young staff officers at her dinner table.
But in truth, there’d been no time for any sort of breakdown, mental or physical. During the battle, their house in Brussels had been filled with wounded soldiers for whom just taking their next breath was a struggle. She had dressed wounds and mopped burning foreheads and closed the eyes of the dead, and all the while wondered how she and Charles could possibly go on, whatever the outcome of the battle.
Charles was watching her closely. “After Waterloo when we went to Paris—it can’t have been easy for you.”
She remembered the horror of seeing the city her father had loved, the cradle of revolution, occupied by foreign troops. She thought of the men like Marshal Ney, who had died in the White Terror as the French royalists wreaked vengeance on those who had been loyal to Napoleon. She remembered walking with Charles beneath the Porte Saint-Martin. Someone had tried to obliterate the inscription from the stone but she’d been able to make out the words
“No,” she said, “it wasn’t easy. But I knew then that whatever I did in the future, I’d have to find a way to do it without deceiving you. I know I can’t make you believe that, darling—”
“I believe that much.” His gaze was still trained on her face.
“Why?”
“Because it was in Paris after Waterloo that you told me you wanted to have another child. You weren’t going to risk anything that tied you to me before then, were you?”
She looked into his clear gray eyes and thought of all the times she might have told him the truth. She wondered if anything would have been different if she had. “I was already tied to you in a hundred ways, darling. But I wasn’t going to risk making the tie stronger, no.”
“Until you decided your cause was lost.”
“No cause is ever completely lost, Charles. I’ll still fight for what I believe in. But I won’t lie to you.”
Charles stared at her as though he were trying to see beneath her skin. “And yet you thought you could spend the rest of your life playing a role.”
“I wasn’t playing a role. Not always. Not when I was with you.”
“Damn it, of course you were.” He leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair. “You turned yourself into a pattern card of the perfect wife for Charles Fraser.
“Of course not.”
He gave her a withering look. “Everything was calculated to perfection from the moment we met. Did O’Roarke tell you I liked Shakespeare?”
“No. Yes. But I’ve been quoting Shakespeare since I was a child. I didn’t put that on for your benefit.”
“But you made yourself into the perfect political hostess for my benefit. The perfect house, the perfect parties, the perfectly run nursery—”
“Don’t you dare, Charles. Don’t you dare imply the children have anything to do with my playing a part.”
“Even without the children, it’s a brilliant performance. For God’s sake, Melanie, you were a revolutionary who was trying to turn the world upside down. This can’t be the life you wanted.”
“I’d look like a bloody hypocrite if I said it was, wouldn’t I?” She tugged the sheer fabric of her scarf about her shoulders.
“I know you, Mel.” He gave a brief laugh. “God, that’s rich, isn’t it? But I know you well enough to know that at times you must have been ready to scream with the longing to speak your mind. To box my ears and tell me what you really thought of me.”
“Of course I wanted to box your ears at times, Charles. I’m your wife. And if memory serves, I tell you what I think of you quite often.”
“But you could never talk freely. Not even to me. How could you, when you had to pretend to be the daughter of a man who fled France because he opposed the same revolution you were actually trying to defend?”
“What do you want me to say?” The words were ripped from somewhere beneath the bright veneer she had learned to wear like a second skin. “Of course I hated not being able to speak my mind—when I wasn’t buried so deeply in the part I was playing that I lost track of who I was entirely. Of course I sometimes think I’ll go mad if I have to fuss over one more seating arrangement or pay one more round of calls or pour out one more damned pot of tea.” She drew a breath. She hadn’t realized until now just how maddening the incessant round of such activities could be.
Charles regarded her, arms folded across his chest. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I suppose I assumed you enjoyed such activities because it was the life you’d been brought up to. If I thought about it at all, which I have a lowering feeling I didn’t. I was arrogant enough to think that the fact that I’d read Mary Wollstonecraft made me an egalitarian husband. I don’t know what’s more humiliating. The fact that all the time I thought our marriage was a model of equality and intellectual understanding, you were biting your tongue and catering to my every whim. Or the fact that I didn’t realize you were doing it.”
“I do a lot more than pour tea, Charles, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Acquit me of blindness, at least. You play the social game to perfection and you still manage to speak to reform societies and organize committees and write pamphlets. Not to mention writing half my speeches. That’s the woman I fell—” He glanced away. “You were wrong. You didn’t need to be some ideal of a perfect wife to hold me.”
She settled the folds of her scarf over her elbows, searching for the right words. Speaking the unvarnished truth was like picking her way through a foreign tongue. “It’s true, I tried to be what I thought you wanted in the beginning, because that was the way to succeed in my part and because that was the least I thought I owed you. But I’d never have stayed, I’d never have wanted to stay, if you’d wanted the sort of wife most men want. If I’d thought for one minute that all you cared about was having someone to plan your dinner parties and charm the opposition, if you hadn’t believed in so many of the things I believe in. I’d never have been able to survive for seven years if I hadn’t been able to be myself with you.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his gaze dark and opaque. “My God, Mel. After seven years of lies, how can you have the least idea of whether or not you can be yourself with me? How can you know yourself at all?”
Her fingers clenched on the gauzy folds of her scarf. She stared back at him, unable to find an answer.
He reached for the walking stick that was leaning against his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “It’s nearly eleven-thirty. Let’s find Edgar.”
“It looks as though we gave our watchers the slip,” Melanie said at his shoulder.
“Yes.” They had taken three hackneys and traversed two back alleys to reach Mannerling’s.
They went through the half-open outer door into a dank, narrow passageway. The lamplight revealed a second door at the end of the passage, solid oak, with a lighter patch in the middle that looked as if it might cover an eyehole. Edgar rapped at the door. A few moments later, the lighter piece of wood slid back. Wary eyes stared out at Edgar. After the first glance, the wariness eased a trifle. “It’s Captain Fraser, isn’t it?” The voice had a rough cast, like the scrape of the wood. The dark eyes peered beyond Edgar at Melanie and Charles.
“Good evening, Simpson.” Edgar spoke with easy familiarity, as though he had been to the club regularly rather than once or twice. “I’ve brought my brother with me this evening. And—ah—a lady of our acquaintance. They aren’t Bow Street Runners in disguise, I promise you.”
Simpson gave a grunt that might have been a chuckle and slid the eyehole shut. After a few more moments, a bolt rolled back and he pulled open the door.
They stepped into an entrance hall dominated by a large gilt mirror and a red and black carpet that was a
