Sophia James - A Proposition For The Comte

‘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?’