Authors: Imperial Scandal

Teresa Grant (25 page)

BOOK: Teresa Grant

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S
uzanne accompanied her husband back into the garden, to find Cordelia staring across the table at her husband, with a smashed look that suggested utter shock.

“I’ve told her,” Davenport said. “Sorry, Rannoch. One of my quixotic moments.”

“On the contrary.” Malcolm pulled out a chair for Suzanne. “I’d welcome Lady Cordelia’s opinion.”

“Dear God.” Cordelia put a hand to her face.

Suzanne reached across the table to touch Cordelia’s arm. “It must seem completely incredible.”

“On the one hand it does. And yet—It makes sense of so much. Her two letters to me. Her affair with the Prince of Orange. But how could she—”

“A typical mistake of an elder sibling,” Malcolm said.

“Refusing to think one’s younger sibling can do wrong?”

“Refusing to think one’s younger sibling can take initiative. I’m the eldest myself.”

“Yes, I suppose I do tend to see Julia as my little sister.” Cordelia pushed herself to her feet with sudden force. “Those bastards. To play upon her weakness, to force her to betray her country, to send her into a man’s bed—I’ve never been one to hate the French, but I could kill the men who drove her to this. Why the devil didn’t she tell Johnny?”

“Why indeed?” Davenport said.

Cordelia spun toward him. “You think there’s some reason she didn’t?”

“I think it’s odd.”

“Why didn’t she tell me? I’d have pawned every jewel I possessed—”

“Cordy.” Davenport got to his feet in a swift move and went to her side. “Don’t be so foolish as to blame yourself. You’ll make me regret telling you.”

“Damn it, Harry. She was my responsibility.”

“She was a grown woman who made her own choices. I know you well enough to know you’d never make anyone else responsible for your choices.”

“She was my sister.” Cordelia pressed her hands to her face. A choked sob spilled between her fingers.

To Suzanne’s amazement, Davenport put his arms round his wife and pulled her against him. To her even greater amazement, Cordelia drew a shuddering breath, then turned in her husband’s arms and clutched the fabric of his coat. Her knuckles were white against the dark blue fabric.

“Life is hard enough,” Davenport said into Cordelia’s hair. “Don’t make it worse.”

Cordelia lifted her head from his shoulder and gave a crooked smile. “Of all the people to be offering me comfort.”

“I know what it is to feel regret. And I know just how corrosive regret can be.”

She wiped a hand across her eyes, smearing the blacking on her lashes. “I know my sister. I seem to be saying that a lot lately. But Julia could have applied to Johnny or me for the funds. There has to be more to it.”

“Ashton says he and Violet Chase just exchanged the one kiss,” Malcolm said. “And that it was all his fault.”

“So does Violet.” Cordelia moved back to the table and dropped into her chair. “Save that she says she was the one who initiated it.”

“Lady Julia might have had reasons other than blackmail for becoming a spy.” Even as she spoke, Suzanne wondered at her own daring. But years in the intelligence world had taught her that telling the unvarnished truth was often the safest course.

“Are you suggesting my sister became a committed Bonapartist?” Cordelia asked.

“A committed Republican perhaps,” Malcolm said. “One can understand the impulse to one committed to the rights of man. I’ve been accused of my sympathies tilting too far in that direction myself.”

Suzanne forced a smile to her lips.

“But you haven’t spied against your country,” Cordelia said.

“Unless Rannoch’s a very clever agent indeed.” Davenport joined his wife and the others at the table.

Cordelia shook her head. “My sister was one of the least political people I knew.”

“She could have had more personal reasons.” Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “How she felt about her spymaster for instance.”

Suzanne met her husband’s gaze. “You think her spymaster was her lover?”

“It’s certainly one way to create an agent.”

Suzanne frowned in genuine consideration. For all Raoul had been and still was to her, it wouldn’t have been enough in her case. “Love” hadn’t been a word in her vocabulary. She’d been driven by her beliefs and if she’d admitted to feelings they’d been something she’d tucked in round the edges. A part of her bristled at the suggestion that a woman would blacken her soul simply for the love of a man. Yet she couldn’t deny the possibility.

“It seems Julia ended things with Anthony Chase at Stuart’s ball.” Suzanne related the scene Violet Chase had described overhearing.

“If Julia’s spymaster put her up to the liaison with Tony—” Cordelia said.

“He probably also ordered her to end it,” Suzanne said. “Though on the brink of war, you’d think intelligence from an officer would be helpful.”

“Perhaps they were worried Tony Chase was growing suspicious,” Davenport said. “He still has one of the best motives to have got rid of Julia.”

“If her spymaster was afraid Julia had revealed information to Chase, he might have decided Julia was a liability,” Malcolm said.

“I’d very much like to find out who this spymaster is,” Suzanne said. “Given that he wants my husband dead.”

Amazing how often she could speak the unvarnished truth. Even when talking about French spies.

Malcolm loosed his hands on the reins, letting Perdita lengthen her stride. He cast a sideways glance at Davenport in the leafy shadows of the trees that overhung the Allée Verte. “It can’t have been easy.”

Davenport’s gaze was fixed on the soldiers and civilians cantering or trotting on the path ahead. “Given what I’ve been through these past four years, do you really think an encounter with a three-and-a-half-year-old would unsettle me?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said.

Davenport gave a grin that didn’t quite hide the conflict in his eyes. “Caught. I don’t think I knew what sheer terror was until I looked across your garden at a small person some three feet tall. French cuirassiers are nothing to it.”

In quick succession, Malcolm remembered sitting beside Suzanne’s bed, holding the basin of hot water, his cold terror at her pain-wracked face, the wonder of the moment he first glimpsed Colin’s head, the wash of fear and amazement when Geoffrey Blackwell placed the baby in his arms. “I remember the terror vividly.”

Davenport studied two red-coated hussars from the King’s German Legion cantering toward them. “My case is hardly the same as yours.”

Davenport couldn’t possibly know how similar the circumstances of their paternity were. Malcolm swallowed a welling of memories. “She’s your daughter,” he said. “You acknowledged her as such. You introduced yourself as her father. Whatever existed before today, you now have a bond that will never go away.”

He meant it as both a reassurance and a warning. As much as he thought of what Davenport had done in the garden, he would do worse damage if he then walked away from young Livia.

Davenport nodded, eyes on the rays of sunlight that slanted through the trees. “I still remember when I received Cordelia’s letter saying she was pregnant. I told myself it didn’t mean anything. But my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t pour myself a glass of whisky. To own the truth, I thought I was doing something magnanimous by allowing Livia to be considered my own. I never thought about
her
. That she’d expect more from a father than his name.”

It was perhaps the longest speech Malcolm had ever heard Davenport make about anything remotely personal. “Perhaps you thought you’d done enough given the circumstances.”

“Livia wasn’t responsible for the circumstances. I should have written the occasional letter. Sent gifts at her birthday and Christmas. Not left it entirely up to Cordy to create a father out of made-up stories and a bad portrait of me at the age of twelve.”

“And now?” Malcolm asked.

Davenport nodded at Lady Charlotte Greville and her daughter, a girl of about twelve, passing them in a phaeton. “I didn’t see much of my own parents when they were alive, not that they set an example of connubial bliss. I spent school holidays with my uncle, who left me to my own devices while he pursued the pleasures of town. I escaped into the library. I thought I was rather lucky. No ties meant no risk of being disappointed.”

“I spent a good deal of my childhood in the library as well,” Malcolm said. “My wife would tell you it’s where I’d still spend much of my time if her efforts or the call of duty didn’t pull me out.” He hesitated, but Davenport had confided so much, more seemed to be required. “My brother and sister and I were in Scotland most of the time, my parents in London. Though they spent little time together. My mother died when I was nineteen.”

He broke off, because much as he was coming to trust Davenport, there were things he wasn’t prepared to talk about. Particularly not after last autumn’s events in Vienna. “It didn’t exactly leave me with a favorable view of matrimony,” he said instead. “For years I thought I’d never marry at all. I was convinced I’d be a disaster at it. I warned Suzanne of as much when I proposed.”

“She saw beyond it.”

“She was in difficult circumstances, or I’d never have dared take the risk. I still wonder sometimes if I was fair to her.”

Davenport edged his horse to the side as three officers from the Royal Horse Artillery approached, riding abreast. “I gave scant consideration to Cordelia’s feelings when I offered for her. The damnable thing about thinking one is immune to love is that one loses all perspective when one tumbles into it. Or what one thinks is love.”

Malcolm shot a sideways glance at him. “Thinks?”

“I’m dead to all feeling, remember?”

“I don’t think one can ever really be dead to all feeling, much as one might wish to be.” Malcolm shifted his grip on the reins. “As I said, I was terrified when Colin was born. With so poor an example, I was sure I’d make a damnable parent.”

Davenport grimaced. “I don’t think I have the makings of a good father. But I’ll do my best. After all, Cordy appears to be a more than passable mother, which I wouldn’t have expected.”

“People can surprise you.”

“So they can. If—”

Davenport broke off as they at last caught sight of Anthony Chase, bent forward over the neck of a blood mare, galloping hell for leather down the allée. He passed them, then wheeled round and rode back at them, the horse’s hooves pounding against the path. He drew up short a few feet off. Sweat gleamed on the mare’s sides and his own forehead.

“What the devil?” He looked from Malcolm to Davenport. “Don’t tell me you have more questions. Couldn’t you make sense of it the first time?”

“New facts require new questions.” Malcolm tightened the reins on Perdita, made restive by the energetic mare. “You didn’t tell us the woman for whom you were planning to abandon all for love had broken off your liaison only hours before she was killed.”

The mare danced sideways as Tony’s hands jerked on the reins. “Who told you that?”

“Your sister.” Davenport edged his own horse to the side, as though to box Tony in. “She followed you into the garden to confront Lady Julia.”

“Damnation.” Tony loosed a hand from the reins and dug his fingers into his hair. “Violet never did know when to stay out of things.”

“For what it’s worth, she tried to avoid telling us,” Malcolm said. “She wanted to protect you.”

“She did a damn poor job of it, didn’t she?”

“So it’s true?” Davenport said.

Tony’s mouth tightened. “I loved Julia. I’d have given my life for her. I was going to give up the life I had for her. That’s true.”

“But she felt differently,” Malcolm said.

Tony fingered the reins. “It never occurred to me. That one could love someone so completely and not see that the feeling wasn’t returned. Or not want to see it.”

“Hell, isn’t it?” Davenport said in a voice not entirely devoid of sympathy.

“Was that why you lied to us?” Malcolm asked Anthony Chase. “Because you couldn’t bear to admit you’d been wrong about her?”

“No.” Tony gave a short laugh. “God knows it was hard to believe, but Julia drove home the reality.”

“Why then?”

Tony drew a harsh breath, then released it, as though making a decision. “Because I was protecting my brother.”

D
avenport exchanged a quick look with Malcolm. “What does George have to do with it?”

“Everything,” Tony Chase said. “He’s the reason Julia broke with me.”

“He talked Lady Julia into ending the affair?” Malcolm asked.

“You could say so.” Tony’s hands clenched on the reins. “Inasmuch as he wanted her for himself.”

“George was having an affair with Julia?”
For once Davenport’s voice was stripped of all irony.

Tony shot a hard look at him. “Surely you didn’t think your wife was the only woman my brother dallied with? Two sisters. If he’d married them it would be considered incest.”

“Lady Julia told you she was breaking with you because she’d fallen in love with your brother?” Malcolm said.

“I already knew.” Tony edged his horse down the allée. Malcolm and Davenport followed. “I saw them together earlier in the evening. In one of the antechambers. In each other’s arms.”

“And then?” Malcolm asked, voice neutral. “She broke with you?”

“I confronted her. She didn’t deny the affair. She didn’t deny anything. She looked”—Tony spurred his horse to a faster speed—“pitying.”

“That can’t have been easy to take.”

“I told her I was damned if I’d share her with my brother. She said of course this was the end between us. That was when I lost my head. I said it couldn’t end this way. My God, it couldn’t have all been lies.”

“Love can be real without being lasting,” Malcolm said, then wondered why he felt compelled to offer Anthony Chase any sympathy.

“You must have been furious,” Davenport said.

Tony pulled his horse up and stared at Davenport. “You think I was somehow behind her death? Even if I could have arranged it so quickly, it wasn’t Julia I wanted to kill. It was George.”

“Did you confront him?” Malcolm asked.

“With Julia dead there seemed no point.” Tony shook his head. “I don’t know what possessed him.”

“Jealousy?” Malcolm suggested.

“Of me?” Tony Chase gave a short laugh. “God knows we’ve always been rivals the way brothers are. But I never thought he’d serve me such a turn. We always—”

“Kept your hands off each other’s women?” Davenport asked.

“Yes. No. Damn it, a man doesn’t—” Tony glanced at Davenport. “You should know. How it feels to realize the woman one loves is sharing another man’s bed.”

“So I do.” Davenport fixed Tony Chase with a hard stare. “It’s the closest I’ve ever come to wanting to commit murder.”

Cordelia hugged her arms round herself, fingers digging into her elbows. As though she could shock herself back into reality. “God help me. I didn’t know my own sister.”

“You didn’t know one aspect of her.” Suzanne Rannoch reached for the teapot. They had retreated to the salon, and Suzanne had ordered tea. She might not be an Englishwoman by birth, but she seemed to have adopted the British belief that tea soothed all troubles.

“An aspect that overshadows all else.”

“Yes, I can see how it would seem that way. Oh, dear, how silly of me.” Suzanne reached for a napkin to blot up the tea she’d spattered on the silver tray.

“You don’t think it does overshadow all else?”

“I think your sister was a complex woman with complex motives. The fact that she was a French spy doesn’t change the fact that she was your sister. Or that she cared for you.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because I’ve seen your memories of her.”

“I’m questioning every one of those memories.” Cordelia glanced out the window. Livia and Colin were once again playing in the garden under the watchful eye of Suzanne’s companion, Blanca. “And in my preoccupation with Julia I was woefully unprepared for introducing Livia to Harry.”

“You’ve spent years apart from Colonel Davenport.” Suzanne held out a cup of tea.

“But I knew I might encounter him in Brussels.” Cordelia returned to the table and accepted the cup. “I was so preoccupied with how I would deal with him, I failed wholly to think about Livia. Of all the things I should have discussed with Harry, that was the most vital.”

“It sounds as though you did discuss it, if a bit late.”

Cordelia dropped onto one of the sofas beside Suzanne. “Harry was—I had no right to expect him to be so generous.”

“What did you expect him to do?”

“God knows. At first I was simply relieved he left us in peace. Then guilt set in.” Cordelia turned her head to look at Suzanne, shame and defiance roiling within her. “The truth is, I’m not sure who my daughter’s father is.”

“I assumed as much.”

Cordelia stared at Suzanne Rannoch, startled by the matter-of-fact tone as much as the words.

“Given the timing of your affair with George Chase. Unless you and Colonel Davenport—”

“Had stopped sharing a bed? No, it wasn’t that tidy.” Cordelia took a quick swallow of tea. It scalded her mouth. “I don’t understand why he was so kind.”

“Perhaps because he realizes none of this is Livia’s fault.”

“Harry has the devil of a tongue, but he’s a good man.” Cordelia reached for the milk jug and splashed some milk into her tea. “Far better than I deserved.”

“But not, I imagine, an easy man to know.”

Cordelia gave a short laugh. “No.”

“I know a bit about that.”

Cordelia studied Suzanne Rannoch. “You and your husband seem almost to be able to read each other’s thoughts.”

Suzanne gave a rueful smile. “It wasn’t always that way. When we married we were quite literally little more than strangers. Even now when it comes to some things—” She shook her head.

Cordelia saw Malcolm Rannoch’s face—polite, pleasant, and as guarded as though he wore armor. “I don’t imagine Mr. Rannoch shares his feelings easily.”

“No. It’s difficult for him,” Suzanne said. “He never meant to marry until he found himself coming to my rescue. Marriage is a damnable invasion of privacy.”

Cordelia nearly choked on a sip of tea. “What an odd way of thinking of it.”

“Two independent people suddenly forced to share a house—or in our case cramped lodgings. It was weeks before Malcolm and I managed not to have my scent bottle and powder and rouge pot and his shaving things crowding each other off the dressing table.”

“Harry and I always had plenty of space.” Perhaps too much. It had felt as though they’d rattled about in their stylish house on Hill Street. Even though she’d chosen the watered silk wall hangings and mahogany furniture, it had never really seemed like home. As though they were playing at being grown-ups. “But I still remember how odd it was to look at him over the breakfast things. To realize I owed him some account of how I was spending my day. Though to be fair Harry always let me go my own way.”

“More perhaps than you wanted?”

Cordelia shrugged. “At the time I thought it was fortunate, as it was quite awkward spending as much time together as we did. But there were moments when I wondered why he’d married me at all.”

Suzanne reached for her own tea and took a sip. “So you tried to get his attention?”

Cordelia shook her head. “It’s too easy to excuse my behavior as a cry for my husband’s attention. I wanted George. I thought our love was powerful enough nothing could or should stand in its way. I told myself Harry couldn’t be happy married to a woman who didn’t love him, but the truth is I was appallingly blind to how I hurt him.”

Suzanne leaned forward to pour milk into her own teacup. “I don’t think it’s possible to be married without hurting the other person at some point.”

“You’re a fine one to talk.”

Suzanne looked up, silver teaspoon clutched between her fingers. “What?”

“Whatever you may think you’ve done to Mr. Rannoch—putting together an unfortunate seating arrangement, failing to charm one of his diplomatic colleagues—it can hardly compare to what I’ve done to Harry.”

Suzanne stared at the polished silver spoon as she stirred the milk into her tea. “There are all different types of betrayal. And whatever Malcolm and I have, it’s been hard won. I don’t think—”

She broke off at a rap on the door. A moment later, Valentin stepped into the room to say that Mrs. Anthony Chase had called.

Harry scowled down the allée as Anthony Chase galloped off. Careless and heedless even in his grief. Or at least his supposed grief. “Damn the man.”

“I own to feeling distinctly little sympathy for him,” Rannoch said, “despite his claims to have lost the only woman he ever really loved. Or perhaps because of them.”

“Quite. But it wasn’t Tony I was thinking of.”

“George? You had little enough cause to like him before this.”

“And yet I thought—” Harry broke off. He felt the pressure of Rannoch’s gaze on him, but the other man said nothing. Harry shifted his grip on the reins. “I thought he loved Cordy. Somewhere beneath the anger and guilt perhaps a part of me thought he deserved her because he was the love of her life. If it wasn’t for that—”

“You wouldn’t have left?”

Harry gave a wry grimace, though the pain of that last scene with Cordelia sliced through him, sharp as a fresh sword cut. “I was scarcely in a fit state to judge coherently. Like a callow young idiot, I wanted nothing more than to die, but I wasn’t quite brave enough to do it for myself. And yet—I hate to think of a woman who was even remotely my wife throwing herself away on a man like that.”

“I wouldn’t have thought it of him,” Rannoch said.

“You thought he had too much honor?” Harry asked with a short laugh.

“Of a sort. The Chase brothers strike me as the type who can seduce at liberty but think it’s a violation of the code to go after their brother’s women.”

“Evidently even that was doing them too much credit.”

“The personalities involved aside, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense,” Rannoch said. “I always thought it odd that the French put Lady Julia up to her liaison with Anthony Chase. For them then to have her form a liaison with his brother, when neither of them has any particular knowledge—”

“That we know of.”

Rannoch shot a look at him. “True. If—”

A bullet whistled out of the trees and shot past Harry straight toward Malcolm Rannoch.

BOOK: Teresa Grant

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