Secrets of a Lady

Charles straightened up. “What sort of a letter? How many pages?”

“I couldn’t rightly say, sir. But it must have been longish. It was a fair fat packet.”

“Fat enough for the ring to be tucked inside?”

Baxter’s eyes went wide. He nodded slowly. “Aye. More than fat enough.”

Charles regarded him for a moment. “You didn’t say anything about it at the time.”

Baxter glanced down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “Well, no, sir, I didn’t quite like to. It—ah—the letter wasn’t addressed to Mrs. Jennings at their house in Surrey. Seemed more discreet just to send it on to the lady quiet-like. If I’d known—”

“But you couldn’t have, of course. Did you tell Lorano about the letter?”

“I mentioned it, sir. Didn’t see any reason not to. I’m not sure he put it together that the ring might have been inside. I didn’t myself properly until just now.”

Charles sat forward in his chair. “Do you remember the lady’s name?”

Baxter’s face screwed up with concentration. Out of the corner of his eye, Charles saw Melanie twisting her gloves round her fingers.

“Ellen something,” Baxter said at last. “No, Helen, that was it.” His face cleared. “Helen Trevennen. Like Helen of Troy, I thought. I suppose that’s why it stuck in my head.”

Charles released his breath and gave thanks to a God he had long since ceased to believe in. “Did you mention her name to Lorano?”

“No. I said I couldn’t remember—which was true until just now. Seemed best to leave well enough alone.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you remember her direction as well?”

“Oh, I remember that right enough. She must have been an actress or a dancer or something of the sort. The letter wasn’t directed to her lodgings. It was sent to the Drury Lane Theatre.” He shook his head. “Fancy my remembering after all these years.”

Chapter 10

Melanie gripped the edges of the carriage seat to steady her hands. It was not far to the Drury Lane Theatre, but the narrow streets were thronged with carts and drays going to and from the market. They were crawling along at a maddening pace. “Seven years is a long time,” she said. “I don’t recall seeing a Helen Trevennen on the program at the Drury Lane since we’ve been back in Britain.”

“No.” Charles turned his gaze to her. He’d been staring out the window with a fixed expression. “The odds are she’s not at the theater anymore.”

Don’t let your hopes carry you away, his voice said. It was difficult when hope and fear churned within her, clogging her throat, tearing at her chest. “What about this man Lorano who asked Baxter about the ring?” she said. “Who do you think he’s working for?”

“The royalists most likely, perhaps even the Spanish embassy. If there’s a rebellion in Spain, the royalists could make as much use of the ring as Carevalo and the liberals.”

“Wouldn’t they have to return it to the Carevalo family?”

“Why?” He scanned her face with a cold gaze. “Your people weren’t planning to turn the ring over to Carevalo seven years ago. All the royalists need to do is dig up a Carevalo relative who supports the monarchy and parade him about with the ring. They could repeat the legends about the ring with a strategic emphasis on the links between the ring’s power and the Spanish throne. Like most legends, the story of the Carevalo Ring can be bent to serve a multitude of purposes.”

She couldn’t argue with that. It was much the same thing Raoul had said to her seven years ago. “And if the people on Carevalo’s lands saw a pro-royalist Carevalo cousin with the ring, they might side with him rather than Carevalo and the liberals.”

“Precisely. If the royalists get their hands on the ring, there’s not a chance in hell they’ll surrender it to Carevalo, even if we could explain what that means for Colin.”

“We’ll just have to hope Mr. Lorano hasn’t traced Helen Trevennen to the Drury Lane.”

“Yes.” Charles pushed his hair back from his forehead. She caught a telltale tremor in his hand. For a moment his controlled expression wavered. It was like looking into a glass at the reflection of her own terror.

“So Lieutenant Jennings found the Carevalo Ring,” she said, recapitulating what they had learned thus far in the hope it would still the panic welling up in her chest. “It must have been hidden in some village or town the British occupied. Jennings heard the legends about the ring and realized how valuable it could be to the British. But he knew his superiors in the army wouldn’t pay him for it. In fact, given Wellington’s strictures against pillaging, he might get asked some uncomfortable questions about how he’d acquired the ring. So he hired the bandits to sell the ring to the British for him. Somehow he arranged to lead the detachment of soldiers who traveled with you when you went to buy the ring from the bandits. He wouldn’t trust the bandits with the ring until the last minute, so he carried it with him and hid it in a letter he’d written to his mistress, Helen Trevennen.”

“It’s largely conjecture,” Charles said, “but it’s the only explanation that fits the facts as we know them.”

“What do we tell them at the Drury Lane?” Melanie said. “The truth?”

“The truth?” Charles’s voice cut like ice. “Surely not. Do you even know how to tell it? Besides, it might frighten Helen Trevennen or her friends into silence. I think Lieutenant Jennings had better have been a good friend of mine. I was going through a trunk of his belongings recently and I found a letter from him leaving a bequest to Miss Trevennen. I didn’t want to tell his wife, so I’m seeking out Miss Trevennen myself.”

“That’s simple and fairly plausible.” She adjusted the brim of her bonnet, as though she could anchor herself. “What time is it?”

He pulled his watch from his pocket and opened it. “Just past ten.”

“There’s sure to be a rehearsal starting by now. The stage manager’s a better bet for information than the manager. Stage managers know everything.”

He nodded, returned his watch to his pocket, then swung his head round to look at her. “How long were you an actress?”

Even now, even with his mind on Colin, he missed nothing. She tightened the ribbons on her bonnet, tugging harder than was necessary. The ribbon cut into her skin. “My father had a traveling theater company. I was performing before I was Jessica’s age. I went on doing so until I was fifteen.”

“And then?”

He deserved an answer. She gave him the bare minimum. “He died.”

Charles’s eyes asked a great deal more and, she feared, saw more than a glimmering of the answers, but he merely said, “Evidently he taught you well.”

A rich voice, smiling eyes. A hand ruffling her hair, a challenging question, a love she had never doubted. “My father was a man of integrity,” she said. “I think he’d have liked you. I expect he wouldn’t be very happy with what I’ve become.”

“If he was a man of integrity,” Charles said, “I can’t imagine he would be.”

His cool words cut her to the quick, because she knew he was right. Her father, like Charles, could never have made sense of letting the ends justify the means.

The porter at the stage door of the Drury Lane greeted their entrance with a frown, which changed to a look of surprise when Charles produced his card. It was not politic for a theater to offend influential politicians. He waved them in.

The smell was instantly recognizable. Not the scented candles, French perfume, and ripe oranges one smelled in the audience, but a sharper scent composed of cheap gilt paint, musty costumes, thick greasy cosmetics, and rehearsal tea brewed over a spirit lamp. Her father’s company had never played in a theater half so grand, but some things were universal, whatever the size of the house.

The slither of booted feet on floorboards and the clang of foils came from the stage.

“‘Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives,’” a voice muttered in desultory tones.

“No, no.” Another voice interrupted from beyond the stage. “You’re supposed to be the best swordsman in Verona, Tony. Try to look confident. Crispin, Mercutio should swagger. You look as though you’re a stripling trying to remember the steps of the waltz.”

Melanie hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, teetering on the edge of a forgotten world. She’d long