The Mask of Night

I met the most amazing girl last night at Carfax House. Her name is Sylvie de Fancot. She’s like no one else in the world.

Oliver Lydgate to Charles Fraser

5 December, 1804

Caroline Pendarves greeted Mélanie with a smile. “Mrs. Fraser. How nice. I was going to go shopping in the Burlington Arcade with Lady St. Ives, but the weather is so wretched we called it off. You find me quite marooned.”

Mélanie stripped off her gloves and dropped into a chair. “Have you seen Mr. Vickers this morning?”

“Yes, as it happens.“ Lady Pendarves twitched the cream-colored sarcenet of her skirt smooth. “He called on his way to the Home Office—shockingly early for a call, but he’s such an old friend. I gather there was some unpleasantness last night, but that the matter of that unfortunate gentleman’s death at the Lydgates’ is resolved?”

“I wouldn’t say resolved precisely. But we do feel any further danger has been averted.”

“I’m relieved to hear it. Neil was circumspect of course, but I’ve learned not to tease him. I imagine it’s the same way for Charles. It’s difficult being close to a man who has secrets, don’t you find?”

“It can be,” said Mélanie.

The footman came in with a tea tray a moment later. Lady Pendarves began to pour. “You must be relieved that your life can get back to normal now.”

“There are one or two details I’d still like to clear up. When you lost your earring at the Lydgates’ ball, didn’t you think to go back to the garden to look for it?”

“I suppose I would have done if I’d realized it was missing. You take milk, don’t you?”

“Thank you.“ Mélanie accepted a cup. “But you did realize it was missing. Mr. Vickers told Charles you were quite distressed about it.”

“Did he?“ Lady Pendarves set down the teapot. “I confess I don’t remember. But then it’s no wonder, considering the events of the evening.”

“No, I suppose not. But I know whenever I lose a piece of jewelry I retrace my steps at once. And I’m always checking to make sure I haven’t inadvertently lost an earring. I was even doing so last night, when one would have thought it would have been the last thing on my mind.“ Mélanie took a sip of tea. “I think you did go back to the garden to look for the earring, Lady Pendarves.”

“And then forgot all about it? Goodness, I hope my memory isn’t that bad. Do try these biscuits—they’re quite divine. My cook has such a light hand with the lemon.”

“Perhaps you had your reasons for not telling me.”

“I’ve already been quite dangerously frank about the events of the evening. In any case, if I’d gone back into the garden, I’d have found the earring.”

“If you hadn’t been distracted.”

“Distracted?”

“You overheard Isobel Lydgate accusing her lover of being Arthur Mallinson.

Lady Pendarves went as still as carved ice for a fraction of a second. “My dear Mrs. Fraser, Arthur died in a sailing accident twenty-five years ago.”

“No. Although I imagine until that moment in the garden you believed he had done. It must have come as quite a shock.”

“It certainly would. I’d have wanted to speak with him and find out what had happened.”

“You did. After Isobel went inside, you confronted him and killed him.”

Caroline Pendarves lifted her teacup to her lips. The firelight shot through the fragile porcelain. “Nonsense. Even assuming all of this were true, why on earth should I have killed Arthur Mallinson?”

“Because you were his wife.”

Sylvie St. Ives sank into the wing-back chair beside Lord Carfax’s desk and began to pull off her gloves. Her blue velvet pelisse fell in symmetrical folds about her and she had removed to her bonnet to reveal the golden hair coiled sleekly against her head. Every detail precisely chosen.

Chairs creaked as the four men in the room seated themselves. Charles by the windows, where the light was best to observe Sylvie’s face. Carfax behind his desk. Oliver, who hadn’t met Charles’s gaze since he came into the room, within arm’s reach of Sylvie. Talleyrand by the door, a little removed from the others.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ Sylvie said.

Carfax rested his clasped hands on his desk. ‘I fail to see why Charles’s presence is necessary.’

‘Charles is my insurance. If you prefer, I can explain matters to him without you present.’

‘I prefer to make sure the truth is told.’

‘I’m not sure you’d recognize the truth, my lord.“ Sylvie turned to Charles. ‘You know Arthur began by selling information to the French. By now you may have guessed that I was the one who found him his contact in France. Not all my family went into exile. I had a cousin whose husband was highly placed in the Directoire.’

‘Why?’ Charles asked.

‘Need you ask? I didn’t find being penniless any more amusing then than I do now.’

‘Arthur didn’t need the money.’

‘No. Arthur was bored and looking for excitement. And he was jealous of Christopher Pendarves who had gone into the navy and could claim that he was having a man’s adventures while Arthur was still a schoolboy.’

‘And Arthur and Christopher were rivals over you.’

‘Over me?“ Her pale brows drew together. ‘Yes, I can see how you might see it that way. Perhaps it’s as well.“ She put her gloves into her reticule and snapped the steel clasp shut. ‘Lord Carfax realized I was involved from the papers he found in Arthur’s room. After Arthur faked his death, Carfax came to me. He made the consequences if I didn’t help him find Arthur clear. He also made it clear that my work for him wasn’t going to end there.“ She looked from Charles to Oliver. ‘Like you both, I’ve been his pawn ever since.’

‘You sell yourself short, my dear,’ Carfax said. ‘Though I’m very grateful for the services you rendered me through the years.’

‘Grateful!“ Sylvie half-rose from her chair, then dropped back, hands locked together. ‘I was fifteen years old, and I could scarcely dance with a man without you ordering me to obtain information.’

Oliver’s face was set in harsh lines. Charles glanced from him to Sylvie.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘He told me to flirt with Oliver. He wanted to know if he could rely on Oliver’s reports of your activities at Oxford. But Oliver was different. He was the first person in years I’d confided in.“ She put out her hand as though she would touch Oliver, then thought better of it. ‘Oliver and I learned we were both Carfax’s creatures. If it weren’t for Carfax, I might have been mad enough to risk marrying him.’

Oliver’s eyes widened. ‘Sylvie—’

‘I never told you. I was too afraid of how you’d react. Carfax wanted me to marry St. Ives. As your wife I’d have been on the fringe of society. St. Ives moved in the first circles, and he was a compliant husband. Which was convenient when Carfax dictated the men he wanted me to turn my attentions to after my marriage.’

Carfax leaned back in his chair. ‘Spare us the portrayal of star-crossed young love. You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy being a viscountess. Or that you don’t enjoy being in Parliament, Oliver. I didn’t even quarrel with your choice to become a Whig.’

‘Of course you didn’t. It made me better positioned to collect information for you.“ Oliver turned his head and met Charles’s gaze. ‘I told you I stopped spying for him after Oxford. But that wasn’t true I stopped giving him reports on you and David and Simon, but I couldn’t extricate myself completely.’

‘My marriage was probably doomed from the start,’ Sylvie said. ‘But it never even had a chance with Carfax demanding infidelity in the service of the crown. Arthur could work for other masters. He had a certain freedom as long as he didn’t come back to England. I had none.’

‘And so you decided to free yourselves from Carfax.“ Charles studied Oliver, wondering if he’d ever really seen him before. ‘The three of you?’

‘No.“ Sylvie’s voice was quick and sharp. ‘Oliver never knew about Arthur. But Arthur and I had kept in touch through the years. After Waterloo, we were able to meet. Arthur wanted to reclaim the life he’d lost. I wanted my freedom. Neither were possible without freeing ourselves from Lord Carfax.’

‘A cool justification for murder,’ Carfax said.

‘You’ve had men killed for far less.’

‘Not for personal reasons.’

‘You could have got rid of Carfax a number of ways,’ Charles said. He turned to Talleyrand, who had settled back in his chair, his face in shadow. ‘Why did they go to such pains to have you present as well, sir? Did you know the truth of St. Juste’s identity?’

Talleyrand hesitated, weighing his words. ‘I learned about St. Juste’s past from Carfax some years ago.’

‘Your association with Carfax is closer than I had realized.’

‘We’ve been useful to each other through the years.’

‘Lord Carfax and Prince Talleyrand formed a strategic alliance years ago,’ Sylvie said. ‘A closer alliance than I imagine either of their governments would care for.’

‘St. Juste had papers in Talleyrand’s hand,’ Charles said. ‘Papers that I can’t read without the code book. Papers which I suspect reveal the extent of that alliance.’

‘Interesting speculation, Fraser.“ Talleyrand brushed a spec of lint from the lapel of his frock coat. ‘But without the code book, no more than speculation.’

‘Just so.“ Charles turned back to Sylvie. ‘You and St. Juste needed to get Carfax and Talleyrand in the same place. So St. Juste had Hortense Bonaparte write a letter to Raoul O’Roarke mentioning the Wanderer. A letter he fully intended Talleyrand to intercept.’

‘Clever of you, Charles.’

‘If you knew St. Juste had been involved in hiding the Dauphin twenty-five years ago,’ Charles asked Carfax, ‘why hadn’t you tried to force him to tell you where the Dauphin was before now?’

The room had gone still. A log snapped in the fireplace. Carfax settled his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

‘Because he knew perfectly well where the Dauphin was,’ Sylvie said. ‘He’s known for twenty-five years.’

‘Where?’ Oliver asked, his voice a scrape of sound.

‘Rotting in a secret grave in France,” Sylvie said.

Carfax’s face was white, but he didn’t move a muscle.

‘And yet Josephine sent St. Juste instructions about switching the boys,’ Charles said.

Sylvie inclined her head. ‘Josephine sent the instructions. Arthur told Carfax. Carfax told him not to make the switch. Arthur smuggled the substitute boy out of the country instead. The real Dauphin stayed in prison and died a few weeks later.’

Charles stared at his former spymaster.

‘An exiled boy king would have been a receipt for disaster,’ Carfax said. ‘Every faction in Europe would have wanted to use him for their own ends. And if someone had managed to put him on the throne, we know what a débâcle can come from a child monarch.’

‘If they’d got the boy out of prison, it might have saved his life.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘God in heaven.“ Oliver sprang up from his chair.

‘Sit down, Oliver,’ Carfax said. ‘We haven’t got time for ostentatious scruples.’

Charles turned to Talleyrand. ‘Did you know about the Dauphin’s aborted rescue? Did you agree with Carfax that he should stay in prison? Or did Carfax tell you later?’

‘My dear Charles. I really don’t think you can expect me to answer.’

‘But you must have felt yourself implicated or you wouldn’t have been so concerned. When you heard Hortense Bonaparte talking about the Wanderer, you and Carfax were afraid the truth was going to unravel. If she’d claimed the boy was still alive, if people looked for him, the whole story might come out. The world would know that Louis XVII might be alive but for Carfax’s intervention. And perhaps yours as well.’

‘We knew when Talleyrand intercepted Queen Hortense’s message he and Carfax would decide they needed to talk,’ Sylvie said. ‘Talleyrand arrived in England the day before yesterday. He sought Carfax out at the theatre.’

‘And you had Hortense arrange the meeting with them at Spendlove Manor,” Charles said.

‘Yes.“ Syvlie gave a smile of unexpected mischief, though her eyes remained ice-cold. ‘I imagine they didn’t know what to think. Hortense might have been offering them information about St. Juste and whomever he’d been working with or she might have been leading them into a trap. They didn’t trust her, so they arranged to have soldiers present. As I had known they would. I’ve learned to read Lord Carfax rather well.’

‘How much of all this does your son know?’ Charles asked Talleyrand.

‘Very little.’

‘But enough that Sylvie and St. Juste thought he needed to be eliminated as well.’

‘My God,’ Oliver said.

‘You didn’t know?’ Charles asked.

‘Good God no. It didn’t occur to me Sylvie had anything to do with it until we learned St. Juste was Arthur Mallinson. I never knew the exact source of Carfax’s hold on her, but once I knew about Arthur’s past it started to make a sort of horrible sense. I followed her down to Spendlove yesterday. It took me a while to break into the house. I still didn’t realize how bad it was until I found her in the room with the explosives just before you and O’Roarke burst in.“ He studied Sylvie as though seeking traces of something he had lost. ‘How were you planning to account for the explosion?’

Sylvie adjusted the folds of her pelisse.

‘By blaming it on Raoul O’Roarke,’ Charles said. ‘That was the plan, wasn’t it, Sylvie? It was supposed to look as though O’Roarke got caught laying the explosives. To make it convincing, you were going to frame him for the other Radical disturbances on that list we found.’

‘Which were in fact the work of Carfax’s agents provocateurs,’ Sylvie said. ‘Spare me the guilt over O’Roarke. Like Carfax and Talleyrand, he knows how the game is played.’

‘And I imagine St. Juste was afraid O’Roarke knew enough that he might be able to piece together the truth,’ Charles said. ‘Safer to get rid of him. So you had Hortense give him the pamphlets to get him to England. One of those pamphlets was an attack on your own father.’

The wintry light from the window turned Sylvie’s cameo features to carved marble. ‘If my father had been a more prudent man, I very likely wouldn’t find myself in my present predicament.’

‘And Bel?’ Oliver asked. ‘In God’s name why—’

‘Arthur wanted to know more about his family. Besides, we knew Talleyrand would get wind of the affair and write to Carfax, and we wanted them both on edge. And—“ Sylvie fingered a fold of her skirt.

The blood drained from Oliver’s face. ‘Because Isobel was my wife. My God, Sylvie.’

‘Oliver—“ Sylvie put out a hand.

‘Bel never hurt you.’

‘She married you.’

Oliver closed his eyes.

‘When I said I didn’t kill for personal reasons,’ Carfax said in an even voice, ‘I was not accounting for all eventualities.’

Sylvie regarded him, her chin lifted. ‘It never occurred to you that Arthur’s partner might be me, did it? You still thought I was just a pawn.’

‘A mistake, Lady St. Ives, that I will never repeat. But I’m not sure that should comfort you.’

‘You’d cheerfully see me dead. But you’re wise enough to know it’s too great a risk. Charles now has the papers that prove Arthur’s and my treachery. Should anything happen to me, I think I can count on Charles to get to the truth of the matter. Not because he feels any affection for me, but because, as I’ve heard you say, he has a surprising devotion to uncovering the truth. Your secrets will remain safe as will mine. I don’t imagine either of us will sleep very well, but we’ll both survive.’

‘Did you kill him?’ Charles asked.

‘Arthur?“ She lifted her brows. ‘Of course not. I don’t expect you’ll believe this, Charles, but I do have some loyalties.“ She reached into her reticule and drew out a paper. ‘Perhaps you would return this to Queen Hortense. I think Arthur would want her to have it.’

Caroline Pendarves returned her cup to its saucer with a clatter. “I beg your pardon?”

“The Dowager Lady Pendarves was your godmother, wasn’t she?”

“I don’t see what on earth that has to say to—”

“And you visited the Pendarves’ in Kent as a girl.”

“Goodness, yes. So nice to have a country house within an easy distance of London. My father’s seat is in Scotland, like Charles’s. We scarcely went above once or twice a year. I still don’t see what that has to do—”

“So you also knew Arthur Mallinson.”

“Of course I knew Arthur. He was friendly with my husband and with Christopher—my husband’s brother. But I was still in the schoolroom when he died.”

“He died three nights ago at the Lydgates’.”

“When he died as far as I knew. I was a child.”

“You’d have been fifteen.”

“Would I? I’m dreadful at sums, but that sounds about right.” Lady Pendarves squeezed a wedge of lemon into her cup. “We were hardly more than children.”

“Just the age where romantic impulse overwhelms sense.”

“I’m far too timid to be a true romantic, I’m afraid. In any case, as a girl I was half-promised to Christopher Pendarves.”

“Of whom Arthur Mallinson was an inveterate, according to Lord St. Ives. Always trying to out do each other, always wanting what the other had.”

“It’s the way of young men. My son and Sylvie’s are always competing. But they’d never—“

“In my experience, as young men grow up competition often involves young women. You were all in Scotland the winter before Arthur supposedly died, weren’t you?”

“Yes, and if you must know both Christopher and Arthur were flirting madly with Sylvie. Men are always flirting with Sylvie. I confess I found it rather tiresome.”

“Sometimes flirting with one woman can be a cover for a true interest in another. And I think you were more Arthur’s type.“ For an instant, Mélanie could feel supple fingers running through her hair and hear his voice against her cheek. I could almost imagine I’m with my first love.

“You can’t know that,” Caroline Pendarves said.

“Perhaps not.”

“Even if Arthur had made advances toward me, I’m not the sort to give way to impulse.”

“Lady St. Ives says you warned her once that nothing but misery could come of an elopement.”

“And I daresay I was right.”

“Speaking from personal experience?”

“Lord Pendarves and I were married at St. George’s Hanover Square.”

“You and Arthur could have easily slipped off and got married in Scotland. All you’d have needed were witnesses, though I imagine there were documents or you wouldn’t have been so alarmed about the truth coming to light. It wouldn’t be so very difficult, you know, for me to make inquiries at all the churches within an easy ride of your father’s house in Scotland. The minister who married you may still be there. On the whole, I think you’d prefer I not stir the embers of the past.”

Lady Pendarves folded her hands in her lap. Her sapphire ring that caught the firelight. “Even if you could prove I’d been married to Arthur, I doubt you could prove he was the man who died in the Lydgates’ garden. He’s buried in the family crypt. I’d be surprised if anyone in the Mallinson family will say to the contrary.”

“No. I have no illusions I can prove it in a court of law. I’m not even sure I want to. But I have the strangest desire to know the truth. I think I picked it up from my husband. Did you see The Barber of Seville last month?’

‘Of course. I told you I adore Rossini.’

‘Arthur saw it too. He said he looked across the theatre and for the first time in his misspent career he knew what he wanted. There’s been considerable debate about what he meant. I wasn’t sure myself for the longest time. Now I think he looked across the theatre and saw his first love.’

Lady Pendarves gave a peal of laughter. ‘That sounds like something from a lending library novel. I can’t believe Arthur has been alive these past twenty-five years, but if he had been, I assure you he made no attempt to contact me.’

‘I believe you. He was caught up in a life of danger and risk. But I don’t think he forgot you.’

‘You can’t—’

‘He kept a ribbon of peacock blue satin. Blue is your favorite color, I believe?’

For an instant, Caroline Pendarves’s lapis eyes were shot with truth. ‘I’m very fond of blue. But I’m hardly the only woman to wear it.’

‘He called one of his mistresses cara. I expect that was his pet name for you.’

‘Any man conversant in the Italian tongue might use it for a beloved. Why, after all these years—’

‘The war was over. People like Arthur were left trying to make sense of where they stood when the music stopped playing. Arthur said that ennui was the curse of peacetime. Until he’d looked across a London theatre and for the first time knew what he wanted.“

‘I wasn’t—

‘You were symbol of everything he’d given up. Everything he found himself wanting again, twenty-five years on, when adventuring was beginning to pall. He wouldn’t be the first man to think a woman could give meaning to his life.’

‘You just said he was having a rendezvous with Isobel Lydgate.’

‘He needed her for his mission. He needed to wait until the mission was carried out. Then he’d be free to claim his heritage and you as well. I don’t think he had any intention of seeking you out at the ball. But you overheard Isobel confront him. It must have been a great shock to realize your first husband might still be alive. Of course you ran down the terrace steps to see if it was really Arthur.“

“My dear Mrs. Fraser, do you seriously imagine I could have killed Arthur? Even as a boy he was brilliant at fencing and boxing.”

‘But he was the sort of man who’s at his most vulnerable when he loses control of the situation.“ Mélanie saw again the violence in his eyes that night in Paris when she’d got her hands untied. The one moment in their encounter when she thought she might have overpowered him. ‘I can only guess at what happened, but obviously you took Arthur by surprise. And it would have soon become clear to him that you had no desire to resume your first marriage. I don’t know if you got close enough to him to reach for his knife or if he drew it first in anger and you struggled. Was it self-defense?”

“My dear Mrs. Fraser. It wasn’t anything at all.”

“I can still make inquiries in Scotland.”

Caroline Pendarves tucked a dark ringlet behind her ear. “I’m very comfortably situated. I’m fond of my husband. I believe we will be able to work out an amicable arrangement for living our lives. But even as a girl I knew how very precariously lives such as ours are balanced. If I had a moment of folly in my girlhood, it only taught me that folly leads to madness and despair.”

“People who make love in gardens during masquerade balls can’t be said to have entirely put folly behind them.”

“I’d drunk rather too much champagne. I wasn’t myself that night.”

“Precisely my point.”

“I wouldn’t want to put Pendarves through a scandal. I wouldn’t want my children branded bastards. You’re a wife and mother. You should be able to judge how far a woman would go in such circumstances. Particularly when she feared for her own safety.”

It was more of a confession than Mélanie had hoped for. “Thank you,” she said.

Lady Pendarves broke off a piece of biscuit and crumbled it between her fingers. “You could go to Neil with your story. But that would be cruel. And I don’t believe you’re cruel.”

“Not without good cause.“ Mélanie reached for her gloves and reticule and got to her feet. “My regards to your husband. Tell the children I’ll bring Colin and Jessica next time.”

“Mrs. Fraser,” Lady Pendarves said as she moved to the door.

Mélanie turned back.

Caroline Pendarves stood facing her, hands at her sides, chin lifted. “He was the most exciting man I’ve ever met. Even as a girl I knew he was dangerous. That was what drew me to him. I always feared he’d be my undoing. And you see, I was very nearly right.”