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even when they were his opponents. “He knows what it is—and what it costs—to deceive people."
    Hortense stared at her as though she'd claimed Charles Fraser was possessed of magical powers. "I can scarcely imagine what my husband would do in such a situation. He’d go into a rage—"
    "I didn't say Charles wasn't furious.” The sound of Charles's fist smashing through the wall of their salon echoed in Mélanie's head. "At first I couldn't imagine we'd ever be able to carry on a civil conversation, let alone maintain any semblance of a marriage. Even now— It isn't easy for him. It's never going to be easy."
    "Mélanie—"
    "I told Charles I stopped spying after Waterloo. Which is the truth. And I promised him I'd indulge in no more intrigues behind his back. Charles has a seat in Parliament. We have two children. We’ve made a life here. If the truth about my past came to light, he could be branded a traitor.”
    And yet she could not deny the pull of that older loyalty, the plea in her friend's eyes, so like her mother's. A good spy shouldn’t care about anyone. Did any agent really manage that? She had broken the rule more times than she could count.
    Hortense leaned forward. "I know how much I’m asking of you. But I don’t have anyone else to turn to.“
    Mélanie forced herself to look straight into her friend’s familiar, pleading gaze. “I can’t help you, Hortense. Not this time."
    “Only listen. Two months ago—"
    But before she could say more, a scream of horror cut the night air.
     

Chapter 3
    I hear that Charles de Flahaut is at Woburn. Poor Madame de St. Leu [Hortense Bonaparte] will sing all the romances about eternal constancy with a heavy heart, but a French ex-queen can never be long without consolation.
Harriet Granville to her sister Georgiana Morpeth
October, 1815
     
    Mélanie ran down the stone steps of the temple. She could see a man and a woman huddled together by the fountain across the garden. She pushed Hortense toward the steps to the terrace. “Go. Before you’re discovered.”
    Hortense hesitated a moment, then ran to the steps. Mélanie ran in the opposite direction, toward couple by the fountain. She recognized the Titania costume and dark hair of the woman. It was Lucinda, Isobel Lydgate’s young sister.
    “Lucy? Are you all right?” Mélanie called.
    “Ye— No.” Lucinda’s voice was rough and terrified. “I think he’s dead.”
    “He” was obviously not the man beside her, who was also staring transfixed at the fountain. Mélanie ran up to them and dropped an arm round Lucinda’s shoulders.
    The dark figure of a man floated on the shallow pool, beneath the bronze nymphs who shot water into the air from the seashells held in their outstretched hands. For a moment Mélanie thought he had drunk too much and been sick and fallen into the fountain, for an oily scum filmed the water about him. Then the wind ruffled the clouds over the moon, and she saw that the oily scum was crimson.
    Nausea rose up in her throat. No matter how many times she looked on death, on a smoke-blackened battlefield or a tiled floor or the mildewed cobblestones of an alley or monogrammed sheets in a silk-draped bed, the absence of life never lost its gut punch.
    He was floating on his stomach. Mélanie reached into the water and touched her fingers to his throat. Cold, clammy skin and no hint of a pulse. “Yes, he does seem to be dead,” she said, in as tranquil a voice as she could muster. She turned to the man beside Lucinda. He was costumed as Robin Hood. Toby Alcott, she realized, Lord Winterton’s younger son. She’d noticed Lucy and him flirting earlier in the evening. “Mr. Alcott? Could you help me turn him over?”
    Toby Alcott’s gaze started in his green-tinged face. “What? I— Oh, yes. Of course, Mrs. Fraser.”
    The man in the fountain wore a heavy red velvet cloak, now sodden with water. He was a lifeless, unresisting weight as they turned him on his back, revealing