The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (7 page)

“And I provide you with deniability.”

Carfax settled back in his chair. “But of course.”

CHAPTER 5

“Oh, dear God.” Manon put her face in her hands. The read-through was over. Simon was beginning to block the opening scene with Horatio and the other guards and the ghost. Manon and Suzanne had escaped back to Manon’s dressing room.

Suzanne clunked her cup of fresh tea back in its saucer. Her stomach was roiling. “You didn’t know about Lord Harleton being a French agent?”

“Can you imagine I’d have involved you if I did? That I’d have involved myself?” Manon dragged her hands away from her face and stared at Suzanne. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know that you’re wise to do so, but it happens to be the truth.” Manon pushed herself to her feet and moved to a cabinet with chipped gilt paint. “You didn’t know? About Malcolm’s father?”

“Dear God no.” Suzanne shook her head, seeing again Alistair Rannoch’s mocking face and the way his gaze had at once undressed and dismissed her. “I still can’t believe it. Malcolm doesn’t—His family life has been unfortunate.” An understatement if there ever was one. “One more betrayal—”

Manon turned to her, her hand on the cabinet latch. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and I’ve put you at risk.”

Suzanne smoothed her hands over her sarcenet skirt to still their trembling. “We’re all at risk.”

“You have a husband.”

“You have a lover.”

Manon gave a short laugh. “I’m fond of Crispin. Fonder than I intended to grow. But I have no illusions.” She opened the cabinet and took out a brandy bottle. “It’s better not to have illusions. Not that I don’t have moments of envy when I see you with your Malcolm.” Manon studied her for a moment. “He might forgive you if he learned the truth, you know.”

“No.” Suzanne forced herself to stare into the possible future. She could feel Malcolm’s lips against her hair in the Green Room a half hour before. “He has too much integrity himself. He could never do what I’ve done.”

Manon crossed the room and splashed brandy into Suzanne’s teacup and then her own. “You sound as though you admire him.”

“I do. It doesn’t mean I regret what I’ve done.”

Manon dropped down beside her. “Drink some of your tea. You could do with the jolt.”

Suzanne gave a bleak smile and took a sip of brandy-laced tea.

“You can’t persuade him to give up the investigation?” Manon asked, reaching for her own cup.

Suzanne shook her head.

“For a woman with a besotted husband, you’re slow to use your wiles.”

Suzanne ran her finger over a chip in the gilded rim of the cup. “Malcolm and I don’t have that sort of relationship. We never did. It’s part of what I love about him. Part of what he loves about me, I think.”

“And you claim not to be romantic.” Manon tossed down a generous swig of tea and brandy.

“It’s the opposite of romantic. Romance is rose-colored glasses. Malcolm and I see each other clearly.” Suzanne took a sip of tea and brandy. “Except for the part where he has no idea I was spying on him.”

Manon flopped back in her chair and stared up at a cobweb on the ceiling. “I can’t believe Crispin’s father was a Bonapartist agent.”

“Did you ever meet?”

“Once. He came to my dressing room after a performance. Said he wanted to get a look at his son’s bit of muslin. Tried to put his hand down my dress. The usual tiresome sort of thing.” Manon wrinkled her nose. “Crispin came in and grabbed his father by the back of his coat and threw him out. An overreaction, but I rather appreciated it.”

Suzanne studied her friend. “I think you may have more in Crispin than you’re crediting, Manon. He obviously loves your girls.”

Manon’s carefully plucked brows drew together. “It’s dangerous, that. I don’t want them to become too attached to him. They’re too young to understand that he won’t always be here.”

“Are you so sure he won’t be?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Suzanne.” Manon sat up straight, sloshing her tea. “Has love addled your brain? Forget being a former French agent. I’m an actress. Even if I had any desire to marry, he’d hardly consider it.”

Suzanne saw the tenderness in Crispin’s gaze when it had rested on Manon. “He’s in love with you.”

“A lot of men have been in love with me. It passes.”

“He doesn’t know you were an agent?”

“Good God no. That would certainly cross a line for him.” Manon gave a crooked smile. “He may not be a Crown and country sort as he says, but he’s an English gentleman. Charming but decidedly set in his ways beneath the easygoing demeanor.”

“So is Malcolm. Well, a British gentleman. However forward-thinking he is, he’ll never get past certain things.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure he never learns the truth. While evading Lord Carfax.” Manon twitched her muslin tippet smooth, as though armoring herself for the fight ahead. “Simon doesn’t know about you, does he?”

“No,” Suzanne said.

“But?”

Suzanne stared down into her tea. “I’m not sure. I’ve always found it harder to dissemble with Simon than with the rest of Malcolm’s friends. Perhaps because he’s an observer and an outsider as well.”

“I’m never sure how much he sees, either,” Manon agreed. “I’m only comforted by the fact that if he knew the truth he wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Suzanne smoothed her hands over her lap. There was a brown smudge on the amber sarcenet she hadn’t seen before. Probably applesauce. These days Jessica’s food ended up everywhere. “I know Malcolm. He won’t rest until he learns the truth.”

“The truth about Harleton and his father won’t necessarily lead him to you.”

Suzanne rubbed at the smudge out of instinct. “It could lead him to any number of former Bonapartist agents. I can’t stand by while my husband destroys someone who was once an ally.”

“So you’ll oppose him?” Manon asked as though they were discussing stage combat tactics.

“If necessary. What else have I done all these years?”

“But it’s different now. You left that behind.”

“One can’t ever leave it behind truly. You know that. I should understand it.” Suzanne locked her hands together, conscious of the pressure of her wedding ring. “I knew my life would be a balancing act. I have to face the fact that it may not be a balance I can maintain.”

Manon stretched out her hand. “Suzanne—”

Suzanne closed her fingers round her friend’s own. “Of course I’m terrified. How could I not be?”

 

Suzanne looked up at the sight of the figure crossing Berkeley Square. Jessica dozed in her lap, having fallen into a milk coma, so Suzanne was careful not to move. Malcolm opened the gate of the square garden and stepped inside. Something in his posture told her the added weight his interview with Carfax had placed on him. Her heart lurched for a host of reasons both personal and practical.

“Daddy!” Colin scrambled to his feet from the flagstones where he was lining up his lead soldiers round a castle built of blocks.

Malcolm forced a smile to his face, though it didn’t drive the shadows from his eyes. “Excellent job with the fortifications, old chap.” Malcolm knelt down beside Colin for a few minutes, conferring over the arrangement of the soldiers. After a few adjustments, Malcolm got to his feet and moved to the bench where Suzanne sat with Jessica.

He dropped down beside her as though his bones ached. “Carfax confirmed it. Apparently he’s suspected Alistair for years. He was hoping I’d stumble on proof.”

“Oh, darling.” She touched his arm, aching with sympathy, while at the same time she felt as though the square’s gnarled plane trees were closing their branches round her.

“I don’t know why—” His fingers curled inwards. “I should be used to the ground being cut from beneath my feet and my perception of reality being turned upside down. It’s happened often enough.”

Suzanne looked down at Jessica, her head tucked into the crook of Suzanne’s elbow, one hand curled round Suzanne’s breast. “It’s different with your father.”

“Possibly.” He touched his fingers to Jessica’s head. “There’s more. Carfax has a theory about who killed Alistair and Lord Harleton and is after the
Hamlet
manuscript.”

He quickly outlined Carfax’s revelations about the Dunboyne leak and the five suspects.

Suzanne swallowed, a host of possible scenarios racing through her mind. “The General Cyrus we knew in the Peninsula?”

Malcolm nodded. “Shock waves would reverberate through the British army if he proved to be a traitor. His brother died in the Dunboyne affair. But Carfax says the mole wouldn’t have known Thomas Cyrus was part of the mission at the time he betrayed it.” His gaze fastened on Jessica, her face relaxed in sleep, one leg tucked under her, the other sliding off the edge of Suzanne’s lap. “I find it hard to believe he could live with the guilt.”

Her fingers curled over Jessica’s sparse hair. “You don’t know how easily he did. If he is the one. Who else?”

Malcolm reached down to pet Berowne, curled up in a basket by her feet. “Sir Horace Smytheton, who was so eager to share his thoughts on
Hamlet
at the rehearsal this afternoon. His role at the Tavistock doesn’t obviously make him more likely to be guilty. But at the very least it’s an odd coincidence. Lord Bessborough.”

“Caroline Lamb’s father?” Suzanne forced her hands not to tighten instinctively round Jessica. Lady Caroline Lamb was the childhood friend of Suzanne’s friend Cordelia Davenport. Caro Lamb was also the wife of Malcolm’s friend William Lamb.

Malcolm nodded, mouth grim. “Bessborough’s in less of a powerful official position than the others. But he’s the late Duke of Devonshire’s brother-in-law. The current duke’s uncle. Part of the inner circle of the Devonshire House set, which makes him minor Whig royalty. And for all the Whigs have been tweaked on sympathy for Bonaparte, to imagine one a traitor—”

The word “traitor” sliced through her. She needed to make herself hear it a hundred times a day to get past this. She drew a breath, focusing on the boneless weight of Jessica in her arms and the even rise and fall of the baby’s breathing. “Who else?”

“Archibald Davenport.”

Jessica let out a squawk as Suzanne’s hands tightened. “I’m sorry,
querida
.” Suzanne shifted the baby against her. “Harry’s uncle?”

“Who raised him after his parents died, though he appears to have done so at a distance.”

Suzanne had only met Archibald Davenport once, at the theatre with Harry and Cordelia. A tall man with a jovial manner, shrewd eyes, and breath laced with port. “Isn’t he a crony of the prince regent?”

“One of his inner circle. Yet another who would cause shock waves to reverberate should he prove to have been betraying his country for years.” Malcolm’s gaze fastened on Colin as their son galloped a knight on horseback up to the castle. “I don’t know whether to be in awe that Carfax has trusted me with this investigation or furious that he’s blithely throwing me to the wolves. How do you feel about having to go live in exile?”

How odd to hear one’s husband blithely summing up one’s worst fears for the future. “Even Carfax couldn’t force you into exile.”

“It might not be so bad. We’d be free of my family.”

“You’d miss your family.” She knew now, having seen him with them, how much his siblings and aunt and cousins meant to him.

“Some of them.”

The truth of course was that Suzanne wouldn’t mind exile so much if she was with him and the children. But if her past drove her into exile, they almost certainly wouldn’t be together.

Jessica lifted her head without opening her eyes and flopped back down in a different position. She’d left a milky smudge on the moss green velvet of Suzanne’s spencer. “Harry and Cordelia could help us with Archibald Davenport and Lord Bessborough.”

“I know. Carfax acknowledged as much. He said it was up to me how much I told them. Well, how much I told Harry.” Malcolm’s gaze returned to Colin, who was now staging a tournament with two knights on horseback. Or a fight. She hoped it was a tournament. “Harry and his uncle are far from close. But as I learned with the revelations about Alistair, that doesn’t make it easier.” One of Colin’s knights fell to the pavement. Colin lifted the second from his horse and had him go help the fallen rider. “Carfax said he thought I’d have tried to protect Alistair if I’d known while he was alive.”

“You’re loyal. To people as well as countries.” A conflict that would tear him in two if he learned the truth about her, she feared. He might not expose her, but he’d never trust her again. “Do you think Harry would protect his uncle?”

“I don’t know. Harry can be ruthless. But Cordelia’s made him no stranger to betrayal. And forgiveness. If their marriage can survive what it’s been through, God knows what’s possible.”

Suzanne swallowed. Harry and Cordelia’s miraculous marriage both terrified her with the possibilities of what could go wrong and gave her an odd sort of hope. “Yes.”

Malcolm scratched Berowne’s ears. “I know if I were him I’d want to know the truth. I owe him that as my friend.”

Jessica’s head was slipping to the side, heavy with sleep. Suzanne curled her arm up, carefully, so she anchored Jessica without waking her. “Cordy can help with Lord Bessborough. She was in and out of Caro Lamb’s house growing up. Unless you don’t want to involve her in something so delicate?”

Malcolm reached down and touched Jessica’s tiny black-booted foot. “No, I think the more we can keep the investigation as unofficial as possible with this group, the better. And after what we’ve been through with Harry and Cordelia we know we can trust them.” He gave a twisted smile. “I may not have known my father, but I know them.”

Suzanne twitched a fold of blanket closer round Jessica. Such simple words. But in theory, Malcolm knew her far better than he did Harry and Cordy. Perhaps it was simply that some betrayals were unimaginable. “Who is the fifth suspect?”