of his breath on her skin. “You won’t get away with it.” The faint words had a hard glint of triumph. “Bow Street. Left a letter for them.”

  Blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes froze. Mélanie seized his shoulders. “Damn you, Carevalo, tell us.” She shook him, so hard that more blood spattered over her chest.

  “Mel.” Charles’s arm came round her shoulders. “He’s dead.”

  She released Carevalo and sat back on her heels. She felt as though all the strength had drained from her body.

  Charles pulled her to her feet and gripped both her arms. “Are you all right?”

  She stared down at the wreckage of what had been Carevalo. Blood and secrets spilled onto the Turkey rug. “He could have given us Colin back.”

  “Some prices are too high to pay.” His grip on her arms tightened, forcing her attention to his face. His forehead glistened with sweat. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Really, he was making an extraordinary fuss about it. “The bullet just grazed me.”

  He peered at her arm, released his breath in a harsh sigh, and pulled her tight against him. His mouth came down on her hair. His hands moved over her back and shoulders, as though to reassure himself that she was really there.

  She pulled her head back. “He said they’d kill Colin if they don’t hear from him every twenty-four hours. We don’t know when they got the last message. Charles, you said it yourself. Carevalo’s life was more precious than our own.”

  He took her face between his hands. “We’ll find out where he has Colin. There’ll be a way.” He drew back and glanced at her arm again. He tugged his handkerchief from his pocket, splashed it with brandy from a decanter, and pressed it to the wound.

  Footsteps pounded in the hall. “Fraser?” Raoul called. “Mélanie?”

  Charles bound the handkerchief round her arm. “In here, O’Roarke.”

  The door banged open. “We heard a shot. Good God.” Shock, such as she had rarely heard in Raoul’s voice, reverberated through the room.

  “Christ, Charles.” Edgar followed Raoul into the room and froze on the threshold. “I thought you wanted to avoid bloodshed. Why the hell—”

  Charles dropped his arm round her shoulders. “I took exception to Carevalo killing my wife.”

  “He threatened to kill Mélanie?” Edgar said. “Why?”

  “He was quite mad,” Mélanie said. “He took it into his head that I was a French agent.”

  “Good Lord.” Edgar stared from Carevalo’s body to their faces. “He must have been mad.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Charles said.

  Raoul’s gaze moved over her face. “Are you all right?”

  “Only grazed.” She realized Raoul was staring at her hands. She looked down. Her hands were smeared with blood and more of it had spattered over her gown, glistening against the black fabric in the lamplight. “Charles got his shot off before Carevalo did. Most of the blood must be Carevalo’s.” She drew a breath and went on speaking quickly. “Before he died Carevalo told us the people holding Colin have orders to kill Colin if they don’t hear from him every twenty-four hours. We don’t know when they received the last message.”

  “There has to be a clue somewhere.” Charles sounded as though he would force that clue into existence by sheer power of will. He glanced from Raoul to Edgar. “You two look upstairs. Carevalo may have a manservant staying here with him. Possibly other guards, though I doubt he’d have trusted many with the knowledge of his whereabouts. It should be obvious which rooms he’s used—we’re looking for papers, letters, anything with writing on it, even if you can’t make sense of it. Stay together. Whoever else is in the house may be armed.”

  Raoul nodded. “Right. Captain Fraser?”

  Edgar hesitated, received a look from Charles, and strode from the room.

  “Just a minute, O’Roarke.” Charles crossed the room to detain him by the door. “Carevalo knew about you and Mélanie,” he said, the words low and rapid. “He may have left a letter somewhere for Bow Street.”

  Raoul nodded without wasting time on further questions. Charles steered Mélanie toward a chair that faced away from Carevalo’s body. “It’s most likely any papers are in here. Sit down for a minute. I’ll search the desk.”

  “Charles, for heaven’s sake.” She wiped her hands on her skirt. “I admit it was a close call, but I’m not actually hurt.”

  “You’d be pardoned for being in shock. I know I am.” His fingers were shaking where they gripped her arm. “I thought—” He sucked in his breath. For a moment, he seemed incapable of speech. “I wasn’t at all sure I could manage that shot. I thought—” His throat worked, as though he was trying to force the words out.

  She laid her fingers over his own. “You should have more faith in yourself, Charles. Though I confess I had doubts about my survival myself.”

  He took her hand and brushed it with his lips. “I love you.”

  The words were clipped, almost harsh. Before she could answer, Charles turned back to the desk. “Carevalo had to have a way to communicate with the people who are holding Colin.”

  “A newspaper advertisement?”

  “Too much like his instructions to us. He’d know we might think of it.”

  She lit the lamp on the mahogany desk. An innocuous, solid, English desk. The Sheffield plate of an inkpot and penknife glinted in the spill of light. A recently mended pen lay beside the knife, and a wax jack and a small globe stood in the opposite corner. The cubbyholes and drawers were stuffed with papers, but these proved to be accounts relating to the property and correspondence by a J. Grafton, who presumably was the husband of Carevalo’s mistress.

  Charles tilted the lamp close to the penstrokes imbedded in the ink blotter. Mélanie tugged at a side drawer that refused to open completely. It gave way with the crack of splintered wood. She reached behind the drawer, scraped her hand on the broken wood, and felt the crinkle of paper. She drew it out. A piece of folded paper, sealed with red wax, with no imprint and no direction written on it. She broke the wax with her nail. A handful of banknotes spilled onto the desk.

  “Payment to his minions,” Charles said.

  Mélanie smoothed out the paper wrapping. The inside was covered with writing. QAWMW UGCC EW DSMVAWM OWCYX. PWW QI GV NYLB OIWPHQ OMGHB YCC QNGP. AWCC AYTW QGFW WHISRA QI OI QAYV UAWH QAGP GP OIHW.

  She showed it to Charles. “Recognize it?”

  “A simple substitution code, I suspect.” He pinned down the curling edges of the paper with his fingers. “It’s not long, but hopefully there’s enough to break it. He hasn’t troubled to run all the words together, which makes—”

  Raoul came back into the room. “The rest of the house is empty. He only seems to have used the kitchen and one of the bedrooms. There’s some food in the pantry, a change of clothes and shaving things in the bedroom. Captain Fraser’s having a closer look, but I doubt we’ll find anything. No sign of a letter to Bow Street, either. You’ve done better?”

  “Perhaps.” Mélanie looked up from the paper. “We’ve found a payment and a coded message, presumably prepared for the people holding Colin.”

  Raoul strode into the room and stared down at the cipher. “If Carevalo had this ready and waiting, he must have been expecting a messenger.”

  Charles looked up and met his gaze. “Quite.”

  Raoul nodded. “Mélanie’s better at ciphers than I am, and you were brilliant at them even as a boy. I’ll keep watch in the hall with your brother.”

&n
bsp; Mélanie looked back at the coded message. The image of Colin’s severed finger swam before her eyes. This must be how Carevalo had sent the instructions. But if this was the next message he meant to send, then the twenty-four hours between messages were not yet up. She sat in the desk chair, back straight, picked up the pen, and reached for a sheet of writing paper. “W seems to be the most frequent letter,” she said.

  “It is,” Charles said. “So assuming he’s writing in English, W must be e.”

  They had both devised and decoded countless substitution ciphers in the Peninsula and later in Vienna and Brussels. It was a simple enough code, used when one wanted to conceal the message but was not expecting a serious attempt at decoding. One chose a key word (treason had been a favorite of Raoul’s) and matched the letters of the word with the first letters of the alphabet. The rest of the alphabet was then displaced by the number of distinct letters in the key word. It was impossible to determine how the letters were displaced without knowing the key word and the number of letters it contained. But there were ways to break the code. E was the most commonly occurring letter in the English language, so the most commonly occurring letter in a cipher written in English was almost certainly translated as E.

  “W must be the fifth letter in the key word.” Mélanie copied out the cipher with e filled in in lowercase for all the Ws.

  She stared at the paper before her and forced her mind to focus down to those black strokes of ink. The first word was now simplified to QAeGe. “I’d hazard a guess the first word is ‘there.’ Or ‘where,’ but it seems more likely he’d start a letter with ‘there.’”

  Charles pulled up a stool and sat beside her. “The second word is a four-letter word without an e and with a double letter at the end. Followed by a two-letter word with e as the second letter. There will be?”

  “Let’s try it. If you’re right, that gives us t, h, r, w, i, l, and b.” She rewrote the cipher with those letters filled in.