Chapter 3: : Chapter 2

Mélanie held the spider-gauze skirt of her gown in one hand and gripped her beaded lace shawl taut with the other to prevent telltale rustling as she retreated along the mirror-hung corridor. Mercifully, the thin soles of her satin slippers made barely a whisper of sound on the oak floorboards.

Her mind went back to an airless sitting room in the British Embassy in Lisbon, choked with the heat of a December fire. The embassy chaplain, hurrying through the wedding service with the speed of one eager for his dinner. Charles’s firm, level voice as he repeated his marriage vows, his fingers steady on her own as he slid the hastily purchased gold band onto her finger, his hand neat and even when he signed his name to the marriage lines.

Their marriage had begun in a crucible of war and personal turmoil. Even now she could not be entirely sure of his reasons for offering for her. And God knew her own reasons for entering into the marriage had been less than pure.

In Lisbon and war-torn Spain, in the thickly layered intrigue of the Congress of Vienna, in Brussels before Waterloo and Paris afterward, they had been consumed by the needs of the moment. To think of the future, let alone plan for it, had been an impossible luxury. As for the past, it had been a minefield round which they’d both learned to tread with caution, respecting each other’s scars. Charles had volunteered little more than cursory details about his family and friends and childhood. With more than enough reasons to avoid discussing her own past, she hadn’t pressed him.

But now they had stepped back into the warp and weft of Charles’s old life. The life of a man who was grandson to a duke, educated at Harrow and Oxford, connected to half the noble families in England and Scotland. A life of alliances stretching back generations, of unwritten rules and uncrossable boundaries. A life that Honoria Talbot exemplified. A life to which Mélanie was alien in every sense of the word.

Without Charles, she would be alone in this strange world. She needed him, she who had once prided herself on not needing anyone. Words like love belonged to fairy tales and lending library novels and balconies in Verona. Was it folly to want to believe that something more than desperation and chivalry, physical need and yellowed marriage lines bound them together?

A laugh sounded from one of the anterooms off the corridor, followed by a stir of fabric and a furtive sigh that was unmistakable in its implications. Some of the guests had stolen away from the ball for reasons other than talk. Mélanie hurried on and then realized she should have reached the ballroom by now. She must have taken a wrong turn in the maze of corridors. A faint whisper of music drifted through the air, but she wasn’t sure of the direction.

‘Don’t tell me my son has abandoned you. I’d say I thought I’d raised him better, but I’m afraid I can take little credit or blame for his upbringing.’

Her father-in-law, Kenneth Fraser, stood ten paces away. He must have emerged from one of the rooms that lined the corridor, though she hadn’t heard any sound until he spoke.

The cold glass of the mirrors that lined the corridor threw their reflections back at them—a black-coated man with graying hair and a bearing that radiated power, a pale, dark-haired woman in a silver dress. Fraser’s fine-featured face was set with its habitual mask of sardonic amusement. One of the tapers in the sconces on the left wall had gone out, leaving him half in light, half in shadow. Fitting. In a fanciful mood, she’d have called him equal parts Sun King and Prince of Darkness.

‘I may be new to London society, Mr. Fraser,’ she said, ‘but I know very well that a husband and wife are not expected to live in each other’s pockets.’

‘To say the least. I’ll wager there’s more intrigue at a London ball than you’ve found in all your years in Continental diplomatic circles.’ His gaze seemed to slice through the gauze and satin of her gown and the linen of her chemise to expose the flesh beneath. ‘You’ve learned the ways of London society very quickly, my dear. You have the look of a daughter of the game.’

She lifted her chin a fraction of an inch but otherwise held herself still. ‘What game is that, Mr. Fraser?’

‘The oldest game of all, Mélanie. And the most enjoyable.’ He strolled toward her with the easy confidence of a roue striding across a courtesan’s boudoir. ‘I’m sure you have all the requisite talents to excel at it. You’re obviously an excellent actress. You play the devoted wife to perfection.’

She gave him a smile designed to be as hard and brilliant as the mirrors. ‘That depends on whether or not one considers it acting to portray the truth convincingly.’

‘You see what I mean? You’re superb.’ He offered her his arm. ‘May I escort you back to the ballroom? It’s a sad shame for you to hide yourself away from your admirers.’

She didn’t allow herself to hesitate before she set her ivory-silk-gloved fingers lightly on the black superfine of his sleeve. They walked a few paces down the corridor in silence.

‘I’d give a great deal to know why you married him,’ Fraser said.

‘If you have to ask that, Mr. Fraser, you don’t know your son.’

‘Ah, mere you speak the truth, my dear. And I know you even less. But then in the final analysis, who’s to say why anyone chooses a marriage partner? Often even the person’s spouse is quite in ignorance.’

‘Oh, Mr. Fraser,’ Mélanie said. ‘Sometimes ignorance is bliss.’

‘One must find bliss in marriage somehow.’ His gaze drifted over her face and throat and settled on a point just above the twists of silver satin at the neck, of her gown. She felt it like a rapier point against her skin. ‘I advise you to remain in the ballroom, my dear. I think you’ll find the events that are about to transpire to be of interest.’

They stepped through a blue damask draped archway into a long, barrel-ceilinged white-and-gold chamber. The room was an assault on the senses. The brilliance of burning wax tapers and sparkling crystals, the lively melody of a country dance, the smell of perfumes and oils and fresh-cut flowers.

Gauzy pastel gowns, feathered headdresses, ringleted hair, and sober coats of coal black and midnight blue swirled on the dance floor. Strange to see so few redcoated officers, riflemen in green, staff officers in sky blue. Mélanie was reminded, with a jolt that was almost physical, that she was no longer in Lisbon or Vienna or Brussels or Paris. The war was over and danger had supposedly been left behind on the Continent. This unfamiliar world was home now. It was supposed to be safe. Though holding her father-in-law’s arm, she didn’t feel safe.

The Marquis of Glenister, Honoria Talbot’s uncle, was leaning against one of the columns on the gallery that ran round the top of the ballroom. His silver-streaked dark head was bent close to that of a fair-haired lady in a peach gown who was young enough to be his daughter. Lord Glenister and Kenneth Fraser had been friends since their school days at Harrow and were said to have shared every manner of debauchery. According to rumor, Glenister had once bought a mistress from Kenneth Fraser for the sum of five thousand pounds. The lady and her husband were said to have been witnesses to the contract.

‘There you are, Kenneth. Might have known I’d find you with a pretty girl on your arm.’

The speaker was a tall lady with a thin, imperious face, sharp blue eyes, and a quantity of auburn hair piled high on her head and adorned with three orange ostrich feathers and a diamond clip that would have kept a company of soldiers in rations for a month.

‘My daughter-in-law, Mrs. Charles Fraser,’ Kenneth said. ‘Lady Winchester. A friend of my late wife’s.’

The woman’s gaze swept over Mélanie as though she were inspecting a horse she suspected of being unsound. ‘So you’re the gel who finally brought Charles Fraser up to scratch. I always thought his taste ran to blondes. French, aren’t you?’

‘My father was French. My mother was Spanish.’ That much of her history was the truth.

‘So confusing, these Continental alliances.’ Lady Winchester murmured in a tone that implied if foreigners had the least sense of breeding they would confine themselves to marriage partners of the same nationality. ‘And your father was—?’

The inevitable question. The question that defined one’s place in this world. ‘The Comte de Saint-Vallier,’ Mélanie said, the lie coming easily to her tongue.

Lady Winchester pursed her rouged lips. ‘Haven’t heard the name. But then I understand they do things differently in France. Nearly everyone has a title.’

Kenneth had been drawn away by a gentleman in a snuff-stained coat. Mélanie gave Lady Winchester a smile that had all the sweetness of lemon ice. ‘Not quite everyone. Or perhaps we wouldn’t have had a revolution.’

‘Outspoken, aren’t you? Continental manners won’t do in London, you know. You met Charles in Lisbon?’

‘In Spain. In the Cantabrian Mountains. Charles came to my rescue after my maid and I had been stranded.’

‘My word. I would never have thought to find Charles Fraser taking part in such scenes of high romance. You obviously have quite an influence on him, my dear.’

Lady Winchester’s expression suggested that this influence was no doubt compounded of black magic and a thorough knowledge of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Mélanie summoned up her best demure Desdemona look.

‘I’m afraid I can’t take credit for Charles’s adventurous side. It was well entrenched before I met him.’

Lady Winchester unfurled her fan and wielded it vigorously. ‘I understand you’ve already managed to produce two children.’

She knew, Mélanie realized, looking into Lady Winchester’s hard gaze. She knew precisely how many months into their marriage their son had been born. She thought Mélanie had worked her wiles to capture a wealthy husband. If only she were aware of the full truth.

Lady Winchester closed the ivory sticks of her fan with a snap. ‘The Frasers aren’t an easy family to marry into, as my friend Elizabeth, Charles’s mother, learned to her cost. You should—’

‘Mélanie. I’ve been looking all over for you. Pray excuse us, Lady Winchester. I promised to present Mrs. Fraser to the Duke of Devonshire.’

It was David Mallinson, Viscount Worsley, Charles’s closest friend and a blessed voice of comfort and sanity. He bowed to Lady Winchester, took Mélanie’s arm, and steered her toward an ivory satin settee set in an alcove between two columns. ‘I haven’t the least idea where the Duke of Devonshire’s got to. Do you mind? It was the only story I could think of to extricate you from that gorgon.’

‘I’m eternally grateful.’ Mélanie squeezed his hand and smiled into his kind brown eyes. ‘Thank you, David.’

David grimaced. ‘It’s the least I could do. I must apologize for Lady Winchester. I always suspected she wanted to catch Charles for her own daughter. When someone connected to as many powerful families as Charles suddenly comes home with a wife it’s bound to make people curious. Particularly—’

‘When the wife is the penniless daughter of a minor French aristocrat who lost what little fortune he had in the Revolution.’

David’s well-cut features twisted with discomfort. ‘That’s not it. Not with everyone. But it would be foolish to pretend people don’t think—’

‘That Charles ought to have married a nice British girl.’

‘Anyone who really cares for Charles only wants him to be happy.’

Which would be a bit more comforting if she could be confident that Charles was happy. Mélanie forced her gloved fingers to unclench and east a sidelong glance at her husband’s best friend. David, she acknowledged with a pang as sharp as a knife cut, knew Charles far better than she did herself. David was also Honoria Talbot’s cousin. His father, Miss Talbot’s mother’s brother, shared her guardianship with Lord Glenister, her father’s brother. If anyone could explain what Charles and Miss Talbot had been to each other, no doubt David could.

‘Very unsporting of him to leave you to fend for yourself,’ David said in a lighter voice. ‘Where’s he got to?’

Mélanie swallowed. ‘He’s in the library.’

‘Of course, where else? I’d have sought refuge there myself, but I had to help Evie deal with Quen. He was dipping a bit deep and he ended up being sick into one of the potted palms.’

‘You’re a kind cousin, David.’

David shook his head. ‘We’re a hopeless tangle, aren’t we? Talbots and Mallinsons and Frasers. It must give you a headache trying to sort us all out.’

‘It’s not nearly as complicated as diplomatic protocol at the Congress of Vienna.’ The country dance had ended and the musicians were striking up a waltz. Mélanie was swept up in a memory of waltzing with Charles at a ball given by Count Stackelberg in Vienna. She still couldn’t say what made that night different from any other—the haze of champagne, the blur of candlelight, the seductive strains of the music. She’d looked at Charles and for a mad moment they’d both been transported to a world of girls in white muslin frocks, ardent young men just down from university, and tentative, breathless first kisses in moon-drenched gardens. Then they’d laughed, a little too quickly, because such a world was so wholly alien to them and what they meant to each other.

Mélanie spread her hands in her silken lap and glanced at David. ‘You and Charles must have seen a lot of the Glenister House children growing up.’ Even as she framed the words, she hated herself for being weak-enough to need to ask the question.

‘Good Lord, yes, we were all in and but of each other’s houses. Charles and I taught Quen and Val how to hold a cricket bat, when we were ten and eleven and they couldn’t have been more than four and five.’ David’s gaze fastened on a young man with artfully tousled blond hair and a girl with golden brown ringlets who were waltzing together closer than some lovers embraced. The young man was Lord Valentine Talbot, Lord Glenister’s younger son. The girl was Charles’s sister, Gisèle.

‘Val’s as bad as Quen in his own way,’ David muttered. ‘I’ll have to say something to him. Gisèle’s only nineteen.’

Mélanie studied her young sister-in-law. Gisèle’s gaze was fixed on Val Talbot with an expression that seemed to be equal parts adoration and defiance. ‘I imagine interference will only make her more determined.’

David shot her an appraising look, his level dark brows raised. ‘Charles was right. You’re good at reading people. Gisèle’s always had a willful streak. Quite the opposite of Honoria.’

‘I don’t suppose you and Charles taught Miss Talbot how to play cricket.’

‘Hardly. Honoria knew exactly what was proper even men. She and Charles used to play and sing duets, though.’

Memories of joining Charles at the pianoforte in a deliciously flirtatious rendition of ‘II core vi dono’ tugged at her mind. ‘I should have guessed. Miss Talbot has a lovely voice.’

David nodded. ‘I remember one afternoon in Lisbon—’

‘Miss Talbot was in Lisbon?’

David’s gaze darted over her face. ‘Honoria, Val, and I went to Portugal on a visit with my father six years ago. Before you came to Lisbon.’

Miss Talbot would have been seventeen, as lovely as she was now but less polished and self-assured. Charles would have been three-and-twenty, perhaps not yet quite as self-contained or numbed to feeling as the man Mélanie had married. ‘That explains it,’ she said. ‘They’re better friends than I would have expected if they hadn’t seen each other since childhood.’

‘Look, Mélanie, I don’t know what you’ve heard—’

‘What is there for me to have heard?’ The question slipped from her lips with a woeful lack of finesse.

‘Nothing.’ David squeezed her hand. ‘You said it yourself. We all grew up together. It was only natural—’ He broke off, his fair skin flushed with color.

‘That everyone expected Charles to marry Miss Talbot one day?’

‘People are always trying to marry off their children to each other,’ David said.

When you told me that one day I’d meet the right man, you also said that you’d bring me nothing but unhappiness. Do you remember when you said that? And where?

‘Mélanie.’ David’s fingers tightened on her wrist for a moment. ‘Sometimes the past is best left in the past. For everyone’s sake.’

His words quickened the alarm that had been coiling inside her all evening. Sometimes the past couldn’t be left in the past, or one had no hope for the future.

‘Escaping to a quiet corner, wife? You’re picking up bad habits from me.’ Her husband had materialized from the crowd and was leaning against one of the pillars beside the settee. Like his father, he could move soundlessly when he chose. Mélanie suppressed a start, as though he’d caught her with a lover rather than his oldest friend.

‘You’re impossible,’ David told Charles. ‘Where have you been? It’s one thing for a bachelor to hide from the throng. It’s another for a married man. You have responsibilities.’

‘On the contrary.’ Charles was smiling, cheerful, and to his wife quite obviously playacting. ‘I’m well enough versed in the matrimonial rules of engagement to know a husband isn’t supposed to get in his wife’s way at a ball.’ He met Mélanie’s gaze for a moment, but the Fraser armor was well in place. He didn’t appear remotely concerned or apologetic at having left her alone, but then he rarely acted protective toward her. Why should he, when she had been at great pains throughout their marriage never to let him think that she needed him?

‘Oh, dear, darling.’ Mélanie got to her feet. ‘Only four and a half years and you’ve quite lost interest in whom I choose to flirt with. Goodness knows what I’ll have to do to get your attention when we’ve been married a decade.’ She reached for Charles’s champagne glass and took a sip. A blatantly proprietary gesture. It should have been beneath her.

Charles didn’t seem to notice. ‘I hear you stopped Quen from making a scene,’ he said to David as he took the champagne glass back from Mélanie.

David grimaced. ‘I did my best. I don’t know why the devil he always—’

He broke off. A sudden silence had rippled through the room and settled over the crowd. Charles raised his brows. Lord Glenister had walked halfway down the stairs. Honoria Talbot moved up the stairs to join her uncle, a slender column of white and gold.

Near the base of the stairs, Evie Mortimer stood smiling like a waxwork figure at Madame Tussaud’s. She was holding Lord Quentin’s arm, as though in an effort to keep him upright. Mélanie caught sight of Charles’s sister in the crowd. A shadow of fear flickered across Gisèle’s face. She cast a look of inquiry at Lord Valentine, who was beside her. He avoided her gaze, his own fixed steadily on his father and Miss Talbot.

‘My friends,’ Glenister said, ‘the time has come for me to confess that there is another reason for our party this evening. As you know, for the past twenty years my niece Honoria has graced Glenister House with her presence. It is hard to believe the time has gone so quickly. You must allow me a father’s feelings on this happy occasion.’

He paused for a moment. He might have been recovering from an attack of fatherly sentimentality or relishing the drama of the moment. Or both. ‘My friends, I have an announcement that it gives me great pleasure to make. Please join with me in celebrating the betrothal of my niece Honoria to my best and oldest friend, Kenneth Fraser.’

The silence from the crowd in the ballroom lasted just a fraction of a second longer than one might have expected after such an announcement. Then it gave way to the requisite applause. Kenneth climbed the steps to stand beside Miss Talbot, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

Gisèle looked as though she had only just comprehended that someone had slapped her across the face. Lord Valentine dropped a hand on her shoulder, in comfort or in warning. Lord Quentin jerked away from Miss Mortimer and lurched from the ballroom.

Closer at hand, Mélanie heard the crack of broken glass. Charles was staring straight ahead, his expression unreadable. He seemed quite unaware that he had shattered his champagne glass.