The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (45 page)

CHAPTER 41

Crispin put a glass of cognac into Manon’s hand. The girls were safely asleep upstairs. She and Crispin had both stared at them for a long interval, though Manon had refused to meet his gaze afterwards. “Are you sure you aren’t cold, darling?” He reached for a shawl that was draped over a chairback.

“I’m fine, Crispin.” Manon jerked away from his hand. She was leaning back on the settee, calling on her acting talents to maintain her usual negligent attitude. “It was Suzanne who was almost killed, not me.”

“It was you Dewhurst was trying to kill.” Crispin stared down at her with that look that said he wanted to put his arms round her again. And if he did so it would undo her.

“If it comes to that he was trying to kill you, too.” Manon’s fingers tightened round her glass. She stared at it for a moment, the fear of those moments on the Tavistock stage shooting through her, then took a quick sip. To prove she could do so.

Crispin took a turn about the hearth rug. “Malcolm says I should point out to you that marrying me is by far the best way to protect the girls.”

“Malcolm Rannoch said that?”

“Yes.” Crispin frowned at the memory. “I was braced for a fight and sure he’d try to talk me out of it.”

“So was I.” Manon considered Suzanne’s British husband. “I wouldn’t have thought a man of his type would be able to see beyond the confines of his world. Though I must say he impressed me today.”

“What about me?”

She smiled, wondering how many more times she’d stare into those blue eyes. “You impressed me as well,
mon cher
. It was quite masterful how you took down Lord Dewhurst.”

Crispin took a step closer to the dressing table. “Don’t try to change the subject. I mean what about me being able to see beyond the confines of my world? Malcolm’s right: If you marry me, it will be easier for me to protect the girls.”

She tilted her head back, surveying his familiar features, the curly hair that fell over his forehead, the curve of his mouth, the unexpected stubborn strength in his jaw. How had she ever been so foolish as to let him become so important to her? “Do you think I would marry only to protect the girls?”

He swallowed. The look in his gaze was fear. It occurred to her that he was terrified she wouldn’t say yes. “No, of course not. But I also know you’re concerned for their safety. As am I.”

“My dear Crispin, if you’ve learned anything at all about me you must realize I’ve done rather well protecting them my entire life.”

“And you think I’m a callow amateur, blundering about in a game I don’t understand.”

“Never that,
chéri
. Though it’s quite true you don’t understand it. Fortunately for you.”

“God.” He took a turn about the hearth rug. “It’s a wonder you ever wasted any time on me at all.”

“Crispin . . .” She hesitated, words she dare not say hovering on her lips. For to say,
It’s precisely because I love you that I can’t marry you,
would be to give the game away. “I couldn’t possibly consider our time together wasted.”

“An agreeable interlude then?” His mouth twisted. “Look, Manon, I know your past—No, that’s not what I mean,” he added as she gave a sharp laugh. “I know you’ve been with men who are more brilliant than I. I have no illusions. But the one thing I do have is an old family name and a title and fortune and all the trappings that go with it. I know that seems particularly hollow after today’s events, but it gives me a certain influence. Which I know is precisely what your people were fighting against, and I daresay there’s a great deal to be said for their argument, but right now, here, it’s an advantage.” He dropped down on one knee before her. “For God’s sake, let me do what I can.”

“My dear Crispin.” She reached out and touched his face. “It’s the most generous offer I’ve ever received. But you’d get tired of it, you know. Having a wife who couldn’t be received in your world.”

“You mean the world of my father? Who was a French spy himself? I don’t give a damn about it. But I can’t imagine a world without you and Roxane and Clarisse.” He sat back and scanned her face. Suddenly he no longer looked like a schoolboy. “Or are you saying you’d get tired? Of me?”

“No.” She touched his face again, against her better judgment. “I never thought I’d say this to a man, but oddly enough, I don’t believe I would.”

He seized her hand and drew it against his mouth. “Well then.”

“If the truth ever came out—”

“We’d go to Italy or Switzerland or America. I’ve enough money. Amazing how that can cushion most blows.”

She drew a breath, hovering on the edge of something she hadn’t thought possible. “I wouldn’t give up the theatre.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“There’ll always be a risk—”

“Life’s a risk.” He got up on the settee beside her and took her in his arms. “It helps to take the risk with the right person.”

Manon laughed, despite herself. “You’re very stubborn.”

“Say it.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

She drew a breath that trembled between fear and wonder. “Yes, Crispin. I’ll marry you.”

Cordelia pulled the door of the night nursery closed on her sleeping daughters. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked Harry.

“Yes. No.” Harry gave a twisted smile. “That is, I’m not at all sure I do, but I probably should.”

Cordelia leaned against the closed door and touched her husband’s face. She and Harry had gone to Dewhurst’s house in case he was there and so had missed the confrontation at the Tavistock and had only arrived at the theatre in time to speak briefly with a subdued Malcolm and Suzanne. “What will happen to Dewhurst?”

“Rupert is determined to try to bring him to justice and to find Francis Woolright’s descendants, but I don’t know if either will be possible.” Harry rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Odd. Rupert wants his father brought to justice. And I’m profoundly relieved that Archibald won’t be.”

Cordelia scanned her husband’s tired face. “The scope of what they did can hardly be considered the same.”

“No. In fact, it’s not a great leap for me to find myself in sympathy with Archibald’s views. Still. I never thought his fate would be a matter of such moment to me as it has been these past few days.”

“Parents.” Cordelia glanced over her shoulder at the nursery door. “The bond is there whether we realize it or not.”

“And perhaps having our own children drives that home.”

Cordelia leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. “Do you think Malcolm and Suzanne will be all right?”

“It was just a flesh wound to her arm.” Harry stroked his fingers against Cordelia’s hair. “It looked worse than it is.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Cordelia lifted her head to look at her husband, struck by how very precious the tenderness in his gaze was. “Something’s . . . shifted between them these past few days.”

“I know.” Harry’s mouth turned grim. “That is, I know something’s changed between them, though not why.”

“And?” For a moment Cordelia felt like a child, desperately wanting to be reassured that fairy-tale endings were possible.

But Harry was never one for false reassurance. He touched her hair again, his gaze clouded with concern. “I’m afraid only time will tell.”

 

Malcolm knotted off a clean dressing round Suzanne’s shoulder. “It’s good to be home.”

She looked up at him. The light from the tapers on her dressing table shadowed his eyes and sharpened the bones of his face. “Do we have a home?”

“It’s time Berkeley Square became ours and not Alistair and Arabella’s.”

Her fingers closed on the silk and lace of her dressing gown. “You can’t seriously want me here.”

He pulled the dressing gown up about her shoulders. “I don’t see where else you’d be.”

“Don’t, Malcolm.” She steeled herself against the seductive brush of his fingers. “We’ve settled that we’re sharing a house. That doesn’t mean we have a home. Or that you want me in it.”

He dropped down on the dressing table bench beside her. “At the moment, the prospect of you being anywhere else is bloody terrifying.”

Her fingers closed round his wrists. “I know what this is, and it won’t work.”

“What is it?”

“I almost died, and you’ve had a rush of remorse.”

“If you mean contemplating a future without you adjusted my thinking, you’re right.”

“But it won’t last.” She tightened her grip on his wrists, wondering how many more times she’d be able to touch him. “We’ll settle into everyday prosaic reality, and you’ll remember all the reasons you have to hate me.”

He slid his fingers behind her neck. A glint of familiar laughter lit his eyes and made her heart turn over. “When have we ever been able to exist in everyday prosaic reality for five minutes?”

“Don’t be clever, darling, you know what I mean. You’ll go over every secret I might have exposed. You’ll think of every one of your friends who died in battle. You’ll think that through me you betrayed comrades and Crown and country and that your own honor was compromised.”

“You don’t believe in honor.”

“No, but you do.”

He turned his hands in her grip to brush his thumbs against her fingers. “I wonder if Cordy put Davenport through this?”

“It’s not the same.”

“On the contrary. I’d say it’s remarkably similar. He told me she did her best to argue to him that it couldn’t possibly work. That he couldn’t forget.”

“It’s one thing to forget infidelity. It’s another—”

“You don’t call what you did infidelity? Betrayal is betrayal, my darling.”

She swallowed. “Cordy regrets the past.”

“And you don’t?”

“Of course I do. But I can’t say I’d behave differently if I did it again.”

He pulled one hand free of her grip and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. “I doubt you would. I think I know you that well.”

“Can you seriously tell me you think you can go on as we did before?”

“I should hope we won’t. We’ll be a deal more honest.” The laughter faded from his eyes. “We have two children. I don’t think either of us has much choice about where and how we live.”

She couldn’t suppress an inward flinch. Though it was no more than the truth. “You said it yourself. You don’t want Colin and Jessica to grow up with two parents at each other’s throats like—”

“Like I did?” His mouth curled with derision. “I don’t think we could be like Alistair and Arabella if we tried.” He drew a breath. She felt it rough against her skin. “I wonder sometimes if Arabella kept us in Scotland so much because the atmosphere in Berkeley Square was so poisoned. I don’t think that was all of it. I think she genuinely did find being a mother wearing. And God knows packing the children off to the country isn’t unusual in our set. But I think it was part of it.” He looked at Suzanne for a long moment. “I can’t imagine you packing your children off.”

“Well, I’m not an aristocrat.”

“I don’t want the children to grow up afraid to trust.”

“Nor do I. But it’s a bit of a challenge when their parents don’t trust each other.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Poor word choice. I trust you with my life, Malcolm.”

“Yet you thought I could take the children away from you.”

“I’d never seen you pushed to this extent.”

“We have to find a way to go on. Not just to live under the same roof. To keep the atmosphere from being poisoned.” He watched her in silence a few moments longer. “It must drive you mad. Planning seating arrangements, ordering dinners, answering cards of invitation. That isn’t what you were trained for. What O’Roarke trained you for.”

“Sometimes it drives me mad. Sometimes I find myself enjoying it. And then I think I’m a hypocrite.”

“Enjoying the trappings of a life you’re fighting against?”

“In a nutshell.”

“I feel much the same when I make use of being the Duke of Strathdon’s grandson.”

“You don’t have any choice about being the Duke of Strathdon’s grandson.”

“I could repudiate my heritage.”

“And upend your life and destroy your family’s.”

“Which is what telling the truth would have done to you.” His gaze locked on her own. “Whatever else, I don’t doubt you love Colin and Jessica. And our marriage began to protect Colin after all. At least on my side.”

Once again she felt a well-deserved flinch. She curled her hands into fists at her sides. “Plenty of couples in the beau monde live nominally under the same roof but lead separate lives.”

His gaze hardened. “So they do. Is that what you want?”

Her nails bit into her palms. “I’m trying to figure out what you want.”

“To be honest, I don’t know.”

“You should be able to fall in love, forge your own life.”

“That isn’t an option anymore. I don’t mean that as an accusation, it’s a statement of fact. We’ve forged a life. Even if it’s a false one, we have to make it work.”