good imitation of an Axminster. Voices and footsteps and the smell of tobacco and brandy came from the rooms opening off the hall and drifted down the stairs.
Simpson proved to be a barrel-chested man with graying hair. He wore an evening coat and a showy pin in his cravat, but judging by the breadth of his shoulders and the bend in his nose, Charles suspected he had once been quite at home in the boxing ring.
Simpson took Charles’s and Edgar’s greatcoats and hats with an impassive face, but when he lifted Melanie’s black velvet cloak from her shoulders, his eyes widened, like a pawnbroker who has stumbled upon a black pearl in a box of glass beads.
Melanie was wearing a low-cut claret-colored silk that clung to her body. It was one of Charles’s favorites of her gowns, but normally she wore it with pearls and a black lace mantilla. Tonight she had draped a spangled scarf over her elbows. The pendant he had given her for their first anniversary nestled in the hollow of her throat, the diamond at the center of the gold knotwork twinkling provocatively. Diamond earrings swung beside her cheeks, twining with loose tendrils of hair. More diamonds sparkled on her white-gloved wrists and the combs in her hair. She had applied her rouge and eye-blacking with a heavy hand and splashed on twice as much scent as usual.
Charles had an impulse to take off his coat and throw it round his wife’s shoulders. Not so much to protect her from the knowing appraisal in Simpson’s eyes, as to protect her from the associations of their visit to the Gilded Lily and the horrors of a time before he had known her. Which was ironic, because any woman who had done what Melanie admitted to doing in her years as a spy didn’t need any sort of protection.
Edgar led the way up the gilt-railed staircase. They could hear the rattle of dice, the whir of a roulette wheel, the whiffle of cards being shuffled. Through one doorway a linen-covered table was visible with a supper buffet, through another the corner of a gleaming mahogany billiard table. A waiter passed by with a tray of glasses. Pipe and cigar smoke hung thick in the air.
They went into the largest of the rooms, which had a faro bank at one end and smaller tables for games such as whist and hazard and ecarte scattered about. The walls were hung with a pale green paper that was textured to resemble watered silk. A handsome chandelier hung from the ceiling, though the glint of the wax tapers showed that the silver gilt was peeling to reveal the brass beneath. The mantel, beneath which a log fire blazed, was papier-mache painted to give the appearance of Siena marble. The overall effect was of the clever illusion and slightly tawdry glamour of a stage set.
Edgar glanced round the room. “That’s Julia Mannerling.” He nodded toward an auburn-haired woman in a green velvet gown. She was moving about the room, stopping to speak to various members of the company and to murmur instructions to the waiters, very much as Melanie would be doing if they were entertaining at home. “The man presiding over the faro bank is Ralph Seton, her current lover.”
Seton was an angular, elegant young man with carefully combed light brown hair and an unexpected scar slashing across his cheek. “A soldier?” Charles asked.
Edgar nodded. “Sold out after Waterloo. Country squire’s son. Went to Winchester, though he’s not received in the best houses anymore.”
“See anyone you know, darling?” Melanie asked.
Charles scanned the throng at the gaming tables, which ranged from obvious cardsharps to a number of gentlemen who looked as if they’d just come from the House of Commons or an evening at the opera and more than a handful of ladies, though most of the latter would not be found in Mayfair drawing rooms. “No, but I couldn’t swear there’s no one who’ll recognize us. I don’t see any yellow waistcoats, either.”
“The only ladies present definitely seem to be of a certain kind,” Melanie said. “What a good thing I dressed for the part.”
Charles glanced at her for a moment. The glint in her eyes was as hard as the diamonds she wore. He cleared his throat. “Right. We’re clear on the plan. Look sharp, troops.”
They separated according to prior arrangement. Edgar went into another room to play roulette. Melanie circulated about the various apartments. Charles sat down to play faro.
Ralph Seton greeted his arrival with a careless nod and a gaze that took in rather more than he let on. Charles played automatically, one eye peeled for yellow waistcoats. Waiters moved among the tables with bottles of claret and brandy. Someone sneezed, letting loose a cloud of snuff. Two of the men at the faro bank had their coats turned inside out for good luck, in imitation of Charles James Fox. Charles doubted it would do them any more good than it had done Fox. At a nearby ecarte table a well-dressed young man of little more than one-and-twenty appeared to be doing his best to run through his entire fortune in the course of the night. A hot-eyed man in a threadbare coat was frantically scribbling his vowels.
Charles had seen similar scenes in a half-dozen London clubs, not to mention the card rooms at just about any ball. Yet beneath the showy elegance, he could feel an uneasy edge to the atmosphere, like a piece of glass run along his skin. Gazes were sharper than one would expect of mere gamesters. He suspected a number of the gamers had knives and pistols hidden beneath their flashy coats.
He hadn’t played cards much lately, but in Lisbon, cooped up for the winter, they’d all whiled away hours with games of chance. Kitty’s ghost hovered at the edge of his consciousness tonight. She had had quite a knack for faro and been quite brilliant at ecarte. She’d liked the risk of it. He could see her bright eyes just beyond the green baize, hear her brittle laugh over the clatter of tokens, feel the texture of her honey-colored hair between his fingers as he calculated the odds of which card the dealer would turn up next.
He felt as though a scab had been stripped raw somewhere inside him, yet it had been a strange sort of relief to confide the story to Melanie. She had given him, if not absolution, at least understanding. He hadn’t realized how much he craved it.
Melanie had claimed to know the moment she’d realized she loved him. He couldn’t be sure he believed her —given how long she’d been playing a part, he wondered if she could be sure of what she felt at all or if she had merely begun to believe her own deception. On the other hand, while he had no doubt that he had loved her, he realized he could not pinpoint the moment he had first known it. He hadn’t let himself think in those terms when he married her, nor for a long time afterwards.
He remembered watching her sleep the morning after their wedding, the dark tumble of her hair, the sleep- softened line of her profile, the curl of her hand against the sheet. He had felt as though he was standing on the edge of a cliff, exposed to the scouring of the wind and the rain. It had been easy enough to pledge his fidelity, his fortune, the protection of his name. But what else did marriage mean? In binding his life irrevocably to someone else’s, had he also pledged a part of his soul? And was he capable of giving it even if he had?
In the end he had given it to her, of course, and much more besides. Though it was not until after his father’s death that the last of the barriers had given way.
Melanie’s accusations this evening had had a kernel of truth. On some level, without ever articulating it, he had felt he was paying a debt to Kitty by doing what he could for Melanie and her child. And Melanie’s other accusation? That he had been thinking of his own relationship with his father when he offered to raise another man’s child?
The faro game ended and another began. Charles pulled in his tokens automatically. Gaming had been one of his father’s passions. He had a clear image of Kenneth Fraser at a baize-covered table, a glass of brandy at his elbow, cards held negligently in his hand.
He recalled, with uncompromising clarity, a fragment of conversation overheard in the card room during one of his parents’ evening parties. He’d been fourteen, paying a rare visit to his parents in London after winning a history prize at Harrow.
Kenneth Fraser had glanced over at Charles, and Charles had been sure his father knew he could hear. For a moment there had been something sharp and deadly in his father’s gaze.
Charles hadn’t admitted it to himself at the time, but looking back now he knew that that was the first moment he’d questioned whether Kenneth Fraser truly was his father.
Charles smiled automatically at a joke one of the other gamers had made. Was Melanie right? When he married her, had he wanted to prove it was possible to love another man’s child as one’s own? Had he seen a certain justice in leaving the inheritance that might not be rightfully his to a child who was not his by blood?
