Strings of glass lamps danced in the breeze, sending a wash of crimson, violet, gold, and indigo over the crowd on the walks below, glinting off spangles, crystals, and jewels. The shadows lent a sort of equality, Mélanie thought, blurring the distinction between real and paste jewels, between members of the beau monde out for a raffish adventure, servants and tradesmen on a precious evening out, and those seeking to earn money, whether by cutting purses or acquiring a new protector. Or both.
"God," Harry murmured. "I haven't been here in years."
Cordelia looked up at her husband. "I didn't know you'd ever been here."
He slid his arm round her. "I wasn't entirely a recluse before we married."
Cordelia leaned against his shoulder. "There was a pageant to celebrate Vitoria. I came to that. I—"
"It's all right," Harry said. "You don't have to say who you came with."
She looked up at him with a steady gaze. Cordy was fearless. "Actually, I came alone. That is, with friends, but not—I was with a large party. It seemed wrong, somehow, to do anything else on a night celebrating a battle you'd fought in, whatever the state of our marriage."
Harry tightened his arm round her. "You have more finely turned scruples than I do, sweetheart. Though I rather shudder to think what they'd have done with a pageant celebrating the hell of any battle."
"Yes, I imagine you'd have disliked it excessively. I thought it in rather poor taste myself, and that was before what I saw at Waterloo."
Their little party were wandering down the gravel walkway in couples. A bit like a moment towards the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mélanie thought, her hand curved round Malcolm's arm.
Lady Frances cast a glance up and down the walkway. She was wearing a sapphire diadem and a particularly fine pair of diamond earrings that glittered in the lamplight. "The evenings we used to have here. I could scarcely look round without seeing half a dozen acquaintances. I've barely seen one tonight. I remember when it was far more fashionable."
"So do I," said Archie.
Frances looked up at her husband. Her gown had a low square-cut neck and a high-standing lace collar that gave her something of the look of Queen Elizabeth. "We must have been here on some of the same nights. So odd to think of that."
Archie lifted her hand to his lips. "We must have been a number of places on the same nights. And I was too foolish to take advantage of it."
Frances smiled. "As was I."
"I suppose you've been here," Laura said to Raoul.
"Mmm?" Raoul was looking up and down the walkway as though scouting enemy terrain for the best advantage. "Oh, yes. It's always been a good place to arrange meetings. No, not that sort of meeting, sweetheart. Bella did drag me here a few times. But that was mostly for spy purposes as well."
"Mostly."
"I wasn't always entirely driven by being a spy."
"That's rather a relief, sweetheart."
Malcolm was also scouting the path and the avenues and grottoes off to the sides, all the while holding Mélanie's arm and keeping his gait and posture that of someone bent merely on a night of pleasure. "We have more than an hour," he said. "We should go to our box. Make a show of being here purely for the amusements."
"Anyone who knows us might be pardoned for being suspicious," Harry said.
"That's why we're all here." Frances unfurled a fan of ice blue silk that matched her gown. "I had a nostalgic desire to revisit the scenes of my youth—brought on by my new motherhood and the fear that I was past frivolity—"
"Ha," Archie said.
"And so my doting husband arranged this evening out and prevailed upon you all to accompany us. We've given enough hints that anyone noting our movements should be aware of the story."
"Hiding in plain sight," Raoul said. "Always a good strategy."
They proceeded down the avenue to the colonnade round the main grove and their allocated supper box. A bottle of champagne was already chilling on the table. "I needed to keep in character," Archie murmured. "And I thought we could all do with it. Damn sight better than the usual punch."
The orchestra were just starting up again after a break. It was a long time since the days when Handel himself had performed at Vauxhall, but the music was more than passable. They disposed themselves about the table. Waiters arrived with plates of thinly sliced ham and beef, watercress salad, iced cakes, and ratafia biscuits.
A petite, dark-haired woman with coffee-colored skin and brilliant eyes moved in front of the orchestra and began to sing a Spanish song while playing a guitar. She wore a red dress and a black lace mantilla in her hair.
"Josefina Lopes?" Cordelia asked.
Harry nodded.
Cordelia took a sip of champagne. "She's pretty."
"Yes, she is," Harry said. "She might have caught my eye if I hadn't still been obsessed with my estranged wife."
"Cordy!" A man with a flushed face and a shock of dark hair stopped beside their supper box, eyes wide with shock.
Mélanie watched Cordelia draw an imperceptible breath, then watched the mask that was part of any role, whether in society or espionage, settle over her friend's exquisitely groomed features. "Lord Fenchurch. How agreeable. It's been an age."
"Didn't think you frequented Vauxhall these days."
"I don't, as a rule. But it's a different matter when my husband wants to attend." Cordelia smiled at Harry and slid her gloved hand through the crook of his arm.
"Davenport." Fenchurch blinked in confusion. The scent of brandy wafted off his breath, but Mélanie didn't think that was the only cause of his disbelief.
"Greetings, Fenchurch," Harry said. "I know I wasn't much one for Vauxhall in the old days. But our friends got up a party." He proceeded to introduce the rest of the table. Fenchurch nodded and murmured greetings and acknowledgements to those he was acquainted with and those to whom he had been introduced. "Must go, meeting friends," he murmured. "Enjoy your evening."
He lurched off down the line of boxes, nearly colliding with two waiters and a trio of ladies with plumed headdresses.
"A little more champagne?" Harry picked up the bottle and refilled Cordelia's glass.
"Have I told you you're wonderful, Harry?" Cordelia said.
"Not the sort of thing one grows tired of." He refilled the others' glasses and returned the bottle to its cooler.
"It was a flirtation at Ascot," Cordelia said. "Nothing more." Her brows drew together. "Looking at him now, I can't understand how it was ever even that."
"One grows bored," Frances said. "Really, I think boredom is responsible for more liaisons than lust and champagne combined."
Cordelia's gaze had followed Fenchurch down the line of boxes. "He's talking to the Carwells. I do hope he hasn't got his eye on Imogen. She was flirting madly at the Austrian embassy last week, and Peter couldn't have been more oblivious."
"Peter Carwell is preparing a debt relief bill to bring before the House when the new session starts," Malcolm said. "When I saw him at Brooks's last week he had ink on his hands and his cravat was half in his coffee cup. I think he was about to nod off in his chair."
"Well, if he wants to keep his wife, he should try at least to do the nodding off in her bed," Cordelia said. "That might help keep her in it." She continued to frown. "I like Imogen. She has a wicked sense of humor and a wonderful ability to laugh at herself. She was quite besotted with Peter when they married."
"Sometimes that makes it harder for a marriage to work," Frances said. "But not always." She glanced at her own husband.
"For what it's worth," Malcolm said, "from what I saw of Carwell in the early days of the marriage, I'd say the feeling was quite mutual."
Cordelia looked at Malcolm. "I know her husband's probably trying to do great things, and she should understand, but it can be damnably hard to be patient. Perhaps it would help if he tried explaining his work to her."
"An excellent thought," Malcolm said. "I don't know Carwell well, but I'll try to convey it. I've learned, though, that one can rarely fix the relationships of others."
"It is tempting to try, though," Cordelia said. "I hate to see people make mistakes. I've made so many myself."
"Harry." Josefina spun round on her dressing table bench and ran towards Harry with outstretched hands as a stagehand held aside the curtain into her dressing room. "I thought I glimpsed you in the audience," she said, smiling up at him, "but I couldn't quite believe it. I thought you loathed Vauxhall."
"Loathe's a bit strong, but it's not exactly my preferred sort of entertainment." Harry took her hands and lifted them to his lips. "Your performance was brilliant, though."
Josefina laughed. She might be the toast of Vauxhall now, but she had the same laugh she'd had as an agent in the rough and tumble of the war, easy and unforced. "No need to flatter."
"I'm not. You have a lovely voice and the ability to hold an audience. I've always thought performers make good agents, but I suppose agents also make good performers."
"That's one way of putting it." Josefina drew back to look up at him. She was such a vivid presence, he forgot how tiny she saw. She was made up for the stage with heavy blacking and rouge, her hair was dressed in elaborate curls, and she wore a blue silk dressing gown foaming with ivory lace. But the smile and the glint in her eyes were those of the determined agent he'd strategized with in Lisbon garrets and Spanish mud huts. She studied him for a moment. "That was your wife next to you, wasn't it?"
"Yes, that was Cordelia." He didn't think he'd ever mentioned her to Josefina in the Peninsula, but of course she'd have heard the gossip.
Josefina's gaze remained steady on his face. "You look very happy. Not at all like the man I knew in the Peninsula, if you'll permit me to say so."
"Since when have you ever needed permission to say anything, Josefina? And I'm not the man you knew in Spain. Thank God. I think my wife and daughters would say I'm much easier to live with. Or, at least, they would if they'd known me then."
"I'm glad. That is, I'm glad you're happier. You deserve it."
"Not half so much as you do. I'm glad to see your voice being appreciated."
Josefina gave a wry smile. "It's as much that they consider me exotic. They've spread rumors about my being a 'Moorish princess,' which is errant nonsense if one knows anything of the history of Spain, let alone Portugal."
In reality, Harry knew, Josefina's mother had been born the daughter of slaves from Sao Tomé, where Portugal had a colony, and her father had been a Portuguese sailor who had brought her mother back to Lisbon. Like Britain, Portugal had abolished slavery at home but not in its colonies. Britain had at least abolished the slave trade, which Portugal and many other countries had not yet done. But cousins of Josefina's might well still be enslaved in plantations in the West Indies, and the owners of those plantations might be among those applauding Josefina at Vauxhall.
Josefina's gaze moved over Harry's face. "This isn't a social visit, is it?"
"Didn't you see me with a large party enjoying ourselves?"
"Yes, it looked like excellent cover."
He laughed. "I only hope others are easier to deceive than you."
"Perhaps others don't know you well enough to know what to look for." She took his hand and drew him over to a flowered chintz settee draped with a black-fringed Spanish shawl. Bits of costume hung from clothesline strung across the ceiling, musical scores were stacked amid the pots of cosmetics on her dressing table, on the arms of the settee and the low table before it, and in a basket on the floor, but overall the room was very tidy, as he remembered Josefina's apartments always being. Quite different from the elegant chaos of Manon Caret's dressing room, the only other theatrical dressing room he was really familiar with.
"I have half an hour until I'm on again," Josefina said. "I have a bottle of wine about somewhere. Or I can make tea or coffee?"
"Thank you, no." Harry sank onto the settee beside her. "It's good to see you. If—" He broke off as his gaze fell on a silver rattle half hidden by a sheet of music.
Josefina smiled. "I have a little boy. One last month. His father plays the violin in the orchestra and composes songs for me. And yes, we're married. Over a year before Miguel was born. Vauxhall doesn't like to publicize it, as being a wife and mother apparently makes me appear less of a temptress. I told Lucian—my husband—that I don't see why I can't be both."
"My felicitations," Harry said. "Being a parent is a wonderful thing."
A smile broke across her face, the smile of one still discovering the wonder of her child. "Yes, it is." She smoothed the folds of dressing gown. "I should have written. When I married Lucian, when Miguel was born. But Vauxhall didn't like me to make much of it, as I said—"
"I should have been in closer touch. Should have come to see you sooner. I was in Italy for much of last year, but that's no excuse for being out of touch."
Josefina shrugged with the matter-of-fact insouciance he remembered well. "It's all right. We're all making new lives for ourselves, in different ways. We can't dwell in the past."
"No, but we can hold on to our friends from it."
She touched his hand. "We'll always be friends. But I imagine your years in the Peninsula aren't a time you like to be reminded of."
"Oddly enough, I find I'm more and more comfortable with the memories the happier I am with my life in the present. I'd like you to meet Cordy and our daughters and our other friends. I'd like to meet your husband and son and have Miguel play with Livia and Drusilla. I'm glad circumstances have brought us back together. But you're right, this isn't purely a social visit. I have news of Annabel. Concerning news." He told her about the attack on Annabel Larimer. Quickly, because there was no other way to do it.
Josefina went pale. "Madre de Deus."
"And yet, you don't look entirely shocked." Harry had watched her closely as he told the story.
Josefina fingered the silk tie at the neck of her dressing gown. "I saw Senhora Larimer a fortnight ago."
"Yes, she told me she'd come to see you. To ask who knew about her work in the Peninsula?"
"No. That is, we did talk about that, but that wasn't why she came to see me. And I was the one who sent for her."
Harry sat forwards. "Go on."
Josefina spread her hands over her lap. "I don't know if I ever told you about the necklace? The one Senhor Martinez gave to her the night he was killed?"
"Red and gold glass beads in a black lacquer box." Harry could picture it clearly. "She showed it to me that night. There wasn't anything remarkable about it. I asked her if she wanted me to get rid of it, but she said she'd see to it."
"She brought it home with her," Josefina said. "She told me perhaps it was foolish, but she couldn't bear to throw away a dead man's last gift. She gave it to me and told me to do what I liked with it." Josefina rubbed her arms. "I never liked to wear it, but I didn't feel right throwing it away either. And I was practical enough to know if I were ever in dire straits I could sell it. So I kept it packed away. I hadn't thought of it in years. Then last month we—Lucian and Miguel and me and my parents—moved from our lodgings to a small house. Vauxhall's quite happy with how things are going and they increased my salary. I was unpacking a box I hadn't opened since we left Lisbon, and I found the necklace, still in its black lacquer box. I was staring at it, trying to think what to do with it, when Miguel toddled over and picked it up. I tried to take it back and he tugged, the way children do, and it went crashing to the floor. It broke apart. That was when I saw there was a paper hidden inside the frame."
Harry swore. "I should have broken the damn thing apart myself the night Martinez died."
"There was no reason to think he'd have been giving a secret message to Senhora Larimer. And the box had been pulled apart and glued back together. It was very well concealed."
Harry kept his gaze steady on Josefina's face. "Did you read it?"
"I looked at it." Her own gaze was equally steady. "It was in code. I could have tried to break the code. But it wasn't intended for me. So I sent for Senhora Larimer."
"How did she react?"
"She was shocked. Well, if she had any reason to think anything was hidden in the box, she wouldn't have given it to me. She said something about the past always surprising one. She took the paper with her, but she left the box and the necklace with me. I assume she decoded it, but that would have been after she left."
"Did she give you any hint of what she thought the paper might contain?"
Josefina shook her head. "But then, Senhora Larimer was always like that. She was a kind mistress. Very considerate. She shared her work for you with me without hesitation. But there were other things she held close. In some ways, she treated me less like a maid than many mistresses. But in other ways, I knew her less well than many other maids I know knew the ladies who employed them." She hunched her shoulders, as she might have against the wind in the Spanish mountains. "I was curious, of course, but I had no notion she was in danger of being attacked. I had thought the past was behind us."
"The past is rarely behind, for an agent. But I confess I too thought Annabel had more or less escaped it."
Josefina leaned forwards to tidy the stack of musical scores. "Her life seemed quieter after she stopped working for you. In truth, that's why I left her service. After a taste of a life of intrigue, I couldn't bear to go back to being just a lady’s maid. When I told her that, she said she quite understood. She confessed she felt the quiet herself. But she said she had to do what was best for her children and that meant making a life with her husband."
"Who do you think killed Martinez?" Harry asked.
"I told you at the time I had no idea."
"And with six years to reflect?"
"I'm sure Senhora Larimer didn't."
"Because you trust her?"
"Yes. No, I know you'll tell me trusting is too simple." Josefina tucked the edges of the scores smooth and sat back, hands folded in her lap. "I can't swear Senhora Larimer wasn't capable of killing. But I am sure she'd have felt the guilt of it afterwards. However justified she might see it, even if she could call it self-defense. She might not have shared things with me, but one can't keep that sort of guilt from the person who does one's hair and dresses and undresses one. I'd have noticed something even if I hadn't known the reason. She was troubled after Senhor Martinez's death. But not by guilt."
Harry nodded. "You're right, I do think trusting is too simple. But your judgment is very astute. So, if not Annabel, then who?"
Josefina looked down at her locked fingers. "Senhor Larimer wasn't the sort to put up with his wife being unfaithful. If he'd known."
"Did he know?"
Her brows drew together again. "In some ways, after Senhor Martinez was killed, things were easier between them. Perhaps because Senhora Larimer didn't resent his behavior as much, with her own to reflect on. She seemed to have lost her illusions, but at the same time to be determined to make it work. It's not the marriage I'd want." She touched her wedding band. "I know that more now I'm married myself. But it worked, after a fashion. Yet, sometimes I'd catch him looking at her—not with anger, but as though she wasn't the person he'd thought she was. I don't know that he knew about Senhor Martinez, but I think he at least knew something. Knew that their marriage wasn't the same."
"Do you think he killed Martinez?"
Josefina drew in and released her breath. "Senhor Larimer had secrets. Well, obviously, he had affairs he was attempting to keep secret from his wife. I can't precisely say I saw guilt in him. But if he'd killed his wife's lover, I'm not sure he would have felt guilty. Especially if he'd learned the lover was also spying for the French. And I'm not sure I could read him as well as I could read Senhora Larimer."
"You're a very astute judge of people, Josefina. It's part of what made you such a good agent."
"It's rather essential for a lady’s maid, as well."
"Did Annabel ever say who she thought killed Martinez?"
"No. She was white-faced when she came home that night. She said the French must have learned he was betraying them. But I had the oddest sense she wasn't entirely sure of that. That there was more she wasn't telling me."
Harry nodded. He too had had the sense there were things Annabel was holding back about Diego Martinez's death. "Did Annabel ever mention the Goshawk?"
Josefina started. "What does the Goshawk have to do with this?" And yet she sounded more surprised that Harry knew to ask about the Goshawk than surprised that the Goshawk might be connected to Annabel.
"I'm not sure, but some people believe Annabel knew his identity. Did she talk about the Goshawk to you?"
"Not precisely. But once, at a party, I heard people speculating about the Goshawk and Senhora Larimer got the oddest look on her face. For a moment, I was sure she was hiding a secret. Then that night, when I was brushing her hair, she said it was odd all the fuss people made about 'sad Tom.' I asked whom she meant, and she just shook her head and said she'd said too much. I've always been sure she was talking about the Goshawk."
"Who do you think 'sad Tom' could have been?"
"I don't know. I wracked my brain going over every gentleman I can think of named Tom or Thomas or Tomás. I think Major Clifton's given name was Thomas but I couldn't imagine him as the Goshawk."
Nor could Harry, picturing the corpulent Major Clifton, who was devoted to port and cards and did his best not to stir from Lisbon. "Even if his entire persona was a façade, I don't think he was away enough."
"Yes, precisely. And the Gordons had a coachman named Tomás, but he wasn't out of Lisbon enough either. Of course, I didn't know the given names of a number of gentlemen who frequented the house. But I couldn't think of anyone who made sense. I almost asked her that night, but I couldn't quite." Josefina shook her head. "It's odd, I think I'd have asked you, for all I worked for you as well."
"I'd say you worked with me," Harry said. "There are different types of employment."
Josefina met his gaze. "I told you Senhora Larimer treated me more like a friend than other ladies I know did their maids. But I wouldn't precisely say we were friends. Not then. It was different with you. Not that I'd say we were friends—"
"No?" Harry sat back on the settee. "I would. Not that I'd precisely have admitted to having friends at the time. But I confided in you as much as anyone. I trusted you as much as anyone."
"You didn't see me as different. That is, of course we were different—"
"You were a much nicer person than I was."
Josefina shook her head. "You always say that sort of thing. The truth is, you were one of the kindest people I'd ever met. Not the least because you tried to hide the kindness." She frowned again. "Senhora Larimer didn't tell me about Senhor Martinez. Not at first. Before she was spying."
"But you guessed."
"I'd seen them together. I knew she'd come in late or slip out of the house. She was happier, more excited. More restless too, in a sort of giddy way. And then, one night, she smashed a vase and cut her hand. That must have been when she learned he was working for the French. I remember bandaging her hand and her telling me it was a dangerous thing to trust anyone. That you could never be sure of a person's motives. It was after she went to work for you that she took me into her confidence. She said she'd need my help, and that she suspected I already knew about Senhor Martinez. And then, oddly, she seemed to come to life in a very different way. And she was less restless."
Harry nodded. "She was a natural agent. As were you. Did she ever talk about her family?"
"She'd share news from her sister. She said that as a girl she couldn't wait to get away from Shropshire, but now she rather missed it and wondered if her sister was happier in her vicarage than she herself was living abroad. And I remember when she got the news that her father had died. She said 'He'll always be my father.' I said 'Yes, you'll always have him with you.' And she said, 'Quite,' in a way that made me think she'd actually been talking about something else."
All of which fit with what Mélanie had told him about Violet Durbridge's account of her sister's parentage. "Was there anyone else she wrote to?" Harry asked. "Besides her family?"
"A few friends, I think. People she'd grown up with. Officers' wives who had gone back to Britain. Senhor Larimer's family. She didn't seem particularly close to them, but she'd send news of the children."
Harry nodded. "We found a love letter hidden in a picture. I don't think it was from her husband or from Martinez. Do you know who it could be from?"
He was prepared for denial—there were a number of years Josefina hadn't worked for Annabel, so even if she were willing to share her former mistress's secrets, she might not know—but Josefina hesitated, not with uncertainty but with consideration. "I can't be sure. She held things close, as I said. When I was her lady’s maid, I never suspected anything before Senhor Martinez. But after I stopped working for her, I'd come back to see her and the children when I was in Lisbon. She liked to hear about my work for you. She knew there were details I couldn't share, but she said she could live through my adventures—to which I replied, a lot of those adventures were cooling my heels in a wine cave or a dusty tavern waiting to deliver a message, but that's another story. In any case, a few months after Senhor Martinez was killed, I found her mood remarkably changed. Her smile was brighter. Her eyes more brilliant. She laughed more. Not even the way she had during the beginning of the affair with Martinez. That seemed more a reckless gamble. This time she seemed—happy. She seemed like someone in love." Josefina touched her wedding band again. "I didn't understand love then as well as I do now, but I could see it."
"Do you know with whom?"
"She didn't tell me. And I didn't ask. We were friends, after a fashion, by then—more so than when I'd been her maid—but not friends who ask those sorts of questions. But we were walking in the plaza one afternoon with the children and a gentleman stopped to speak with us. He didn't say a great deal. No more than many other gentlemen might. He was very careful not to so much as touch her hand or brush against her skirts. Almost too careful. But there was something in the way he looked at her and the way she looked at him. I was quite sure he was the reason she'd been looking so happy."
"Was he a soldier?" Harry asked.
"Not an English soldier. He was Spanish."
"Do you know his name?"
"Oh, yes," Josefina said. "O'Roarke. Raimundo O'Roarke."