Teresa Grant (33 page)
Authors: Imperial Scandal
“Which doesn’t make it any less real.”
“Lowering to realize I’m just like everyone else. I’ve always prided myself on being an original.”
“War provides a sad amount of commonality.”
The door opened to admit Aline, who came into the room with a determined step. “Valentin took my bags up. I told him there was no need to bother you. The streets were so quiet on the way here. Now the bugles and fifes and marching have stopped I could almost imagine it was a hideous nightmare. If Brussels weren’t so eerily empty.” She dropped down on the sofa and reached for the coffeepot. “I don’t think I slept a wink.”
“Nor did I.” Cordelia moved to the sofa. “Do pour me out a cup as well.”
Aline filled three cups, letting loose the rich aroma of the coffee. “The Comtesse de Ribaucourt is organizing ladies to prepare lint this afternoon. I thought it might be good to feel one was doing something useful.”
“I never saw myself as the lint-scraping sort,” Cordelia said, “but I quite agree.”
Aline gulped down a sip of coffee. “People keep saying one can’t admit the possibility of defeat. But whichever way the battle goes, there are going to be wounded.”
Suzanne reached for her own coffee and took a fortifying sip. That was what she had told herself for years. People died in war. Different people might die because of her actions, but people would die regardless.
“Suzanne?” Aline said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, love. Just a bit—”
“Overwhelmed,” Cordelia concluded for her. “Commonplace or not, it’s overwhelming.”
“I wish I’d paid more attention when Geoff was patching people up. At the moment those skills seem infinitely more useful than solving quadratic equations.” Aline pushed herself to her feet. “Damn. I did so want to avoid this.”
“War?” Cordelia asked.
“Caring about people.” Aline strode to the window and stood staring out at the garden. “Oh, I’ve always cared about my family in the detached way our family does. But for years I thought I was above personal relationships. Or not worthy of them. Or something. Numbers always seemed so much safer. It wasn’t until last night I realized how very right I was.”
“Would you go back?” Cordelia asked. “Would you change any of it if you could?”
Aline turned round and shook her head at once. “Of course not.” Her hand went to her stomach. “I can’t imagine my life without Geoff. Or the baby, even though the baby still scarcely seems real half the time.”
Cordelia nodded and took a sip of coffee. “If you wouldn’t change anything, then you’re more fortunate than most. How soon can we start scraping lint?”
Georgiana Lennox looked up from a length of linen fixed to a board in her lap. “The bugles and drums and everything made it hard to sleep. Not that I could have in any case. But now the quiet is almost worse. At least when we can hear we have some sense of what’s going on.”
“Whereas the quiet encourages our worst imaginings,” Cordelia said.
“Precisely.” Georgiana scraped her knife over the linen. “Harriet Somerset has gone to Antwerp. So has Lady De Lancey. She said Sir William insisted. I suppose as quartermaster general he’s all too well aware of what could go wrong. Papa has post-horses in our stable. Wellington promised to send word if it’s necessary to leave. Of course publicly he can’t admit the possibility, but privately he has to be practical.”
“Even in the worst-case scenario,” Suzanne said, “it would take the French a day or so to reach Brussels.” How odd she was calling that the worst-case scenario.
Georgiana nodded with determination. “If only—”
She broke off as the door of the salon opened to admit Lady Frances Webster.
“Lady Frances!” exclaimed the younger Miss Ord. “Surely you’ve had news.”
“I can’t imagine why you would think so,” Lady Frances said with a smile. She was known to be at the least the Duke of Wellington’s flirt, possibly more.
Miss Ord closed her mouth in confusion. Her sister touched her arm.
Lady Frances might not have Cordelia’s or Caroline Lamb’s reputation, but she was no stranger to scandal. Suzanne had heard from more than one person about Frances Webster’s flirtation with Lord Byron and that the poet had actually given her a lock of his hair. With the aplomb of one used to navigating difficult social waters, Lady Frances moved away from those ladies more likely to gossip and sank down in a chair by Suzanne, Aline, Cordelia, and Georgiana, settling her skirts with care. She was seven months pregnant, though that had done nothing to reduce the gossip. “In truth the duke has promised to send word if necessary,” she said, “as I’m sure he has to your family, Georgy. But so far I’ve heard nothing. Which I take as a good sign.” She reached for a length of linen. “The duke would approve that none of you has left.”
“Personally I find the French less daunting than being stuck on the road to Antwerp,” Aline said. “Though perhaps you’d best not repeat that to the duke.”
Lady Frances gave one of her lovely, artless smiles. “Nearly everyone who’s left in Brussels seems to be here,” she said, scanning the room.
It was of course an exaggeration, but in Lady Frances and Georgiana’s world—not to mention Cordelia’s and Aline’s and Malcolm’s—“everyone” had a different meaning.
Lady Frances’s gaze fell upon Violet and Jane Chase, sharing a settee across the room. “I remember Mrs. Chase saying good-bye to her husband at your mother’s ball, Georgy. Very affecting. They’re old friends of your family, I believe, Lady Cordelia?”
“We all grew up together in Derbyshire.”
“I thought I remembered that. Though I didn’t get the impression Mrs. Chase and your late sister were the best of friends.”
Cordelia’s fingers jerked on her knife, cutting through the linen she was scraping. “What makes you think that, Lady Frances?”
“I heard them quarreling at Stuart’s ball. I came round a bend in the passage, and they went quiet all of a sudden, but it was clear it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.”
Aline cast a sharp look between Cordelia and Suzanne.
“Did you hear anything to indicate what they were quarreling about?” Suzanne asked.
Lady Frances’s delicate brows drew together. “It sounded as though Julia was saying something about ‘not worth throwing your life away.’ Of course I felt hopelessly awkward and was trying to pretend I hadn’t heard anything at all. It was the oddest thing, though.”
“What?” Cordelia said in a tight voice.
Lady Frances tucked a pale blond ringlet behind her ear. “Lady Julia had a red mark on her face. I had the distinct suspicion that Mrs. Chase had actually struck her.” Lady Frances looked up and met Cordelia’s tense gaze. “Oh, dear. That would have been just before your poor sister was killed. But surely you can’t think—No, it’s too absurd. Mrs. Chase couldn’t possibly have anything to do with that horrid business.”
“Of course not,” Cordelia said. “Do you have any more linen, Aline?”
37
C
ordelia pulled the door of the nursery to with more force than was necessary. She and Suzanne had looked in on the children upon their return from the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s. “Julia seems to have quarreled with everyone the night she was killed.”
ordelia pulled the door of the nursery to with more force than was necessary. She and Suzanne had looked in on the children upon their return from the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s. “Julia seems to have quarreled with everyone the night she was killed.”
“One can certainly imagine her quarreling with Jane Chase,” Suzanne said. “And I can see Mrs. Chase being reluctant to tell us. Save that—”
“Jane’s confided so much else to us,” Cordelia said. “Including her suspicions that Tony was behind Julia’s death. What was so terrible about her quarrel with Julia that made it worse than that?”
“Her quarrel with Julia could cast suspicion on her rather than her husband,” Suzanne said.
Cordelia drew a sharp breath. “Why on earth would Julia have been telling Jane not to throw her life away? Could Jane have been contemplating leaving Tony? In that case—”
She broke off at the sound of carriage wheels rattling to a stop directly below. They ran to the window to see that a post chaise had pulled up before the house.
“That must be the only carriage to come
into
Brussels today,” Cordelia said.
into
Brussels today,” Cordelia said.
The door opened before the coachman had let down the steps. A tall man with strongly marked features and smooth, dark uncovered hair sprang down, quickly followed by a slightly less tall man with pale skin and wavy brown hair showing beneath the curling brim of a beaver hat.
“Good heavens,” Suzanne said. She spun round, pausing to scoop up Colin, who had run out of the nursery and was tugging at her skirts, and hurried down the stairs and across the hall to the front door. She pushed it open, ignoring Valentin, to find David Mallinson, Viscount Worsley, and Simon Tanner on the front steps.
“Suzie.” A grin broke across Simon’s angular face. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. You see, David, I told you she wouldn’t have turned craven and fled to Antwerp.”
Suzanne nearly laughed from the sheer relief of seeing familiar, friendly faces. Still holding Colin, she leaned forward to hug first Simon, then David.
Colin surveyed them with a serious gaze.
“Good day, young chap,” Simon said. “I don’t suppose you remember us. It’s been nearly a year.”
“Your uncle Simon and your uncle David,” Suzanne said. “Two of Daddy’s best and oldest friends.”
Colin shook hands solemnly.
“David! Simon!” Aline came running down the hall like the schoolgirl she had been not so very long ago and hugged both men.
“Mrs. Blackwell.” David spun her round. “I haven’t seen you since you’ve become a married woman.”
“I’m precisely the same. Save that I’m going to have a baby.”
“And this is Lady Cordelia Davenport.” Suzanne turned to Cordelia, who had followed her down the stairs. “She and her daughter are staying with us, as is Aline.”
“David and I’ve known each other since we were in the nursery,” Cordelia said, shaking David’s hand. “Mr. Tanner, we met once at Carfax Court years ago. I’ve enjoyed many of your plays.”
Simon grinned. “You’re a diplomat, Lady Cordelia.”
“And you and David are either exceedingly brave or exceedingly foolhardy to be traveling into Brussels today of all days.”
“As it happens my father sent us,” David said. “With messages for Malcolm.”
David’s father was Lord Carfax, unofficial head of British intelligence. It wasn’t unusual for him to send messages to Malcolm, but David was an unusual choice of messenger. “I’m afraid Malcolm is off on an errand,” Suzanne said.
“Leaving you alone?” David’s brows rose.
“Not for the first or last time. And it’s not as though there’s a great deal he could do if the French do come marching through.” A cannonade rumbled through the air to punctuate her words. “Miles off,” she said in a brisk voice. “Let’s get your bags unloaded and then come into the salon for some refreshment.”
“The line of carriages going out of Brussels was worse than the crush outside a Mayfair ball,” Simon said a quarter hour later, relaxing into a corner of one of the sofas with a glass of sherry. “Of course we galloped briskly through, even if we did get some odd looks at some of the posting houses. Not to mention stories to rival any fiction I could devise. According to some accounts the French were already in Brussels.”
David leaned forward, face drawn. “Have you had any news?”
“Not since last night.” Suzanne quickly brought the two men up to date on what they knew, with Cordelia and Aline filling in bits and pieces.
“Nothing to do but wait,” Aline concluded.
“Damnable.” Simon took a quick sip of sherry. “Whatever I thought of the war in the first place.”
Cordelia cast a quick glance at him.
“Some of us argued strenuously that there were other ways to deal with Bonaparte,” he said. “David did so quite eloquently in the House, to his father’s horror.”
David shook his head. “Even the prime minister had his doubts at first. But that’s all changed.”
“I rather think my husband might agree with you about there being other ways,” Cordelia said. “But nobody asked him, as he’d be quick to point out.”
“It’s done now,” David said. “We can but hope for victory.”
Suzanne took a sip of sherry.
Another cannonade shook the windows of the salon. Aline flinched. Cordelia squeezed her hand.
“I’m so sorry about your sister, Cordelia,” David said.
“You know?” Cordelia’s sherry glass tilted in her fingers.
David exchanged a glance with Simon. “We stopped at an inn in Ghent to change horses and learned of it from a party of British who had fled Brussels. I was never more shocked. I still remember Julia playing with Amelia.”
A smile shot across Cordelia’s face, then faded. “Damnable to remember and think of what happened to them both.”
Suzanne felt as though she’d stumbled into a play in the midst of the third act. A not unfamiliar sensation with her husband’s friends. She might only have known Cordelia for two days, but of course Cordelia and David and Malcolm had all grown up in the small, interconnected world of the British ton.
“Amelia Beckwith was my father’s ward,” David said in response to the confusion in her gaze. “The daughter of an army friend. Father was a soldier before he succeeded to the earldom.”
Suzanne nodded. It was, she knew, how Lord Carfax had come to work in intelligence. As a younger son he’d gone into the army. He’d kept his unofficial position as head of British intelligence operations after he succeeded to the earldom when his nephew and elder brother died in quick succession.
“Amelia’s father was killed in India in 1805,” David said. “Her mother had died in childbirth, so Father became her guardian. She came to live with us when she was twelve.”
“She was just Julia’s age,” Cordelia said. “They met that summer at a party the Duchess of Devonshire gave at Chatsworth for the younger set.”
“I think Amy liked having a friend who was outside our family,” David said. “She felt the contrast of her position with my sisters’.”
“She wasn’t from a wellborn family?” Suzanne asked.
David flushed. Talking about social position discomfited him. “Not particularly.”
“More to the point she didn’t have any dowry to speak of,” Simon said, his voice unusually grim.
“Yes,” David said. “It made marriage more challenging for her.”
Cordelia took a sip of sherry. “She never lacked for dancing partners, but marriage proposals were more problematic. A damnable predicament. Of course Julia and I didn’t have any dowry to speak of, either, but at least we had the Brooke name.”
“Bel never mentioned her.” Suzanne had become good friends with David’s sister Isobel when she and Malcolm had visited Britain the previous summer.
“No. We tend not to. It’s not a happy story.” David stared into his sherry glass as though looking into unwelcome memories. “Amelia drowned in the lake at Carfax Court four and a half years ago. She was seventeen.” He hesitated, as though perhaps about to say more, but bit back whatever it was.
“I remember how devastated Julia was,” Cordelia said. “One doesn’t expect to lose one’s friends at seventeen.” She drew a sharp breath.
Aline met her gaze. “Unless they’re marching off to battle.”
Blanca did up the last string on Suzanne’s gown. “I never can get used to dressing for dinner with the world tumbling to pieces about us.”
“It’s the British stiff upper lip.” Suzanne smoothed her tulle-edged rose sarcenet skirt. She remembered putting on silk and pearls and sitting down to dinner with Wellington on the eve of the battle of Toulouse.
“Are you all right?” Blanca asked.
Suzanne turned round and smiled into her friend’s concerned gaze. “As right as I can be.”
“If we lose—”
“Who do you mean by ‘we’?”
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t necessarily trying to be funny.”
Blanca rubbed her arms. “Addison’s worried. He actually admitted it to me, which he never does. All I could think to do was put my arms round him. I was nearly sick all over his coat.”
Suzanne took Blanca’s hand and squeezed it, though her own stomach was twisted into knots. “We’ll get through this.”
“You always say that.”
“We always do.”
Blanca shook her head. “Mr. Rannoch’s off in the midst of it, and you know—”
Suzanne drew a sharp breath. Beneath the ruching on her bodice and the busk of her stays, guilt sliced into her chest. “I know Malcolm is doing what he considers his duty. And I know I’m doing the same. And that we could neither of us live with ourselves if we did anything different.”
She pulled on her gloves, gave Blanca a quick hug, and made her way downstairs to the salon. The swish of beaded satin greeted her. Cordelia was pacing the length of the room.
“Sorry.” She turned to Suzanne with a smile. “I can’t seem to sit still.”
Suzanne closed the door. “I know the feeling.”
“Thank God we have David and Mr. Tanner to provide some distraction. I can see why Mr. Rannoch prizes them both as friends.”
Suzanne perched on the curved arm of one of the sofas. Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to sit properly. “Malcolm and David met at Harrow, and then they met Simon at Oxford. They were all in a production of
Henry IV Part I.
As Malcolm tells it they used to sit about in coffeehouses giving speeches on the ills of the world and how to correct them.”
Henry IV Part I.
As Malcolm tells it they used to sit about in coffeehouses giving speeches on the ills of the world and how to correct them.”
“I wish I could have heard them.”
“So do I.”
Cordelia perched on the other arm of the sofa. “David and Mr. Tanner share rooms?”
“In the Albany.”
Cordelia nodded and didn’t say more. It wasn’t unusual for two young bachelors to share lodgings, but from the look on Cordelia’s face Suzanne suspected she understood that David and Simon’s relationship was more complicated. They were, in fact, more truly intimate than most married couples Suzanne knew. Arguably more so than she and Malcolm. For one thing, they had chosen to share their lives rather than being thrown together by circumstances and a war. And then there was the fact that neither was spying on the other. They had a comfortably settled relationship, overshadowed, Suzanne knew, by the fact that as heir to an earldom David was expected to marry and produce a son.
“I envy them,” Cordelia said.
“Envy?”
“They’re so wonderfully at ease in each other’s presence.” Cordelia plucked at the moss green satin of her skirt. “I can’t imagine feeling so sure of another person.”
David and Simon came into the room a few moments later, and though their shoulders didn’t even brush and they moved at once to opposite ends of the room, Suzanne had to agree with Cordelia’s assessment. The intimacy between them was as tangible as the warmth of the candles.
Aline followed them, tugging at her primrose satin sash. They moved into the dining room and made a strained pretense of conversation through dinner. At length Cordelia tossed down the last of her wine and pushed back her chair. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to walk on the ramparts. Anyone care to come?”
In the end, they all did. A welcome breeze stirred the air on Brussels’s stone ramparts. The cannonade was louder here, breaking the air like thunderclaps, but in a way it was easier. “It feels as though we’re closer to it,” Aline said as a burst of sound died in the distance. “And that makes it seem as though we can make a difference. Nonsensical.”
Others had left their homes to walk the ramparts in the warm night air. They stopped several times to exchange greetings with acquaintances or to share news or the lack of it. Suzanne caught sight of a familiar figure gripping the moss-covered stone wall up ahead, bareheaded, clutching a shawl over a gauzy white gown.
“Mademoiselle Garnier,” she called.
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