act as my agent.”
Charles looked at his wife’s lover. He would have hit him, but that seemed a woefully inadequate response in the face of what had been revealed. “Shut up, O’Roarke. If I don’t believe Melanie, I certainly won’t believe you.” He looked back at his wife. “Is Jessica mine?”
Melanie sucked in her breath as though he’d slapped her. “Don’t be ridiculous, Charles. You can see it in her face.”
“Convenient.”
Her hands clenched at her sides. “I didn’t need to see her face to know that no one else could be her father.” She hesitated a moment. “There hasn’t been anyone else for a long time.”
“You’ll have to tell me more someday. I’m afraid there isn’t time now.” Charles wrenched his gaze away from her and spread his hands palms-down on the cold, uncompromising marble of the table. He couldn’t seem to stop them from shaking. “O’Roarke, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you want to get my— your—our son back. What else do you know about Carevalo?”
“No more than I told you at Mivart’s. Do you know whom he employed to actually take the boy?”
“Not by name. We have a Bow Street Runner looking for them.”
O’Roarke’s eyes narrowed. “The Bow Street Runners are in charge of ferreting out foreign spies.”
“Among other things. That should make Roth right at home in this mess. Tell me again that the ring never found its way into French hands.”
“If it had found its way into French hands, we’d have used it.”
Charles looked at O’Roarke a moment longer, then nodded. “If one of the British soldiers really had the ring, then it must have been on his person when he died. Unless Baxter had it. Baxter’s the next person to talk to.” He glanced at Melanie. “Are you coming with me?”
“Of course.”
O’Roarke’s gaze flickered between them. “I don’t know where Carevalo is, but there are one or two places I can make inquiries. Melanie can tell you I used to be rather good at tracking people. I’ll see what I can learn.”
“Tomas might learn more asking questions among the servants,” Melanie said.
“I’m afraid my loyal valet left me last spring. My new man is decent at starching the linen but no earthly good as an agent. I’ll do my best on my own.” O’Roarke picked up his gloves. “I have no doubt Carevalo will be getting reports on events in London. I need hardly say that the less he knows about any connection between us, the better. For all our sakes—and the boy’s.”
Charles bit back the impulse to fling O’Roarke’s tacit offer of help in his face. He needed the man, damn his soul to hell. “You know where to find us. I presume you and my wife are experts at sending messages without detection.”
“We’ve done it once or twice.” O’Roarke tugged on his gloves. “How the two of you settle matters between yourselves is your own affair. But take care you don’t let Carevalo guess even a hint of the truth about Melanie’s past. He’s been longing to wreak vengeance on the French ever since his own family were killed. The last thing you want is for him to realize he has the child of a French agent in his power.”
Melanie tucked her disordered hair into the knot at the nape of her neck. “I’m not a fool, Raoul. By now you should know Charles isn’t, either.”
The three of them left the room in a sort of strange solidarity, like rival MPs forced into an uneasy alliance by parliamentary expediency. Charles retained no coherent memory of the next ten minutes. Somehow he must have said and done what was necessary. O’Roarke was shown from the house. The carriage was brought round. He and Melanie settled themselves inside, wrapped in the appropriate outer garments. He directed the coachman to Covent Garden, then turned to Melanie and spoke the words that most needed to be said. “
“As much as I believe anything. Raoul can be ruthless, but he has his own loyalties.”
He leaned back into his corner of the carriage. They were at opposite ends of the seat. “Was he loyal to you?”
She turned her head and met the full force of his gaze. “After a fashion. He never forced me to take a risk I didn’t understand.”
“Including marrying me?”
The pleated silk that lined her bonnet cast cool, blue-tinged shadows over her face. Her eyes were very dark, almost black. “He wanted me to accept your offer. But he left the decision up to me.”
“Kind of him.”
“Charles—” She reached out to him, then let her hand fall in her lap. “You’d better ask me whatever you need to ask now, or we’ll never get through this.”
They rounded a corner. He gripped the strap harder than was necessary. “No, I think I’d better not. Or we’ll never get through this.”
She watched him with that damned look that could always slash through his defenses. “I think Raoul cares about Colin more than he’d admit even to himself. But Colin’s your son in every way that matters.”
“Of course he’s my son.” His hand tightened round the strap. The leather cut into his bandaged palm. “I can understand that you used me. I was fair game. But you used Colin. Before he was even born.”
“Darling—”
His hand jerked, wrenching the strap from the carriage wall. “You bloody bitch, don’t you dare try to make excuses for yourself.”
She sucked in her breath. “What could I possibly say that would excuse what I did?”
“Nothing.” And yet even as he spoke, he knew that a part of him would clutch at any excuse she offered, as a drowning man clutches the flimsiest shard of timber. Christ, he was a fool.
He fixed his gaze across the carriage. The patterns on the watered silk squabs wavered and shimmered before his eyes. Questions he hadn’t meant to ask came unbidden to his lips. “Surely O’Roarke could have used your help even after Waterloo. Why the hell did you stop working for him?”
“Because I’m your wife.”
The carriage lurched over a loose cobblestone. He gave a laugh that was as rough as the scrape of the iron- bound wheels. “You’ve been my wife for seven years.” He swung his head round and met her gaze. “Or had you forgotten?”
“That’s something I’ve never forgotten, darling.” She drew a breath, as though she meant to say more. Then she checked herself, hands folded tight in her lap.
He looked from her still hands to her pale, shadowed face. “Where did you meet O’Roarke?” he asked.
She jerked her chin up a fraction. The ribbons on her bonnet rustled. “In a brothel.”
“You continue to surprise me. What was the Comte de Saint-Vallier’s daughter doing in a brothel?”
“I’m not the Comte de Saint-Vallier’s daughter, Charles. My parents were traveling actors.” She paused a moment but kept her gaze on his face. “I was in the brothel because I worked there. Before Raoul introduced me to a new game, I was a daughter of one of the oldest games of all. I was a whore.”
He was silent for the length of a heartbeat. “Of course. And O’Roarke suggested you sell your body for military secrets instead of a few paltry coins?”
“Why not?” Her voice went sharp. “If one’s been forced into the gutter, why not make the most of it?”
“Why not indeed. Though surely when it came to selling yourself in marriage, you could have done better than a mere attache.”
“I told you, I never meant—” She slammed her fist against her mouth. “When Raoul sent me after the ring, seduction wasn’t any part of the mission.”
“No, apparently that was an added benefit.” He pressed his hands over his eyes, but a thousand memories deluged his senses. The whiff of roses and vanilla. The slither of a silk stocking. The taste of champagne in her mouth. The feel of her body clenched round his own and her lips against the hollow of his throat. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “On our wedding night I told you I wouldn’t rush you into intimacy. I said we could wait until after the baby was born. Why the hell didn’t you take me up on it? Who knew what the future held. You might never have had to sleep with me at all.”
She was silent. He dragged his hands from his face and stared at her. “Damn it, madam, you owe me an answer.”
“I knew I’d done an unspeakable thing to you, Charles. I thought—” She looked at him the way she looked at
