The Mask of Night

Don’t listen to my sister’s foolish exaggeration, old fellow. Nine-tenths of what I do is push papers across a desk and pen letters full of diplomatic protocol.

Charles Fraser to David Mallinson, Viscount Worsley,

13 November 1811

Roth strode along Picadilly, hands jammed in his greatcoat pockets, collar turned up against the wind. Two months ago he’d known where he stood in relation to the beau monde. It was a different world, into which he was only asked to step (most likely through the back door) to recover someone’s lost jewels or to collect information to be used in a divorce action. Its members had viewed him as a set of attributes, not a human being, and he’d felt quite at liberty to think the same of them.

The investigation into Colin Fraser’s abduction had changed that, at least as far as Mélanie and Charles Fraser went. It had been impossible not to share the Frasers’ concern for their son, not to admire their courage and resourcefulness. He had discovered he had a surprising amount in common with both of them, from reading tastes to political views. He had suspected they were keeping something from him but had not been able to determine what it was. Not until the end of the investigation when he received the letter betraying that Mélanie Fraser had once been a French agent.

He had not struggled long over what to do with the information. The investigation was over, and Mrs. Fraser’s past was in the past. If she and her husband had come to terms with it, he saw no need to interfere. Or so it had seemed two months ago. The dead body of a foreign agent changed the picture. He was quite sure Mr. and Mrs. Fraser hadn’t told him the whole story about Julien St. Juste. He knew they were damnably good at keeping secrets. He had no doubt they’d lie to protect each other. Not to mention their friends.

Roth turned into the forecourt of the Albany and stared up at the brown stone building. He liked the Frasers. He also liked Lord Worsley and Simon Tanner. But he was going to do his damnedest not to let that liking cloud his judgment.

A porter directed him to Worsley and Tanner’s rooms. The door was opened by a manservant whose dark twilled coat was cut far better than Roth’s own but whose gaze was less starchy than those of the liveried footmen at the houses he had visited earlier in the day. The manservant apparently had orders to admit Roth, for he took his water-stained beaver and grimy greatcoat and conducted him to a book-lined sitting room filled with furniture of graceful English oak and the smell of good ink and better sherry. Simon Tanner was seated at a Pembroke table strewn with papers while Lord Worsley stood at one of the windows.

“Roth.” Worsley strode forward as the manservant announced him. “Is there news? I had a note from Charles this morning saying he and Mélanie were going out to pursue a lead and he’d call later to explain.”

“I haven’t seen Mr. and Mrs. Fraser since early this morning. I’ve come to have a word with Mr. Tanner.”

Tanner had got to his feet when Roth came into the room. Now he too walked forward. Unlike Worsley, who wore an immaculate dark gray coat and a perfectly-tied cravat, Tanner was in his shirtsleeves, his neckcloth loosened and his sleeves rolled up to avoid ink stains. “You want to talk to me about the murder? Of course.”

Roth surveyed the playwright’s sharp-boned face and seemingly open dark eyes. Though he had gone to Oxford with Worsley and Fraser and Lydgate, Tanner was something of an outsider in their world. His father, the younger son of a wealthy Northumbrian brewer, had run off to Paris to study painting and married an artist’s model. Simon Tanner had grown up in the tumult of revolutionary Paris until he’d been packed home at the age of ten after his parents’ deaths. He had told the story to Roth at their first meeting, as though to make it clear that Roth was not the only guest at the Frasers’ dinner party not born to the beau monde. “I thought you might prefer to talk in private.”

“We are priv—Oh, I see.” Tanner grinned. “Anything you need to ask me you can say in front of David. He’s bound to hear about it sooner or later in any event.”

Worsley shot a quick glance at Tanner. “Won’t you sit down, Roth? Can we offer you anything? Coffee? Sherry?”

Roth shook his head. He dropped into a carved armchair and spoke without preamble, always the best way to catch someone off guard. “Who was the gentleman who accompanied you onto the terrace last night, Mr. Tanner?”

Tanner was perched on the bronze-velvet sofa arm, refastening his cuffs. His fingers didn’t so much as falter. “I don’t believe I said that anyone accompanied me onto the terrace, Mr. Roth.”

“No, you indicated that you hadn’t been on the terrace at all. You didn’t, I now realize, state absolutely that you hadn’t, but you certainly gave that impression.”

Tanner smoothed a crease from one of his sleeves. “I saw no reason to give any other impression.”

“We can forego the verbal fencing, Mr. Tanner. The Countess Lieven saw you go through one of the French windows accompanied by another gentleman at about half past eleven.”

Worsley was sitting very still at the other end of the sofa, but Roth caught the start in his eyes.

“Who was your companion, Mr. Tanner?” Roth asked.

Tanner fixed Roth with a gaze as sharp as a newly mended pen. “We’d barely stepped onto the terrace when we realized a lady and gentleman were conversing in the garden below. We ducked back inside and spoke in one of the anterooms.”

“You knew someone else was in the garden?”

“Any number of couples were probably in the garden during the course of the evening. I could hardly add anything that would help you identify them.’

‘Countess Lieven saw the man we now know as Julien St. Juste go onto the terrace a few minutes before you did.’

Tanner went still. ‘Good Lord. I should have listened more closely.’

‘Could the gentleman of this couple you overheard have been St. Juste?’

‘He could have been anyone. We couldn’t hear enough to make out their words or to recognize their voices and we didn’t actually see anything.”

“You can’t answer for your companion.”

“He wouldn’t have noticed anything I didn’t.”

“You’ll have to let me question him and judge for myself, Mr. Tanner. Surely as a writer you understand how two people can perceive the same event differently.”

Tanner rested one hand on the sofa back and flexed his fingers. “You’re entirely too good at your job, Mr. Roth.”

“Simon,” Worsley said.

“Yes, all right. It was Pendarves.”

“Pendarves? Lord Pendarves?” Roth had vague associations of an old title and a name that appeared occasionally in Parliamentary transcripts, usually associated with long, intricate speeches on subjects such as crop drainage

“Quite,” Tanner said. “We were at Winchester together.”

Roth leaned back against the intricate lattice work of his chair. “Forgive me, Mr. Tanner, but I fail to see why you couldn’t have informed us last night that you went out onto the terrace for some conversation with your old school friend.”

“Well, yes, as this has played out I certainly should have done. But as I didn’t think we’d been observed and I was quite sure Pendarves hadn’t seen or heard enough to identify the couple in the garden and I knew I hadn’t, it seemed easier to say nothing.”

“Lying frequently seems easier in the short term, Mr. Tanner.”

“I didn’t lie, as you yourself pointed out. I failed to speak up.” Tanner studied his nails, as though looking for ink stains. “Pendarves prefers not to be seen with me. I’m a bit too much of a Radical to suit his sober Whig sensibilities.”

“And yet he had a private interview with you last night on the terrace?”

“He needed my advice on a certain matter so he sought me out. We haven’t spoken alone together for years.”

Roth folded his arms across the frayed brown wool of his coat. “Mr. Tanner, I have no more wish to pry into your life than anyone else’s, but no matter how starchy the man is you can hardly expect me to accept that he wouldn’t want to admit he spoke with you—“

“You can accept or not accept whatever you please, Mr. Roth. But you must realize that speaking with me—particularly alone—carries certain implications.” Tanner regarded Roth for a long moment, letting those implications linger in the air. “You’re quite free of course to now ask Pendarves for his version of the events.”

“You’re sure you can’t identify the other couple in the garden?” Roth said.

“Quite sure.”

David pulled the door to behind Roth and turned to stare across the sitting room at Simon. “What the devil was that about?“

“I told you. Pendarves—”

“I know what you said.” David strode across the room. “It doesn’t make a particle of sense.”

“It does if you read between the lines. Roth was doing that quite well.”

An image of Lord Pendarves danced before David’s eyes. Curly brown hair. Dark eyes. Tall. Elegant bones. “I didn’t know the two of you—“

Simon got to his feet and returned to the table where he’d been working. “There’s no reason you should. It was over long before I met you.”

An unfamiliar sensation closed David’s throat. “So the two of you were—“

“Oh, yes.”

David swallowed. He knew Simon’s past was more checkered than his own, but knowing in the abstract was different from being confronted with evidence of it.

Simon replaced the lid on the inkpot. “It didn’t last long. One of those moments of madness as one hovers on the brink of adulthood. Pendarves has done his best to ignore me since.”

“So what the devil happened last night?”

Simon shot a quick glance up, laughter in his eyes. “Good God, David. You don’t think—“

“No,” David said. He wished his voice was a bit more resolute.

“My days of rendezvous during entertainments are long past.” Simon began to tidy the papers strewn over the table. “Pendarves has two children, a wife he cares for, and more of a conscience about infidelity than most men. Which hasn’t stopped him from wanting to seek satisfaction outside his marriage. I imagine you’d be in much the same condition if you ever married.”

“I’m not going to get married. What does this have to do with last night?”

Simon aligned his pen beside the stack of paper. “Pendarves needed to talk to someone about his dilemma, and I was one of the few people—perhaps the only person—he felt he could talk to openly. He was so upset, he didn’t even realize there was another couple in the garden until I noticed. Then he was mortified that we might have been overheard.”

David studied his lover in the stormy light from the sitting room windows. “You could have said that last night at Bel and Oliver’s. Charles and Roth would have respected your confidence.”

Simon looked up, hands resting on the scribbled over draft of his play. “Charles and Roth want to get at the truth of the murder which tends to be incompatible with respecting anyone’s confidence.”

“You hate anyone lying about the truth of their life.”

Simon grimaced. “Pendarves married shortly after he left university. He loves his wife and children. God knows I wouldn’t make the choices he’s made but given that he has made them I was trying to avoid causing further difficulties for his family.”

“You could have told me—“

“I did. Just now.” Simon moved to his side and set his hands on David’s shoulders. His eyes were bright and his smile was the one that had been able to turn David’s heart over since they first met in an Oxford production of Henry IV Part I. A dusty hall with a makeshift stage at one end. A tall, loose-limbed figure walking toward him with a careless, brilliant smile. He’d been lost in that moment, though it was weeks before he’d admitted it to himself and longer before he’d admitted it to Simon.

“I could have spoken to Roth alone,” Simon said, his face inches from David’s own, “but I knew I’d have to give you some explanation. And you’ve always been damnably good at telling when I’m lying.”

David stared for a long moment into the eyes of the man he thought he knew better than anyone on earth. “Yes,” he said, “so I have.

Charles watched the silent duel of glances between his wife and Sam Lucan. Lucan walked forward, gaze still trained on Mélanie’s face, took her chin in his hand, and turned her face toward the stormy light from the casement window. “Dios. It is you. I didn’t believe it until I saw you. You’re a sight more elegant than when we last met. Salamanca. As I recall you had blood on your face and a good portion of your gown. English blood, I think, though I couldn’t swear to it.”

“English and Spanish if memory serves. You had your arms round one of the local girls, but she seemed willing so I didn’t interfere.”

Lucan gave a low laugh. He had a full-lipped mouth and a gaze that said he was accustomed taking what he wanted from life and draining it to the dregs.

The curly-harried woman walked toward them, crimson silk skirts snapping about her ankles. “Who the devil is she?”

“Juana Murez,” Lucan said, still looking at Mélanie. “Maria Salvados. The Marquesa de Fuentes. Mélanie Lescaut. The stuff men’s dreams are made of. And the best damned agent I ever met.”

“Bloody hell, Sam.” The woman turned a sharp blue gaze on him. She looked no more than Mélanie’s age, or perhaps younger, but she had the hardened eyes of a woman who’s learned to survive in a hostile world. “What’s the point of the guards if you’ll let any woman you’ve tumbled saunter in without so much as a by your leave?”

“Oh, I never came close to tumbling her. Not that I wouldn’t have if I’d got the chance. But she was—“

“O’Roarke’s,” Charles said. “That is, she wasn’t anyone’s but she slept with him. She doesn’t anymore.”

Lucan’s gaze moved to Charles. “Who the devil’s he?”

“My husband,” Mélanie said.

“Bloody hell, woman, have you gone mad? Your English husband?”

“I’ve had a varied career, Sancho, but I’ve only married once.”

“What the hell are you doing bringing him here?”

“Charles and I tell each other the truth these days. We find it saves time.”

Lucan looked from Mélanie to Charles. “I’ve missed something.”

“Quite a lot, actually,” Charles said, “but that’s between my wife and me.”

Lucan’s gaze swung back to Mélanie. “So help me, if you’ve changed sides—“

“I haven’t. I’ve called a truce with my husband.”

“A truce! That’s rich. I’ve never known a marriage to end in a truce. A fight á la outrance is more like it.”

“I was a diplomat for years,” Charles said. “I have a tiresome tendency to try to reason things out.”

Lucan frowned at him, then turned to Mélanie. “You can do whatever the devil you want, but why the hell must you needs embroil me—“

“Charles has given me his word not to betray any of my former associates,” Mélanie said. “He takes his word very seriously.”

“So do you, ma belle. But I’ve seen you break it on more than one occasion.”

The curly-haired woman was running her gaze over Mélanie as though toting up each detail of her toilette. “If you can dress like that and go about on the arm of a man like that, what the hell are you doing in Seven Dials?”

“Lucan’s neglected to complete the introductions,” Charles said. “My name’s Fraser. Charles Fraser. Madam—“

“Simcox. Nan Simcox.” She straightened her shoulders and pushed her mane of hair back from her face.

Charles inclined his head. “Enchanted.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lucan said. “Enough with the niceties. How do you put up with this life, Mélanie?”

“It has its compensations. I’m not the only one with altered circumstances. You’ve changed professions since we last met.”

“Not really. I still deal in information. It isn’t only to steal military secrets that someone wants to find out the layout of a house. I still provide a staff who can undertake the odd job here and there. It’s a buyer’s market, now, though, and the pay’s far more erratic. Nothing like that nice stream of French gold we had pouring into the Peninsula to buy information and supplies.”

“That’s what Charles and I need. Information.”

“About?”

“Julien St. Juste.”

Lucan’s face went beautifully blank. “Who?”

“He came to London recently. If he needed information or assistance, who better to seek out than you?”

“I’m not an easy man to find.”

“We managed to find you, Sancho. St. Juste could have done as well.”

“Assuming he did—and I’m not admitting anything, mind—do you think I’d tell you what transpired?”

“Yes.” Mélanie pulled a knife from her bodice and pressed it against his throat.

“Damnation. Tom was supposed to search you.”

“He did. You need to train your men better. Raoul would rip you to pieces for employing such shoddy guards.”

Nan gave a gasp that might have been either shock or appreciation. Charles kept a careful eye on her in case Mélanie wasn’t the only one with a hidden weapon.

Mélanie pressed the knife deeper into Lucan’s flesh. “St. Juste is dead.”

“Jesus. How?”

“Stabbed. Last night,” Charles said.

“You bloody bastard.” Nan rounded on Lucan. “What have you got my brother into?”

“Your brother?” Mélanie asked.

“Shut up, Nan,” Lucan said.

“You’re forgetting I have the knife,” Mélanie said.

“Go ahead, use it.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“You’re not a cold-blooded killer, Mélanie. Unless marriage has changed you.”

“Damn it, Sancho—“

As she spoke the door burst open. Four men ran into the room. Charles barely had time to see the rush of movement before a blow knocked him into the wall.