A Proposition For The Comte

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.’