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Authors: Imperial Scandal

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6
“
C
ordelia. What in God’s name are you doing here?”
Cordelia Davenport turned from her conversation with Caro and Suzanne Rannoch to see a tall, broad-shouldered man with close-cropped golden-brown hair and an all-too-familiar smile striding along the edge of the dance floor.
“Major Chase.” Cordelia extended her hand. “Why shouldn’t I come to Brussels? All the world seems to have flocked here. I’m not usually so behind the fashion.”
George brushed his lips over her hand, a bit stiffly. He met her gaze as he straightened up. “For God’s sake, Cordy, it’s dangerous.”
“I doubt Wellington would care to hear you say so. You know Lady Caroline, of course,” Cordelia said, grateful for the mask of social convention. “Have you met Mrs. Rannoch? Her husband is on Stuart’s staff.”
George nodded at the other two ladies with one of his quick, disarming smiles. “Forgive my informality. Cord—Lady Cordelia and I have known each other since we were children. I’m in the habit of worrying about her.”
“A fatal mistake, Major Chase,” Caro said. “Cordelia could look after herself at the age of six, and nothing puts her in such a temper as being fussed over.”
George grinned. “With Cordy I’ve always been slow to learn my lessons.” The look he turned to Cordelia was a mix of ruefulness and regret. It reminded her of the way he’d used to turn his head to meet her gaze one last time before he stepped into the carriage to return to Eton or Oxford, knowing it would be many months before they met again. Against all instincts to the contrary, her throat went tight.
George turned to Suzanne Rannoch. “I knew your husband a bit as a boy when he used to visit the Mallinsons at Carfax Court in Derbyshire. Always thought he’d do something remarkable.”
“He was frighteningly clever,” Cordelia said, recalling the tall, gangly boy with intent eyes and a quick wit. “And inclined to spend all his time in the library.”
Suzanne Rannoch smiled. “Some things don’t change.”
“I hear Wellington claims Rannoch’s the civilian he could least do without,” George said.
“My husband would say one can’t believe everything one hears in Brussels these days.”
“You seem very sanguine, Mrs. Rannoch.”
“As a diplomat’s wife, one of my first duties is to calm the panic.”
“And yet”—George cast a glance at the couples circling the floor—“I fear life in Brussels is not the picnic it appears.”
Cordelia unfurled her fan, willing her fingers to hold steady against the ebony sticks. “Have you sent your own wife back to England?”
She heard George suck in his breath. He looked directly into her eyes, his own shadowed with ... guilt? Apology? “No, Annabel’s somewhere in the ballroom as it happens. I’m stationed at Ninove, on Uxbridge’s staff, but we’ve taken a house in Brussels. We talked about Annabel taking the children back to England, but we—She felt it would be harder to be separated at such a time.”
“How sweet.” Cordelia took a sip of champagne and then cursed herself. She was being spiteful and neither George nor Annabel deserved that.
“It’s different for Annabel,” George said quickly. “She’s a soldier’s wife—”
“So am I if it comes to that. I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I came to Brussels to see Harry?”
The look on George’s face might have been comical had she been able to muster up anything remotely approaching laughter. “I’m sorry, Cordy,” he said. “I should have realized—”
“Oh, don’t look so apologetic, George. Harry isn’t even in Brussels as it happens. I came here to see Julia, only I can’t seem to find her anywhere in the ballroom or salons. Have you seen her?”
George frowned. “Not since supper, I think. But she’s bound to turn up before long. Julia’s not the sort to fade into the woodwork. She’ll be glad to see you.”
“I hope so,” Cordelia said, for once speaking the unvarnished truth.
George touched her arm. “Don’t be silly, Cordy. Whatever else, Julia will always be your sister. Ladies.”
George inclined his head to Caro and Suzanne Rannoch and walked off along the edge of the dance floor.
Cordelia felt Caro’s concerned gaze on her and Suzanne Rannoch’s appraising one. How much of the story had Mrs. Rannoch heard? Not that it mattered. She was damned in any case. “George and I’ve known each other since we were both in the nursery,” she said.
“Old friends know one in a way no one else quite does,” Suzanne Rannoch said. Cordelia could see her trying to piece together the past, yet there was a surprising lack of judgment in her gaze. Not what Cordelia was accustomed to from respectable happily married women.
“Damnable, isn’t it?” Cordelia said, throwing out the curse like a challenge. George was talking with two cavalry officers, head bent at a serious angle. A bit of a change. The old George would have been dancing with a pretty girl.
“Quite damnable.” With two words Suzanne Rannoch picked up the challenge and rendered it irrelevant.
Caro touched Cordelia’s arm. “Cordy—”
“It’s quite all right, Caro. If I couldn’t confront my past I’d never be able to go out in society.”
“Lady Cordelia?”
Cordelia turned to tell the footman she didn’t need any more champagne and saw that he was holding out a square of paper. “A gentleman asked me to give you this.”
Cordelia took the paper.
I’m sure you find this as awkward as I do, but I have important news to impart. I beg you will grant me a few moments of your time. I fear I’m not fit for the ballroom.
H.
She knew the precise, slanted handwriting at once. Speaking of confronting one’s past. She folded the paper between fingers that had gone nerveless. “Where is he?”
“In one of the salons.”
Cordelia turned to Caro and Mrs. Rannoch. “Pray excuse me. It seems I need speak with my husband.”
Caro made a quick move toward her. “Dearest—Do you want me to go with you?”
Cordelia drew together defenses carefully built over the past four years. “No, I shall be quite all right. I knew I might encounter Harry in Brussels after all. And I’ve just dealt with George. How bad can this be?”
The footman guided her along the edge of the ballroom and then held open a white-painted door. Cordelia stepped beneath the gilt pediment, feeling like Anne Boleyn on her way to her execution.
Oh, that was absurd. She wasn’t a fanciful girl anymore.
It was a small room hung with cream silk and lit by a candelabrum and a couple of additional tapers. She caught a whiff of brandy in the air, overlaying the wood polish and lemon oil.
Harry stood on the far side of the room. Though his face was in shadow, she’d have known the mocking angle of his shoulders anywhere. For a moment she was a girl of twenty, her eye caught by the broody-looking young man with disordered brown hair and intense blue eyes, hovering on the edge of the Devonshire House dance floor. A quadrille that had been all the rage that season had been playing, and she’d wanted to avoid dancing with Toby Somerton. How different would their lives have been, hers and Harry’s, if she hadn’t crossed the room to speak with him that night?
“Thank you for coming.” He stepped forward as she pushed the door to. The light from the candelabrum fell across him, and she saw that his face had hardened into sharper planes and angles and that lines she didn’t remember bracketed his mouth. He wore riding dress, not his uniform. His coat and breeches were splashed with mud and—Good God, was that blood?
“Harry—” She crossed to his side in three quick steps, her hand extended. “Are you hurt—”
“No.” His voice forestalled her before she could touch him. “The blood isn’t mine. It belonged to a poor French bastard who was selling us information and got caught. At least that’s what seems to have happened.”
She let her hand fall to her side and clasped her gloved fingers together. “That’s why you’re back in Brussels.”
“Yes, in a roundabout way. I’m sorry, I don’t suppose you expected to see me.”
“I knew it was a possibility. But then we’re foolish to think we can avoid each other forever. At some point you’ll come back to England.”
“I suppose anything’s possible.”
“Perhaps it’s easier to see each other first here rather than in London with the ton staring at us like fish in a bowl. Was that why you asked to see me?”
“No.” He ran a hand over his hair, an uncharacteristic gesture. “Cordelia—Perhaps you should sit down.” He reached out a hand as though to take her arm, then let it fall to his side and instead pulled a shield-back chair forward.
There was something in his eyes that was suspiciously like pity. She jerked away from it and from the proffered chair. “For God’s sake, Harry, don’t be silly. I’m not some missish girl. Whatever it is you have to tell me say it straight out.”
Harry swallowed. She saw that beneath the grime and blood and the layer of tan from years in the field his skin had gone pale. “I went to a château just outside Brussels this evening to warn Malcolm Rannoch and this agent of ours that our communications had been rumbled. We were caught in a French ambush. It was only afterwards that we realized someone else had been in the château and had died in the cross fire. A woman.” His gaze fastened on her face with a gentleness she had never thought to see again when he looked at her. “It was Julia. I’m sorry, Cordy.”
For a moment the room swam before her eyes, a dark void she could not look into. A roaring filled her ears and a silent scream echoed in her head.
Strong fingers closed on her arms. She clung to him, her fingers digging into the cloth of his coat. The smell of blood and stale sweat washed over her, and beneath it a whiff of spice, a scent she had not smelled in so long it was half forgot.
His quick intake of breath stirred her hair. Then he steered her to the side and pressed her into the chair. A moment later he put a glass into her hand and guided it to her lips. She choked down a sip of brandy.
“You’re sure it was Julia?” Her sister’s laughing voice echoed in her ears.
“I’m sure.” He knelt beside her, his hand hovering near the glass in her hand.
“You haven’t seen her in four years—”
“Cordy, I’m sure. I don’t forget so easily.”
She darted a quick look at him but saw none of the usual mockery in his expression, only a sympathy that cut her to the quick. “I’d been trying to find her ever since I got to the ball. If I’d arrived sooner—”
His hand closed over her own. No doubt to keep the glass from falling from her fingers. “Guilt will get you nowhere.”
“She left the ball and went—What in God’s name was she doing there?”
“I don’t know,” he said. But she saw the flicker in his eyes, a shutter drawn closed over whatever he knew.
“You mean you won’t tell me.”
“Yes, I thought there hadn’t been enough tragedy tonight, I’d throw in some lies to top it off.” Harry sat back on his heels. “Whatever Julia was doing at the château, it had nothing to do with Rannoch’s meeting with La Fleur, which was what took me there—”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have more information.” She jerked her hand away from his and took a quick swallow of brandy. It stung her throat. All her senses came flooding back. “She was there for a rendezvous, wasn’t she?”
“Cordelia—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, why else would a woman slip off in the midst of a ball and go to a lonely château? After all, I’m an expert in such matters. Don’t tell me you were avoiding the nasty truth to spare my sensibilities, that would be too rich.” She looked down into his face, closed now as a book in an unknown tongue. “It’s because of whom the rendezvous was with, isn’t it? Someone you think it’s too sensitive for me to know about.”
His gaze remained steady, but she could tell from the quick flash in his eyes that she’d guessed correctly. She could still read Harry well, for all she’d never properly understood him.
“Damn you.” She pushed herself to her feet, scraping the chair against the floorboards. “My sister’s dead and you’re covering it up like a good little soldier.”
He got to his feet as well. “It would seem that way to you, I suppose. Though I doubt any of my commanding officers would agree that I’ve ever been anything remotely approaching a good little soldier.”
He had retreated behind that caustic mask that had always driven her to distraction. One could never air anything with Harry in a proper fight. “
Seem?
Don’t play your word games with me, Harry. We’re talking about my baby sister. Or are you just as glad to have one less Brooke in the world?”
“I was smiling all the way back to Brussels. For God’s sake, Cordelia.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the words stopped her like a slap to the face. “Julia was—” Memories cracked open the reserve in his eyes. “Julia welcomed me to the family. She was always kind to me.”
“A great deal kinder than I was.” The anger drained out of her, leaving a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “A pity for you it wasn’t me who died.”

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