The Mask of Night (19 page)

"A number of things, though it's difficult to make sense of them. Hortense, when did you last hear from Raoul?"

Hortense's blue eyes widened. "At Christmas. He sent a gift for the boys. He always does. Is M. O'Rourke—"

"Apparently he was at the ball."

"You saw him?"

"No. The popular theory is that he was there to meet St. Juste. They appear to have been working together."

"
Mon Dieu
, to do what?"

"We don't know. Raoul's got links to revolutionaries in Ireland, to those who opposed the monarchy in Spain, to former Bonapartists in France—"

"Oh, no.” Hortense inched back against the squabs. "If I knew of any plot— Dear God, I'm not sure I would tell you. But I don't know of any such thing, Mélanie. I swear it. Do you believe me?"

"Very nearly."

Hortense gave a quick smile. "Thank you. From you, that's quite an admission of trust."

"But just because you haven't heard of a Bonapartist plot doesn't mean there isn't one," Mélanie said.

"M. O'Roarke hasn't contacted you?"

"Not since last autumn.” Mélanie shifted her position, trying to get a better view of Hortense's face in the dimly lit carriage. "Before all hell broke loose last night you were going to tell me what brought you to England."

Hortense plucked at her skirt. The fabric had a sheen that caught the lamplight, while her face remained in shadow. "Julien St. Juste came to see me in Arenberg two months ago."

Mélanie stared across the carriage at the friend—a far older friend than Isobel Lydgate—she had just said she trusted. "
What?
"

"Don't look at me like that, Mélanie, I lied to you last night about having seen him, but it's not what you're thinking."

"Go on."

"I hadn't heard from him since
Maman
died, and that was only a brief note of sympathy—written in code on the flyleaf of a book. But two months ago I was walking in the garden and he suddenly appeared beside me, dressed as a gardener, with gray hair and a beard and I'd swear a good three inches off his height. He said he'd come to warn me."

"About?"

Hortense lifted her gaze to Mélanie's face. Even in the shadows, her eyes were haunted. "He said he was about to embark on a mission that might prove more dangerous than usual, and he felt impelled to clear his conscience first. I know it's absurd to think of St. Juste having a conscience, but the way he said it I found myself believing him."

"He had that knack. Clear his conscience about what?"

"He'd undertaken assignments for the British. You know that. He always worked for the highest bidder. Apparently during one of these assignments, certain papers had fallen into the hands of a Lord Carfax. He's—"

"England's spymaster. Papers about what?" Mélanie asked, though from the fear in Hortense's eyes she was quite certain she knew.

"About Saint-Maurice-en-Valais eight years ago," Hortense said.

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. "
Chéri
e. 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."