Secrets of a Lady (aka Daughter of the Game)

On a warm spring afternoon, in an open carriage, bound for a breakfast or a fête champêtre with a basket from Fortnum & Mason tucked under the seat, the drive to Chiswick seemed to take no time. On this chill November night, in the stale air of the traveling carriage, with the prospect of seeing Carevalo at the end of it, each length of road pulled at Mélanie’s worn nerves.

Edgar settled back in his corner of the carriage. “If Carevalo’s alone in the house and we take him unawares, we might not have to give him the ring.”

“We play by the rules until we have Colin back,” Charles said. His voice left no room for discussion.

“Carevalo may not play by the rules.”

“I know. But he wants the ring. I won’t employ our bargaining chip lightly.”

“Charles, there are four of us and one of him—”

“And if we start brandishing guns about, someone’s likely to get shot. Possibly even Carevalo. He’s the only one who can take us to Colin. Until he does so, his life is more precious than our own.”

That silenced Edgar. Raoul had the sense to say nothing at all.

They stopped at an inn in the village to inquire about the exact location of the Graftons’ villa. A groom who appeared to have been dozing at his post gave them the direction willingly enough and confirmed that the Graftons had indeed departed for France and the villa was closed up.

They resumed their journey and at last pulled up at a pair of locked iron gates. One of Mélanie’s picklocks made short work of the bolts, and they wound down the oak-shaded drive. On Charles’s orders, Randall pulled up out of view of the house. They left the carriage and walked along the gravel drive on foot, by the light of the three-quarter moon and a vast scattering of stars. The villa was serene and classical in the moonlight. The walls were a brick that was probably red in the light of day, the windows framed in white. No light shone behind them.

When they reached the circular drive in front of the house, Raoul stopped and peered at the ground, still muddy from yesterday’s rain. “Fresh footprints. A man’s. And by the look of it, he wasn’t wearing laborer’s boots.”

“The two of you wait here,” Charles told Raoul and Edgar. “Keep an eye out for any unexpected arrivals. If we don’t come out in half an hour, follow us.”

Edgar made a stir of protest, but Raoul’s hand closed on his arm. “Right.”

Mélanie and Charles paused in front of the Corinthian portico, a miniaturized version of Palladian splendor. They stared up at the dark mass of the door, exchanged glances, and with one accord made their way round the side of the house. A faint light glowed in the chink between the heavy curtains of one of the ground-floor rooms. Yet more evidence that Carevalo was probably within. Her senses quickened. They stopped and studied the windows for a moment, then continued round to the back of the house.

A stirring of wind brought the damp air of the river. The moonlight shone off the smooth flagstones of the terrace. The French windows opened with the simplest pressure from one of her picklocks. They stepped onto a tiled floor and were enveloped by the smell of loamy earth and fresh flowers.

The conservatory gave onto a long, high-ceilinged hall, lit by the moonlight coming through the tall windows that flanked the front door. A wedge of light showed beneath one of the doors off the hall. As they approached it, Mélanie heard a faint scrape of metal against fabric. Charles glanced at her over his shoulder and slid his pistol from his pocket. His eyes were dark blurs in the shadowy hall, but she read the question in his gaze. She nodded.

Charles rapped at the door, a clear, distinct knock. “Carevalo? It’s the Frasers. We’ve come to negotiate, not attack. Don’t shoot before you ask questions.”

He stood still for a moment, his hand on the doorknob. Mélanie was just behind him.

“Fraser?” A voice came from the other side of the door panels, sharp with disbelief. Before, Mélanie could not have said with certainty that she could identify Carevalo’s voice, but now she recognized it without a doubt. They had found him. Relief washed over her, followed by a frisson of anticipation. “All right, come in,” Carevalo said. “But I have a pistol. No tricks.”

Charles turned the knob, pushed open the door, and stepped into the room. Mélanie followed. Lamplight and fire-warmed air spilled toward them.

The room was a library, heavy with brass and dark upholstery. Carevalo sat across from the door, sprawled in the green leather of a wing chair, a decanter at his elbow. A glass of brandy tilted between the fingers of his left hand, a pistol was clutched in his right. His slight body was relaxed, but his gaze fastened on them with the intensity of a tiger bearded in its lair.

His features were the same, but the implacable determination in his eyes transformed him. It was difficult to believe this was the same man who had paid her outrageous compliments and downed bottles of claret with the British officers in her drawing room. And yet Carevalo had always thrown himself with abandon into everything he did, be it flirtation or carousing or warfare.

Mélanie stared at the sharp-boned face of the man with whom she had flirted and danced. The man who had dined at her table and patted her children on the head. The man who had mutilated Colin. Rage such as she had never known slammed through her.

Charles closed the door. “Surprised, Carevalo? I expected a warmer greeting. I thought you’d be as eager to recover your ring as we are to give it to you.”

Fire leapt in Carevalo’s blue eyes. “You have it?”

“We have it.”

Carevalo sprang to his feet, sloshing his brandy onto the floor. “Let me see it, damn you.”

“You think I’d be fool enough to bring it with me?” Charles said, quite as if the ring wasn’t still hooked on his watch chain.

Carevalo set his brandy glass on the table beside him. His hooded eyes were red, but there was a gleam in their depths. “You think I’d be fool enough to hand over your son without seeing the ring?”

“No, I’m through with underestimating you.” Charles walked into the room, as though he hadn’t a thought for Carevalo’s pistol.

Carevalo followed him with his gaze. “So I was right. You had it all along.”

“No. We found it. Though to paraphrase Wellington, it was a damned close run thing. Not that I expect you to believe me.” Charles moved to the fireplace and leaned his arm on the mantel, as though laying claim to it. His pistol was still in his hand, resting on the plaster. “We appoint a neutral place. You bring Colin. We’ll bring the ring.”

“That could be a bluff to draw me out from under cover.”

“My dear Carevalo. If we didn’t already have the ring, we wouldn’t be wasting time with you. And if you think I’d risk a bluff with my son’s life at stake, you don’t know me.”

“If you think I’d give up my bargaining chip without proof you have the ring, you don’t know me.”

“Then it seems we have each other in check.”

Carevalo moved, so quickly that all Mélanie saw was a blur of movement, and then his pistol was pointed straight at her heart. “The ring, Fraser. Or I shoot your wife.”

In an instant, Charles had his own gun on Carevalo. “Don’t be a fool, Carevalo. Shoot Mélanie and I’ll kill you.”

“Oh no, Fraser, I don’t think so.” Carevalo’s eyes had a restless glitter, but his fingers were steady on the pistol. “You’d hardly kill the only man who can restore your son to you. Let me see the ring.”

“I told you I didn’t bring it with me. Because I feared just this scenario.”

“A good try, Fraser,” Carevalo said, his gaze trained on Mélanie. “But I don’t for a minute believe you’d trust the ring to anyone else. You have it on your person. Unless you don’t have it at all and your coming here is a bluff.” His grip on the pistol tightened.

“He’s the one who’s bluffing, Charles,” Mélanie said, though she wasn’t at all sure that this was the case. She was as conscious of the gun trained on her as if the cold metal had been pressed against her skin. “He doesn’t know you well enough to realize you’d never give way to a bluff.”

“On the contrary. Carevalo is displaying a disgustingly acute understanding of my character. It’s difficult to call his bluff when he holds all the cards.” Charles transferred his pistol to his left hand. “I’m going to show you the ring, Carevalo. Then perhaps you’ll be ready to negotiate.”

His movements slow and deliberate, Charles unbuttoned his coat with his right hand and unhooked his watch chain. The lamplight fell on the gold and rubies. Carevalo started as though he’d received a shock. Quicker than thought, he lunged across the room and flung himself on Charles.

Charles must have anticipated the attack. He closed his fist round the ring and struck Carevalo with his right arm. Carevalo staggered and grabbed Charles’s coat, Charles’s injured leg gave way beneath him, and both men crashed to the floor.

Carevalo had Charles pinned beneath him. He brought up his arm and swung the butt of his pistol at Charles’s head. Charles hurled the ring toward Mélanie a split second before the pistol struck his skull. The ring skittered past her across the floor. She made a dive for it, skidded on the polished floorboards, caught her foot in the hem of her gown, and fell sprawling. Pain screamed through the wound in her side.

She scrambled to her knees and saw the ring five feet away, glinting against the corner of the Turkey rug. Booted feet thudded on the floorboards. She dove forward, her hand extended. At the same moment, Carevalo hurled himself across the floorboards with a shout of triumph. He slammed into the polished wood and lay prone, the ring clutched in one hand, his pistol in the other, pointed straight at her.

For the length of several heartbeats, Mélanie would have sworn none of them breathed.

Carevalo pushed himself to his feet, the gun still trained on her. He slid the ring onto the third finger of his right hand. The action transformed his whole demeanor, the way an actor suddenly finds a part by donning a particular piece of costume. He seemed taller, his shoulders broader, his gaze more commanding.

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.