“So what?”
“You know I don’t like having an audience.”
“You turning into a mum?”
“Don’t be stupid, Jack.” Her voice was harsh, like sandpaper.
“Oh, hell, Meggie, I forgot about your own kid. I’m sorry.”
She was quiet for so long Colin thought she wasn’t going to answer. She drew in her breath with an odd sort of hitch, but when she spoke her voice sounded flat and ordinary. “I forget myself half the time.”
They fell silent. Then the sound of the pencil on paper stopped. “Oh, Christ.” Meg sounded as though she’d lost her breath for a moment. “God, he’s a sick bastard.”
“What?” Jack said.
She muttered something in a voice too low for Colin to hear. Jack let out a low whistle. “Not turning squeamish, are you?”
“Course not. But I don’t see the point—”
“That’s his lookout.” Jack’s heavy boots thudded on the floorboards. “Come on, let’s get it done.”
“I’ve a good mind not to.”
“Don’t be daft, Meg. He’d find out soon enough. We won’t get the blunt we were promised, let alone more, if we turn soft. Get a move on, will you, woman?”
“This wasn’t part of the agreement.” Her voice faded, as though she’d crossed the room.
“Damn it, Meg, we do what it takes to finish the job, same as always.”
“No!” Her voice bounced off the thin walls. Something in it sent a prickle of fear down Colin’s back.
“Jesus.” The boots thudded again. “I’ll do it myself, then.”
“Wait a minute, Jack.” Meg’s lighter footsteps hurried after him. “Hell. Bloody, bloody hell.” She drew a rasping breath. “All right, if it’s got to be done, let’s make sure it’s done proper-like. Do we have any more laudanum? No? Then where’s the brandy?”
They appeared in the doorway a moment later. Jack had his hands behind his back, as though he was hiding something. Meg’s gaze moved over Colin’s face. She didn’t look angry, but something in her eyes made Colin want to crawl under the bed. He would have, if it wasn’t for the leg shackle. As it was, he inched back as far as he could against the spiky iron headboard.
Meg stood there for a long moment, long enough for his heart to start pounding again. Then she walked toward him. She had a bottle in her hand. She pulled out the cork. It had a strong, raw sort of smell. “Drink, brat. Bottoms up. Trust me, love, it’ll make what’s coming that much easier.”
Colin took a sip and gagged. It didn’t taste like the stuff they’d given him in the cart. It burned his throat like hot coals.
Meg tipped the bottle up and forced the rest down his throat. Then she looked over her shoulder at Jack. “Don’t stand there with your mouth hanging open. Let’s get the bleeding thing over with.”
“He’s always had such faith in his parents. I hope—” Melanie swallowed, her throat dry, the supper she had forced herself to eat roiling in her stomach. “I hope his faith proves warranted.”
“Don’t be foolish, Melanie. You and Mr. Fraser are ten times more clever than Senor Carevalo. I never thought he had much wit for all his—how do you say it?—for all his swagger. Oh,
Melanie shut her mind to images of failure while Blanca stitched the string back onto the frock and finished doing up the ties. Ridiculous to be fussing with evening dress at this of all times. But though Mannerling’s gaming hell might be raffish, proper attire would be expected. She had left Edgar downstairs in the library to help Charles dress, after the three of them and Laura Dudley had choked down mouthfuls of soup and coffee in uneasy silence. Edgar had made no further reference to Charles’s revelations about Kitty Ashford or to his own abrupt exit. Melanie doubted that he would have even had Laura not been present, but the memory of Charles’s story had reverberated through the room nonetheless.
Blanca did up the last string and gave Melanie’s shoulders a quick squeeze, then picked up the curling tongs and plunged them into the chimney of the Agrand lamp. Melanie sat at her dressing table and began to brush French rouge, ordered every month from the best parfumerie in Paris, onto her cheeks and lips. The actions were mechanical. Her thoughts were on the revelations in the library. How could she have lived with Charles, have been his wife, scarce seven months after Kitty Ashford’s death and never caught a hint of his torment? She had known he battled his own demons, but she had put it down to his troubled relationship with his parents. Surely she should have been able to see it was something more recent.
She reached for her eye-blacking with fingers that were not quite steady. She’d never thought of herself as a romantic, but the truth was, she had fallen victim to her own fairytale version of what she had meant to Charles, as florid as any lending-library novel. She had let herself be seduced by the belief that he had opened his heart to her as he had to no one else before or since. She had deceived him, but she had thought that she knew every corner of his soul, that she had broken down every barrier, that he was wholly hers. She was well served for her folly.
The truth was that she was jealous. She had no right to Charles’s love, but she was jealous of what he had felt for a woman who had been dead before she met him.
Her hand jerked, smearing the blacking beneath her eye. She wiped it away, more viciously than was necessary, dusted a light film of powder over her face and decolletage, and forced herself to sit still while Blanca set to work on her hair.
A memory shimmered in her mind, sweet as hedgerow brambleberries, painful as a knife beneath her nails. She and Charles had been married less than two years and were visiting the Fraser estate in Scotland for the first time before going to the peace congress in Vienna. The French had been driven out of Spain. Napoleon had abdicated and been sent to Elba, but already plans to help him escape were brewing. Once they got to the congress, she would be in the thick of the plotting, but on that trip to Scotland, far removed from the world of politics, she had shut her mind to all thoughts of intrigue and luxuriated in the simple pleasures of a holiday.
Charles had woken her and Colin early to give them their first sight of the beach. They walked side by side along the sand, Charles carrying Colin on his shoulders. Colin laughed with glee, as though he knew he was home. She took off her stockings and half-boots and let the sand squish round her toes. She could still remember the shimmer of the sun striking gray stone and clear blue water and ivory sand. A sight so intense it hurt.
The quote she’d had engraved on the watch she gave Charles their second Christmas together echoed in her mind.
She’d chosen the quote because she knew he loved the sea. But until that moment on the beach she hadn’t realized how much it meant to him.
Charles had been watching her watch the ocean. She turned her head and met his gaze. His eyes were steady, intent, a little questioning, more interested in gauging her reaction than imposing thoughts of his own. Something in his gaze pierced through the layers of lies and deceptions to an inner core she had almost forgotten existed. In that moment she realized that though he might not know her true name or any of the details of her life, he understood her as no one else ever had, not even Raoul. In a world gone mad, he was a constant she would never doubt.
“Sorry.” Blanca unwound a curl from the tongs. “Too hot?”
“No.” Melanie folded her hands in her lap. “It’s me. I can’t make my thoughts be still.”
Blanca pinned another coil of hair high on the crown of Melanie’s head. “I know—Oh, the devil, as Addison would say, of course I don’t know, not really, not until—unless—I have little ones of my own. I can only imagine—”
