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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?’
