Mélanie was halfway up the stairs to change for the evening when she heard the door open below and saw Raoul walk into the hall, returned from his call on his nephew. "We're definitely going to Vauxhall," she said as he climbed the stairs. Harry had confirmed that Josefina Lopes was performing that evening, and Gisèle had confirmed, in a quick exchange of coded messages passed through a coffeehouse, that she could meet Malcolm. "Harry and Cordy are going to bring Livia and Drusilla here for the night."
Raoul nodded. He moved with his usual crisp decisiveness, but his brows were drawn in the sort of look she remembered from when he'd received conflicting intelligence reports. "Did you talk to Raimundo?" she asked.
"I found him in Hyde Park. I agree with your assessment. I can't shake the sense that there's more to him beneath the surface, but I'm damned if I can make out what. Perhaps not surprising, given that I can't really claim to know him."
"I used to wonder about your family," Méalnie said, as they started up the rest of the stairs. "But then in those days I had this ridiculous illusion that one could break free of the past."
"Given your own past, I think that was more a survival skill than an illusion," Raoul said.
"Perhaps. I thought personal ties didn’t matter. Or at best they were a temporary indulgence. I thought you’d mastered the technique of not having them, which was something to emulate."
"Querida—" Raoul paused on the first-floor landing. He put out a hand and touched her cheek lightly. "Among the many things I have to regret, apparently I set a terrible example."
"I’d have said you were telling yourself the same thing at that point, but you weren’t really at all. You had Malcolm. You had Arabella."
"I had you. Surely you knew that."
"Yes. That is—I thought you put other things first."
"To a large extent I did."
"And personal connections were simply expendable?"
"You know it was never that easy."
Mélanie studied him, scenes from the past playing out in her head. "I do now."
Blanca picked up the curling tongs. "You need something more elaborate for Vauxhall."
"It's not a masquerade night," Mélanie said.
"No, but with all those colored lights and shadows, you need something out of the common way to stand out."
"I'm not particularly aiming to stand out."
"You are to keep your cover. If you were going out for an evening of pleasure you'd want to stand out. You're still known as one of the most stylish women in Mayfair."
These days Mélanie often left her hair tumbling down her back and just pulled back the front, but a night like this called for Blanca's artistry. She'd done Mélanie's hair for Emily Cowper's ball, but she was creating an even more intricate arrangement tonight. Blanca coaxed another side curl into place and paused to study the effect. "Do you want to talk about it?" she asked, meeting Mélanie's gaze in the looking glass.
Given the events of the day, Blanca could be referring to a great many things, but Mélanie didn't pretend not to understand. Blanca had only seen Kitty Ashford for a few minutes this morning, but that and what she had probably asked Addison would be enough. "With everything else that's happened, it's hardly worth dwelling on," Mélanie said.
Blanca wound the tongs round another length of hair. "I've never met a former lover of Addison's. But I don't think I could avoid dwelling on it if I did. For all I don't have the least doubt of how he cares for me."
"Perhaps it's just as well we're so busy," Mélanie said.
"Which means you have to work with her." Blanca set down the curling tongs on their cushioned mitt.
"As well perhaps that I get to know her."
Blanca surveyed her work and stuck another pin into the elaborate knot of hair at the back of Mélanie's head. "She's not what I'd have expected. I thought Mr. Rannoch's first love would be quieter. Less spirited."
"Why?" Mélanie was startled into swiveling her head round to look up at her friend.
Blanca's brows drew together as she adjusted a coil of hair. "Ladies of the beau monde usually are."
"Cordy isn't. Or Laura. Or Lady Frances or Emily Cowper."
Blanca turned Mélanie’s head back towards the mirror. "Something kept Mr. Rannoch and whomever he loved in the past from being together. I suppose in my head I blamed her lack of adventure."
"Whatever went wrong between them, I don't think it was owing to Mrs. Ashford's lack of adventure." In fact, Kitty's thirst for adventure might have led her not to go to Italy with Malcolm.
Blanca fluffed the side curls round Mélanie's face. "Addison wouldn't tell me a great deal. He admitted he thought Malcolm had loved her, but he said he didn't know the details."
"I don't think Malcolm would share them easily. Even with Addison."
"No, they aren't the sort for those types of confidences." Blanca stuck an extra pin into Mélanie's hair. "I don't think Addison approved of her."
"Addison worries about Malcolm. I expect he was worried about what would happen to Malcolm if things didn't go right."
Blanca made another adjustment to the pin. "Addison liked you from the first. I don't think Mrs. Ashford would have made Malcolm happy."
Mélanie drew the seafoam silk of her dressing gown closer round her throat. "I don't think anyone really knows what she'd have made Malcolm. Including Malcolm himself."
Laura watched in the dressing table looking glass as her husband bent over the cradle to scoop up their daughter. He had come into the room from his call on Raimundo while she was dressing for Vauxhall. She paused in the midst of fastening the second of her blue topaz earrings. "What is it?"
"Am I that transparent?" Raoul settled Clara against his shoulder.
"No." She glanced down at the earring. The blue stone shimmered in the lamplight. He'd sent the pair to her in the early days of their relationship when the gift had given tangible shape to something she'd still feared wasn't real. She looked back at her husband holding their daughter, remembering those even earlier days in Newgate when she'd been testing him out, searching for vulnerabilities. "I'm still learning to read you. But I can tell when something's troubling you. At least, some of the time."
Raoul circled the room jiggling Clara, which made it hard to see his face. Which may or may not have been deliberate. "It's just an odd thing. To realize one cares about what one is suspected of doing."
She fastened the second earring, her gaze still on him in the looking glass. "You mean when you've made it a point for nearly the whole of your life to make people think you were capable of a great deal you'd never really do?"
"Ah—" Raoul stopped, the light spilling over his shoulder, Clara in the curve of his arm. "Just so."
Laura turned round on the dressing table bench. "It's not unusual for a father to care about what his son thinks of him."
"We're hardly a typical father and son in that regard."
"And it's perhaps especially important when the trust is hard won." She got to her feet and went to his side. "Malcolm knows you. He saw you clearly before you ever meant to let him do so. But he's your son. He knows how to evaluate a situation. He knows people make hard choices. He knows to be cautious."
"And God knows I've given him reason to be so, especially when it comes to me." Raoul looked down at Malcolm's little sister and touched his fingers to her tiny fist. "It's a wonder that he trusts me at all. Or thinks that I have any limits."
Laura tilted her head back and scanned her husband's face. "What does he think you've done?"
"Killed an inconvenient agent. He seemed quite matter-of-fact about it. One could say it wouldn't be any worse than things I have, in fact, done. Odd, I suppose, where we all draw lines."
"Darling." Laura put a hand on their daughter's back and reached up to kiss him. "I know you. And so does Malcolm. If you didn't have clear lines, you wouldn't agonize so much when you cross them."
He gave a twisted smile. "I'm a bit old to be wanting my son to be proud of me."
"I don't know that one's ever too old for that." She threaded her fingers through his gray-streaked brown hair. "We know secrets are inevitable in this family. Perhaps doubts are as well. It doesn't mean we can't get past them."
"No." Raoul shifted his arm beneath Clara. "And I seem to have quite lost my pose of ironic detachment. Whatever was left of it." He looked down at her, taking in her gown, silver net over turquoise satin. "You're ready for Vauxhall."
"I confess I'm quite looking forward to—"
"Getting out?"
"Having a mission."
"Ah." He smiled. "I know the feeling."
She held out her arms. "I'll take Clara. You need to dress."
"I haven't talked to you about Raimundo," Raoul said, as he shrugged out of the coat he'd worn riding.
"You saw him?"
"Riding in Hyde Park. A very conventional setting for a talk that was anything but." He stripped off his neckcloth and started on his waistcoat buttons. "I told Mélanie that like her I'm not entirely sure what to make of him. On the surface, he seems a fairly conventional man with a keen understanding. At times I had a sense I might be up against a façade. But I may be jumping at shadows."
Laura settled Clara against her shoulder. "You don't tend to jump at shadows."
"I also haven't had to confront my family in recent years." He pulled his shirt over his head. "I realized today I've said almost nothing to you about Raimundo. Or about his father—my brother. I haven't told you much about my family at all."
Laura cupped a hand behind Clara's head. "You needn't unless you want to. Oh, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious. But what matters is what we're building together. It's up to you what you want to share or not. God knows I know the past can be painful territory to explore."
Raoul took a clean shirt from the chest of drawers and pulled it over his head. "For a long time I told myself I could live without ties. Or at least without admitting to them. I've learned how wrong I was." His head emerged from the folds of linen, his hair rumpled in a way that reminded her of Colin. "I think you're right that the ties we form ourselves are those that often matter most. My brother and I are very different. But he's still my brother. Still part of my past, even if he seems unlikely to be part of my future, given our different views."
"You have friends with different views. Lord Weston. You even are on somewhat civil terms with Carfax."
Raoul smiled. "True. But I think there's something about a sibling that makes it harder to get past differences." He began to do up his shirt cuffs. "I wish you could have known my mother. She was rather remarkable."
"Yes, I thought she probably was."
He raised a brow.
"Someone raised you with respect for women's intelligence."
"She did give me that. Mostly by example. I don't know what she'd make of the man I am now. But I'm quite certain she'd like you."
"I expect she'd be concerned about my making you happy. Parents usually are."
"No." He fastened the second cuff. "She could read me with devastating acuteness. She didn't find a lot of joy in her own marriage. But she had the wit to recognize it when she saw it. And the sense to value it." He reached out to cup Laura's cheek. "She'd know you make me happier than I have any right to be."
Malcolm closed the door to the night nursery, where the children were having supper with Blanca, and leaned against the panels. "I don't know where to begin."
Mélanie was sliding her arms into a gown of rose-colored satin with crystal beading at the neck that sparkled in the light from the tapers on her dressing table. "It would be an understatement to call it an eventful day. It's a long time since we've had one with quite so many twists and turns. I confess a part of me quite relishes it."
He watched her, the candlelight sliding over the bones of her face, features he could trace from memory. "And to think at the start I thought investigating with Kitty would be the greatest challenge we faced."
"It was certainly something new for us." She tugged the gown over her shoulders. "Do you mind helping with the strings? I sent Blanca in to the children."
Malcolm moved to his wife's side and began to do up the strings on the back of her gown. "You're amazing."
Mélanie laughed and leaned back against him, then turned round, her hands against his chest. "How many times have you not balked at my investigating something with Raoul?"
"That's a bit different. Kitty isn't your mother."
She gave a strangled laugh. "No, thank goodness."
"You know what I mean. You walked on eggshells until my own relationship with O'Roarke shifted."
"As I recall, Raoul kept getting tangled up in everything we did."
"Which was probably inevitable given how tangled our lives are, and a good thing or we'd never have sorted out our relationships. But actually I wasn't thinking of that so much as your playing nursemaid to Raimundo while Kitty and I investigated."
"That took fortitude, I confess." She smiled as she said it, but he could read his wife's smiles enough to know it had taken more fortitude than she was admitting to. "Thank goodness Jeremy brought me back into things. But all other things aside, it wasn't a bad thing for me to get to know Raimundo."
Malcolm reached behind her to do up the last of the strings. "You really think there's more to him than meets the eye?"
"I think there may be, as I said to Kitty. He has a quick mind. He seemed genuinely shocked by the attack on Annabel, but he was trying to put the pieces together. Asking the right questions. He reminds me a bit—"
"Of O'Roarke?"
"Of you. Though you remind me of Raoul at times."
"O'Roarke's assessment agreed with yours. Though he also says he doesn't know Raimundo enough to be sure he isn't deceiving him." Malcolm frowned at a print of Prospero and Miranda. "Has Raoul ever talked to you about his family?"
"Just the occasional fragment." Mélanie moved to her dressing table and picked up her diamond earrings. "Mostly making it clear he was estranged from them." She fastened the first earring. "If anything, he'd have talked to you more. They're your family too."
"Ours." He moved behind her and set his hands on her shoulders. "You're my wife, sweetheart."
"Something I'm hardly likely to forget, darling."
"Odd." Malcolm smoothed a strand of hair back from her face and tucked it into her hairpins.
"What is?"
"The things we share and the things we don't. I know remarkable details of my parents' relationship. Far more than many people do whose parents are conventionally married, I suspect. But I know next to nothing about my father's parents or brother or why he's estranged from them. At least, from his brother. He does mention his mother occasionally."
"Yes. I think he was quite fond of her." Mélanie fastened her second earring, then fastened a diamond and garnet pendant he'd given her round her throat, peered at her reflection, reached for the rouge pot and added a touch more color to her cheeks.
For a moment, Malcolm was content to do nothing but watch her. Almost seven years and she still took his breath away. But as she set down the rouge and reached for her gloves, he forced his mind back to what had to be said. "I asked O'Roarke. About Diego Martinez. About the fact that he'd have had every reason to get rid of Martinez. Including the fact that Martinez could have been a threat to you."
"To Raoul's entire network." Mélanie pulled on the first glove. "What did he say?"
"That he's capable of killing in a fight, but tries to hold on to some shred of belief. And that ultimately I'll have to work it out for myself."
"That sounds like Raoul."
"In the end, I don't suppose it really matters." Malcolm looked back at the print. Miranda was gazing at Prospero with utter trust as he gestured towards the tempest he had conjured. She placed an extraordinary amount of trust in her father.
"Doesn't matter?" Mélanie's voice held a rare note of surprise.
"Even if Raoul did have Martinez killed, I don't think he tried to kill Annabel Larimer. So whatever happened with Martinez isn't really relevant."
"Except that if Raoul didn't kill Martinez, whoever did kill him may well be behind the attack on Annabel. So he'd be muddying up the investigation by lying to us." Mélanie smoothed the fingers of the second glove with unwonted care. "There was a time I'd have said Raoul wouldn't cavil at killing an agent who posed a danger. I'm not so sure now. But I am fairly sure he wouldn't muddy up an investigation by lying to you. At least, not without more vital cause than this."
Malcolm met his wife's gaze and felt a smile break across his face. "That's my Mel. While I've been going round in ethical circles you've gone straight to the heart of it. Raoul's capable of a lot. But not of denying who he is. At least, not without cause, and I can't see the cause at present."
She touched his face. "It's more complicated for you. You want to see him a certain way."
"I don't want to see him as other than he is."
"And he keeps warning you not to build up a false image of him."
He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through her own. "Would it bother you? If it were true?"
Her brows drew together. "I'd have thought not, five years ago. Even a year ago. I used to think I didn't know his limits. But now—I'm not sure if it's that he's changed, or that my view of him has, or that I've changed myself. But—yes. It would bother me more than I'd care to admit."
Malcolm nodded. "We've all changed. But we're still living in a world that can put us on different sides."
"Not so much now. We all want to find the Goshawk. And whoever attacked Annabel."
And the search for those answers could take them in a host of different directions. But there was no point in worrying until they had more information. "Vauxhall," Malcolm said. "Practically the last place I thought to spend the evening when I woke this morning."