Secrets of a Lady

Charles glanced up and down Bow Street as they emerged from the Brown Bear. It was not yet three o’clock, but with the soot-stained buildings leaning over the street, the rain clouds massed overhead, and the steady downpour obscuring vision, it felt like twilight. A crossing sweeper was clearing away the mud and horse manure at the intersection with Russell Street, shoulders hunched against the rain. Great-coated men with umbrellas hurried toward the shelter of taverns or coffeehouses. Charles hadn’t asked the hackney to wait for them, on the chance that they were being followed. No new hackney was immediately within view. He looked at Melanie. “We’d better walk toward Covent Garden. How’s the wound?”

“I’m fine.”

He studied her face beneath the brim of her bonnet as they walked along the muddy pavement. She was paler than usual and the tension in the set of her mouth betrayed just how hard she was working to control the pain of the wound. But that she could control it, he had no doubt. He shook his head at his own certainty. The very fabric of her life was alien to him, yet he could still read the clues in her face as though it were his own.

In the space of a few hours, he had learned that everything about their marriage was a lie. And then an unknown assailant had stuck a knife in her ribs. If the blade had struck a few inches higher, he might well be a widower.

The possibility, not quite articulated before, slammed home in his mind. To all intents and purposes he had lost her when she told him the truth of what she had been and done and why she had married him. Yet the prospect of losing her to death brought a prickle of sweat to his skin and stripped his throat raw. He recalled the words a friend of his, a French journalist, had used in describing the Reign of Terror. We’d nourished ourselves on the dream for so long, you see, that we couldn’t let go of it. Even when it had turned into a nightmare.

The rain had whipped up, a deluge that fell in sheets off the umbrella and blew icy drafts in their faces. Charles caught sight of a hackney up ahead and waved, but the driver took off without seeing him.

“Charles.” Melanie’s fingers tightened on his arm. “We’re being followed. No, don’t look round. It’s better he doesn’t know we’ve spotted him.”

“Are you sure?”

“I caught his reflection in the window glass a moment ago. A man in a dark greatcoat with a hat pulled low over his face.”

He took a few steps in silence, weighing possibilities. “Are you up to a diversion?”

“Dearest, I’m up to whatever needs doing.”

“Stay in this shop”—he steered her into the nearest doorway, a tobacconist’s—“as though you’re waiting while I find a hackney. If he takes the bait and walks past, you can follow him. I’ll round the corner and see if I can lead him into a court or alley.”

“Don’t take unnecessary chances. We don’t know if he can tell us anything.”

He turned up the collar of his greatcoat. “I’m not a complete fool.”

“You keep the umbrella.”

“Mel—”

“Don’t be pigheaded, Charles. It will look odd otherwise. You’d keep the umbrella if I was waiting inside.”

He nodded, then hesitated a moment. “If it turns nasty, stay out of the fray. We can’t afford to have you bleeding all over the street.”

She put the umbrella into his hand. “I’m the last person in the world you ought to be worrying about just now, darling.”

He stepped out of the doorway, stopped as though scanning the street for a hackney, and walked on. The only other pedestrians visible were a cherry-seller pushing his barrow toward the shelter of an overhang and a rain-soaked errand boy laden down with parcels. Charles kept one eye on the window glass. He caught a flash of movement, but he could not make out anything more clearly.

He rounded the corner into Russell Street. Rainwater sluiced off the umbrella. Shop signs flapped overhead— the golden balls of a pawnshop, the striped pole of a barber, the gilded key of a locksmith. He quickened his pace and ducked beneath a low stone archway into a narrow court. Once there, he snapped the umbrella shut and flattened himself against the rotting wood of the nearest doorway.

Thirty seconds later a man in a dark greatcoat and a low-crowned hat appeared in the mouth of the court. The faint light from the street behind him outlined his form but left his face in shadow. He paused and scanned the court. Come on, you bastard, Charles thought.

Seconds ticked by. The man walked forward.

Charles lunged out of his hiding place and hurled himself on the shadowy figure. The force of the assault knocked them both to the slimy cobblestones. They landed in a tangle of damp wool and flailing boots. Charles sat up, gripping the man’s throat with both hands, and found himself staring into the blue eyes of his brother.

Chapter 15

Charles slackened his hold and sat back on his heels amid the litter of rotting apple cores, moldy orange peels, and discarded sausage wrappers. He stared through the curtain of rain at the familiar face. The blue eyes, the guinea-bright hair, the features that were so like his own, save that Edgar was a handsome devil, with the gift of careless, unthinking laughter.

“What the hell are you up to?” Charles said.

“I might ask you the same.” Edgar pushed himself to a sitting position, then let out a yelp of pain. “Christ, Charles, I think you’ve broken my arm.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you, you damn fool.”

Footsteps pattered against the sodden cobblestones. “Charles—Edgar!” Melanie hesitated a moment, then ran forward and bent over them. “Are you all right?” she said, addressing both brothers impartially.

Edgar brushed the decaying debris off his greatcoat. “No thanks to my brother. What’s he got you in the middle of, Melanie?”

“We can’t talk in the rain.” Charles pushed himself to his feet and held out his hand to pull his brother up. “I saw a coffeehouse in Russell Street.”

Edgar stared at his brother as though he’d taken leave of his senses. “We can’t take Melanie to a coffeehouse.”

Melanie unfurled the umbrella, which she’d retrieved from the doorway. “It’s all right, Edgar, I’ve seen a lot worse today.”

Charles picked up his beaver hat and Edgar’s own, both of which had fallen to the ground in the struggle, shook the rain off them, and returned Edgar’s to him. Edgar frowned as he settled the curly-brimmed hat on his head, but in seven years he had learned better than to argue with Melanie. They walked back to Russell Street, a motley trio, soaking wet and far from clean.

Steam and tobacco smoke clouded the air in the coffeehouse. The smell of coffee mingled with the stench of damp wool from the garments drying on a bench by the fire. The patrons were a diverse lot, as they would be anywhere near Covent Garden. Actors studying scripts; journalists scribbling in notebooks; merchants and lawyers, with charts and ledgers spread on the tables before them; a couple of young sprigs who looked as if they’d been sent down to rusticate from Oxford or Cambridge; and mixed in among the crowd, no doubt, a handful of men who might find themselves facing the magistrates in the Bow Street Public Office, should ever they have the bad luck to get caught.

There were no other women present. Heads turned in Melanie’s direction. One of the young sprigs started to say something, but his companion grabbed his arm. The proprietor of the coffeehouse blinked once in surprise, then took Charles’s and Edgar’s greatcoats and Melanie’s pelisse and showed the three of them to a table with high- backed benches, which afforded a small measure of privacy. At least they hadn’t been followed into the coffeehouse, Charles was sure of that much. He glanced briefly at the torn side of Melanie’s gown. No sign the bandage had bled through.

Charles surveyed his brother across the table. He saw Edgar nearly every week, at their club, at balls and receptions, at dinners carefully orchestrated by Melanie and by Edgar’s wife, Lydia. But it was a long time since Charles had talked to his brother about anything this serious. It was a long time since they had talked at all, in any