Banquet of Lies (6 page)

“I questioned his lordship during our little chat.” Gigi dipped her hands into the cold water in the sink, and rubbed them to get the dough off. She pronounced
little
as
leetle
and nearly snorted at herself. Really, her mother would be laughing so hard she’d be crying if she could hear this.

“You . . . asked Lord Aldridge what he was up to with Mavis?” Iris’s voice was strained.

Gigi gave a nod, turning to look at her over her shoulder. “He sneaks her his bonbons. Says he can’t stand them, and he can’t stand to see her so thin.” She finished washing her hands
and picked up a cloth to dry them with. “He’s not doing anything that he shouldn’t be doing.”

“He just told you, straight out?”

“Yes.” Gigi shrugged. “Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know.” Iris backed away. “Maybe because he’s Lord Aldridge. And he can do whatever the hell he likes.”

Gigi paused. Gave another shrug. “I don’t really care who he is. If he was abusing Mavis, I wanted to know about it.”

“Cor.” Iris finally stood just within the passageway. “I ’eard the French don’t care for their nobs. Guess that’s right.”

Gigi lifted her head, startled. “I don’t mean it like that.”

But Iris was already gone, and Gigi was staring at the dark shadow of the doorway.

She shook her head. It was true, anyway. The French most certainly didn’t care for their nobs.

She knew that full well, her mother being one of the nobs they had wanted to kill.

“A
re you humming?” Durnham looked up from the glass of whisky in his hand and waited for Jonathan to take a seat opposite him.

Jonathan grinned, making himself comfortable in the large, overstuffed armchair tucked in a quiet, dim corner of the club.

Durnham caught the smile and lifted a brow. “Bit late for dinner, too, aren’t you?”

“If I play my cards right, I’ll never have to eat the slop they pass off as dinner here ever again.” Jonathan stretched out his legs and placed both hands on his stomach.

Durnham leaned forward. “Finally found a French chef, eh?”

“A French cook, actually. And I can’t see how the meal she produced this evening could possibly be improved upon.”

“She trustworthy? You know where she’s from?” An edge crept into Durnham’s tone.

Jonathan stilled and then straightened in his chair. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t need to tell you we’re at war with France. You’re a member of the House, and it’s widely known you’ve been looking for a French chef for months. If they could sneak a spy across—which we know they can—it’s conceivable they could plant one in your house. Even if they didn’t know you’ve started working for me and Dervish on the side, you’d still be a source of useful information, if you were careless with leaving papers about the house.”

Jonathan narrowed his eyes. “I’m never careless.”

Durnham shrugged. “It was just a word of caution. I can have her checked, if you like. Ask the Alien Office to take an interest.”

Jonathan sat forward, his hands fisted on his knees. “Let me get this straight, Durnham. You want me to agree to subject the woman who prepared me a meal I’d be happy to get in heaven itself to the suspicious, ham-fisted idiots of the Alien Office, just in
case
, being French, she is here to spy on a viscount with barely any influence in government and who knows almost nothing?”

Durnham pursed his lips. “You don’t know almost nothing. You know more than a little about certain aspects of the war, and we’re grateful for your help. How old is this cook, and how good is her English?”

Jonathan hesitated. And it
wasn’t
because of her distinct lack of enthusiasm for answering perfectly reasonable questions, damn it. He took a breath. “Her English is excellent. She’s spent quite some time here, I’d guess. She is also hardly a day over twenty.”

He thought back to his meeting with Madame Levéel an hour ago; the way her eyes had refused to meet his when he asked for her former place of work. And the first, niggling worm of doubt began to eat at him. “You can really ruin a man’s mood, Durnham.” He flopped back into his chair.

“She pretty?” Durnham asked, and there was something in his expression that shot a bolt of searing anger through Jonathan.

And possibly, shame.

“God damn you. Yes. She’s beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. And there’s something about her. I’m almost sure she’s familiar to me, but I can’t place her.”

Durnham crossed his arms over his chest. “What were her references?”

Jonathan stood and was shocked to find his hands were shaking. “I didn’t see them myself, but they were from the Duke of Wittaker’s chef, Georges Bisset.” He pointed a finger at Durnham.

“Whatever plans you had for me on the committee, you can strike me off the list. If assisting the Crown means I have to answer to someone every time I hire a servant, and have insinuations about my conduct and relationships with my staff leveled at me in my own club, then—”

“Jonathan, I’m sorry.” Durnham leaned back and rubbed his hands over his face. For the first time, Jonathan could see he was hollow-eyed. “Sit. Please.”

Very reluctantly, he complied, drumming a heel on the floor to help work off the anger.

“I’m the least diplomatic person in London, you know that. I didn’t mean to insult you or ruin your mood.” Durnham sighed. “My wife is the only person who seems to delight in my blunt talk, and even then, I’ve managed to anger her a time or two.”

He looked down at his hands. “That’s why I’m here right now, truth be told. I’ve more or less been kicked out until she cools off.” He looked up again. “I’m dealing with a hell of a mess at the moment, involving the death of someone I respected very much, and I can’t seem to put a brake on my mouth. I just meant, be careful. That’s all. If you knew some of the things I do. . . . Well, just be careful. I don’t need another friend dead while in the service of his country. Someone just doing us a favor, killed in cold blood.”

Jonathan blew out a long breath. “Apology accepted. Can I help you with this matter?”

Durnham looked past him, and Jonathan turned to see Lord Dervish coming in the door. He searched the room, turning slowly, as if the walk up the stairs had exhausted him. When he saw them, he lifted his brows and walked over.

As he came closer, Jonathan could see the lines bracketing his mouth were deeper than usual, and there were dark smudges under his eyes, a match to Durnham’s. He took the last chair in the grouping, almost falling into it, and Jonathan had the sense of a meeting called to order.

“Aldridge doesn’t know yet,” Durnham said. He lifted his whisky and tipped the last of it down his throat.

“Do you know Sir Eric Barrington?” Dervish asked, turning in his chair a little to face Jonathan. “The folklorist?”

“Barrington?” Jonathan nodded. “Yes. Lives a few houses down from me. Although he’s hardly ever there.”

“Does he?” Durnham sat straighter. “That might be useful.”

“Useful for what?”

“We may need to watch his house.”

“What the devil for?” Jonathan tried to remember Barrington. A man of medium height, with an intense intelligence burning in his eyes. It had been years since he’d seen him. He’d seen his wife only a few times as well, before she’d died suddenly and tragically. She and her husband had attended the usual balls, and his father had invited her to tea once, he remembered. One of the kindest and most beautiful women he’d ever met.

Something tugged at his memory, just like earlier when he’d spoken to his cook, but was every bit as elusive as it had been then. He put the connection down to them both being beautiful and French. “I can’t believe Barrington would have done anything to warrant suspicion.”

Dervish shook his head. “Barrington is—was—one of the most loyal men I’ve ever worked with. Although he didn’t actually work for the Crown, he just lent a hand now and then, when needed. Because of his studies and the places they took him, he was often in a country where it was useful to have a man on the ground, or else he was going from one place to another when it was useful to have someone above suspicion
carry a message or document.” Dervish rubbed his temples with stiff fingers.

Durnham took over the story. “Six days ago he was murdered in the gardens of Tessin Palace in Stockholm, during a party to which the diplomats and nobility of Sweden were invited.” The way he said it, too calmly, showed Jonathan how angry he was. “At the time, he had in his possession a document that proclaimed Russian willingness to enter into a secret agreement with us against France, signed by the tsar himself.”

“What?” Jonathan almost rose out of his chair in surprise. “The Russians are in an alliance with France. Theoretically at war with us.”

Dervish gave him a sharp look, and he subsided.

“They want to change that. Their relations with France have been getting progressively worse over the last two years. They’re ready to start talking terms.” Dervish kept his voice very low.

“What do you think happened in Stockholm?”

“At first it seemed obvious that someone had discovered what Barrington had and killed him for it. We can’t proceed with a treaty unless we have a letter or some other indication from the Russians that they’d be willing to negotiate with us and sign it. With the letter gone, we’re back to asking the Russians for another document, and at the very least, it makes us look incompetent.”

“And at worst?” Jonathan always liked to know the worst-case scenario.

“At worst, they’ll be scared off. Someone knew about that document. So we’ve either got a mole in the Russian camp or in the British camp—someone in French pay. Even if the Russians simply posture a bit before coming back with a new document, it’s costing us time we don’t have. Dragging out the war even longer.”

“You said at first that you thought the document had been taken. Something made you change your mind?”

“Barrington has a daughter. Giselle Barrington. Our man in Sweden, Thornton, was waiting to have a last, quick word with Barrington before he and his daughter took the document to London, under the guise of a trip home. He spoke to Barrington’s daughter during the party, and she was worried about her father’s absence. Barrington had told her he was going outside for some air, but she thought he was taking too long about it. Thornton saw her walk into the gardens to look for him.”

“She wasn’t harmed?” Jonathan tried to think back to what he knew of the Barringtons. He didn’t recall a daughter.

“We don’t know,” Durnham said. “She’s disappeared.”

“Thornton was desperate at first, thinking whoever had killed Barrington may have taken her. But it turns out Barrington had hired a coach to take them from Stockholm to Gothenburg that night. And it appears that someone took that coach.”

“You think Giselle Barrington decided to complete the mission on her own?” Jonathan asked. It seemed ludicrous, but it was clearly something Dervish was considering. “How old is she, anyway?”

“She’s twenty-one. Thornton now wonders if her father managed somehow to give her the document before he was killed. Although that doesn’t explain why she didn’t return to the palace and get Thornton’s help.”

“If she did have the document, then her actions only make sense under one scenario.” Durnham leaned back and steepled his hands together.

“What is that?” Jonathan did the mental arithmetic and worked out that Giselle Barrington would have been ten the last time he’d been home long enough to see her. No wonder he had no recollection of her.

“The only reason she would not have returned to the ballroom and asked for help was if the man who killed her father was someone from the party—either a Swedish nobleman or a diplomat from one of the embassies present—and she witnessed it and recognized him.”

“And that,” Dervish said, quietly, “is a very big problem. For us, of course, but also for Giselle Barrington.”

Jonathan tapped his mouth with a finger. “Because she’s the only person who can identify him.”

Durnham nodded. “And if our scenario is correct, she’s also got something he wants very, very much.”

“That’s why you want to watch Barrington’s house,” Jonathan said, suddenly understanding.

Durnham nodded. “It’s the only place Giselle Barrington has to go. And it’s the first place anyone after her will look.”

“Who would she contact, if she did make it here with the document?”

There was a surprised silence for a moment. “Damned if I know.” Durnham shot a look at Dervish. “Unless her father told her, and I doubt he would have, knowing how sensitive this was. She wouldn’t know who to contact.”

“That’s if she’s even made it as far as London,” Dervish said softly. “She’d need perfect timing to have made every connection to be here already, or even within the next few days. We only got word of Barrington’s death from Thornton last night, brought by an experienced courier.” He sighed. “Chances are, Thornton and the Swedish authorities will find her body floating in Lake Mälaren.”