Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (40 page)
“Where are you off to?” Davenport asked.
“To have a talk with George Chase.”
Lord Uxbridge and his staff were quartered in a whitewashed cottage on Waterloo’s single street. Malcolm wouldn’t go so far as to wake George Chase the night before a battle, but he rather suspected Uxbridge’s staff, like Wellington’s, would find sleep eluded them. Sure enough, he entered a parlor choked with tobacco smoke and the smell of wet wool to find a group of Uxbridge’s officers lounging on chairs and the floor, sharing cigarillos and red wine by the flickering firelight.
He was greeted with jokes about civilians who didn’t know when they were well out of it, pleas for the latest news from Brussels, and an offer of wine. He laughed off the jokes, answered the questions as best he could, and declined the wine. “Actually, I was hoping for a word with you, Chase.”
George Chase met his gaze without flinching, his face pale even in the red-orange glow of the fire. “Of course.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Shall we go outside?”
To the accompaniment of much ribbing about fools who couldn’t stay out of the rain, Malcolm and George went out beneath the overhang of the roof. Rain dripped relentlessly from the roof and splashed against the cobblestones. The glow of candles and fires showed in the windows of the houses and thatched cottages where fortunate generals and their staffs were quartered. Few were sleeping tonight.
George dug his shoulder into the wall. “Uxbridge called on Wellington and asked him what the plans for tomorrow were. Said he thought he ought to know as second in command. Apparently Wellington told him Bonaparte had not confided his plans in him and as Wellington’s plans depend on Boney’s, he couldn’t possibly tell Uxbridge what they were. Added some nonsense about them both doing their duty.” George scanned Malcolm’s face. “But I don’t think you asked me out here to discuss battle strategy. Have you found Tony?”
“No. But I think I’m beginning to piece the picture together.” Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. “When you and Tony left Stuart’s ball did you meet Alexander Gordon and Will Flemming?”
George stared at him. “How the hell do you do it?”
“Your brother fought a duel with Will Flemming the night of Stuart’s ball.”
George glanced to the side, then swung his gaze back to Malcolm. “They were—Damn it, Rannoch, I’ll kill you if you reveal this, but Flemming had formed a liaison with my sister-in-law.”
“Hardly shocking given the way your brother carried on.”
“It’s not—”
“Not the same? No, that’s true. Your sister-in-law had license to break her vows by your brother’s betrayal. Your brother had no such excuse.”
“Rannoch, will you stop it with your damned Radical—”
“I don’t see what’s so radical about—”
“So says the man with the perfect marriage and the wife who will never stray.”
Malcolm leaned back, resting his hands against the rough whitewashed wall. “Gordon was Flemming’s second, I presume. Were you your brother’s?”
“Obviously.”
“You were the second in a duel—a violation of the law and Wellington’s orders—for your brother, whom you knew to be a French spy?”
George cast a quick glance about at the word “spy.” “This had nothing to do with that. It was an affair of honor. My brother asked me to act for him. What was I supposed to do?”
“Refuse?”
“I couldn’t let Tony know I was on to him. Besides—”
“You thought this sort of honor went deeper than betraying one’s country?”
“It’s not the same—One doesn’t refuse when a friend asks such a thing of one. Let alone a brother.”
“I think I’d refuse if Edgar asked me to be his second,” Malcolm said, though in point of fact he had fought one duel himself, much as he abhorred the practice. One duel in which he had not been the challenger.
“Spare me your damned moralizing. You’re a gentleman. You know how these things work. Or you should.”
“Regrettably.”
“Well then.” A crack of lightning illumined George’s face. His well-cut features looked unusually hard.
“Why fight the duel during the ball?” Malcolm asked over the answering roar of thunder. “As the second, you must have arranged it.”
“Wellington and most of the senior staff would be at the ball and out of the way. Gordon and I reasoned it was as safe a time as any. If we could slip out and return quietly, no one would know we’d been gone.”
“You were counting on your brother not actually killing Flemming?”
“I’d been impressing upon him that honor could be satisfied simply by the meeting itself. I prayed I’d been successful.”
“Where did you go?”
George drew a breath. Nearby a horse whinnied. “The park. Empty at that hour. We had a surgeon present of course.”
“And then?”
“Tony had a restless glitter in his eye. I was terrified of what he might do. It’s not just possessiveness. I think he does love Jane. In his way.”
“ ‘Love’ is perhaps the most bastardized word in the English language. Go on.”
“Tony shot wide. Deliberately, I suspect. I think Flemming was trying to shoot wide as well, but his hand was shaking badly—he’d been drinking. He ended up winging Tony.”
“Hence the blood on your brother’s coat.”
“Quite.” George drew a weary sigh. The rough, methodical scrape of a sword being sharpened against stone sounded from inside the house. “The surgeon patched him up, and we all went back to the ball. Flemming and Gordon and the surgeon can vouch for Tony’s and my whereabouts.”
“Our investigation into Lady Julia’s death would have been speeded along considerably if you’d told me this to begin with.”
“For God’s sake, Rannoch, I couldn’t have told you my brother had been fighting a duel over his wife’s infidelity. You must see that.”
“You’re protecting your traitor brother from being accused of dueling?”
“I’m protecting my sister-in-law’s reputation, you damned idiot.”
“I’ll do everything I can to keep Mrs. Chase out of this.”
George looked at him for a moment and gave a curt nod. “Thank you.”
Alexander Gordon met Malcolm’s gaze when he stepped back into the parlor in Wellington’s Headquarters.
“You’re an idiot, Gordon,” Malcolm said.
Gordon’s face relaxed into a grin. “Oh, well. That’s not exactly a new revelation.”
Fitzroy lifted a paper from the table at which he was working. “A lieutenant in the Fifty-second delivered this for you a quarter hour since, Malcolm. Said he had it from a villager.”
Malcolm took the paper and recognized the handwriting of one of his best sources within the French army, a cook in a regiment of lancers.
“Important?” Canning asked.
“Probably. It’s in code.” And had no doubt passed through so many hands that it would be impossible to trace it back to its source. Malcolm took the paper over to the corner where Davenport had left the ink and paper he’d used earlier and decoded the brief message.
He looked up to find Davenport watching him.
Malcolm folded the letter and the plaintext and tucked the papers into his cuff. “It appears I know where to find Anthony Chase.”
44
Sunday, 18 June
“
W
hat the hell—”
W
hat the hell—”
“I wouldn’t advise you to move, Chase. You have a sensitive part of your anatomy exposed.” Malcolm had surprised Anthony Chase when Chase stumbled into the trees near where he’d bivouacked to relieve himself. Malcolm had one arm clamped round Chase’s shoulders and a pistol held to his head.
“
Rannoch?
What the devil are you doing here?”
Rannoch?
What the devil are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same.”
Tony was silent for a moment. A pre-dawn glow spilled through the overhanging branches. A breeze rustled through the trees, but there was no sound of humans within earshot. “I would think that would be obvious to a man in your profession. I’m on a mission.”
“For which army?”
Tony was silent, but Malcolm felt the tension that ran through him.
“I know,” Malcolm said. “Your brother knows.”
“How the devil—”
“Lady Julia was betraying you with your brother.”
“Julia wasn’t my mistress.”
“Apparently she wasn’t your brother’s, either. But she was spying on you for him.”
Tangible shock ran through Tony’s body. “She—No. It’s not possible.”
“She was the perfect agent because people underestimated her. Including you. She never was your creature. She was George’s from the beginning.”
“You can’t prove—”
“Give it up, Chase.” Malcolm kept the pistol steady against Tony’s temple. “You’re working for the French. Your brother knew. Lady Julia knew. Now I know as well.”
“And you came here to drag me back to face justice?” Tony’s harsh laugh echoed through the trees. “I’ll be most interested to see how you attempt to carry that off.”
“I have no such delusions. I can’t stop you from fighting for the French. And I’m not much interested in doing so. One soldier won’t turn the tide of battle. But I can warn you that if you attempt to come back to the Allies as an agent provocateur, you’ll be arrested for treason.”
“Point taken.”
Malcolm studied the back of Tony’s head. The matted blond hair, the arrogant angle at which he carried himself even now. “If you’d learned Julia was a double I imagine it would have made you exceedingly angry.”
“I didn’t know.”
“So you say.”
“You think I’m that good an actor?”
“Possibly. I’m still not decided about quite what you are, Chase. What gave you the idea that I knew about Truxhillo?”
“George told me,” Tony said without hesitation. “Didn’t realize what a favor he was doing me.”
Malcolm frowned, going over his conversations with George Chase.
“And so of course I did want you dead,” Tony continued. “But as it happens I couldn’t have ridden to the château and shot at all of you. I was otherwise engaged.”
“Fighting a duel with your wife’s lover.”
Tony jerked against his hold. “How the devil—”
“Your brother told me.”
“Damn George.”
“But that wouldn’t have prevented you from arranging for someone else to ambush us at the château and kill Lady Julia.”
“I didn’t—”
Tony didn’t get any further. Malcolm flung him to the muddy ground and put a foot on his back. As Tony tried to struggle up, Malcolm dealt him a blow to the head with the butt of his pistol. Tony subsided into the mud and fallen leaves, unconscious.
Raoul O’Roarke scanned the field in the pale gathering light. Mist hovered over the ground, but the day promised to be clear and hot.
“The ground’s still too wet,” Flahaut said beside him. “We’re going to have to delay.”
Raoul glanced round at the soldiers cleaning their weapons, sipping coffee, tramping their feet against the damp ground. One could almost smell the eagerness for battle running through the men. “They’re going to get impatient.”
“Can’t be helped.” Flahaut’s face was drawn with tension. Today would decide whether he was branded a traitor or crowned as a hero who might have a chance for a life with the woman he loved. “We can’t get the guns into position in this mud, and the men wouldn’t be able to move fast enough.”
Raoul nodded. His gaze focused on a figure in the distance. It looked like—Raoul lifted his spyglass. Good God. Malcolm Rannoch was a madman. Not but what Raoul hadn’t been behind enemy lines often enough himself. But he could do so in the guise of an ally. And he didn’t have a wife and son to think of. At least not who were dependent on him.
“What is it?” Flahaut asked.
“Nothing,” Raoul said, lowering the spyglass. “Nothing at all.”
“Malcolm.” The voice called out across the street as Malcolm rode back into the village of Waterloo. He turned to see the Prince of Orange standing before the house that had been his quarters for the night, drawing on his gloves.
Malcolm swung down from Perdita and walked toward Billy. The rain had let up and a dawn glow battled the mist, but the ground was still a sea of ankle-deep mud.
Billy walked forward, grinning. “I knew you’d be back.”
“On a day like today, where else could I be, sir?”
“That’s the spirit.” Billy met Malcolm in the midst of the street, mud squelching round their boots. Gold braid glittered on Billy’s uniform jacket in the fitful light, but above his stiff, high-standing black collar, his face was the face of an uncertain undergraduate. “Somehow I didn’t quite believe today would actually come. Facing Bonaparte. After two days ago—”
“Don’t think about two days ago.” Malcolm gripped Billy by the shoulders. “All that matters is today. One moment at a time.”
Billy swallowed. “But I don’t know—”
Malcolm had a clear memory of teaching Billy to hold a cricket bat on the lawn at Carfax Court. He looked into the eager, anxious gaze. The gaze of his boyhood friend. The gaze of the man who might be a killer. He pushed all questions about Amelia Beckwith and Julia Ashton to the back of his mind and said the words that needed to be said. “You’ll do splendidly, sir.”
Harry held his restive horse in check and ran his gaze over Malcolm Rannoch as they waited in the street for the duke’s staff to assemble. The duke and his aides had been breakfasting by the time Rannoch returned to Waterloo, so they’d had no chance for private conversation until now. “Well?” Harry asked Rannoch.
“Nothing conclusive.”
“For God’s sake, Rannoch, this isn’t my first engagement. I won’t be distracted. But if I’m going to die, I’d like to have as many pieces of the puzzle as possible in my possession.”
“I confess I feel much the same.” Rannoch told him about Tony Chase’s duel with Will Flemming.
Harry shook his head. “Damned fools. So our obvious suspect has an alibi.”
“He could still have set up the ambush.”
“But much of the evidence against him and against George is explained away.”
“There’s still Billy.” Rannoch’s gaze drifted down the street. The Prince of Orange was conferring with March and Rebecque.
Harry noted the concern in Rannoch’s eyes. Concern and, beneath it, fear. “You’re fond of him,” he said.
Rannoch’s mouth tightened. “He isn’t the first murder suspect I’ve been fond of.”
Malcolm was far from the only civilian to ride out with the Duke of Wellington. In addition to his staff, the Prince of Orange, and Lord Uxbridge, Wellington was accompanied by a diplomatic corps including Pozzo di Borgo, who was Corsican but represented Tsar Alexander of Russia, Spanish General Alava, the Austrian representative Baron Vincent, and Prussian Baron von Müffling. Wellington, in white buckskin breeches and tasseled top boots, the gold knotted sash of a Spanish field marshal showing beneath his blue coat, might have been setting out on a fox hunt. Malcolm, who knew the value of costume and disguise, could appreciate that everything from Wellington’s polished, casual dress to his easy manner was part of his campaign tactics.
As they rode toward the troops, two men on horseback approached them. “Good God,” murmured Alexander Gordon, who was riding beside Malcolm. “It’s Richmond.”
It was indeed his grace the Duke of Richmond, whom Malcolm had last seen in his study at the ball, poring over the map as Wellington pointed at the village of Waterloo. Beside the duke rode his fifteen-year-old son, Lord William, his arm in a sling and a bandage on his head. Malcolm recalled Uxbridge toasting William and the other junior officers at the Richmond ball.
“William has come to present himself for duty,” Richmond informed Wellington.
Wellington cast a glance at the young lieutenant. “Nonsense. William, you ought to be in bed. Duke, you have no business here.”
Richmond’s reply was carried away on the wind, but he appeared to be arguing with his friend Wellington. He and William continued to ride alongside Wellington’s cortège, and when they did move off it was toward General Picton’s division rather than back to Brussels.
Malcolm turned his head to see a tall figure in the short-tailed blue jacket and red-plumed shako of the light dragoons riding toward him. Even before the rider was close enough for Malcolm to make out his features or his captain’s insignia, his posture was unmistakable. Malcolm’s throat tightened, and he breathed a small sigh of relief. He hadn’t consciously let himself think it, but he’d been dreading the prospect that he might never see his brother again.
“Malcolm.” Edgar reined in beside him. “I was hoping I could find you.”
“You knew I’d be here?”
“I know you, brother mine.” A shadow crossed Edgar’s normally sunny face. Since their mother’s death, they didn’t know each other as well as they once had. Then he gave one of his careless grins. “Have a care, will you? You’re the only brother I’ve got.”
Malcolm felt his own face relax into a smile. “I could say the same to you. And I’m only observing.”
“Ha. You may be able to run intellectual rings round me, Malcolm, but I’m not quite so naïve.” Edgar glanced toward Picton’s division. “Couldn’t believe it when I saw Richmond and young William.”
“Family honor,” Malcolm said.
Edgar turned his gaze back to him. “At least if anything happens to either of us we know it won’t affect Father overmuch.” He said it matter-of-factly, because matter-of-fact was what they’d come to be when it came to their father, out of sheer survival instinct.
“Quite,” Malcolm said. For a moment, the name of their mother, who would have cared, hung between them, tightening the air with past questions and past guilt.
Edgar gathered up his reins. “Give my love to Suzanne and Colin if I don’t come back. And to Gelly.”
“Likewise,” Malcolm said. Gisèle was their seventeen-year-old sister, home in England with Aline’s mother. He looked into Edgar’s eyes, the eyes of his boyhood confidant and first friend, and for a moment understood precisely why George Chase hadn’t turned Tony in. His throat went tight with all the things he couldn’t say. He clapped his brother on the arm. “Go carefully, Edgar.”
Edgar’s gloved fingers closed over Malcolm’s own. “You too.”
Malcolm watched his brother ride out of view. Mist hung over the fields, mixed with smoke from the Allied cooking fires and those of the French on the opposite ridge. Steam rose from cheap tea brewed in iron kettles. The smell of clay pipes and officers’ cigars mingled with the stench of wool still sodden from the night’s rain. Shots split the air as soldiers fired their guns to clean them.
“Waste of ammunition,” Davenport said to Malcolm. “It’s going to be a long day.”
And it had yet to properly begin. A breeze gusted over what would be the battlefield, stirring the corn, cutting through the curtain of mist. Wellington had taken up a position before the small village of Mont-Saint-Jean. Fitzroy had said that the duke would have preferred the position across the field at the inn of La Belle Alliance, which Bonaparte occupied, but the Allied position had its advantages. Wellington had seen the ground when he was in Brussels the previous year. Malcolm remembered the duke mentioning the slope of the land to the north, which would allow him to keep most of his troops out of sight of an enemy across the field.
To the left stood the fortified farm La Haye Sainte, with whitewashed walls and a blue-tiled roof that gleamed where the sunlight broke the mist, and still farther to the left the twin farms of Papelotte and La Haye. To the right, in a small valley hidden by cornfields, was Hougoumont, a pretty, walled château surrounded by a wood and a hedged orchard. Both Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte had been garrisoned with Allied soldiers.
The ground before them sloped down to a valley, through which the road to Charleroi ran, then rose to the ridge on which stood La Belle Alliance. On this ridge, the French army had begun to deploy. An elegant, masterful pageant. Malcolm lifted his spyglass. Lancers with white-plumed
shapkas
on their heads, chasseurs with plumes of scarlet and green, hussars, dragoons, cuirassiers, and carabiniers, and the Imperial Guard in their scarlet-faced blue coats. Gunners adjusted the positions of their weapons. Pennants snapped in the breeze and gold eagles caught the sun as it battled the mist.
shapkas
on their heads, chasseurs with plumes of scarlet and green, hussars, dragoons, cuirassiers, and carabiniers, and the Imperial Guard in their scarlet-faced blue coats. Gunners adjusted the positions of their weapons. Pennants snapped in the breeze and gold eagles caught the sun as it battled the mist.
Other books
Elianne by Nunn, Judy
Remembering You by Sandi Lynn
Diamond by Justine Elyot
Numbers by Laurann Dohner
The Knight of Silk and Steel by Terry Deary
In A Heartbeat by Hilary Storm
The First Kaiaru by David Alastair Hayden
Mordraud, Book One by Fabio Scalini
All My Relations by Christopher McIlroy
Seventh Enemy by William G. Tapply
