The Mask of Night (32 page)

“You’ve only been round Bel and Oliver constantly for a couple of years,” Simon said. “I’ve seen them day in day out for a decade. Does David know?”

“Bel told him this afternoon,” Charles said. “At first we thought St. Juste had acted on O’Roarke's orders.”

“And now?”

“Now I confess I’m inclined to believe O’Roarke.”

Simon drew in and released a breath. “You're right, if nothing else, this makes it unlikely that St. Juste was working for Carfax.”

“I've known Carfax to let the ends justify a lot," Charles said, "but I think even he'd cavil at having a man seduce his daughter.”

“St. Juste could have been working for someone in the Government other than Carfax,” Mélanie said. “I'm sure seducing Bel was an opening gambit in whatever brought St. Juste to London, not the end game.”

Simon’s gaze flickered between her and Charles. “And the game may not have stopped with his death.”

“No,” Charles said. “Though whether the person who had O’Roarke attacked tonight was St. Juste’s killer or employer or someone else entirely remains an open question.”

“I have to go home. I need to see David.”

Charles didn’t attempt to argue with him. In the same circumstances, he’d be desperate to see Mélanie. “Randall can drive you. But for God’s sake be careful. We don’t know if it’s just O’Roarke who was a target or all of you.”

Simon nodded. “I may be reckless, but I have a healthy sense of self-preservation.”

The three of them went downstairs together. “Thank you,” Simon said at the front door. “For trusting me.”

Charles nodded. “It’s nice some things have survived the past twenty-four hours. Don't let David brood too much.”

“But he will. Every bit as much as you would in the same circumstances,” Simon said with a ghost of his usual grin. He squeezed Charles’s arm, kissed Mélanie’s cheek, and climbed into the waiting barouche.

The long-case clock showed half-past one when Charles and Mélanie returned to the hall, empty now as Michael had been sent to bed long since. He could feel the dull throb of exhaustion behind his eyes as they climbed the stairs to their bedchamber, but he was too restless for sleep. He pushed open the door and looked at his wife.

“Laura isn’t back yet,” she said.

“She’s with Roth. At least I hope to God she still is.”

Mélanie turned to look at him, the weight of all they had learned since they left the Bartletts’ settling between them. “
Do
you believe him?” she asked.

“Simon?” He closed the door. “I think so.”

“Not Simon.”

He set the lamp he’d been carrying on the Pembroke table. “Do you believe him?”

“Raoul’s probably a better liar than either you or me. But he seemed to be telling the truth.”

Charles turned up the wick, his gaze on the flare of flame within the glass chimney.

"You don't agree?" Mélanie said.

"No. The devil of it is I'm inclined to believe him as well. And I can't be sure—"

A rap fell on the door. “It’s me,” said a voice that belonged, inevitably, to Raoul O’Roarke.

Charles opened the door. The man who had fathered him, manipulated his marriage, and saved his life a few scant hours before stood outside, wrapped in a dressing gown Charles recognized as one of his own.

“We need to talk,” O’Roarke said.

“Quite. You’d better come in.”

O’Roarke hesitated a moment, then stepped over the threshold. He moved a little stiffly, perhaps due to his freshly-bandaged wound. “How much do you know beyond what you disclosed in that scene downstairs?” he asked.

“You mean the part about you sending Mélanie to retrieve the Empress Josephine's paper from St. Juste ten years ago?”

"Among other things.” O’Roarke looked paler than usual, his face reduced to sharp bones and gaunt hollows.

“Sit down.” Charles gestured to the green velvet armchair by the fireplace.

“Thank you. I know you can give me twenty years, but I’m not entirely decrepit.”

“No,” Charles said, “but you are the most badly injured person present at the moment.

O’Roarke gave a faint smile and sank into the chair. “What else have you discovered?"

Charles regarded him.

“For God’s sake, Charles, we’re on the same side at the moment.”

“That’s the argument I tried on Simon. But the world’s a bit too complicated to talk about sides. You taught me that.”

“I’m flattered you were listening. When you first accused Gordon and Tanner and Hapgood and me of being in league with St. Juste, you said something about Lord Carfax. What did St. Juste have to do with Carfax?”

Charles glanced at Mélanie. She lifted her brows, ceding the decision to him. He drew a breath, his friends' confidences sifting through his brain. But he needed O'Roarke's help. And if he was wrong and O'Roarke had been working with St. Juste, O'Roarke probably knew all of it already. Without prevarication, he told O’Roarke about St. Juste’s affair with Isobel and what Lucinda had overheard her father say to his informant about the investigation.

O’Roarke’s gaze remained on his face as he spoke. “That puts a different twist on things,” he said when Charles had done. "It's a tricky business, setting spies to spy on one's own agents. Carfax is a brilliant strategist. I assume he has his reasons."

"He may know about St. Juste's affair with Bel and is afraid I'll find evidence of it," Charles said.

"That's one explanation."

"Raoul.” Mélanie dropped down on the bed and curled her feet under her. "When did you last hear from Hortense?"

O'Roarke's eyes went wide with rare surprise. "That was quick even for you,
querida
. How did you know?"

"You mean you
do
know she’s in England? Damn it, Raoul—"

"
Hortense is in England?
" O'Roarke said.

The former fellow spies stared at each other. Charles watched from the sidelines.

"You first," Mélanie said.

O'Roarke rested his head against the worn velvet of the chair back. "Hortense is the one who gave me the papers to smuggle into England and asked me to find a printer for them."

"When?"

"A month since. I went to see her in Arenenberg."

Mélanie put her hand over her eyes. "I'm a complete and utter failure. I can't tell when anyone's lying anymore."

"I doubt that, but you'll certainly be a failure if you waste time on self-recrimination. Tell me about Hortense being in England."

Mélanie locked her hands round her knees and told him what she had previously told Charles, about meeting Hortense Bonaparte at the Lydgates' ball and then again this afternoon in Hyde Park. "This is the second lie she told me. First she claimed not to have seen St. Juste in years, and then she said the same thing about you. I trusted her—"

"It’s a common failing," Charles murmured.

"She may have been trying to protect me," O'Roarke said.

"From me?" Mélanie asked.

"You are married to the enemy. And you told her you'd stopped working for me."

"I'd never—"

"Yes?" O'Roarke said, watching her.

Mélanie chewed on her lower lip. "I told her we thought St. Juste was working with you. If she'd explained you had another reason for being in England it would have deflected suspicion from you."

O'Roarke pulled his dressing gown closed at the throat. "Hortense never had her mother's talent for intrigue. But her skills have improved over the years. If it's true that Carfax is in possession of papers about her and Flahaut's child—"

"Did you know St. Juste kept papers about the child?" Mélanie asked.

"No, but it doesn't surprise me. Though I am surprised Carfax got his hands on them. Your employer is an enterprising man, Charles."

"Former employer. Do you think St. Juste could have been using the existence of these papers to manipulate Queen Hortense?"

Mélanie rested her chin on her knees. "She asked me to retrieve the papers for her, which is just what you'd expect if the papers are what she says."

"
If
they are," Charles said.

"St. Juste wouldn’t be above using Hortense," O'Roarke said. "But I don't think he'd do anything to hurt her. Her mother was the only person I ever saw him display any real loyalty to."

Charles turned to look O'Roarke full in the face. "Tell us about this paper of the Empress Josephine's you sent Mélanie to steal from St. Juste ten years ago."

"I was wondering when you'd ask. You don't know that it has anything to do with the current situation."

"The same key players are involved. It's the start of the story."

"Yes, I suppose it is. In more ways than one.” O'Roarke stared into the fire for a moment. "I met Josephine when we were both imprisoned in Les Carmes during the Terror—she because her first husband had fallen from favor, me for writing and saying things the Government found inconvenient. Every day the Revolutionary Tribunal’s cart came with a list of prisoners to be tried and executed. It looked very much as if we were both going to die in the name of a Revolution we'd begun by supporting.” He glanced away again, his eyes hooded. "There are things one says at such a time that one would never dream of saying in the light of freedom and sanity. There are bonds that are formed that have nothing to do with the usual relations between men and women. I tell you this as a context for what comes after."

Mélanie was watching him closely. Charles sensed this was a part of the story she'd never heard before, at least not in these words. "You were both released from prison," she said.

"When the Tribunal fell and Robespierre was guillotined. Josephine escaped death by a day. It's difficult to explain what those years of the
Directoire
were like. We'd cheated death and we were all a little drunk on freedom. There was unbridled license in all things."

"From what I hear of my parents' generation, it was much the same in England at the time," Charles said.

"Quite. Except in France we could be completely open about it. No more hiding behind the veneer of marriage and genteel society. Josephine was a widow with two children and no money. She needed a protector."

"Barras," Mélanie said.

"Paul Barras, the most powerful of the Directors. It wasn't an exclusive relationship. But she made him an admirable hostess. And he used her to extract information."

"What a surprise," Mélanie murmured.

O'Roarke regarded her for a moment, his own gaze unfathomable. "She wasn't a trained spy. But her salon was the ideal place to gather intelligence. It was there that I met St. Juste."

"Carfax said he first heard of St. Juste as an agent for Fouché in the Ministry of Police," Charles said.

"Yes. I've never been sure if St. Juste seduced Josephine for information or she seduced him, but by the time I met him they were already lovers. My first glimpse of him was turning the pages of her music in her salon. He couldn't have been more than seventeen, with fair hair and the sort of smile that prompts young girls to scribble madly in their journals. He and I left Josephine's together that evening and walked to the Palais Royal. Someone tried to pick St. Juste's pocket. St. Juste stuck a knife in him without so much as breaking stride."

"Was St. Juste French?" Charles asked.

"I don't think so, though I couldn't place his original nationality. He was one of the best agents I've ever encountered. Present company excepted."

"The paper," Charles said. "The paper Josephine feared could destroy her."

"I'm coming to that.” O'Roarke's gaze skimmed between them. "I know I can't ask you to promise to keep quiet about this, but I will ask that you think carefully about what you do with the information I'm about to reveal."

"For God's sake—" Charles began.

"I'm serious. Deadly serious. And I use the word advisedly."

Charles had only heard that edge in O'Roarke voice once before, at the age of six, when he ran too near a stream with a swift-moving current. Across the room, Mélanie had gone completely still.

"I've never been one to idly reveal a confidence," Charles said.

"Nor have I," Mélanie added.

O'Roarke nodded. "I was in an out of Paris in the nineties, going back and forth between there and Ireland—"

"I remember," Charles said.

"So there was a great deal I didn't know at the time. The first I heard of the paper in question was over a decade later. Josephine came to me in a panic in late 1809. By then there was pressure for Bonaparte to divorce her so he could make an alliance with a foreign princess and produce an heir. Josephine told me Fouché had got wind of the paper's existence. She feared he would try to get it from St. Juste and use it against her."

"Because?"

O'Roarke was silent for a moment, as though he, to whom words came so easily, was choosing his exact words with care. "Barras had been Josephine's protector. As principal Director, Barras had had charge of the young Dauphin."

The room went so still one could hear the hissing of the lamp oil. Charles stared at his father, then shot a glance at his wife. She too was staring at O'Roarke, her face drained of color. The Dauphin, heir of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, rumored to have died in prison. Also rumored to have been smuggled out and hidden away. Rightful King of France if he resurfaced.

Charles dropped into the nearest chair. "My God. Are you saying—"

"There were always rumors," Mélanie said. "That Barras and Josephine had smuggled the boy away. Tsar Alexander even claimed she'd confided as much to him. But I never really believed—"

"Quite," O'Roarke said. "We know the Tsar's penchant for elaboration. But for once he appears to have been telling the truth. According to Josephine, she and Barras switched the Dauphin for another boy with similar coloring early in 1794. The substitute boy died of natural causes a few months later. The real Dauphin was smuggled off to a safe location. Barras and Josephine employed St. Juste to switch the boys and see the Dauphin to safety. The letter Josephine was so desperate to get back was coded instructions to St. Juste about the boy's transfer."

Mélanie pressed a hand to her temple. "
Sacrebleu
. I understand her desperation. If Bonaparte had learned his wife knew the Dauphin was alive and had kept it from him—"