O’Roarke looked down at the dull gold and gleaming rubies. “I’m flattered that you trust me in any way at all, Fraser.” He took the ring and pocketed it. “We’ll see if it means as much to the people of Spain as it has meant to us.” He met Charles’s gaze but did not attempt to offer his hand. “You’ve been a much tried man these past days. Don’t think your forbearance has gone unnoticed.”
Charles swallowed, aware of Melanie’s gaze on the two of them. “O’Roarke?”
“Yes?”
Charles stretched out his hand. “Thank you.”
O’Roarke clasped his hand, inclined his head, and moved to the door. But he turned back at the last minute, gripping the brass doorknob. His gaze moved from Charles to Melanie. “I only spent a few minutes with him last night, but he’s a remarkable little boy. He couldn’t have better parents.”
He opened the door without waiting for a reply and strode from the room. Charles released his breath, though he hadn’t known he’d been holding it. He stood still for a moment, listening to the retreating click of booted feet in the hall, the murmur of Michael’s voice, the muffled thud of the front door.
Charles turned to his wife. She looked more or less herself, the cinnamon-striped stuff of her gown falling gracefully about her, her hair looped and curled and pinned, her pearl earrings gleaming beside her face. But her face itself was marked by indelible shadows.
She rubbed her arms. As usual, she knew what he was thinking without him putting it into words. “It’s one of those cliches of life that it’s hellishly easy to make promises in a darkened bedchamber. And then one wakes up and has to put them into practice.”
His gaze flickered to the hole in the plaster where he had smashed his fist a scant seventy-two hours ago. “Constructing a thesis is often easier than testing it.”
She stared at the rumpled sofa cushions, and then at the painting of her and the children on the overmantel. “It’s never going to be the same.”
“No.” He watched her. The sunlight shot through the stiff lace of her high-standing collar and dappled her collarbone. A loose ringlet fell against her cheek. A scrape showed on the back of her left hand, a relic of one of their brushes with danger. In seven years, there was not a moment when he had felt he knew her so completely.
“It might be better,” he said.
She looked at him, her eyes wide and bruised and tinged with something desperate—hope, relief, fear perhaps. “Oh, darling. I don’t even know where to begin.”
“One step at a time.” He closed the distance between them and held out his hand. “‘What’s past is prologue.’”
“Yes, but prologue to what?”
“What we make of it.”
She hesitated a moment, then she gave a smile that drove the shadows from her eyes. She reached out and put her hand into his own.
Epilogue
House of Commons
December 1819
Sweetheart,
It’s just past ten. I can hear the crack of walnuts from the back benches and shells crunching underfoot. Someone’s opened a flask of brandy. Debate will resume in another quarter hour. God knows when we’ll get out of here. I wanted to get this to you as soon as possible, so I’m sending it with Addison, who I think will not at all mind the excuse to get home to Blanca.
You were quite right about the opening of the speech. Much better to start with a description of the villagers we met in Lurcia (odd now to think of our differing perspectives when we met them, but that’s another matter). Quoting Luis Coria’s account of the Spain he wanted for his children was a stroke of genius. The House went gratifyingly silent. Mallinson and Lydgate instructed me to tell you it was my best speech of the year, which I do only because you wrote half of it.
Castlereagh is present, as you predicted. I could feel the chill of his gaze on me the whole time I spoke. He must have heard by now about Felipe Carevalo having the ring, but he hasn’t said a word. We haven’t spoken in private since that afternoon he summoned me to the Foreign Office and in faultlessly polite language expressed his condolences over Edgar’s death. To do him justice, his concern sounded quite genuine. But I still can’t help but wonder how much he knows. In that, as in so many things, all we can do is wait.
Roth was in the gallery for the speech as well, as he promised he would be when he dined with us. And I had the strangest sense I saw another familiar figure at the back of the gallery. Perhaps it was a trick of my imagination. I thought O’Roarke had gone to Ireland after he left Spain.
I stopped by Hatchards on my way to the House and found the Robin Hood stories we were looking for for Colin for Christmas (you’ve realized, haven’t you, that we have a son who’s fascinated by an outlaw who defies the crown in the name of justice and the common man?). I also got the toy theatre for Jessica. Do you know, it was a relief to hear them quarreling when I left this evening. Reassuringly normal (I of course can say that, having been spared hours of arguments over the dinner dishes, though I suspect you talked them out of it before you’d finished the soup.).
I must go. Addison’s standing by patiently, and Mallinson and Lydgate want me to come rally votes. I’m being slow coming to the point, because I still don’t do well framing such words. You told me when we were working on the speech that I’m better at saying what I think than what I feel. You’re quite right (and, my darling, there’s a great deal to be said for rational thought, as I think you’d be the first to agree). We’ve said a number of things to each other, one way and another, these past weeks. Some things we haven’t said, and I doubt we ever will. Perhaps some truths are best left unvoiced. But there’s one truth I don’t think I’ve ever committed to writing. As we’ve learned we never know what lies in store, this seems an appropriate time to do it.
I love you with all my heart,
Charles
Historical Note
Melanie and Charles and the other principal characters in this book are entirely fictional, but I have endeavored to make the London in which their adventures take place and the Britain and Europe against which their story is set as accurate as possible. For this, I am indebted to the Stanford and University of California, Berkeley, libraries for keeping a wonderful collection of early-nineteenth-century letters and diaries (some of which hadn’t been checked out in years), and to U.C. Berkeley for its invaluable microfilm copies of the Morning Chronicle.
The Carevalo Ring and its history are also fictional, but had such a ring existed, I think it is not entirely implausible that the British, French, and Spanish would all have sought to make use of it during the Peninsular War and its aftermath.
Acknowledgments
A profound and heartfelt thank-you to my agent, Nancy Yost; to my editor, Lucia Macro; to Carrie Feron; and to Marion Donaldson, for believing in this book, understanding what I was trying to do, and helping me do it better.
Thank you to Monica Sevy, John Lampe, and Carol Benz for telling me the story was worth telling, when it existed largely in my head and publication seemed a distant dream.
Thank you to Ross Sevy for helping me understand early-nineteenth-century weapons. If I’ve made any mistakes, the fault is mine entirely.
Thank you to Jim Saliba for brainstorming character motivations, helping me dream up the history of the Carevalo Ring, searching out Shakespeare quotes, and making me laugh when I needed to.
