by Tracy Grant
“A terrible business,” Pendarves said, settling into one of the high-backed benches. “You’re questioning everyone who was present last night?”
“I’m starting with those I think most likely to have information.” Roth fished his notebook and pencil from his greatcoat pocket. “I understand from Mr. Tanner that you and he were on the terrace last night not long before the murder took place.”
The light from the oil lamp on the table cast a yellowish glow on Pendarves’s suddenly bloodless skin. “Yes,” he said. “Tanner and I were on the terrace. Briefly.”
“How briefly?”
Pendarves began to pull off his gloves. The leather gleamed in the lamplight. The stitching was exquisitely precise. “Thirty or forty seconds. A minute at most.”
“Did the weather drive you inside? Or did you perhaps find that you didn’t have the terrace to yourselves?”
Pendarves smoothed out his gloves and laid them on the bench beside him. “Yes, as it happens we discovered we weren’t alone. It seemed prudent to remove to somewhere inside the house.”
“Was the conversation you overheard of a particularly intimate nature?”
A waiter approached their table with two cups of coffee. Pendarves waited until the man had moved off, then took a sip of coffee, free of brandy, whisky, or even cream or sugar. “You obviously know a great deal already.”
“Perhaps. What interests me now is what you know.”
Pendarves blew on the steam rising from the cup. “The couple in the garden were engaged in a conversation of such a nature that it seemed both tactful and gentlemanly to absent ourselves as soon as possible.”
“Of what nature precisely was the conversation?”
Pendarves set down his cup, spattering coffee on the deal table. “Good God, man, do I have to spell out—“
“It may have a bearing on the murder.”
“It can’t possibly—“
“You can’t know that, my lord. Nor can I. Which is why I can only gather all the information available and hope it yields some sort of pattern.”
Pendarves drew a sharp breath. “He said, ‘It can’t go on like this. You must see that.’ And she—the lady—said, ‘Yes, I know. But I don’t know that I can bear to stop.’”
Roth watched him. There was no mistaking the pain in the Pendarves’s dark eyes. “He? She?”
Pendarves turned up the wick on the lamp. The smell of coal oil wafted through the air. “You can’t know—“
“I know that without the truth I’m as likely to accuse the wrong person as the right one. I don’t think you want to see an innocent man accused.”
Pendarves took a quick swallow coffee, as though regretting he had not fortified it. “I can’t be sure. Just as I can’t be sure exactly what they were speaking about. But from the sound of the voices—“
“Yes?”
“The gentleman sounded like Lydgate.”
Roth’s fingers tightened on his untouched coffee cup. “Mr. Oliver Lydgate? The host of the evening?”
Pendarves nodded, gaze on the table.
“And the lady?”
“She—“
“I’ll find out one way or another, my lord. Easier if I find it out discreetly from you. Otherwise, I’ll be forced to question God knows how many guests which will give rise to God knows what rumors. You have my word that I’ll be discreet with the information.”
Pendarves cast a quick glance round the coffeehouse. He leaned across the table, his voice sunk to a whisper. “I think it was Sylvie.”
“Sylvie?”
“Oh, Christ, don’t you see that’s the problem? St. Ives’s wife. She and my wife have been bosom bows since the schoolroom. Her husband and I’ve known each other all our lives.”
“The Viscountess St. Ives? And she and Mr, Lydgate—“
“Have been acquainted for years. I can’t tell you what their conversation last night signified.”
“But you can make assumptions.”
“No.” Pendarves voice cut with the force of a racket swing. “That’s for you to do, Mr. Roth.”
“Fair enough.” Roth leaned back against the high wooden bench. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the interview was not the identity of the couple in the garden, but the fact that Pendarves had revealed it. Roth knew he was a good interrogator, but he had no illusions that he had the skills to get men such as Pendarves and Simon Tanner to reveal the sort of secrets they had revealed in the course of the morning. In Roth’s experience, men only divulged such closely held secrets when it suited their own purposes to do so.
When, for instance, they wanted to divert attention from other secrets far more deadly.
Chapter 11
He trusts me. It's an odd thing, having someone's trust…
Mélanie Fraser to Raoul O'Roarke
18 February 1813
Charles leaned back against the greasy squabs of the hackney he had flagged down in Little St. Andrew Street. “Where do you think he is?”
“Raoul?” Mélanie’s voice was level, but he could sense the worn places beneath the polished veneer.
“He seems to be the pertinent person at the moment,” Charles said, pleased his own voice sounded quite normal. “If he’s here in secret, I doubt he’s be staying at Mivart’s.”
“No.” Mélanie smoothed the folds of the scarlet cloak Bet had lent her. The yellowed ivory of her borrowed gloves pulled over her taut fingers.
“Have you met him anywhere else in London?”
She turned to him with a gaze as steady as the sea on a windless day. “A coffeehouse in Bloomsbury called the Crystal Heart. Two years ago.”
He didn't move a muscle, but his senses quickened, as they did when he heard an unexpected rustle in territory beset with snipers. “Not to be overly inquisitive, but I thought you stopped working for O’Roarke after Waterloo.”
“Stopping working for him didn’t cut all my old ties. He needed help setting one of our former associates up in London.”
“Fair enough,” Charles said, even as an image of his wife and her former lover huddled together at a table in a dimly lit coffeehouse hung in his mind.
“That damned mad man,” Mélanie said.
“St. Juste?”
“Raoul. He had to have known I’d recognize him if I saw him at the ball last night.”
“You didn’t see him?”
“Darling.” Her mouth lifted in an approximation of her usual smile. “I’d have told you.”
“Would you?”
“Probably. After we found St. Juste, anyway.”
“Suppose that’s why O’Roarke was at the ball. Not to see St. Juste but to seek you out.”
“But I just told you he didn’t.”
“He could have changed his mind after St. Juste’s body was discovered and the ball erupted into chaos.”
“Possibly. But why would he have sought me out?”
“Because he needs your help as he did two years ago?”
Her dark brows, carefully plucked into a delicate arch, drew together.
“Wondering which side you’re on?” Charles asked.
“Wondering what the hell Raoul is doing. I don't think he'd employ a man like St. Juste were the stakes not high."
“Nor do I.”
Her brows lifted.
“After all,” Charles said gently, “he is my father.”
She stared at him for a long moment. He returned her gaze, not letting his own waver. “Easier to say it straight out, don’t you think?”
That of course was the core of what made O’Roarke’s involvement in the matter such a cruel jest. Thirty some years ago, Raoul O’Roarke had been the lover of Lady Elizabeth Fraser, and he, rather than her husband, had fathered her firstborn child. Twenty years later, O’Roarke had become Mélanie’s spymaster and lover and was the father of the baby she’d been carrying when she married Charles. Which meant that in strict biology he was not only Charles’s father but Colin’s as well. All of
which Charles had learned a scant two months since.
Mélanie’s mouth curved in an unexpected smile. “That’s the wonderful thing about you, Charles. You’re never afraid of the truth.”
“On the contrary. I’m frequently bloody terrified of it. But I don’t see what’s to be gained from ignoring it.” He shifted his position on the lumpy carriage seat. “We were going to have to deal with O’Roarke again sooner or later. It’s just turned out to be sooner.”
She drew a breath, as though her throat hurt. “Raoul taught me that when one’s attempting untangle someone’s motivation one has to try to think like the person in question.”
“Can you think like O’Roarke?”
“I worked for him for three years. I shared his bed, I plotted missions with him, I soaked up whatever he had to teach me. But some of the things I learned about him last November make me wonder if I ever knew him at all.”
“Yet like all of us he has a code, of sorts.”
“Whatever his sins, he’s driven by what he believes in. Freedom to think and speak without fear of arrest. A say in one’s own government. A world in which people don’t starve in the street.”
“The same things you and I believe in.”
“But Raoul's willing to go to great lengths if he thinks he can achieve success.”
“Such as having the woman he loved seduce St. Juste?”
“That’s unfair, Charles. Raoul always left tactical decisions to me.”
They rounded a corner. He gripped the carriage strap harder than was necessary. "Do you recognize the description of the young man with the dark hair and spectacles whom Lucan saw with O'Roake?"
She shook her head. "The only associates of ours I can think of in London who wear spectacles are older. That's the truth, Charles."
"I didn't question it. You said O'Roarke came to you two years ago for help in settling former Bonapartist agents in London. Was he just finding them a safe haven or was he setting up a network?"
"Why would he want a network in London?"
"Don't play the innocent, Mel. Waterloo didn't end Bonapartist hopes."
"My dear Charles. You're starting to sound like Carfax."
"Don't worry, I'm a long way from checking for enemy agents behind the bed curtains. Except for the one I sleep with, of course. But London has her share of former Bonapartists. The Comte de Flahaut was at the ball last night."
"Flahaut seems to have turned his back on all things Bonapartist."
"Seems. A number of people who seemed to have turned their backs on Bonaparte the first time went over to him during the Hundred Days."
"And you think all these people are part of some vast conspiracy—"
"I'm exploring options. Has O'Roarke been in contact with Bonaparte since he was sent to St. Helena?"
Mélanie's indrawn breath was like the snick of a blade. "Not that I know of. But he'd hardly have confided in me after I stopped working for him. Raoul thought Bonaparte was preferable to the alternatives, but he saw the Emperor's faults as clearly as anyone."
"His loyalty to the Empress Josephine goes back a long way.”
"That's a personal loyalty. One of the few I've known him to admit to. He never talked much about their days in prison during the Terror, but it forged an unshakable bond."
"Did O'Roarke know the contents of the paper he sent you to steal from St. Juste ten years ago?"
"I think so."
"Did he ever mention it in the succeeding years?"
"Not in so many words. But he and Josephine corresponded regularly until her death."
"If he thought Josephine was threatened—"
"Josephine's dead."
"Her memory isn't."
Mélanie pulled the scarlet cloak closed at her throat. The light from the window illumined a mended rent in the fabric. “The truth is how can I guess how far Raoul would go for something he believed in when I can’t be sure how far I’d go myself?”
Her gaze held the scars of what she’d done, the knowledge that she’d probably do the same again, and a host of unanswered questions about choices she had not yet faced.
“I don’t think any of us can be sure,” Charles said. “Not until we face the choice.” He tilted his head back against the squabs. “’Working within the system can be next to impossible when the system itself is corrupt.’”
She swung her gaze to him. “Raoul said that to me.”
“He said it to me as well. When I was ten years old. Before the uprising of ’98 had forced him to leave Ireland for Spain. When he seems to have been trying to be a father to me, though I didn’t have the least idea of the truth of the matter at the time.” He drew a breath. His throat was raw with things he couldn’t define. “We wouldn’t have got Colin back without O’Roarke’s help. I’m not insensible of what we owe him. I’m not insensible of—other things. But I can’t answer for what I’ll do if he and I find ourselves on opposite sides.”
Mélanie folded her hands in her lap. “Nor can I."
The rain had let up and patches of damp were drying on the pavement when Jeremy Roth turned into Berkeley Square. He was a dozen paces from the Fraser house when the door opened to admit a slender woman in a gray gown and bonnet and two smaller figures.
“Mr. Roth.” Colin Fraser ran down the steps and past the filigree lampposts. An indignant meow accompanied his dash. He had Berowne, the family cat, buttoned inside his coat. Colin slowed his pace and stroked the cat’s gray head. One couldn’t tell that beneath the tan leather of his glove the little finger of his right hand was a shortened stump, healed cleanly now, but a lasting legacy of his abduction.
Colin approached Roth at a slower pace, petting the mollified cat. “I expect you need to see Mummy and Daddy about the man who died last night.”
Children had a way of knowing everything. “Yes,” Roth said. “We arranged to meet here at one.”
“Hullo, Mr. Roth.” Jessica ran forward, honey-colored curls bouncing on her shoulders, trundling a hoop along the pavement. “Did you bring Adam and Geoffrey?”
“Not today I’m afraid.” Roth’s two sons were great favorites with Jessica.
“Mr. Roth has business with your parents.” The gray-gowned woman joined them. A flash of titian showed beneath her bonnet. It was Miss Dudley, the children’s governess. Roth shook her hand.
“Mr. and Mrs. Fraser sent the carriage back but haven’t returned themselves. Sometimes this sort of business takes longer than one anticipates.”
Her voice was cool, but Roth caught an unexpected spark in her blue eyes. He revised his impression of how much Miss Dudley knew of her employers’ adventures.
A hackney turned into the square, sending up a spray of water from the street and eliciting another yowl from Berowne.
“There they are,” Jessica said as her parents alighted from the hackney. She ran forward and flung her arms round her mother’s knees, then drew back and stared up at her. “What happened to the dress you were wearing this morning?”
“It got wet,” Mélanie Fraser said.
Jessica touched a fold of the cherry-striped fabric. “This one’s pretty. I like the lace.”
Colin looked from his mother to his father. “Did you get hurt?”
Charles Fraser ruffled his son’s hair. “Nothing serious, lad.”
“If it wasn’t serious you wouldn’t have been gone all morning. But you’re all right now, that’s the important thing.” Colin's gaze moved to his mother and fastened on a scrape above the scarlet folds of her cloak. “Are you going out again?”
“Yes, but not for a bit. We have to talk to Mr. Roth.”
Jessica leaned her elbows on her hoop. “You said we’d play in the square.”
“And you’re going to.” Mrs. Fraser tucked a curl beneath Jessica’s velvet bonnet. “Laura’s taking you.”
“Will you take us tomorrow?” Jessica asked.
Mélanie Fraser flicked a glance at her husband. “Soon.”
Jessica cau
ght a fold of mother’s dress again, this time with greater urgency. “I don’t want Colin to go away again.”
Mrs. Fraser crouched down and put her arms round the little girl. “Laura’s going to take extra-special care of you and Colin, querida, just like we’ve talked about. You and Colin are going to take care of Berowne.” She reached out to stroke the cat. “Make sure he has his lead on, Colin.”
Colin nodded.
“Who’s going to take care of you and Daddy?” Jessica asked.
“Daddy and I can take care of ourselves. We’re very good at it.”
“Sometimes you get hurt.”
“But we always come home safely, don’t we?”
Jessica exchanged a look with her brother. “Promise you’ll come see us before you go out again?”
“Word of honor,” Charles Fraser said.
Mollified, the Fraser children permitted Miss Dudley to lead them off to the square. Roth followed the Frasers up the steps to their house. When he had first visited the Fraser house two months before, he’d been struck by the grandeur. The gleam of the marble tiles in the entry hall, the soaring ceilings, the shimmer of silk and damask upholstery. Now he felt a sense comfort as he followed the Frasers through the polished mahogany door. The warmth of the cream-colored walls, the bright red child’s top the on the console table beside the silver filigree basket for calling cards, the cat’s ball of yarn beneath the hall settle. The sort of comfort that made one let down one’s guard.
Michael, the unflappable footman, took their outer garments, apparently unfazed by the fact that his master and mistress were garbed differently from how they had been when they had left the house four hours before. There was a fire made up in the library, he said. Addison and Blanca had just returned and would join them shortly.
“Colin seems to be doing remarkably well,” Roth said as he followed the Frasers into the library.
“He has nightmares.” Mélanie Fraser lit the lamp on the marble-topped table. “But usually he’ll talk about them, which puts him a step ahead of his parents.” She moved to the sofa and gestured for Roth to sit beside her. “We sometimes overlook that Jessica was very frightened too.”
