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She shook her head, sure it couldn’t be over so simply. Though a part of her hoped against hope that it was.
“I think the artillery was going to the front,” Malcolm said. “Wellington wouldn’t retreat so easily.”
Suzanne knew the duke well enough to realize that was all too true.
Malcolm turned back toward the house while their neighbors continued to argue. Cordelia moved to Suzanne’s side. David and Simon followed, walking a few feet apart, the distance between them palpable.
“We’ll get no more intelligence tonight,” Malcolm said as they stepped into the hall.
Cordelia cast a glance at David and Simon, then moved toward the stairs. “I don’t know that I can sleep, but I suppose we should try.”
They all took candles and climbed the stairs. On the landing, they murmured subdued good nights. David and Simon hadn’t so much as met each other’s gaze. “Cordelia,” Malcolm said softly, when he and Suzanne and Cordelia were alone on the first-floor landing.
Cordelia looked at him in inquiry over the flame of her candle.
“George says Julia worked for him, but they weren’t lovers.”
Cordelia returned Malcolm’s gaze for a long moment and inclined her head. “Thank you. Though oddly, I find that it doesn’t matter very much anymore.”
“I hope David and Simon talk,” Suzanne said to Malcolm in the privacy of their bedchamber.
“I doubt they will.” Malcolm set his candle on the chest of drawers. “David’s the sort who shuts down instead of fighting.”
“There’s a reason you’re such good friends. You’re much alike.” Suzanne used her candle to light the tapers on her dressing table. “Did you know Amelia Beckwith?”
“A bit. But in those days I was even more inclined to retreat to the library with a book than I am now. I certainly never guessed—” He shrugged out of his coat, the same black evening coat he’d worn to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, and stared at the dusty superfine with drawn brows.
Suzanne peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the dressing table. “Cordelia’s right. The connection to Julia is suspiciously coincidental.”
“So it is.” Malcolm tugged at his crumpled cravat. “And if Julia Ashton’s killer is the person who intercepted messages between Carfax and me it narrows the field.”
Suzanne froze in the midst of removing her pearl earrings. “You think Tony Chase was intercepting your communications with Carfax?”
“Possibly.” Malcolm began to unbutton his stained ivory brocade waistcoat. “But George Chase is the one who knew Carfax’s courier system.”
“Tony Chase could have learned about the courier system from his brother somehow.”
“He could. Or I could have been wrong to believe George’s denials that he’s working for the French as well.”
Suzanne dropped the second earring in its velvet-lined compartment beside the first, biting back all the objections she couldn’t possibly make. “Damn George for not telling you Tony was trying to kill you.”
Malcolm shrugged out of his waistcoat, wincing at the pull on the wound in his side. “I’m not feeling particularly charitable toward him myself. But I think I do understand.”
Suzanne’s fingers froze on the silver filigree clasp of her necklace. “Are you saying you’d protect Edgar, even at the risk of someone else’s life?”
“No. At least I hope not. But I can understand the impulse. And then there’s—” He broke off, frowning at the shirt cuff he’d been unfastening.
“Fitz.” Suzanne carefully aligned the pearl necklace against the black velvet in her jewelry box. Fitzwilliam Vaughn, Malcolm’s friend and fellow attaché from Vienna, was now on a mission in India. Talking about him at all was like touching a half-healed wound.
“Difficult not to make the comparison.” Malcolm tugged the button free. “I need to find Tony Chase. For a whole host of reasons.”
Suzanne crossed the room to her husband. “I can’t believe you can actually stay the night.”
Malcolm pulled his shirt over his head with tired fingers. Someone, she was pleased to see, probably Geoffrey Blackwell, had changed his bandages. “I’m scarcely fit for anything else.”
Her gaze moved over the hollow of his throat, the angle of his shoulders, the lean lines of muscle picked out by the candlelight. “Not anything?”
His eyes widened in genuine surprise. “Suzette—”
“If there ever was a time to take pleasure where we can find it—” She took his face between her hands and covered his mouth with her own. When the pull of competing loyalties threatened to tear her in two, she’d always been able to find solace in his arms. A communication that bridged all differences and drove out treacherous thoughts. Once, when she’d feared Malcolm would never let down the barriers that kept them apart, she’d thought this was the only sort of knowledge she’d ever have of him. Even now it was the easiest way to reach him. And the only way she knew to drive the demons from her mind.
His arms closed tight round her, but she felt his moment of hesitation, as though he feared to take advantage of her humor. She deepened the kiss and sank her fingers into his hair, leaving no doubt of what she wanted. When his lips moved to her cheek, she heard the edge of desperation in his breath. The desperation of a man who wonders if he’s making love to his wife for the last time. His fingers shook as he lifted her in his arms and moved to the bed. She pulled him down to her and surrendered to welcome oblivion. Later she even slept for a time, curled against his chest, one hand clasping his own, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.
A cry jerked her from her sleep. Malcolm was already on his feet, pulling on his dressing gown and pushing up the window. She scrambled into her own dressing gown and ran to his side. She could make out the words now.
“Les français sont ici! Les français sont ici!”
39
Saturday, 17 June
 
S
uzanne leaned out the window beside Malcolm. In the street below, a man banged on their door, shouted his message about the French, then ran down the street to do the same at the next house. The street was full of people again, in varying states of déshabille, some milling about, some carrying paintings, chairs, chests, and small tables down to their cellars.
“ ‘Rumor doth double, like voice and echo, the numbers of the feared.’ ” Malcolm closed the window and gave her a quick kiss.
They found Cordelia and David in the hall with Valentin and the maids. “Blanca’s in the nursery,” Cordelia said, her arm round Brigitte, one of the maids, a girl of fifteen. “The children seem to have slept through it, thank goodness.”
Aline came hurrying through the green baize door from the kitchen. “Simon’s making coffee, and he says there’ll be toast and eggs in a quarter hour.”
“I’ll see what I can learn from Stuart,” Malcolm said.
He returned from Stuart’s by the time they had finished Simon’s impromptu breakfast. “Some Belgian troops ran from the battlefield apparently,” he said, dropping into a chair at the breakfast table and accepting a cup of coffee from Suzanne. “Their cavalry galloped through the city early this morning and set off a panic. The roads to Antwerp are more clogged than they were yesterday.”
“Good thing we’re planning to sit tight.” Simon spread marmalade on a piece of toast. He and David had barely made eye contact all morning.
Malcolm pushed back his chair a short time later. “Stuart will keep you apprised of news.” He hesitated. “Casualties from Quatre Bras are sure to reach the city today.”
Suzanne nodded. “That will keep us busy.”
She persuaded him to let her change his bandages before he left and was relieved to see both wounds were healing cleanly. She went out into the street with him and saw him swing himself up onto Perdita. She touched her fingers to the horse’s neck. “Take care of each other.” Perdita nuzzled her hair in response.
Malcolm bent down from the saddle to give her a quick, hard kiss. It was as though they both feared that this time a more prolonged farewell was tempting fate. Not that either of them believed in fate.
David left the house shortly after Malcolm saying he was going to see what news he could discover. The ladies were going to walk round to the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s again. Cordelia and Aline went to put on their bonnets. Suzanne lingered downstairs and followed Simon into the study. She found him standing by the windows. The lines of his back showed taut against the glazing. The light from the window glanced off his whitened knuckles.
“I know it’s still morning, but you look as though you could do with a drink,” she said, moving to the table with the decanters.
“A drink won’t solve this.” Simon turned round and leaned against the windowsill.
“No, but it can dull the edges of the pain. Trust me, I know.”
“You’re a fine one to talk. Do you and Malcolm ever fight?”
She splashed sherry into two glasses. “It’s not so much what we say as what goes unsaid.”
He gave a wintry smile. “That sounds like Malcolm.”
She crossed to him and put one of the glasses in his hand. “It’s amazing what one can get through.”
He curled his fingers round the etched glass and stared down into the sherry. “I don’t think David will ever forgive me.”
“One doesn’t forgive precisely. One gets past things.”
He took a swallow of sherry. “So cynical, Lady?”
“So realistic, Lord. I’ve been married two and a half years. You’ve been with David longer than that.”
“And we’ve got past a lot. But this is family. And duty. And honor. Everything that makes David what he is.”
And Malcolm. Last autumn in Vienna when she confessed about her relationship with Frederick Radley, Malcolm had got past the revelation that she wasn’t the sexual innocent he’d thought her to be when they’d married with surprising ease. What she’d told him was a series of half-truths, but she still hadn’t thought his feelings for her would survive it. “People can surprise you.”
“So they can. But everyone has their breaking point. David’s a brilliant man, a humanist, an idealist, a reformer. But he’s also an English gentleman to his core.”
A chill coursed through her. However much Malcolm had surprised her last autumn, she couldn’t expect his feelings for her would survive greater revelations. He loved her, which she’d never thought possible, but his love was predicated on his not knowing the truth of who she was.
She forced a sip of sherry down her throat. “Mr. Darcy.”
Simon raised his brows.
“Do you remember when I first read
Pride and Prejudice
? You’d sent it to Malcolm in Lisbon. I hadn’t even met you yet, but I wrote to you after I read the book. I said Malcolm reminded me of Mr. Darcy in some ways, and you wrote back that you felt the same about David. That inbred sense of duty and responsibility. Appealing. But damnably difficult to live with.”
Simon swirled the sherry in his glass. “I always knew David’s family loyalty would come between us. I just didn’t think it would be like this.”
For a moment, Lord Carfax was such a tangible force in the room he might have been present. Suzanne touched Simon’s arm. “We’re none of us thinking very rationally right now.”
“I’ve replayed my decisions about Amelia every day for the past four and a half years. If I had to do it again, I’d tell David of her plight immediately. But I still don’t think I’d tell him after she died. Protecting him. Perhaps protecting myself.” He took another swallow of sherry. “No apology is going to wipe away what I did.”
Suzanne slid her arm round him. “Give it time. You and David have more between you than most couples I know.”
“But then the more one cares, the more power one has to hurt.” Simon looked down at her. “Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
“Liar. You must be a stone lighter than when I saw you in England last summer. And you were thin then.”
“It’s the wretched heat.” She drew a breath. “Malcolm is out there looking for a man who’s trying to kill him.” And who was spying for her side.
Simon put his own arm round her and she leaned against him, grateful beyond measure for simple human warmth.
 
“You back, Malcolm?” Colonel Canning, his dark blue aide-de-camp’s frock coat creased, his collar stained, edged his horse toward Malcolm’s own. “Thought you’d returned to Brussels.”
“I did.”
“Crazy devil.” Canning cast a glance round the fields of Quatre Bras. Bloodstains showed against the trampled corn. Bodies sprawled where they had fallen yesterday. A sickening number of kilted Highlanders and cuirassiers in burnished breastplates lay about the walled farm of Quatre Bras at the center of the crossroads. Soldiers who had survived the battle sipped tea from tin cups or cleaned their weapons, waiting for their battalions to be called to march. “Don’t you know when you’re well out of it?”
“I do. I got a night in a soft bed.”
“And returned in time to see our retreat.” Canning grimaced as the soldiers whose battalion had just been called fell into place, marching north toward Mont-Saint-Jean, to keep in contact with their Prussian allies.
“Tactical withdrawal.”
“That’s the spirit. Hookey would be proud of you.” Canning cast a glance at Wellington, lying on his cloak on the grass not far off, a newspaper spread over his face. “He was laughing over some gossip from the London papers not long ago.”
“Which goes miles toward keeping up morale.” Fitzroy Somerset pulled up beside them. “You might not think it to look round, but the withdrawal’s actually going quite smoothly.” He cast a glance at the sky where inky black clouds had begun to mass. “And so far the rain’s held off.”
Malcolm glanced toward Frasnes, where he’d heard Ney had withdrawn for the night. “Have the French given you any trouble?”
“No, they’ve been strangely silent. Though the more of our men march, the more nervous the remaining ones get. There are that many fewer to face a French attack if it does come.”
Canning cast a glance at Fitzroy, then leaned toward Malcolm. “I say, Rannoch, what the devil’s happened between you and Gordon? I could tell something was up when you and Davenport spoke to him at Headquarters—God, was it only the day before yesterday? And when I said something about you last night he got an odd look on his face.”
Fitzroy’s fair brows drew together. After all, he’d been there when March told Malcolm about Gordon slipping away from Stuart’s ball.
“Just a tedious bit of investigation,” Malcolm said. “Nothing lasting.” At least, he profoundly hoped that was the case. Suzanne’s comment that Gordon was the sort of man Wellington might have employed to deal with Julia Ashton lingered uncomfortably in his memory.
Concern drew at Canning’s good-natured face. For all he had gone through in the Peninsular War, Malcolm doubted it had ever occurred to Canning that his friends could be on anything but the side of truth and honor. “I just hate to see you not friends. Not given what we may be facing tomorrow.”
“So do I.” Malcolm looked from Canning to Fitzroy. “You haven’t seen George Chase by any chance, have you?”
“He’s probably with Uxbridge,” Fitzroy said. “The cavalry’s got orders to cover the retreat.”
Canning regarded Malcolm for a moment. “Is this to do with Julia Ashton’s death?”
“What makes you think that?” Malcolm asked.
“You have that look you get when the game’s afoot.” Canning leaned forward in the saddle again. “Does George Chase have anything to do with Julia Ashton? Besides the fact that he was her sister’s lover?”
“Do you have reason to think he does?” Malcolm asked, his pulse quickening.
“No. But if you do—” Canning fingered his reins. “I went out into the garden at Stuart’s ball. Not long before all that fuss about Wellington and Stuart and Slender Billy leaving the ballroom. I saw Chase and his brother coming in through the garden gate.”
Fitzroy, quick to see the implications, drew a sharp breath.
Malcolm stared into Canning’s open, cheerful face. “You saw George and Anthony Chase coming through the garden gate together at Stuart’s ball?”
“Yes, I told you—”
“Why in God’s name didn’t you say something sooner?”
“I didn’t think anything of it. All sorts of people must have been in and out of the house that night. But if there’s any chance George Chase has anything to do with Lady Julia’s death—”
“Quite,” Malcolm said.
 
A tearful Georgiana Lennox greeted Suzanne, Cordelia, and Aline at the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s. “The Duke of Brunswick has been killed. I said good-bye to him at Mama’s ball only the night before last. And—” She bit her lip and put her hands over her eyes. “Lord Hay.”
“Oh, Georgy.” Suzanne hugged her friend. The bright-eyed young ensign had been a favorite waltzing partner of Georgiana’s. Suzanne had wondered if in time he’d become something more.
Georgiana hiccoughed. “I keep seeing him that night. After we found out the troops were to march. He wanted me to dance, and I was cross because he was so excited to be going off to war. I can’t believe that was the last time I’ll ever speak to him.” She dashed a hand across her eyes.
“No time for tears, Georgy.” Cordelia put her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. “The streets will be full of wounded before long. We have work to do.”
Georgiana swallowed and gave a quick nod. Cordelia squeezed her shoulders.
“Mrs. Rannoch.”
Suzanne turned round at the anxious voice to see Violet Chase hurrying toward them.
“I wondered if you’d heard—” Violet stopped, fingering a fold of her blue-sprigged skirt. “I thought perhaps your husband had come back to Brussels last night.”
“Malcolm said most of the British cavalry weren’t involved in the fighting yesterday,” Suzanne said. “So George should have been out of danger. As should Captain Ashton. I’m afraid we don’t know about Tony.”
Violet drew a gasping breath. “Thank you.”
Georgiana looked after Violet as she returned to Jane, who was sitting bolt upright on a settee. “When we heard about the Highlanders being cut to pieces yesterday poor Mrs. Chase went quite pale. Which I thought odd, as her husband’s in the 95th and Major Chase is on Lord Uxbridge’s staff. I suppose they must have friends among the Highlanders.”
Suzanne looked at Jane Chase, scraping lint with methodical fingers and numb eyes. Lady Frances Webster’s comments the previous day—God, had it only been a day?—about Jane Chase’s apparent quarrel with Julia echoed through her mind. With a host of new implications.
They left the comtesse’s, armed with scissors and lint and flasks of water and brandy, and nearly tripped over wounded soldiers as they stepped from the house. The sun beat down on the cobblestones, loosing the smell of blood and dirt from crusted uniforms. The wounded lay everywhere. Some had walked the more than twenty miles from Quatre Bras and dropped where they stood. Others had been brought into the city in carts and wagons. Suzanne had nursed the wounded in the Peninsula. Geoffrey Blackwell had taught her to dig out bullets and stitch wounds and more times than she cared to remember she’d closed the eyes of the dead. But never had she seen casualties on this scale.

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