The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (17 page)

“Did Mama know?” Malcolm tried to keep his voice even but couldn’t quite succeed.

Lady Frances stared into the cup cradled in her hand. “I thought not. I went to elaborate pains to keep it from her, and I was wracked with guilt. A novel experience for me. Then at last one day we were driving in the park together and Arabella looked at me across the barouche and said she couldn’t abide Alistair, but if I wanted to indulge myself with him that was quite my own affair. I had the grace to blush.”

Malcolm took a sip of coffee. It burned his tongue, but that might be the effect of the revelations. “Did that—”

“End it? That would be tidy, wouldn’t it? If no longer forbidden it ceased to be a thrill.” Lady Frances looked into her cup as though seeking an explanation of her attraction to Alistair Rannoch in the dregs. “I must have sworn a dozen more times that it would never happen again. But then circumstances would throw us together or we’d grow bored—” She wrinkled her nose. “Hardly the stuff of romance. Though he did surprise me with this pendant several years ago.” She pulled a chain from beneath the froth of lace at the neck of her dressing gown. A square-cut diamond set in white gold filigree. Malcolm had purchased enough jewelry for his wife to recognize the quality of the stone. It was also a piece he had seen his aunt wear a great deal.

Lady Frances released the pendant as though it singed her. “Not that it was ever anything approaching exclusive. Alistair at least understood that. Unlike some men, like Harleton.”

“Harleton—” Malcolm stared at his aunt. “You and Lord Harleton—”

“Regrettably.”

He stared at her. “You’re the woman Harleton challenged Father to a duel over.”

Her brows lifted. “How on earth do you know about that?”

“The challenge occurred at a gathering—”

“Good God. Of the Elsinore League?”

“I’m not sure. It was a dinner party at which a number of their members were present.”

Lady Frances got to her feet. “I never knew how the challenge came about. In fact, I didn’t know about the whole tawdry affair until after the fact. If I had, I might have felt compelled to try to stop it. Might.” She moved to the drinks trolley and picked up a decanter. “One could make a fair case that both Alistair and Harleton deserved what they got.”

“So they did fight?”

“In Hyde Park.” She moved back across the room and splashed some whisky into his coffee and then her own. “It was swords apparently. Alistair was a better fighter, but Harleton managed to get him in the shoulder. That’s how I found out about it. He winced when I was taking off his shirt.”

Malcolm could have done without that particular image, but the information was useful. “Father and Harleton both continued to be involved in the club?”

Lady Frances settled back on the sofa with her coffee and whisky. “I presume they considered honor satisfied. Harleton was a great bore. I don’t know why I ever wasted time on him. Well, he did have a good leg, and I was bored that season. And it was only that one time at the opera and then—” She broke off and laughed at Malcolm’s expression. “Don’t be a prude, my dear. Oh, very well, I expect I wouldn’t have wanted to hear such details about my uncles and aunts, either. In fact, the thought is distinctly off-putting.” She wrinkled her nose.

Malcolm took a fortifying sip of whisky-laced coffee. “Tell me more about Harleton. No, not that. Tell me your impression of him—outside the bedchamber.”

Lady Frances frowned. “Is Harleton mixed up in this as well?”

“I’d rather get your impression of him first.”

She turned her cup in her hand. “As I said, he was something of a bore. But—” Her gaze moved over the silk wall hangings, the white moldings, the pier glass, the Lawrence oil of her three eldest children, as though she was seeing into the past.

“What?” Malcolm asked.

“I sometimes had the sense he wasn’t quite the fool he let on. There was one time we were lying in bed together—sorry, Malcolm, but that’s where most of our interactions occurred—and he was blathering on about something. Before I could check my tongue, I blurted out, ‘Oh, Freddy, even you can’t be fool enough to think that.’ And he got the oddest look on his face, as though he knew perfectly well he’d been talking like a fool and was afraid he’d—‘gone too far’ is the only way I can think to describe it. I spent the rest of the day trying to puzzle out why Freddy Harleton would have pretended to be a fool. Surely he couldn’t have thought it would make him more attractive to women. Talk about foolery!”

“Anything else?”

“He didn’t like Alistair. I think that’s why he reacted in such a ridiculously overdramatic manner when he learned I was Alistair’s mistress as well. I told him I’d been Alistair’s mistress first, so even though I thought exclusive rights were something claimed by colonial powers, not mature adults, if he was going to get in a huff about betrayal he’d have to get in line behind Alistair and my husband, to name only two with a prior claim.” She took a sip of whisky and coffee. “I’m afraid that didn’t improve the situation.”

“What else did he say to you about Father?”

“Dear God, Malcolm, it’s centuries ago.” She pushed her fingers into her hair with a careless abandon that brought a painful tug of memory of his mother. “One night at the opera he looked across the boxes at Alistair sitting with the prince regent and Brummell and said Alistair was an upstart, just like Brummell. That neither would be where they were without powerful friends.”

“But in Alistair’s case he didn’t just mean the regent. One could hardly call Father a favorite of the prince’s like Brummell.”

“No.” Lady Frances tossed back another sip. “I think he meant men like him and Bessborough and Glenister and others on that list you recited.” She frowned. “I remember now. Harleton said Alistair wouldn’t have got where he was if he wasn’t willing to use information to force his friends’ hands.”

“He was saying Father was a blackmailer?”

“That was the implication. I didn’t give too much credence to it at the time. Those sorts of men seem to be above scandal. And if it’s true Alistair was a spy”—her voice caught, as though she still couldn’t quite believe it—“he’d have been the one with the most dangerous secret.” She lifted her gaze to Malcolm’s face. “Good God, is that it? Was Harleton a French spy, too?”

“Apparently.”

Lady Frances picked up the decanter and topped off both their cups again. “I knew it was a good idea to have this handy.” She picked up her cup but closed her fingers round it without drinking. “Incredible. Yet it makes sense of Harleton’s pose of the amiable fool, I suppose. Do you think Alistair was blackmailing him with the threat of exposure?”

“I hadn’t until what you just said. But Harleton could have ruined Alistair just as easily.”

“Why on earth—Harleton wouldn’t have needed the money.”

“No, it was Alistair who needed the money.” Malcolm reached for his own cup. “For Harleton, I think it was the risk, the allure of adventure.”

Lady Frances took a thoughtful sip. “Yes, I can understand that. It can be deadly dull, this life we lead, for all the excess and indulgence. Or perhaps because of them. One quite longs for some sense of focus and purpose at times. I wish I’d discovered my children could give me that sooner.” She looked up at him. “I often think your mother—”

“Yes,” Malcolm said.

Lady Frances smoothed a satin fold of her dressing gown. “Do you think Harleton’s death—”

“Wasn’t an accident, either? Yes. It seems he and Father were both murdered because of something they knew.”

She shook her head. “It’s incredible. This is Mayfair.”

“A seat of wealth and power. Which can raise the stakes.” He leaned forwards. “Aunt Frances—those last days you spent with Father. Did he seem afraid of anything? Worried about anything?”

“Alistair wasn’t the sort to be afraid. It was one of his attractions. But—” She flicked a bit of lint from her skirt. “He was oddly keyed up those last days. Both intense and distracted. At one point he actually thanked me for our time together.” She gave a faint smile. “Very unlike Alistair. But I can’t credit that he thought—” Malcolm could see his aunt going over those last days she had spent with Alistair Rannoch, details too intimate to be shared. “If I’d known that was the last time we’d spend together, if I’d had the least idea—” Her fingers closed round the chain of her pendant. She had either slept in it, Malcolm realized, or put it on first thing this morning. Did she always wear it, tucked into the neck of her gowns if it wasn’t part of her toilette?

Malcolm stared at his aunt, struck by a blinding revelation that recast much of his childhood. “You loved him.”

Lady Frances put up a hand to tuck the pendant back beneath her dressing gown. “Don’t let it get about.”

CHAPTER 15

“Oh, Malcolm. Glad to see you.” Carfax looked up from the desk in his study, an oak-paneled room filled with books, papers, and well-worn furniture. “Amelia has the house turned upside down for our ball tonight. She spent breakfast fretting over the guest list. Seems afraid the Tories and Whigs will come to blows. Told her politics hadn’t got quite that contentious. Though I’m not entirely sure I spoke the truth.” Carfax pushed aside the papers he’d been reviewing. “Learned something?”

Malcolm pulled the door to behind him. “You didn’t tell me Smytheton had been one of our agents.”

Carfax set down his pen. “I was wondering how long it would take you to ferret that out. Glad to see you haven’t grown rusty.”

“And that he and Jennifer Mansfield are suspected of being doubles.”

“Ah, yes.” Carfax picked up the pen and twirled it between his fingers. “Well, that’s why I didn’t tell you. I wanted to see what you made of Smytheton and the Mansfield woman without putting suspicions in your head. I do value your opinion, you know, Malcolm.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You should be. Sit down, stop prowling about.”

Malcolm dropped into a straight-backed chair across from the desk. “If you suspected Smytheton why the hell did you let him anywhere near the Dunboyne information?”

“Dewhurst claims to have watched him all night. He says he’s nine-tenths sure Smytheton isn’t the one who took it.”

“But you didn’t tell me—”

“Because on the one-tenth chance Dewhurst is wrong, I count on you to discover the truth.” Carfax picked up his penknife and began to mend the nib. “I suppose Dewhurst told you all this.”

“Yes. And of course he had an incentive to point my interest in another direction.”

“Quite. Just as he may have done with Smytheton twenty years ago.”

Malcolm studied Carfax. The spymaster had his desk positioned so anyone facing him had to squint into the light from the window behind the desk. Though the day was gray, a surprising amount of light leached through the clouds. “You think Dewhurst may have been a French spy?”

“I can’t ignore the possibility.” Carfax examined the mended nib as though he were inspecting a weapon. “He was also in love with Geneviève Manet.”

“Dewhurst?” Malcolm began to recast his conversation with the earl.

“Or as in love as a man like Dewhurst is capable of being.”

Malcolm shifted his chair to the side, scraping it over the floorboards. “Were they lovers?”

“I’m not sure. Nor am I sure if Smytheton knew. It’s possible Manet was playing them off against each other. It’s also possible she and Dewhurst were playing Smytheton for the fool he often appears to be.”

Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “I suppose you also knew about the duel.”

“Oh yes. Harleton and your father. Over—”

“My aunt Frances.”

Carfax settled back in his chair, fingers tented. “Who told you?”

“Archibald Davenport about the duel. Aunt Frances that it was over her.”

“Yes, Fanny would. I imagine that came as a surprise.”

“To put it mildly. I always thought she and my father detested each other. But both Davenport and Smytheton thought Aunt Frances might have been merely an excuse for the duel. That there was some other issue between Alistair and Harleton.”

“Interesting.”

“Do you think Alistair could have been blackmailing Harleton?”

“I wouldn’t put it past Alistair. But they both had the power to ruin each other.”

“They were meeting with Dewhurst not long before Harleton died.”

Carfax reached up to adjust his spectacles. “I didn’t know about that. Though it’s not surprising.”

Malcolm sat back in his chair and leaned to the side, getting the best angle he could on Carfax’s face. “Of course it’s always possible it was to do with the Elsinore League.”

Carfax released his breath with what might have been satisfaction. Or expectation. “So you learned about that.”

“Something else you wanted me to ferret out?”

Carfax removed his spectacles and began to clean the lenses with a monogrammed handkerchief. “I wasn’t sure if you already knew of it. Or even if—”

“I was a member? Good God, sir, you can’t have thought I’d belong to any club Alistair had started.”

“It didn’t seem likely. And I don’t think they’ve added members of the younger generation to their number. But they remain shrouded in mystery. After all, Alderson began the Phoenix Society in honor of his uncle.”

“Alderson’s relationship with his uncle must have been very different from mine with Alistair. Not to mention that I have to be the least likely member of a hellfire club in all Britain.”

Carfax gave a dry smile, gaze still on the lenses. “Perhaps. Assuming they are a hellfire club.”

Malcolm studied his spymaster and mentor in the wintry early afternoon light. It accentuated the sharp lines of Carfax’s face and the chill in his blue eyes. “That’s it, isn’t it? The real reason you take such interest in this investigation. Why all this ancient history still matters so much. My father, Harleton, the manuscript, who was behind the Dunboyne leak. You want to find out about the Elsinore League.”

“It’s hardly the only reason. But I’ll own to having been interested in them for some time. They’ve been shrouded in mystery from the first mentions I heard in my days at Oxford.”

Malcolm studied the other man. Was it remotely possible Carfax had felt excluded from the exclusive club? It was not a way Malcolm was accustomed to thinking about his spymaster. “You were never a member yourself?”

Carfax hooked the spectacles back over his ears. “I’m hardly the likeliest member of a hellfire club myself.”

For all Carfax’s pragmatic approach to most ethical questions, Malcolm had never heard rumor of him so much as indulging in dalliance. In fact, he appeared genuinely devoted to his wife. Malcolm knew enough not to take devotion at face value, but still—“Cyrus says they were smuggling works of art off the Continent in the eighties and nineties. My father’s collection and what I saw at Harleton’s villa supports that.”

“Interesting. But hardly enough to ruin men in their position.”

“Alistair and Harleton were French agents. You suspect Smytheton and possibly Dewhurst. Could the whole Elsinore League have been a cover for a French network?”

Carfax drew in and released his breath. “I’ve wondered.” He spread his hands flat on the desk and appeared to be studying his nails. “But I could never connect the dots further than Harleton and possibly your father. And if that many powerful men in Britain were French agents, surely—”

“They’d have won the war?”

“At least they’d have accomplished more.”

“What does the Raven have to do with the Elsinore League?”

Carfax’s head jerked up. “Where did you hear about the Raven?”

“In Alistair and Harleton’s correspondence. Alistair implied the Raven’s exposure could damage them both. Dewhurst told me the Raven is a code name for a French agent under deep cover.”

Carfax’s brows drew together. “Yes. He brought me that report himself. We attempted to learn more. To no avail.” He tapped his fingers on the ink blotter with frustration.

“Dewhurst said the Raven only went back to 1810 or so and was in the Peninsula. Not an English man or woman who was turned but someone set up with an alias.”

Carfax nodded.

“You never found any connection to my father and Harleton?”

“No. I don’t know that the Raven was ever even in England.”

“What do you know about the Raven?”

“He appears to have been responsible for the French intercepting our tactical team at Burgos.”

Malcolm leaned forwards. “Why didn’t you say anything? That happened when I was in Lisbon.”

“I had Tommy Belmont looking into it. I didn’t need to put both of you on the matter.”

“Are you so sure the Raven is a man? Because it occurred to me it would be much easier to plant a woman under deep cover.”

“Interesting.” Carfax turned his penknife over in his hands. “I wonder if that could be the source of the threat the Raven represented to your father and Harleton.”

“You think she could have been mistress to one or both of them?”

“It’s often the way women represent a threat to men.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate female agents, sir.”

Carfax slapped the penknife down. “I never underestimate anyone. But it’s often the way female agents represent a threat. Look at Tatiana Kirsanova.”

Malcolm swallowed. Carfax couldn’t know Tania had been his sister. And it was true in any case.

“But the French wouldn’t have needed to set an agent to seduce Alistair or Harleton.”

“Unless it was a way to keep tabs on them. Or perhaps the French were interested in the Elsinore League as well.”

“You think the French knew about the Elsinore League? Assuming it wasn’t a French spy ring?”

“Whatever games the Elsinore League were playing, they were powerful people keeping powerful secrets. Find out what they were up to, Malcolm.”

Malcolm met the spymaster’s gaze. Powerful secrets were the currency Carfax dealt in. His interest in the investigation now made perfect sense. What he would do with the information if Malcolm uncovered it was another question entirely.

 

Even an almost empty theatre had its own smell. Sawdust, the oil of rehearsal lamps, drying paint, the sweat of active bodies that could never quite be banished. After all these years, it still sent an indefinable thrill of magic through Suzanne. Jessica seemed to sense it from her mother, for she gave a crow of delight in Suzanne’s arms and waved her hands. “Shush.” Suzanne pulled her closer and cast a glance at Malcolm, wondering if they’d been wise to bring the children. Children were a great icebreaker, as Malcolm had said, but Jessica’s shrieks when she got excited could be particularly piercing. Fortunately, she seemed to be growing out of her glee when she had first discovered how loud she could be.

Colin darted forwards and stopped midway down the aisle, staring transfixed at the stage. His mother’s son.

A crowd of actors stood on the stage, clustered round Manon, who lay on the bare boards, covered with a black cloth. A fair-haired actor knelt beside her.

Brandon Ford watched from the side of the stage.

Brandon ran forwards, announcing:

He flung himself down beside Manon and the fair-haired man. The fair-haired man lost his balance and fell against Manon. Manon sat up with a yelp. “That was my arm.”

“Sorry,” Brandon said.

“Watch where you’re going, will you, Ford?” The fair-haired man sat back on his heels and pushed his hair out of his eyes.

“You’re supposed to be sitting by her head, Ned. You’ve got the blocking all wrong.”

Manon shaded her eyes to look into the audience. “Simon, darling, I don’t suppose there’s any chance we could use a wax dummy for Ophelia’s body?”

“Verisimilitude, love.” Simon sprang up on the edge of the stage. “Ned, annoying as Brandon can be he’s right in this case. You should be further upstage. We’re running behind, and I want to go over the fight with the two of you. Besides, we have visitors.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Malcolm said. “I was hoping for a word with Sir Horace.”

“Good lord, with me?” Smytheton, who was again sitting in the audience, pushed himself to his feet. “Brought the whole family, have you, Malcolm? More about this investigation? Can’t see what more I can tell you.”

“Nevertheless, sir. If we could just speak with you for a few minutes?”

Roxane scrambled to her feet at the front of the house, where she must have been sprawled on the floor. “Can we play with Colin and Jessica?”

“They’d be thrilled.” Suzanne walked forwards and put Jessica into Roxane’s arms. Colin had already dropped down on the floor beside Clarisse and her coloring set.

Following the plan she and Malcolm had devised, Suzanne sat in the front row and watched the rehearsal while Malcolm and Sir Horace repaired to the Green Room. By the time Simon called a halt to the rehearsal and dismissed most of the actors for half an hour so he could work with Brandon and Manon on the nunnery scene, Colin was happily absorbed playing with Roxane and Clarisse. Jessica had climbed into Suzanne’s lap and was tugging at her bodice in a way that indicated she wanted to nurse.

Jennifer Mansfield knelt on the edge of the stage with a friendly smile. “You’re welcome to use my dressing room, Mrs. Rannoch.”

Suzanne glanced at Roxane. “We’re fine,” Roxane said, with the ease of one who had been watching her little sister in theatres since the age of three. Colin grinned up at Suzanne.

“Thank you so much, Mrs. Mansfield.” Suzanne got to her feet, holding her daughter. It couldn’t have played out better. Really, children were a great asset in an investigation.

 

Malcolm and Smytheton repaired to the Green Room with its comfortably frayed sofas and chipped gilt paint. “Splendid about the play, isn’t it?” Smytheton said, dropping into a chair. “The more I see of this version, the more I like it. A bit rough round the edges, but so many splendid shadings in Hamlet’s relationship with Claudius just based on a few lines. Adds interest to both characters. Only I think Gertrude has a bit more to do in the official version. Wish we could add those lines back in, but Jenny told me not to fuss. Thought Jennifer should have been Ophelia, but she insists she’s too old—lot of rubbish, she doesn’t look a day over five-and-twenty, well, maybe twenty-six—and that she’s always wanted to play Gertrude.”