Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

As they descended the front steps of the Constable house, Mélanie could feel the weight of failure pressing on her husband, as heavy as the soot-laden night air that seeped through their outer garments. When they reached the pavement, she put a hand on his arm. “You couldn’t have done anything else. All other considerations aside, shooting her wouldn’t have got us anywhere.”

Edgar stopped and looked up at his brother. The lamplight glowed in his wide eyes. “You really might have shot her, mightn’t you?”

“Possibly.” Charles scowled into the dark street.

“I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that she might be telling the truth?”

“It could hardly fail to occur to me.” Charles started along the pavement toward Russell Square. “It was one of the most compelling performances I’ve ever witnessed.” He didn’t glance at Mélanie, but she felt him add, Though no more so than the one you gave for seven years, as surely as if he had said it. “But if Jennings didn’t put the ring in his letter to her, what the hell happened to it?”

Edgar’s boots clicked on the pavement. “Perhaps Jennings never had it at all.”

“One of the soldiers did, or at least told the bandits he did when he employed them. Jennings is the only one who had anything removed from his body.”

Edgar frowned at the paving stones. “Suppose Sergeant Baxter’s lying and he had the ring himself?”

“If Baxter had the ring, why didn’t he try to sell it again after the debacle with the French?” Mélanie said. “He had nothing to gain from hanging on to it.” She tried to sound as though she was analyzing chess moves, but the words came out with a tight strained sound, perhaps because her chest and throat felt as if they were being squeezed raw. “Helen Trevennen’s performance may have been grounded in truth, as all good performances are, but I think she has the ring. And what I want to know is why she’s so determined to keep it rather than sell it to us.”

“Perhaps she sold it already,” Edgar said.

“Then one would think she’d have admitted it when Charles held the pistol on her.”

“So what now?” Edgar asked.

Charles stopped walking and turned back to scan the street. “We burgle the house.”

His brother stared at him, digesting this statement.

Addison detached himself from the shadows by the square railing. His gaze flickered from Charles’s face to Mélanie’s to Edgar’s. “You didn’t get it?”

“No,” Charles said.

Addison gave a curt nod. “The kitchen door is locked but not bolted. The ground-floor windows round the back are sash windows with a simple latch. They open onto the breakfast parlor and Mr. Constable’s study, respectively. I knocked on the area door—I said I was a groom who’d got lost delivering a message—and had a brief word with the kitchenmaid. Mr. and Mrs. Constable’s bedchamber is at the front of the house on the second floor. The cook and kitchenmaid sleep off the kitchen. The rest of the servants sleep in the attics and the nursery is there as well. The manservant locks up at midnight. Mr. Constable is expected to stay in his chambers in the Temple tonight rather than return home.”

“Thank you, Addison. Well done.”

Edgar was still staring at Charles. “You were planning to break in even before we spoke to Mrs. Constable?”

“No, but I knew it might come to that. Which it has. We should return to Berkeley Square to make our plans. Addison, stay here. If Mrs. Constable or anyone else in the household goes out, follow him or her and send word as soon as you can. We’ll be back just after midnight.”

“Right, sir.” Addison said nothing more, but the gaze he exchanged with Charles had the warmth of a hand clapped on the shoulder.

In silence they cut through a mews, rounded two street corners, flagged down a hackney, and directed it to Berkeley Square.

“How would you do it, Mel?” Charles said when they were settled in the carriage.

“The back windows. There’s more chance of being spotted at the kitchen door and more chance of waking someone at the front of the house.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

“You sound as though you’ve done this before,” Edgar said.

“I have,” Charles replied.

“But—Oh, I see. In Spain.”

“And Portugal. And once or twice in Vienna. Ask Castlereagh to tell you the story sometime. He was grateful for my somewhat unorthodox talents on that occasion.”

“Charles picked the lock on a wine cave the night I met him,” Mélanie said. “Of course, it wasn’t until later that I learned what an expert he was.”

“You mean you were there when he—Do you mean he dragged you along on these adventures?” Edgar asked.

“Oh, yes,” Mélanie said. It was quite true. She neglected to add that she had also done more than her share of breaking and entering on her own.

“Good God.” Edgar shook his head and looked at his brother. “Your ‘fetching and carrying’ went even further than I realized.”

“A great deal further,” Charles said. He flicked a glance at Mélanie. “Might as well call a spade a spade, brother. I was a spy.”

Mélanie opened the door of her and Charles’s bedchamber, carrying a bowl of warm water and a roll of lint. She found her husband alone in the room, unfastening the cuffs of his shirt. “Edgar’s changing in the guest suite,” he said. “He ducks out of sight whenever he realizes I have to change your bandages.”

“Poor Edgar. He has a delicacy of mind neither of us can appreciate.” She set the water and lint on her dressing table. “I sent Blanca to make coffee. She’s itching to be doing something. I had a hard time convincing her it would only complicate matters if she came with us. Are you going to be able to climb through a window with your leg in that state?”

Charles pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his dressing gown. “I’m going to have to.”

In truth, both his bullet wound and her knife cut had begun to heal, as was revealed when they changed the dressings. They didn’t speak of what lay ahead until the fresh bandages were in place and they had begun to don clothing appropriate for a burglary.

“If she has the ring hidden in the house, it’s probably in her bedchamber,” Charles said, buttoning a black waistcoat over a fresh shirt. “Have you ever broken into a room while someone was sleeping in it?”

“Once or twice.” Mélanie dropped a gown of jet-colored merino over her head. Most of the time she had managed to already be in a gentleman’s bedchamber before he fell asleep. She saw this realization dawn in Charles’s eyes as she thrust her arms into the long, tight sleeves. “Difficult and dangerous, but not impossible,” she continued, pulling the fabric over her shoulders with more force than was necessary. A stitch snapped in one of the shoulder seams. “But there’s a good chance she keeps the ring in a dressing room rather than the bedchamber itself. A lady’s boudoir is the one room she can keep inviolate.”

“She may have moved it after our visit.” Charles crossed to her side and began to do up her buttons. “She must guess we won’t give up.”

“Addison’s there if she tries to leave the house or send anyone away with the ring. Charles.” She forced herself to voice a suspicion that had been tugging painfully at the corners of her mind. “Suppose Victor Velasquez got to her before we did? If she sold him the ring, she might have promised not to reveal the truth to us.”

Charles did up the last button. “Not at the risk of her own life. She knew how close I came to pulling the trigger. I could see it in her eyes. Which means she was afraid of something—or someone—if she gave us the ring or told us what she’d done with it.”

“If she doesn’t have it—”

He squeezed her shoulders. “We’ll deal with that possibility after we’ve established it’s not in her house.” He went to his chest of drawers and rummaged beneath a stack of cravats. “When did you last see my picklocks?”

“A couple of months ago when Jessica locked Colin in the garden shed.” The memory tugged at her throat. She opened the doors of her wardrobe and forced herself to debate between a black velvet cloak and a slate-colored wool. “Try your handkerchief drawer, darling.”

She decided on the black velvet—camouflage was more important than warmth—and turned from the wardrobe. Charles, normally far more tidy than she was herself, had tossed half the cravats on the floor and was doing the same with his handkerchiefs. She went to her dressing table and opened the central drawer. She lifted out a box with rose-wood cranes inlaid in the lid, pressed one of the cranes to release the false bottom, and took out the set of picklocks Raoul had given her so many years ago. She crossed back to her husband, who was now riffling through a box of sleeve-links, and held out her hand.

Charles stared at the shiny instruments held together with green satin ribbon rather than a metal ring like his own set. “Of course. Any self-respecting agent would need her own.” He pushed the drawer shut. The sleeve-links rattled like ammunition. “Handy for all sorts of things. Including opening your husband’s dispatch box, I imagine.”

She received his gaze as a duelist might receive a bullet. “Among other things.”

The brief, hard flare in his eyes made her bleed inwardly. “I always wondered why you took to picking locks with such natural ability. But then there are any number of things you pretended to learn from me that you were already expert at.”

They stared at each other. Every paper she had stolen, every secret she had gleaned from him and passed on to Raoul hung between them, as impenetrable as the wall of any fortress.

Mélanie drew a breath. “If you’re wondering exactly when—”

“No.” Charles folded his arms across his chest. “As it happens, I’m trying to remember how many dispatch boxes I’ve broken into myself through the years.”

He watched her a moment longer, his gaze steady and unreadable on her own. Then he shrugged into a black coat, wound a black silk scarf over the white gleam of his shirt, and walked to the door. Mélanie put the picklocks in the pocket of her gown and picked up the black cloak.

After seven years, her husband could still surprise her.

The back of the Constable house was as Addison had described, two ground-floor windows with simple latches. The curtains were drawn, but the fringed chintz at one and the velvet drapes at the other easily differentiated the breakfast parlor and study.

Mélanie glanced at Charles. They had left Addison and Edgar to keep watch at the front of the house, with orders for one of them to follow anyone who left.

Charles jerked his head at the study window. Mélanie took out her picklocks and opened the window of this London house as easily as she had any in Lisbon or Vienna. Charles boosted her up and she pulled herself over the sill, ignoring a twinge in her side. She stretched down a hand to Charles and he pulled himself up, using the strength in his arms to make up for the weakness in his leg. He sucked in his breath as he dragged his wounded leg over the sill.

A faint smell of ink washed over them in the darkness. Don’t rush at things headlong, whatever your instincts. Raoul’s advice echoed in her memory. Wait a moment to let your eyes adjust to the dark. Look for clues to orient yourself. She held back the curtains so that enough light from the three-quarter moon spilled through the window to show the outline of the door. Charles seized her hand in his own and they picked their way across the floor, which proved to be covered with a thick, soft carpet. Thank goodness Helen Trevennen was able to afford luxuries.

Charles eased open the door. The hall to which they had been admitted a few hours before stretched before them. A smell of scented beeswax lingered in the air. A half-moon of gray light indicated the fanlight over the front door. After a few moments, she could make out the mass of the stairs and the outline of the hall table.

They tiptoed over a few feet of polished floor to the muffling pile of the Turkey rug. Space seemed to expand in the dark. It felt as though the relatively compact hall took as long to traverse as a palatial gallery. The trick was not to panic and move too quickly, not to rely on one’s faulty memory rather than the evidence of one’s senses. At last Charles stopped, and she heard the faint stir of his hand closing round the newel post.

Mercifully, thanks perhaps to the house’s newness, none of the treads squeaked. Her foot nearly collided with the balustrade as they rounded the first-floor landing, but Charles steadied her. On the second floor, they paused at the head of the stairs. A window at the end of the corridor let in a faint glow of moonlight. The white-painted doors stood out as pale blurs against the dark wallpaper. No light shone beneath the doors.

The door directly across from the stairhead was wider than the others, with a carved doorcase. Charles jerked his head at her and moved to the door to the left of it. It opened on the smell of camphor and lavender. Standing behind Charles, Mélanie could make out the bulk of a four-poster. A spare bedchamber. They moved to the door to the right of the carved doorcase. A faint smell of perfume and face powder seeped round the door as Charles reached for the handle. He pushed the door open.

The curtains had been thrown back from the windows. A scene of chaos shimmered in the moonlight. The wardrobe doors gaped open. Gowns and shawls and hats were strewn about. The dressing table drawers hung from their slots. Powder and jewels and scent spilled across the top of the dressing table. A small oil painting had been pulled from the wall, the canvas slashed.

Charles made a quick circuit of the room. Mélanie moved to the door to the adjoining bedchamber and put her ear to the panels. No sound, not even the stir of bedclothes. She turned to Charles and shook her head. He moved to her side and exchanged a look with her. She nodded and turned the door handle, a fraction of an inch at a time, so it made only the softest of clicks. She put her shoulder to the door and eased it open.

The curtains were thrown back in this room as well. The moonlight fell over the rumpled, empty bed. The room was marked with the same signs of chaos as the boudoir, but her gaze skimmed past them. For on the hearth rug, before the cold, banked fire, was the sprawled figure of Helen Trevennen, the woman who now called herself Elinor Constable.

A pistol gleamed silver on the carpet beside her, and a red stain spread over the front of her nightdress. But Mélanie still hurried forward, dropped to her knees, and put her fingers to the woman’s cold neck. She was dead.