A Proposition For The Comte

He could remember very little of the previous night’s attack, save for speaking to Lady Addington in a bedchamber when he’d been cleaned up and the doctor had left. The swelling in his side was greater this morning, the tight heat releasing into a throbbing ache. There were slight memories of sleet and cold and the sound of a carriage coming on as he fell, but that was about the most of it.

Would Lady Addington talk to the London law-keepers and give them his description? Would there be repercussions that might follow? He had no family here save for his younger sister and his two ageing aunts. A further worry that, for their safety was paramount in everything he did.

Violet Addington’s freckles had been astonishing and her colouring had held the sort of vivid glowing richness that he could never before remember seeing and now could not forget.

She’d worn a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand, but there had been no sign of a husband save for the portrait he’d caught sight of at the bottom of the stairs as he had left, the night light in the hall falling across the face of a man who was imposing and elegant. Her countenance was drawn beside his, a younger, more uncertain version of the woman she’d become.

Rising from the water, he took a towel from the rack and tied it about his waist, catching his reflection in the full-length mirror. He rarely looked at himself these days, but tonight he did. Tonight the scar on his chin was raised and red in the light and the new wound above his ear ate into the black of his hair. His chest was bandaged, hiding ruin’s pathway across the skin, though the swollen bruising on his arm was visible.

His life was reflected in the hardness of his eyes and in the deep lines that ran down each side of his face. Every year he’d worked for the Ministère de la Guerre had placed new scars upon him. The sabre cuts across his back, the many small knife wounds that ran over his hands and his lower arms, the missing half-finger resulting from the debacle with Les Chevaliers and his betrayal by Celeste Fournier-Shayborne.

He knew that the Addington servants must have seen such ruination upon him and wondered just what they might have relayed to their mistress. Or to a master?

The cross on plaited leather at his neck caught his attention next. Veronique. He’d taken it from her body after he’d pulled her out of the Seine and he’d never removed it. The remnants of lost chances and the aching brokenness of love. The beginning of his indifference, too.

A clean shirt hid most of the damage as he pulled it on, a pair of breeches following and then his boots. This double game of intelligence was taking his life piece by piece.

At any moment chaos could consume him. He felt it coming as a bleakness he could not control and then as a shaking that numbed all he knew to be good.

The images of Paris were there, too, of course, Henri Clarke’s ministère and its constant and brutal violence. There was softness in small snatches at brothels and taverns filled with music, connections of the flesh that held only darkness and brevity.

Once he had been a good man. He’d believed in justice and equality and fairness. Once he had slumbered from dusk to dawn barely moving, his dreams quiet, graceful things without any of the monsters that now came calling as soon as he shut his eyes.

In the town house of Lady Addington he had slept the best he had in months. He could barely believe it when the clock in the corridor outside had struck out the hour of six and he had woken.

Three hours of straight and uninterrupted slumber. It was a record.

He knew he had to go back into society to complete his mission here, but she would recognise him now, would know his face. Would she be wise enough to keep quiet about their meeting in the middle of a cold London night? He didn’t want her to be implicated. He didn’t want her to be pulled into something he knew could hurt her.

But if she saw him unbidden? What might happen then? What if her servants talked? Or the driver of the Addington conveyance? Or the doctor with his clumsy hands? Even the plump housekeeper had watched him in a way that made him wonder.

Hell. He never took these risks at home, never walked through the streets of Paris compromised by mistake. He was getting old and soft, that was the trouble. Thirty-four years were upon him already and, he wondered, would he even manage thirty-five?

The wound at his side pulled as he turned too fast and he placed his arm hard against the pain, containing it and keeping it in. He’d need to lay low for a week at least to gather strength, but after that he meant to find those who had ordered his demise. Find them and deal with them. He had his leads and his hunches in the art of intelligence had always served him well.

After his father came to England, they would never return to France. There would be no more favours, no more final turn of the dice for a regime he’d long since stopped believing in. He would live on his estate in the ordered greenness of Sussex.

Compton Park.

The remodelling had been finished for a good ten months now and yet he had barely spent a night there. He wanted that to change. He needed a base so that all the parts of him that were compromised did not spin out, never to be regathered again. Lost in artifice and trickery.

He needed light.

That thought had him swearing because the only woman he had ever met with a distinct aura of brightness was Lady Addington and she was probably rueing her decision to pick him up off the freezing streets to take him home.

Such rumination made him feel dizzy and he sat with relief on the leather chair in his dressing room, a drink in hand and trying to regain a balance that could allow his breath to soften.

He could do nothing yet. He needed to get stronger, needed the weakness that held him captive to dissipate and to lessen. Wisdom came with the knowing of when to wait and when to strike and at this moment he understood that his physical means were restricted.

Drawing in, he made himself relax, made himself reach for the remembered warmth of a Parisian summer, the music in the streets of Montmartre, the pastries in the small bakeries off St Germaine. The lazy flow of the Seine was there, too, in his mind’s eye, wending its easy way through the city, as were the ancient mellow buildings of the Marais with its hidden spaces and green trees. The history of life wound about his uncertainty, knitting resolve and purpose together.

His thumb rubbed across the engraving on his ring which evoked the traditions of an ancient and powerful family. Such rituals heartened him and rebuilt the shaken foundations of his hurt.

Lord, how many are my foes.

How many rise up against me...

David’s Prayer of Deliverance had helped him many times and he liked the peace of it. Finishing the entreaty and the last of his drink he leaned back against leather and closed his eyes. To rest, not to sleep. He’d long since given up even the hope of that.

Six nights later Summerley Shayborne, Viscount Luxford, was at his door.

‘This is unexpected.’ Aurelian could barely take in his friend’s presence.

‘Celeste insisted I come up to see you, Lian. She felt there was something wrong.’

‘Has your wife become a clairvoyant now? A woman who might see through space and time?’

‘More like a pregnant and anxious worrier. She has constant inklings of imminent danger about those who are close to her and sends me to check.’

Aurelian smiled. Shay’s wife might have been the reason for the scar on his chin and the missing half-finger but there was a lot of respect between them now. He liked Celeste Shayborne, loved her even, if he were to be honest, like a favoured sister or cousin.

‘I am fine.’

He suddenly remembered uttering those very words when first Violet Addington had leaned over him on the street, the clouds above her filled with snow. A new memory, that. He filed it away to think about later.

‘Hawkins said that you were lucky to escape with your life. Your valet said a bullet that went through your arm and side festered and it was only the ministrations and expertise of your old aunt’s physician that stood between you and death.’

‘Hawkins talks too much.’

‘Your valet is the cousin of mine. He feels he is family and kin looks after its own.’

Family. Shay had always been like that to him, the brother he’d never had and a friend who through thick and thin had stuck beside him.

‘Someone is trying to kill me, Shay.’

‘Hell.’

‘Someone sent a note to meet at the boarding house at Brompton Place. My assailant shot me the moment I arrived, missing anything important inside by a hair’s breadth.’

‘Had you seen him before?’

‘No, but he was well dressed and had a heavy purse in his jacket pocket.’

‘When you first arrived in England two weeks ago, you said that you were here to recover some lost gold. Someone might be more than interested in stopping you from doing that.’

Lian crossed the room and found two glasses and his best bottle of brandy. Proceeding to pour out generous drinks, he motioned Shay to take a seat in a chair by the fire and, when he did so, took the opposite one himself.

‘Interested because ill-gotten gains can make men do a lot of things that they might not otherwise countenance?’

‘Like shoot a man in cold blood?’

He smiled. ‘That, too. Those in Paris who sent the gold to England in the first place now want it back, for it seems that their plans of a rebellion against the English way of life has come to nothing.’

‘That’s what this is about? Napoleon languishes at Elba. They can’t possibly think to keep his hopes of conquering Europe again alive.’

‘There were six substantial shipments of gold sent in the hopes of inciting insurgence. They stopped fourteen months ago.’

‘Shipments to whom?’

‘That’s the problem. Whoever received the gold was careful to hide their identity, but a small statue was sent anonymously to Paris warning against dispatching more. The gold marks on the piece had been tampered with and the bust consisted mostly of silver and lead.’

‘A way to hide the missing gold should anyone ask after it?’

‘Precisely. The jeweller who I am led to believe fashioned the piece is away from London until the week after next and has left no mention of his travel intentions. When I see him perhaps then there will be some answers.’

‘Leaving you as the one visible person trying to shed light on a world of greed?’

This time Lian laughed. ‘Everyone is expendable. You of all people would know that, Shay.’

‘Then get out. Come south to Sussex and stop. Settle down at Compton Park and become another man, a happier one, just as I have. Leave the gold alone and allow others to die for its recovery.’

Shay’s advice was so like the hope he had just been ruminating on that Lian felt the rip of it in his heart. ‘My father is still in Paris.’

‘So if you were to defect now he would be at risk?’

‘Precisely.’

He liked talking with Shay. He liked his honest astuteness. He liked that the shadows others never saw were so much part of what they both knew. It made the truth easy.

He could see the thoughts racing in his friend’s eyes and knew the moment when the tumblers clicked into place.

‘You’ve been made the damn bait for all of this?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you think you can win against everyone in a city that you no longer know well?’

‘It’s still possible. These people are sometimes like amateurs who are easy to gain the measure of.’

‘The other night did not sound so easy. Who the hell was it that rescued you, then?’

Lian gritted his teeth together and shook his head. He should have known that this would be the next question.

‘Lady Addington, a widow from Chelsea, brought me back to her home. I have found out since that she was married to Viscount Addington, a minor aristocrat from the north. She came down here to London after the death of her husband.’

‘Addington? The name is familiar although I cannot quite place it.’

‘A statue identical to the one that turned up in Paris sat on the mantel of her downstairs salon.’

The shock of that statement settled for a moment into the silence, vibrating into question.

‘So Violet Addington knew you would be there? On that particular street after midnight? She is involved?’

‘I hope not.’

‘Why?’

‘I’d be long dead if she had not picked me up out of the gutter. I think I owe her something for it.’

Shay started to laugh. ‘There’s more, by God, for you don’t even sound like yourself. Work was always strictly professional for you and damned be anyone who got in the way.’

‘That was when I believed in Napoleon’s ability to make France a better place. Then I didn’t and your own wife was a part of that. When she exposed me in Paris I understood that there was no true loyalty left and the idea of spilling one’s blood for nothing was less appealing.’

‘I still have contacts, Lian. Good ones, too. Perhaps...’

‘No. Your loyalties now lie with your family, with Celeste and Loring and the new little one when it comes. I can handle this.’

‘Wounded and alone?’

‘I am improving daily. This morning I managed the stairs without holding on to the banister. Tomorrow I will climb them twice.’

‘Someone knows you are here and if they are prepared to kill you without any dialogue at all, then everyone is dangerous. You have to promise me that you’ll send word if you need help.’

Lian nodded, but knew that only if he lay dying would he consider it and he did not intend for that to happen. His more usual manner was reasserting itself, the ideas churning and the details noticed. It was a jigsaw, intelligence, all the pieces needing to be put in just the right place. Talking to Shay had steadied him and made him think. He would need to go back to see Violet Addington and ask her about the statue.

He dreaded her answer.

When the conversation turned to other things, Aurelian relaxed. It was good to have a friend to talk with.

‘How is Celeste’s grandmother?’

‘Flourishing as she hurls advice and gives her opinion on any and everything related to bringing up children.’

‘Yet her own were such disappointments.’

‘Well, Celeste says that a second chance is what everybody needs and she is going to give it with love to Susan Joyce.’

‘You were lucky in her, Shay. Lucky to have found her.’

‘And don’t I know it.’

Fiddling with his glass, Lian leaned back in the wing chair, the ancient leather squeaking.

‘When did you realise that she was the one, the one you loved? The one you could not live without.’

‘About a moment after I met her again in Paris in heavy disguise and whispering sensitive state secrets. Why do you want to know that?’

Lian looked down, careful to shade his eyes. Shay was a man who noticed almost as much as he did and it was always the tiny gestures that gave one away.

‘Sometimes it is good to hear about things that are not hard or wrong or dangerous.’

‘Does Lytton Staines know you are back?’

‘I haven’t seen him yet, but then I have not been here for long. He is due back from Scotland tomorrow.’

‘My advice would be to go out on the town with him when you are better, for in a social setting you can observe Lady Addington without being noticed. See who she converses with. Find out those who might also be involved and get your leads there. If you are going to be the lure in all of this, you may as well go slowly and carefully so that what’s just happened to you never does so again. Where was the gold sent to here in England?’

‘To a man who went by the name of Derwent in Kensington. I followed up that lead and can find no sign that he ever existed.’

‘A front, then?’

‘The investors in Paris received acknowledgement of the donations. They also received correspondence outlining detailed plans of connecting with others who were anti-government here. Then communication simply stopped about a year and a half ago.’

‘It took you a while to get here, then?’

‘Those sending the gold were all gentlemen. They did not wish to be identified publicly with such an endeavour, preferring to make it a more private crusade.’

‘What changed?’

‘When the statue turned up with the warning they thought that blackmail might come next.’

‘And because you were half-English and had been to school here you were chosen as the one to come and sort it all out?’

‘Not quite. After your wife’s accusations against me in Paris I have been watched, though distrusted might even be a better word for it. When I was shot in the boarding house on Brompton Place I even wondered if the man was not French.’

‘God. A double-cross? Le Ministère de la Guerre?’

‘The struggle for power is never easy. People do not wish to relinquish their assets without a fight.’

‘And one of those assets is you?’

Lian began to laugh and felt better. It had been a long time since he had been able to speak so openly like this.

‘I got out the money I had in France a good while ago after selling my personal properties.’

‘Which was another black mark to your name?’

‘I suppose so. Being the first to recognise the truth of Napoleon’s doomed campaigns and act upon it leaves others...vengeful. The noble families are not what they once were in France, for although aristocracy is tolerated it is no longer encouraged. Papa sent my sister and his old aunts here to England when he sensed the danger in it all, but nothing could induce him to leave.’

‘So he stayed?’

‘My mother’s grave is at Vernon. That was part of it, too. His heart lies in that soil.’

‘The soft underside of true politics? The place where the soul collides with reason?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘So your first questions will be to Lady Addington.’

He nodded, hating to have her name so carelessly tossed into the ring. ‘She is scared somehow and isolated. When she speaks there are shadows in her words.’

‘How long were you in her house?’

‘Four hours and I slept for three of them.’

Shay finished his brandy and got up to pour himself another. ‘She made quite an impression on you, then, for such a brief acquaintance.’

‘There were many books in French in the downstairs library, though the whole place looked shabby and in need of redecoration.’

‘The twin persuasions of loyalty and greed.’

‘But that’s not enough, is it? I need a reason. She is a lady and a gentlewoman. She is delicate and thin. Her hands are soft. Her heart is kind.’

‘The husband, then? Lord Addington? How did he die?’

‘In an accident in the Addington stables. One of his prize stallions booted him.’

‘Were there witnesses?’

‘None.’

‘Easy to apply such a death, then, if you had the motivation. Enough gold might give you that.’

‘There’s something else, too.’ He waited until Shay returned again before beginning.

‘Violet Addington’s father, Wilfred Bartholomew, was a northern businessman made rich by his acquisition of jewellery shops.’

‘A man who knew his way around gold, then, and how to stretch its worth.’

‘And his sister left England years ago to marry a Frenchman and settle in Lyon. A family connection?’

Shay stood against the warmth of flame. ‘I miss it sometimes, Lian, all the energy of intelligence. I miss it until I kiss my wife and son and understand the impossibility of ever inviting danger to arrive again at my hearth.’

Lian knew exactly what it was he spoke about. ‘When I get out I will be like you and never look back. It will be a relief.’

‘Then do it soon, for you appear as if you have not slept well for a year.’

‘That’s probably because I haven’t.’

‘Here’s to Lady Addington, then, a woman who fills you with light and sleep.’

Chapter Three

The music was the ‘Duke of Kent’s Waltz’. Violet had always hated the piece and she gritted her teeth together to try to block out the anger inside that arose unbidden. The country-dance tune had been the one she had been playing on her small piano at Addington Manor when Harland had found out her father’s will had left him all the Bartholomew wealth and he reasoned he no longer needed to be conciliatory.

She’d dressed with care tonight, though her ancient green high-necked gown was plain. Harland would have loathed it because it did nothing to dampen down her vivid colouring and consume some of the flame. She remembered her husband wrapping her hair around his fist and pulling her into him, not in gentleness but in a burning anger.

‘Stop showing yourself like you do, Violet. Stop being brazen. You are no longer a simple commoner, but the wife of a viscount. Act like it.’

Tonight she had caught the length of her tresses up and added a turban to hide them, though there was no help for the fire-flamed tendrils that kept escaping around her face.

‘Your hair is reminiscent of the shade a street prostitute might favour.’ Harland had let her know of all the connotations of the colour after their marriage and for the first few years she had taken to dyeing it a dark brown.

Since coming out of an enforced mourning a few months ago, she’d often worn bright hues, six years of anonymity enough of a punishment for any woman with sense. But she had yet to release her hair from the confines of habit and thus the turban had stayed.

‘Violet.’ The call of her name had her turning and a friend, Lady Antonia MacMillan, caught at her arm. ‘I’ve been waiting an age for you to come and thought you must have decided to stay home.’

‘I was at the Wilsons’ ball for the early part of the evening and did not realise the lateness of the hour.’

Amara had taken herself off to sit along the side of the room. Violet thought she would join her after talking with Antonia. Tonight she felt tired and a bit restless. It had been over two weeks since rescuing her stranger from the frozen street and she thought he might have contacted her somehow. But he hadn’t.

‘Well, I am so glad you have arrived for you need to catch sight of the Comte de Beaumont. He has most recently returned from Paris and has set the ton alight. There are, of course, a few whispers of his past which only help to make him more...alluring.’

‘Whispers?’ She smiled at the theatrical voice Antonia used.

‘He was once heartbroken. His young wife drowned.’

The sadness of such a thing washed across Violet. For young lovers to be parted for ever by such adversity was shocking, though a little piece of her also thought if Harland had been snatched away by ill fortune in the first month of their marriage she would have remembered him with far more fondness.

‘He is tall, handsome and clever and I have been doing my very best to catch his eye all evening, but to no avail whatsoever...’

Such words produced a wariness and she hoped that Antonia would not throw herself at the man in her company. She was here at the Creightons’ ball for the light conversation and not for the machinations of attraction, so when Mr Douglas Cummings crossed the floor to ask her for the next dance, Violet assented.

Cummings was a man who sorely needed a woman to boost his morale and confidence and a shudder went through her. Once she had been that sort of a wife to Harland.

The anger that sat close made her breathe in deeply. It was why she came to these soirées night after night and stayed late into the early mornings so that when she reached her home and her bed she would be weak with exhaustion and would sleep. Dreamless.

She was thinner than she had been in years, the generous curves that her husband had delighted in at first now lessened. A changed and altered appearance; but it was the inside she truly worried about, for there were weeks when she felt empty save for an all-consuming fury.