by Tracy Grant
"I know this sounds absurd in the circumstances," Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte said. "But it's so very good to see you."
"You too,” Mélanie found herself saying. And she meant it, even as another part of her brain screamed that she was about to be sucked into a maelstrom. For a moment, she was thrown back ten years to their first meeting in Josephine’s salon at Malmaison. Little had she guessed then that in the course of her subsequent service to Josephine, she would come to think of the Empress’s daughter as a friend. For a spy, used to trusting no one, a friend was a treasure beyond rubies.
Hortense gave one of her sudden smiles. "Look at you. You’ve become an English lady.”
Mélanie shook her head. “You have to be born to this life to be an English lady. Your parents have to be born to it and their parents before them. Besides Charles is Scottish.”
“But you belong here now.”
Mélanie opened her mouth to protest and then bit back the words. A part of her would always be an exile, but to all intents and purposes, this was her home.
“You're wondering what in God’s name I’m doing here,” Hortense said.
"On the contrary. I can hazard a very good guess what you're doing here."
Hortense drew a shaky breath. "Have you seen him?"
"I could scarcely avoid it. Though he hasn’t been in London much since his marriage."
Hortense's fingers tightened on the stiff folds of her gown. "I caught a glimpse of him in the ballroom. With his wife.” The words seemed to catch in her throat. “How is he?"
Mélanie recalled the Comte de Flahaut as she had glimpsed him in the ballroom a few moments before, waltzing with his bride, bending over her chair. Smiling the smile that had dazzled women across the Continent. "Trying to find his way in a hostile world. Like the rest of us who were on the losing side at Waterloo."
"They have a child."
"A little girl."
"I'm glad. I always knew he'd make a good father.” Hortense fingered a fold of her skirt, her gaze filled with ghosts. "His wife—does he love her?"
"Oh, chérie.” Mélanie’s throat tightened. “It's difficult enough to know if one's in love oneself let alone if someone else is."
"His father pushed him into it. He never approved of me, and now he wants Flahaut as far away from the taint of Bonapartism as possible."
Mélanie grimaced at the thought of Flahaut’s father, currently in Paris. Not his legal father (who had died some years before), but the man widely assumed to have fathered him, his mother's former lover Talleyrand. Talleyrand had navigated the dangerous waters of the French Revolution to serve as Napoleon Bonaparte's Foreign Minister and had survived Napoleon's first exile to represent the French at the Congress of Vienna. He had managed to survive yet again after Waterloo.
"M. Talleyrand's own position is precarious,” Mélanie said.
"As are all of ours. I know I was mad to come here."
"You want to see Flahaut—"
"Oh, no. That is, yes of course I do, but I wouldn't run such a risk for so selfish a reason. Not now.” Hortense sank down the circular stone bench. The gold gown fell in regal folds about her, gleaming in the shadows. "I'm not the girl you met at Malmaison ten years ago, who still nourished romantic fantasies. I’m not the girl who tumbled so blindly into love when I should have been old enough to know better. I told Flahaut it had to end after Waterloo. He had to protect himself. I had to protect my children.” She looked up at Mélanie with a gaze as raw as a saber cut. "I have no right to ask this, but I need your help."
Mélanie's fingers tightened round her fan. The plea had been inevitable from the moment she recognized Hortense, but that made it no easier to answer.
"I know it goes beyond any call of friendship," Hortense said. "I know you can't afford for your husband to know the truth about you—"
"My husband does know the truth."
"Sacrebleu. How—"
"I told him last November."
"You told him—"
"That I've been a French agent since I was sixteen, that I married him to gather intelligence, that everything he thought he knew about my past was a lie."
Hortense’s eyes widened. "Your husband is a remarkable man.”
Memories of Charles rushed through her mind. Unbuttoning her nightdress on their wedding night with a tenderness she had never known. Cupping his hand round their newborn son’s head. The wasteland of his gaze just after she told him the truth about her past. The pain and dawning understanding in his eyes as he tried to make sense of her revelations. That was the wonderful thing about Charles. He always tried to understand other people, even when they were his opponents. “He knows what it is—and what it costs—to deceive people."
Hortense stared at her as though she'd claimed Charles Fraser was possessed of magical powers. "I can scarcely imagine what my husband would do in such a situation. He’d go into a rage—"
"I didn't say Charles wasn't furious.” The sound of Charles's fist smashing through the wall of their salon echoed in Mélanie's head. "At first I couldn't imagine we'd ever be able to carry on a civil conversation, let alone maintain any semblance of a marriage. Even now— It isn't easy for him. It's never going to be easy."
"Mélanie—"
"I told Charles I stopped spying after Waterloo. Which is the truth. And I promised him I'd indulge in no more intrigues behind his back. Charles has a seat in Parliament. We have two children. We’ve made a life here. If the truth about my past came to light, he could be branded a traitor.”
And yet she could not deny the pull of that older loyalty, the plea in her friend's eyes, so like her mother's. A good spy shouldn’t care about anyone. Did any agent really manage that? She had broken the rule more times than she could count.
Hortense leaned forward. "I know how much I’m asking of you. But I don’t have anyone else to turn to.“
Mélanie forced herself to look straight into her friend’s familiar, pleading gaze. “I can’t help you, Hortense. Not this time."
“Only listen. Two months ago—"
But before she could say more, a scream of horror cut the night air.
Chapter 3
I hear that Charles de Flahaut is at Woburn. Poor Madame de St. Leu [Hortense Bonaparte] will sing all the romances about eternal constancy with a heavy heart, but a French ex-queen can never be long without consolation.
Harriet Granville to her sister Georgiana Morpeth
October, 1815
Mélanie ran down the stone steps of the temple. She could see a man and a woman huddled together by the fountain across the garden. She pushed Hortense toward the steps to the terrace. “Go. Before you’re discovered.”
Hortense hesitated a moment, then ran to the steps. Mélanie ran in the opposite direction, toward couple by the fountain. She recognized the Titania costume and dark hair of the woman. It was Lucinda, Isobel Lydgate’s young sister.
“Lucy? Are you all right?” Mélanie called.
“Ye— No.” Lucinda’s voice was rough and terrified. “I think he’s dead.”
“He” was obviously not the man beside her, who was also staring transfixed at the fountain. Mélanie ran up to them and dropped an arm round Lucinda’s shoulders.
The dark figure of a man floated on the shallow pool, beneath the bronze nymphs who shot water into the air from the seashells held in their outstretched hands. For a moment Mélanie thought he had drunk too much and been sick and fallen into the fountain, for an oily scum filmed the water about him. Then the wind ruffled the clouds over the moon, and she saw that the oily scum was crimson.
Nausea rose up in her throat. No matter how many times she looked on death, on a smoke-blackened battlefield or a tiled floor or the mildewed cobblestones of an alley or monogrammed sheets in a silk-draped bed, the absence of life never lost its gut punch.
He was floating on his stomach. Mélanie reached into the water and touched her fingers to his throat. Cold, clammy skin and no hint of a
pulse. “Yes, he does seem to be dead,” she said, in as tranquil a voice as she could muster. She turned to the man beside Lucinda. He was costumed as Robin Hood. Toby Alcott, she realized, Lord Winterton’s younger son. She’d noticed Lucy and him flirting earlier in the evening. “Mr. Alcott? Could you help me turn him over?”
Toby Alcott’s gaze started in his green-tinged face. “What? I— Oh, yes. Of course, Mrs. Fraser.”
The man in the fountain wore a heavy red velvet cloak, now sodden with water. He was a lifeless, unresisting weight as they turned him on his back, revealing a face covered by a black mask and a gaping wound in his chest that had oozed blood all over his gold tunic.
Lucinda put her hand to her mouth. “Who is he?” she asked in a hoarse voice.
“I’m not sure. I don’t recognize the costume.” Mélanie gripped the dead man's arm to hold him steady and leaned over to untie the mask. The string was damp and slippery. It took her several seconds to untangle the knot. At last the strings came loose. She lifted the mask to see high cheekbones, dark brows and hair, ice blue eyes.
Every drop of blood seemed to freeze in her veins. It was the eyes that were unmistakable, though they were beginning to cloud. She was staring down at the dead body of Julien St. Juste.
Mélanie forced air into her lungs. “Lucy.” She gripped the younger girl’s shoulders, turning her away from the body. “I need you to get Charles and Oliver. Can you do that?”
Lucinda gave a shaky nod, as though the crisp words steadied her.
Mélanie squeezed her shoulders. “Good girl. Mr. Alcott, I think you should go with her.”
“We can’t leave you alone here, Mrs. Fraser.”
“I’ll be all right. Get Charles and Oliver. But don’t let word of what’s happened get out among the guests or we’ll have panic on our hands.”
Mr. Alcott began to protest, but Lucinda reached for his hand. “Come on, Toby. Mélanie knows what to do.“
Mélanie watched the young couple run across the garden and up the steps to the terrace. Then she turned back to the body in the fountain.
The sickly-sweet stench of blood washed over her. The moonlight shone bright on the familiar features. Even in death there was something mocking in the curve of the cheekbones and mouth. Julien St. Juste, master spy, lover of Josephine Bonaparte. The man Mélanie had slept with and matched wits against on her first mission ten years ago.
All her promises to Charles, all her good intentions about leaving her past behind her. She should have known it was folly to think she could escape. Here was her past, floating in a pool of blood, staring up at her with cold, dead eyes.
She cast another glance round the garden. No sign of Hortense. It strained coincidence to think there was no connection between Hortense’s presence at the ball and St. Juste’s. Not to mention St. Juste’s death. What in God’s name was Hortense embroiled in? Mélanie bit back a curse. Because whatever it was, she was now embroiled in it herself.
“Mel?” Charles’s voice echoed across the garden. Mélanie turned to see him hurrying toward her, followed by both Oliver and Isobel.
“I’m all right.” Mélanie went to meet them. “But there’s a man in the fountain who’s very dead.”
Oliver strode forward and went stock still, his face as white as the linen of his toga. Isobel froze a few steps behind him, staring at the corpse as though the Commendatore had just dragged her down to hell alongside Don Giovanni.
Mélanie touched Isobel's hand. Isobel jerked as if she'd been struck.
Charles crossed to the fountain and studied the dead man. “Do either of you recognize him?” he asked Isobel and Oliver.
"I don't—” Oliver glanced away, then walked forward and looked down at the corpse. "No, I don't think so.” He turned to his wife. "Darling? Can you bear to look? Do you remember greeting him when he arrived?"
Isobel moved to stand beside her husband. She stared down at the body with the determination of one trained from the cradle not to look away from unpleasantness. "No. But there were some late-comers I didn't greet. It's not unheard of for people to slip into a ball uninvited. Especially at a masquerade. But that doesn't explain—"
Charles squeezed her hand. "We have to send to Bow Street. A runner should look at the body before we disturb the scene any further."
Oliver's gaze snapped to Charles's face. The Prince Regent was in the ballroom, along with two royal dukes, three cabinet ministers, a half-dozen ambassadors, and God knew how many M.P.s and peers of the realm. At last, Oliver gave a curt nod. "I'll write a note for one of the footmen to carry."
"Ask for Jeremy Roth," Charles said. "He's discreet and clever, and Mélanie and I know him.”
"Do you want me to come with you?" Mélanie asked Isobel.
"No, you and Charles should stay out here with the—” Isobel glanced at the fountain then jerked her gaze away. "You should stay out here so no one disturbs things."
Charles touched Oliver on the shoulder. "Make sure the doors are secured."
"You don't think—"
"We don't want anyone to leave until we have an accurate list of who's here.”
Oliver opened his mouth as though to protest that none of his guests could have had anything to do with the dead man floating in his fountain. Then he glanced at the corpse again and followed his wife toward the house.
The Lydgates climbed the terrace steps. The French windows closed behind them, and Mélanie was alone in the cold, moonlit garden with her husband and the body of Julien St Juste.
"We need more light," she said, looking round the stone statues and clipped hedges that filled the garden. Focusing on details would help her hold on to her sanity. "The victim or the killer might have dropped something."
"Roth will be here shortly."
"Yes, but we might as well see—"
"Mel—"
"Look.” Something glinted in the murky depths of the water. “By the base of the fountain."
"For God's sake, Mélanie—"
"We can't just leave it there. Hold on to me, Charles." She knelt on the edge of the fountain without waiting for a reply. Charles drew a sharp breath, but his hands closed on her waist as she leaned forward and reached a velvet-clad, lace-cuffed arm into the cold, blood-filmed water. Her nails scrabbled against stone. She leaned farther forward and would have lost her balance were it not for Charles's hands at her waist.
Her fingers brushed something smooth and thin and sharp. She straightened up, holding a dripping, six-inch object. "The sort of weapon that's meant for business. Whoever brought it here didn't intend it as part of a costume."
"No.” Charles helped her to her feet and took the knife from her numb fingers. His gaze moved over it, sharp with an interest that he quickly masked. Or tried to.
She tugged a handkerchief from her dry sleeve and wiped her hand. "He was stabbed in the chest not the back. That means he probably knew whoever the killer was."
Charles glanced round the walled garden. "There's no sign of a struggle.”
"The victim was probably standing at the edge of the fountain. He stumbled back with the blow and fell into the water. You can see where water splashed onto the flagstones. It could be an hour or more before Mr. Roth can get here. If the victim has papers on him—"
"No.” Charles set the knife down on a wrought iron table.
"But the water could ruin the evidence before—"
"Damn it, Mélanie.” He crossed to her side and gripped her shoulders. His eyes had gone from gray to charcoal. "It's been two months. Two months since we almost lost—"
"Everything.” Child, marriage, trust. Life, and all the things that went to make up a life.
"We don't need to be dragged into more damned intrigues. We’re staying the hell out of it. We’ll show Roth the scene of the crime, we’ll do what we can for Oliver and Isobel, and we’ll go home to our children.”
Check. The tie that bound them, the debt and responsibility she could not ignore. “You said yoursel
f we can’t hide forever.“
“That was about going to a ball. This is about a murder."
She pulled away from his grasp. "I wasn't made for safety and cotton wool, Charles. Sometimes I don't think I was made for happily-ever-after."
"Perhaps not. But you owe it to your family to try."
She spun toward the fountain, hands pressed to her face. "Damn it all, I didn't mean— I owe you and the children more than I can possibly repay."
"Don't turn maudlin, Mel. I wasn't trying to call in a debt."
"You'd be entitled to do so. But—” She dug her fingers into her temples. She had to make a decision, with no time to think or prepare. She dropped her hands to her sides and turned back to her husband. “We can’t stay out of it, darling. I know who the dead man is.”
Shock, disbelief, and sickening certainty filled Charles’s gaze. For a moment he didn’t seem to trust himself to speak. Then he drew a long, harsh breath. “Who?” he said, his voice a scrape of sound.
But before she could frame her answer, boot heels slammed against the flagstones. She looked round to tell whomever it was to go back inside, but when she recognized the new arrivals, she held her tongue. The austere, classically handsome man in the frock coat and powdered wig was Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary. And the wiry gray-haired man in the brown velvet robe was Hubert Mallinson, eighth Earl Carfax. Lord Carfax was Isobel and Lucinda's father. He was also the chief of British intelligence operations.
"Lucy told us there'd been an accident," Carfax said as he and Castlereagh descended the terrace steps.
"There's a dead body," Charles said. "But it doesn't look very accidental."
Carfax strode to the fountain and peered down at the dead man. His keen blue eyes went wide with disbelief then narrowed with what could only be recognition.
Mélanie clenched her hands hard on the folds of her skirt. Knowing Lord Carfax, she shouldn't be a bit surprised he recognized Julien St. Juste.
