The Mask of Night
: Chapter 14

I need you in Paris. A personal errand for JB. She asked for you specifically.

Raoul O’Roarke to Mélanie Lescaut

25 May, 1811

Malmaison

June 1811

The corridor was shadowy as it had been on Mélanie’s first visit, though the dim outlines of paintings and velvet benches and marble tables now had the shape of familiarity. The pounding fear of two years ago had given way to the tightly wound excitement that always accompanied the start of a new mission. Along with the certainty that it was bound to be more complicated than anticipated.

The footman—the same footman from two years before—flung open the double-doors beneath the bee pediment.

Josephine, in white as always, came forward, her hands extended. ‘Chérie. I knew we could depend upon you.’

Mélanie took the Empress’s hands and leaned forward to accept her embrace. The scent of roses and the warmth of a hand on the nape of her neck brought an unexpected flash of what it might be like to still have a mother. Absurd. She blinked and drew back.

As she stepped away from the Empress, she saw a man sitting in the shadows. The candlelight picked out his polished boots and fair hair and glanced off the finely molded bones of his face.

‘Mlle. Lescaut.” He got to his feet with leisurely, controlled grace and inclined his head with a bow that stopped just short of irony.

‘M. St. Juste.” Mélanie returned the nod to the exact fraction of an inch. ‘I’m flattered you remember.’

‘On the contrary. You left an indelible impression.’

‘I’m not as clumsy as I once was.’

Julien St. Juste smiled. ‘You were anything but clumsy, m’amie.’

Josephine’s gaze flickered between them. ‘I fear we have little time for reminiscences. How much did Raoul tell you, Mélanie?’

‘Only that you had need of my services, and it was likely to take some weeks.’

‘Yes.” Josephine raised her voice a fraction. As if on cue a door opened at the back of the room, and a man and woman stepped through. The golden-haired woman was Hortense de Beauharnais Bonparte, whom Mélanie had last seen in this same room two years ago. The tall, dark-haired man at her side Mélanie recognized as the Comte de Flahaut. She had met Flahaut once or twice in Raoul O’Roarke’s company. Aide-de-camp to the Emperor, said to be the illegitimate son of the former Foreign Minister Talleyrand. Known for his amorous conquests, including the Polish beauty Anna Potocka and the Emperor’s sister Caroline Murat. And now, rumor had it, Hortense Bonaparte.

The way the couple stood, shoulders brushing, supported the rumors. When they stepped forward, Flahaut put a protective arm round Hortense’s shoulders and angled his head toward her as though he feared she might break. Her full blue skirts swayed back, clinging to the rounded curve of her belly.

‘Mademoiselle Lescaut.” Hortense looked straight into Mélanie’s eyes. ‘You see I am in a predicament.’

The blue eyes set in the porcelain face contained an unlooked for courage. Mélanie bit back a curse, even as she found herself smiling in an attempt at reassurance. ‘Tell me what I can do to help.’

Josephine lifted a sheaf of papers from a porcelain table. ‘Your travel documents. We have given it out that Hortense is going to a spa in Switzerland and then to stay with her brother Eugène. Instead she will travel to a retreat we have arranged in the Illes Borromées.’

‘I will join her there,’ Flahaut said in a firm voice.

Josephine glanced at her daughter’s lover for a moment. ‘As we discussed. You will accompany her, Mélanie. M. St. Juste will be on hand to assist you. He will see to any necessary documents and to covering your tracks.’

‘I’m sure between the two of us, Mlle. Lescaut and I can manage the matter,’ St. Juste said.

Mélanie met his gaze across the candlelit room. ‘Quite.’

I have a lowering feeling I should have foreseen this. I know how Josephine always valued St. Juste. Have a care, querida. Personal feelings can surface at the most inconvenient moments and play the very devil with one’s plans.

Raoul O’Roarke to Mélanie Lescaut

Salamanca

21 July 1811

You might treat me with a little more respect, Raoul. When have I ever let personal feelings interfere with anything? Besides my only personal feelings concerning Julien St. Juste are pique because he bested me. In any case he has been all cool professional. He assures us he can cover our tracks so no one will be able to determine Mme. Hortense’s whereabouts. Much as I hate to admit it, I have no doubt he will succeed.

The days here are not unpleasant. I had never been so far north nor seen the Alps. Aix is quite lovely—a white town nestled on green mountains above a blue lake. It has that restful, decadent air of a place designed more for holiday-makers than permanent residents. Mme. Hortense and I walk along the lake or venture on some of the easier walks into the mountains. One day we hired a boat. We spend the evening at cards or the pianoforte. She has a fondness for theatricals and produced many plays at her stepfather’s court, as I’m sure you know. We’ve been amusing ourselves by picking a play each evening and dreaming up how we would produce it. Tartuffe this evening. Odd, as you’ve often remarked, how one can find one has things in common with the most unexpected people…

Mélanie dipped her pen in the inkpot and stared at the glistening black liquid. A cool breeze from the lake drifted through the open window. This mission had its compensations. She didn’t envy Raoul the dust of summer in the Spanish plateau. She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. A plaintive Bach sarabande came from the adjoining sitting room, picked out with skill though an occasional false note betrayed the pianist’s preoccupation.

Mélanie lifted the pen and drew the nib clean. She was used to summing up the status of a mission for Raoul, analyzing the risks, calculating the odds. Here there was deceptively little to report on the surface. And yet an uneasy, unarticulated part of her mind warned that she faced risks she was in no way prepared to deal with.

A drop of black ink splattered on the cream laid paper. Not that it mattered. She’d have to burn this version as soon as she’d translated it into code. Perhaps—

The music broke off. The screech of fingers slamming against keys was followed by a cry like that of a wounded animal. Mélanie dropped the pen and flung open the connecting door.

Hortense sat at the pianoforte, arms on the lid, face buried in her hands, shoulders shaking. Mélanie sat beside her and dropped an arm round her shoulders. ‘Querida, shush, it’s all right.” The words came without thinking. For a moment, Mélanie was fifteen and the sobbing woman beside her was her eight year-old-sister in tears over a broken doll or a scraped knee.

She felt a thud through the muslin folds of Hortense’s gown. The baby kicking.

Hortense’s hand went to her abdomen. She tried to speak, choked, tried again. ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

‘One never knows what one can do until one faces the choice.’

‘No one should have to face this choice.’

‘No.” Mélanie pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it into Hortense’s hand. ‘It’s not something I’d wish on anyone.’

Hortense dragged the handkerchief across her eyes. ‘Could you do it?’

Mélanie started to frame an easy acquiescence, but the words died on her lips. ‘I don’t know.’

‘The awful thing is that when I found out—a part of me was happy. I know it’s mad, but I wanted this baby. His baby.’

Hortense’s gaze was so raw Mélanie almost looked away yet so desperate she could not do so. ‘You’ll still be able to see the baby,’ she said, aware the words had all the comfort of a moth-eaten blanket in the driving snow.

‘Rarely. In secret.’

‘He’ll be with his grandmother.’

‘Flahaut’s mother is fond of me. She understands my situation. How could she not? But she was able to pass her baby off as her husband’s. Perhaps I should have tried to reconcile with Louis—” Hortense’s fingers closed round the handkerchief. ‘Listen to me. I must pull myself together by morning. I don’t want him to see how weak I am.’

‘Monsieur St. Juste?’

‘He’d despise me.’

‘I’ll own to having distinctly mixed feelings about Monsieur St. Juste, but I can’t deny he’s been nothing but helpful to us thus far.’

‘Maman trusts him. And I’ve never known him to be anything but faultlessly polite. But I have a feeling he could shoot a man through the heart and barely give the corpse a second glance.’

‘Which might be quite useful, depending on the circumstances.’

‘That’s not funny, Mélanie.’

‘I’m not sure how funny I meant it to be.’ It was, after all, no less than she’d done herself upon more than one occasion.

Hortense spread the crumpled handkerchief out in her lap. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’

‘How?’

‘Like you’re a puzzle he can’t solve.’

‘Probably because after my bungling attempt to steal the paper at our first meeting he can’t believe I’ve managed to survive two more years as an agent.’

‘No. I’m no so naïve I can’t read the interest when a man looks at a woman.’ Hortense traced her finger over the initials embroidered in rose-colored silk on the handkerchief. SAB, to match Mélanie’s current alias. ‘Mélanie, I know that when you tried to get that paper for Maman two years ago you—that is, you and he—’

‘We spent the night together. He was hardly the first or last man I slept with and I certainly wasn’t the first woman he took to his bed. There’s no reason we should linger in each other’s memory.’

Hortense shivered. ‘He frightens me.’

‘I rather think Monsieur St. Juste frightens most people. He certainly frightens me. But he has a code of sorts. We can trust him for the length of this mission.’

Hortense scanned her face. ‘Is that what this is? A mission?’

‘That’s how I thought of it in the beginning. When your mother first summoned me to Malmaison.’

‘And now?” Hortense’s open gaze offered something warm and uncomplicated, something Mélanie had not known since childhood.

Mélanie took Hortense’s hand in her own and squeezed it. ‘Now I’m helping a friend.’

‘You see the problem,’ Hortense said, holding Mélanie’s gaze across the width of the carriage. ‘Those papers in Carfax’s hands— He’s still in France, Mélanie. My little boy. My littlest boy. I used to be able to see him occasionally. Now I’m forbidden the country. If the Royalists learn who is he is—” She gripped her elbows, kneading the rich velvet of her sleeves. ‘He isn’t a Bonaparte precisely, but any Bonapartist connection is the kiss of death in France now. God knows what use some Bonapartists might try to make of him in a crazy plot. God knows what the Ultra-Royalists might do to him for fear he’d be used.’

‘Not to mention that anyone in possession of the truth would have a hold over you.’

‘And over Flahaut. It’s only thanks to M. Talleyrand that he wasn’t proscribed. If it got out that he had a child by a Bonaparte—’

‘Among other things it could do serious harm to his marriage,’ Mélanie said.

‘Yes.” Hortense stared at her gloved hands. ‘I suppose it could.’

Mélanie studied her friend. The line between love and vengeance was all too easily crossed. ‘You want me to steal the papers from Lord Carfax for you.’

‘I know how much I’m asking—’

‘Do you? My husband used to work for Carfax. Carfax’s daughter and son are among my closest friends.’

‘That never—” Hortense bit her lip.

‘Used to stop me. Quite. It’s amazing the odd quirks of conscience one can develop.’

‘I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘It’s no more than I deserve. But I’m oddly out of the habit of rifling through papers these days.’

Hortense locked her hands tight together. ‘We all risked so much to keep his birth secret. I haven’t been able to be a mother to him, but if nothing else I can keep him safe. If your own children were threatened—’

‘I expect I’d be quite capable of murder.” Mélanie swallowed, aware of a bitter taste on her tongue. ‘Do you have any idea where the papers are to be found?’

Hortense released her breath. ‘They’re in code. Disguised as a musical score. With the heading Une Tournure Noire.’

‘Any other distinguishing marks?’

Hortense shook her head.

‘How did Carfax get the papers from St. Juste?’

‘St. Juste didn’t say. Either Carfax stole them or St. Juste was obliged to give them up as a bargaining chip.’

‘Do these papers have anything to do with whatever mission St. Juste was about to embark on?’

‘No—at least I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything about the mission beyond that it was dangerous.’

‘You didn’t know the mission would take him to England?’

‘I told you last night I had no notion he was in England.’

‘You also neglected to tell me you’d seen him a scant two months ago.’

‘I was going to.’

‘Think. Any clues about where he’d been, where he was going—’

Hortense squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. ‘He said the air was more agreeable in Switzerland. But I didn’t think he meant England at the time.’

‘He didn’t tell you anything else?’

‘No. I’d tell you.’

‘Would you?’

‘Of course. Mélanie, do you do trust me, don’t you?’

‘I’m a spy. I don’t trust anyone.’

‘Not even your husband?’

‘More than most.’

‘But not entirely?’

‘I can’t afford to. For his own sake as well as mine.’

Hortense’s brows drew together, puzzling this out. ‘From what you’ve said about Charles Fraser— He loves his children.’

‘Without reserve. That’s the ironic part. No one would understand what you’re asking of me better than Charles.’

Hortense swallowed as though she was afraid to breathe. ‘You’ll help me get the papers back?

‘I’ll help you get the papers back. If I can.’

A ghost of a smile crossed Hortense’s face. For a moment she looked like her mother. ‘There’s very little you can’t do, Mélanie.’

‘That rather depends on what enemy we’re facing.’

A mental image of the first paragraph of code hung before Charles’s gaze as he made his way along St. Martin’s Lane, head ducked against the wind. Roth had returned to Bow Street where he was due to report to the Chief Magistrate. No hackneys had been readily available, so Charles had set out for Berkeley Square on foot. As he traced the familiar paving stones toward home, he rearranged the letters of the paragraph in his mind, searching for a pattern, as he would listen for the click of tumblers if he were picking a lock.

He sensed he was being followed the way he might register a change in the wind or dampness in the air before he framed the thought that there was a storm brewing. At the next corner he crossed the street and managed to catch a glimpse of the drab greatcoated, beaver-hatted figure crossing in his wake. He cut through Green Park and again the silent shadow followed him, blending into the crowds, but always there to one trained to know what to look for. Down Piccadilly to Bolton Street and along the curve of Curzon Street to Berkeley Square and his front door. He relinquished his hat and greatcoat to Michael and went into the library. Under pretext of pouring a glass of whisky from the trolley by the long windows, he spotted a fold of drab greatcoat and a corner of dark silk hat behind one of the plane trees in the square. The watcher had taken up a position on a bench within the square railing.

He returned to the hall and spoke briefly with Michael, then went to the end of the hall and out into the garden. Puddles of rainwater glistened on the flagstones as he crossed to the gate to the mews. He walked along the mews, past softly whickering horses, across Hill Street, and down Charles Street to the far end of the square.

Inclement weather or not, it was the hour for paying calls. A carriage trundled down the street and drew up at the near corner. Three ladies descended. Two gentlemen in military dress stopped to exchange greetings with them. Charles slipped past, paused to nod to an elderly lady with a cane and a younger woman laden with parcels who were climbing the steps of a house farther along the square, and made his way round to the Berkeley Street gate, on the opposite side of the square from the bench where his erstwhile follower still watched his house.

Twilight was beginning to thicken the sky. A Turneresque glow hung behind the clouds. The gnarled, leafless branches of the plane trees showed black against the deepening gray. As a boy, on rare visits to his parents in London, he’d imagined that winter dusk turned the square into a goblin forest. A group of children were rolling hoops down the gravel walks while their nursemaids watched from the benches in the center of the square. A young couple wandered as far away from the others as possible, closely watched by an older lady who sat on the benches.

Charles could move soundlessly. Or at least, quietly enough not to be heard over the wind whipping the branches, the shouts of the children, the rattle of carriage wheels. Especially when Michael, timing it just as Charles had instructed, stepped out of the Fraser house garbed in Charles’s greatcoat and beaver hat.

The watcher was on his feet, moving toward the square gate, when Charles’s hand touched his shoulder. A friendly gesture to anyone who happened to be watching.

‘I have a pistol pointed at your back,’ Charles said. ‘I wouldn’t risk calling out. We’re going to walk through the gate and up the steps into my house.’

‘But—’

‘I don’t think you want to have this conversation in public.’

The man opened the black metal gate without further protest, crossed the street, and climbed the steps to the door which Michael was holding open.

‘Excellently done,’ Charles said to Michael as they stepped into the entry hall. ‘We’ll be in the library. Ask Mrs. Fraser to join us when she returns home. The double doors to the left,’ he added to his enforced guest.

He closed the doors firmly behind them and turned to get his first look at the man who had been following him. He had removed his hat and stood regarding Charles with a cool gaze.

‘M. de Flahaut,’ Charles said. ‘I confess I’m surprised.’

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