The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (3 page)

“It certainly looks old.” Simon stroked Berowne, who had jumped into his lap and was kneading his knees. “It’s handwritten, and at least one other person has made notes and corrections on the manuscript. But I couldn’t tell if either is Shakespeare’s hand.”

“I don’t think anyone could. The only examples of his handwriting we have are a few signatures.” Malcolm moved across the room, shifting Jessica against his shoulder. His voice was temperate, but Suzanne could read the excitement in the taut lines of his body.

“You know Shakespeare. Both of you.” Simon’s gaze flickered to Suzanne. “And you know forgeries.”

“We should get my grandfather’s opinion. Fortunately he’s staying with my aunt Marjorie in Surrey, so I can reach him more quickly than if he were in Scotland.” Malcolm rubbed his hand against Jessica’s back. His grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon, was a noted Shakespearean scholar.

“Yes, I was thinking of that. Obviously it’s a ticklish situation. It could be the making of the Tavistock if it’s authentic. We could make fools of ourselves if it turns out to be a forgery. But it never occurred to me it was dangerous.”

“Simon?” Suzanne said, watching his face. “What happened on your way here?”

“Three men jumped me. I fought back—I don’t take kindly to having my possessions appropriated. But when I took the knife to the chest even I was willing to concede it was prudent to let them have what they were after.”

“Do you have any idea who they were?” Malcolm asked, jiggling Jessica in his arms.

Simon shook his head. “There were three of them. English, I think, but we didn’t stop to exchange pleasantries.”

Suzanne closed her medical supply box. “Where did you get the manuscript?”

“From Manon.”

Suzanne’s fingers froze on the bronze latch. She forced them to unclench. Manon Caret had been the leading actress at the Comédie-Française. She had escaped Paris two years ago just ahead of agents of Fouché, the minister of police. For in addition to being a brilliant actress, she was a Bonapartist agent. And Suzanne had helped her escape. Which of course Suzanne couldn’t say to anyone. Even her husband. Especially her husband. “How on earth did Manon—”

“Harleton gave it to her. Apparently he found it tucked away among his father’s things after Lord Harleton’s death.”

Suzanne set the medical supply box on the sofa table, controlling the trembling of her fingers. Crispin, Lord Harleton, was a cheerful young man, a couple of years ahead of Malcolm at Oxford. He had been Manon’s lover for the past year or so. His father had been one of the sporting set. Suzanne had met him once or twice before his death six months ago, a bluff man with a hearty laugh, an appreciative eye for a low-cut bodice, and hands that were inclined to wander.

Malcolm dropped down on a footstool, propping Jessica in his lap. “I’m surprised old Lord Harleton had a manuscript of such value. Though not surprised he left it tucked away.”

“Crispin said ten to one his father didn’t realize what he had,” Simon said. “I must say Crispin quite impressed me. I always used to wonder what Manon saw in him.”

Jessica wriggled in Malcolm’s lap and arched her back. Malcolm set her on the carpet, and she began to scoot across the floor, heedless of the undercurrents. “Did Crispin and Manon give you any indication that anyone might be after the manuscript?” Malcolm asked.

Simon shook his head. “No. They were merely curious if it could be genuine.”

“Simon.” Malcolm reached down to steady Jessica as she pulled herself up on the edge of an ormolu table. “Tell me that you didn’t give up the only copy of the manuscript?”

A slow smile spread across Simon’s face. “I copied the whole script out the night Manon and Crispin gave it me. I was thinking of fire or damage more than theft. And then I had copies printed up for the actors.” He stroked Berowne under the chin. “I’m not sure why I brought the first copy I made with me tonight. I had some vague thought that we might want to read from it to spare the original. But I’m very glad I did. Because the thieves couldn’t tell my copy from the original manuscript.”

Malcolm echoed Simon’s smile. “You still have the original?”

“Wrapped in oilskin in my greatcoat pocket. They glanced at my copy enough to determine it was a script—which apparently is what they’d been told to look for—and then saw no need to search me further. Bring my coat over and we can have a look at it. I’m eager to see what you think of the authenticity. And more.”

“More?” Suzanne scooped up Jessica, who had crawled over to grab her mother’s sarcenet-covered knees.

Simon’s fingers went taut against Berowne’s soft gray fur. “Even when I was bleeding on the cobblestones, I felt I should put on a show of reluctance to give up the manuscript. One of the men dealt me a blow to the jaw and snatched it from my hands. Another said, ‘All this fuss just for some old paper.’ And another replied, ‘It’s not the paper. It’s the secrets hidden in it.’ ”

CHAPTER 2

Malcolm set Jessica in her cradle, gently settling her head on the tiny feather bed. “An adventure without international intrigue.”

“That we know of.” Suzanne closed the door to the night nursery, where Colin was sound asleep, his arm curled round his stuffed bear. Manon’s involvement danced on the edge of her consciousness. As Crispin’s mistress, Manon shouldn’t have anything to do with a manuscript found among his late father’s things. But her involvement, combined with the talk of dangerous secrets, brought Suzanne’s defensive instincts springing to life. Or perhaps she was starting to jump at shadows, like the Tory politicians who saw Radical plots behind every tree.

“Old Lord Harleton wasn’t particularly political,” Malcolm said, stroking his fingers against Jessica’s cheek. “Difficult to imagine international secrets being hidden in papers he possessed, whether or not the manuscript is genuine. Amorous secrets on the other hand—”

Suzanne crossed the room and tucked a soft blanket round Jessica’s legs. English houses were drafty and the fire in the grate (why had the porcelain stoves so prevalent on the Continent never caught on here?) could not drive out the chill. “Yes, he managed to get his hand down my bodice the one time we actually spoke. At the regent’s reception at Carlton House.”

Malcolm’s brows snapped together. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You might have turned husbandly and felt obliged to do something. I may be new to London society, but I do realize that making a scene at a party hosted by the prince regent isn’t the way to further your political career.”

“I’m not worried about furthering my political career.”

“I know, you’re delightfully blind to it, which is wonderfully idealistic but not perhaps wise for furthering your agenda.” Suzanne adjusted the blanket as Jessica stretched in her sleep. “Which is why your wife has to do it for you.”

He grinned and pushed a ringlet behind her ear. “It’s not as though I’d have challenged Harleton to a duel or planted him a facer—much as I’d have liked to.”

“No, you’d have said something cutting. But it still could have caused a scene. Trust me, I dealt with it perfectly well on my own. But crude as Harleton’s approach was, I gather he had a fair amount of success in the boudoir?”

Malcolm moved across the room and shrugged out of his coat. “So rumor has it. He moved in the same set as my parents.” His hands stilled for a moment on his waistcoat buttons.

Suzanne watched him. She had known before they left Paris that Britain held ghosts for him. But even after almost nine months here, she was only beginning to understand the nature of those ghosts. His childhood had been lonely, his parents distant, he and his brother and sister largely packed off to the country house in Scotland. His parents’ marriage, he had warned her when he proposed, had been a disaster. His mother’s death was a wound that plainly still festered but which Suzanne couldn’t touch. His father’s death over the summer had only raised more questions about their relationship.
He didn’t love me,
Malcolm had told her in a stark voice.
I didn’t love him. There isn’t much to mourn.

She knew she could only watch and let the picture unfold, listen to what Malcolm was willing to reveal. She had to constantly remind herself not to push for more. And to tell herself it shouldn’t matter that when they shared so much there were still secrets he kept from her. After all, she had more than her share of secrets that she kept from him.

Malcolm stripped off his waistcoat and tossed it over a chair. “I’d hazard a guess the secret concealed in the manuscript is the name of a lover.”

“A love affair doesn’t necessarily spell ruin in these circles.” Love affairs, Suzanne had learned, were not flaunted as openly in London as in Paris or Vienna (where some of her friends could move about openly as couples with their lovers), but though the veneer of respectability was slightly stronger, amorous intrigues seemed just as common. It had been an open secret, Malcolm’s cousin Aline had told her, that the late Duke of Devonshire lived in a menage-à-trois with his wife and his mistress Lady Elizabeth Foster. On the other hand, Suzanne’s friend Cordelia’s childhood friend Lady Caroline Lamb had caused no end of scandal with her affair with Lord Byron, because she flaunted it so flagrantly. It wasn’t what one did, said Cordy, who had her own past, it was how openly one did it. “Of course talk always has more power to ruin the woman involved,” Suzanne said, thinking of Caro and Cordy.

“Precisely.”

Suzanne looked at her husband and could tell they were both thinking back to a matter they’d investigated at the time of their wedding. “You think Harleton devised the manuscript as a way of concealing the names of his lovers?”

“It’s hard for me to imagine Harleton having the wit to devise a manuscript that could even remotely plausibly be by Shakespeare. But he could have hidden the information in an existing manuscript.”

“And a former mistress is behind the attack on Simon?”

“It’s the likeliest explanation.”

The door creaked as Berowne pushed his way into the room. Suzanne bent down to pet the cat. “Whoever was behind the attack went to considerable lengths. Which argues wealth. And desperation. Someone with a great deal to lose. At the very least a less than complacent husband.”

“Or secrets that go beyond a love affair. A child perhaps.”

Malcolm didn’t pause before he said it, though she could hear his questions about his own parentage, never fully voiced between them, echoing in the air. And then there was the son his late half-sister, Tatiana Kirsanova, had gone to such lengths to conceal, who now lived in London.

“It can be a powerful motive.” Suzanne scooped up Berowne and held him against her. “Whoever was behind the attack isn’t likely to give up. And they may realize we have the manuscript.”

“I hope they do.” A smile curved Malcolm’s mouth. “We’ll be prepared if they come calling. But we should plant guards at the theatre as well. David wouldn’t forgive me if anything happened to Simon. For that matter, I wouldn’t forgive myself.”

“Nor would I.” She pictured the precious stack of paper, now locked in the desk in Malcolm’s study. “If Harleton used an existing manuscript to encode the information, the manuscript itself could be genuine. Even our glance in the library just now confirmed it’s old.”

He met her gaze and she could feel the air tighten between them, this time with excitement. Shakespeare was one of the first things they’d shared. Strangers in what was to all intents and purposes an arranged marriage, with so many lies between them, they’d been able to cap each other’s quotes. On their wedding night, when words like “love” had seemed as distant as Illyria, they’d been able to quote
Romeo and Juliet
to each other. Shakespeare quotes had been their own private code, a way to express emotions they still couldn’t and might never be able to properly put into words, a shared language that marked out territory uniquely their own.

“It could be,” he agreed. He pushed his fingers through his hair. “And God help me, of course I’m sorry for what happened to Simon, but—”

She shifted Berowne against her shoulder. “You’re excited.”

“It is a welcome distraction.”

From his father’s death. From the stresses and unresolved issues of their return to Britain. From her own fears of discovery, as long as Manon’s connection didn’t drag them onto dangerous ground. The bond between them had always been strongest when they were able to work together on a mystery. Where some couples might bond over glasses of champagne or a moonlit stroll in a garden, they could over missing papers, complex codes, or mysterious deaths. “And a chance to work together.”

A smile lit his eyes. “Quite.” He crossed the room and slid his fingers behind her neck. She tilted her head back, but as he bent his lips to hers a knock fell on the door.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The voice of Valentin, the first footman, came through the door panels. He was not quite three-and-twenty, but after the battle of Waterloo and the subsequent events he had gone through with Malcolm and Suzanne in Paris, he was unflappable. “But Lord Carfax is below. He’s asking for you to come down at once. He says it’s urgent.”

 

Valentin had shown Lord Carfax into the library and had poked up the fire and lit a brace of candles and two lamps. Malcolm came into the room to find his mentor, spymaster, and best friend’s father by the drinks trolley pouring himself a glass of brandy. Carfax set down the decanter and replaced the stopper. “Sit down, Malcolm,” he said without looking round.

Malcolm advanced warily across the Aubusson carpet. Through the years, those words from Carfax had taken on an ominous ring. In Malcolm’s boyhood, the earl had been a commanding but distant presence who appeared on speech days and other special occasions at Harrow and occasionally poked his head in the schoolroom or nursery when Malcolm visited Carfax Court. Carfax burdened his son, David, Malcolm’s best friend, with expectations but was generally kind to Malcolm if rather dismissive. Then in the wake of Malcolm’s mother’s death, Carfax had found Malcolm a diplomatic post. With an intelligence component. Malcolm wasn’t sure what would have become of him if Carfax hadn’t come to his rescue in the midst of that personal crisis. He knew full well he owed the earl an incalculable amount. Malcolm respected Carfax, knew he would be forever in his debt, perhaps even cared for him, if one could apply such simple words to such a complex man. And at the same time Malcolm knew he couldn’t trust him.

Malcolm dropped into one of the Queen Anne chairs. He remembered sitting in a similar chair at the age of fifteen when Carfax called him and David in for a rare grilling about where they had disappeared to the previous evening (he’d seemed, if anything, disappointed to learn they had slipped out of the house to go to a lecture by William Godwin). Malcolm wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Carfax remembered that incident as well and had set the scene accordingly. He wasn’t above making use of the past.

Carfax took an appreciative sip of brandy. “Your father kept a good cellar, I’ll give him that.” He ran his gaze over Malcolm, no doubt taking in his rumpled coat and lack of a cravat. “Sorry to have called so late. My apologies to Suzanne.”

“Suzette’s used to it. What’s happened?”

Carfax regarded Malcolm over the rim of his spectacles. “I understand Tanner came to see you this evening.”

“That was quick even for you.” Malcolm stared at Carfax. The light from the brace of candles on the library table bounced off the lenses of his spectacles.
Good God.
Malcolm’s stomach lurched. “Did—”

“My dear Malcolm. I admit to finding Tanner’s views dangerous, but do you really imagine I’d have my son’s friend attacked on a London street?”

Malcolm’s fingers sank into the carved walnut arms of the chair. “Yes, if you thought it necessary to achieve your ends.”

Carfax gave a smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of a point scored. “Possibly. But I don’t dislike Tanner, you know. Nor do I actively wish to pick a quarrel with my son.”

Like the rest of David’s family, Carfax maintained the fiction that David and Simon were friends who shared lodgings. Simon was even invited to Carfax Court on occasion. Malcolm suspected that Carfax had known the truth of David’s relationship with Simon Tanner from quite early on. He wasn’t even sure Carfax had moral objections or that he wished the relationship to end. But Malcolm had no doubt Carfax expected David, as his heir, to marry and produce a son. Malcolm had seen in Paris what tragedy those tensions could lead to. Still, as Carfax said, there was no reason Malcolm knew of for the earl to have taken such drastic action now.

“Do you know who did have Simon attacked?” Malcolm asked.

“No, as it happens.” Carfax advanced across the room at a measured pace and sank into the other Queen Anne chair. “Nor who is after the
Hamlet
manuscript.”

Malcolm was suddenly and keenly aware of the frame of the chair pressing through the cassimere of his coat. “You know about the manuscript.”

Carfax removed his spectacles and folded them. “My dear boy, that’s why I called on you.”

“To ask me about a manuscript that may be by Shakespeare?”

“To order you to examine it. And bring me what you learn.”

Malcolm stared at his former spymaster. “What the hell is in the manuscript?”

Carfax set the spectacles on a table beside the chair. “Surely the fact that it may be by Shakespeare makes it valuable enough.”

“Not to explain your interest. Need I remind you that I don’t work for you anymore, sir?”

“My dear Malcolm. I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to believe you could have thought walking away from the intelligence game was as simple as resigning from the diplomatic corps.”

“I’m not obligated to follow your orders anymore. I have a right to demand an explanation.”

Carfax gave a short laugh. “You’d have demanded it anyway.”

“Probably.”

“Undeniably.” Carfax picked up his spectacles and turned them over in his hands. Malcolm sometimes wondered if the earl actually needed them or if he had appropriated them as an effective prop. “How much did Tanner tell you about where the manuscript came from?”

Malcolm hesitated. He always did so before revealing information to Carfax, but there didn’t seem any harm in this. “He said Crispin Harleton found it among his father’s things after Lord Harleton’s death.”

“And Crispin gave it to the lovely Manon Caret, who is sharing his bed.” Carfax lined the spectacles up on the chair arm. “Old Lord Harleton was at Oxford with your father, wasn’t he?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. They seemed of an age. My father was hardly given to reminiscing about his undergraduate days with me.” Malcolm swallowed. Five months after Alistair Rannoch’s death, the mention of him still brought the bitter bite of an emotion Malcolm could scarcely name. Save that it at once chilled and scalded.