The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (42 page)

CHAPTER 35

Colin’s and Jessica’s voices carried on the air as Suzanne approached Berkeley Square. Normalcy. At least their lives were still untouched. Though sooner or later surely they would notice the constraint between their parents. Colin was a sensitive child and sharp-eyed. She was surprised he hadn’t picked up on it already. Still, for the moment, Suzanne could indulge herself in the fantasy that all was as it had been.

She started across the street to the garden and saw what had been hidden by a tree. A man sitting on the bench beside Laura. All Suzanne could see was the back of a beaver hat and shoulders of a gray greatcoat, but something in the angle of his head was unmistakable. She quickened her steps.

“Mummy.” Colin ran over to the black metal railing. “Mr. O’Roarke came to see us. Well, to see you, but he played catch with me. And Jessica, she can roll the ball. Wasn’t that splendid of him?”

“Splendid.” Suzanne put a hand on her son’s head, anchoring herself. “Good day, Mr. O’Roarke.”

“Mrs. Rannoch.” Raoul lifted his hat.

“Where’s Daddy?” Colin asked. “Is he Investigating somewhere else?”

“Just so, darling. He’ll be along in a bit.” Suzanne stepped through the square gate. Jessica crawled over the paving stones and flung her arms round Suzanne’s knees. As Suzanne scooped her up, Malcolm came into view down Hill Street. Suzanne swallowed at the image they must present, she holding Jessica, Colin chattering to Raoul. But after a brief gaze that took in the scene, Malcolm merely said, “O’Roarke. I suppose you have news.”

“Yes. Forgive me for calling unexpectedly—”

“No, it’s as well. Let’s go in the house.”

“Mr. O’Roarke threw a ball with me, Daddy,” Colin announced.

“Splendid, old chap. Very good of him. I know I haven’t been playing with you as much as I should.”

Colin’s gaze shot from Malcolm to Raoul. Suzanne realized that her fairy-tale window of the children being deaf and blind to the undercurrents in the house was fast closing.

They crossed the street to the house and went into the library, just as they had the day Malcolm asked Raoul about his parentage.
Three
—
was it really only three?—days ago.
A different world in which Malcolm had been able to turn to her for comfort.

“I know I’m the last person you want to see just now,” Raoul said.

Malcolm gave a dry smile. “I think Fouché ranks a bit higher on the list.”

Raoul’s answering smile was equally dry but had a bit less of an edge. “For once I can say I’m pleased to be outranked by Fouché.”

Malcolm waved a hand towards the Queen Anne chairs. “Sit down, O’Roarke. We’re still in the midst of an investigation.”

Raoul dropped into one of the chairs. Suzanne sat on the sofa. Rather to her surprise, Malcolm sat beside her instead of taking the other chair, though not close enough to touch, even accidentally.

Raoul leaned forwards, fingers tented together. “I think it’s time—probably past time—I told you both what I know about the Elsinore League.”

“You mean you know as well?” Suzanne asked, startled into speech.

Raoul’s gaze shot to her. “What do you know?”

Malcolm looked from her to Raoul. “You mean they
were
a French spy ring?” he asked, overlapping Raoul’s question.

“Not according to Jennifer Mansfield.” Suzanne picked her way through Jennifer’s revelations. “She thinks they were a British spy ring.”

“With two French agents as members?”

“Malcolm—” She wasn’t going to be able to keep Jennifer’s confidence. But Jennifer herself had seen that. “According to Jennifer, Alistair wasn’t a French spy.”

“How does she know?”

It still stuck in Suzanne’s throat to betray someone else’s secrets. “Because the French set her to gather intelligence on Alistair.”

“She was a good agent,” Raoul said.

“You knew?” Suzanne asked.

He nodded. “I knew most French agents. It’s why I could never credit the supposed revelations about Alistair.”

Malcolm glanced at Raoul, then looked back at Suzanne. “Tell me. Tell me everything she said.”

Suzanne recounted her exchange with Jennifer Mansfield. “I have to say I believe her when she says that if Alistair were a French agent she’d have found evidence of it,” she concluded.

Malcolm gave a short laugh. “Her talents ranking considerably higher than mine.”

“But she was looking for evidence, darling. You had no reason to investigate me.”

“Very true. I was too blind even to see the need to look for it. If Alistair wasn’t a French spy how do you account for the letters to Harleton?”

“The references to the Raven are because somehow he knew about me and knew what his daughter-in-law being exposed would do to the family.”

“Whatever his opinion of his putative son. All right, that makes sense. But when he talked about how they could ruin each other—”

“I think he was talking about the Elsinore League,” Raoul said.

Malcolm’s gaze shot back to Raoul. “Was Jennifer Mansfield right? Were they a British spy ring? And if so why do you know when Carfax doesn’t? Although knowing Carfax, he could have simply had his reasons for not telling me.”

“Very likely,” Raoul said. “But as it happens they are not a British spy ring. Nor are they simply a hellfire club.”

“Jennifer said she overheard Alistair saying they had to remember what they were fighting for and to whom they owed their allegiance,” Suzanne said. “To whom do they owe their allegiance?”

Raoul’s mouth curved. “Themselves.”

“You mean they were driven by self-interest?” Malcolm said. “In the service of what?”

Raoul sat back in his chair. “I can’t claim to have been privy to the group’s founding. I went to university in Paris, and I wouldn’t have been in their set in any case. But as I understand it, this group of young men joined forces with the aim of working to ensure their mutual benefit.”

“In politics?” Malcolm asked.

“In politics. In the army. I think the goal was at first to work within Britain, but some, your fath—Alistair in particular, had ambitions with larger scope. They saw that the world was changing. Like many, they wanted to influence that change. But not in the service of a particular set of beliefs or ruler or even a particular country. The goal of the Elsinore League is to maintain a balance of power on the Continent favorable to the League’s members.”

Suzanne stared at him and felt Malcolm doing the same. “You’re saying they tried to influence international events to benefit themselves?” Malcolm asked.

“I’m saying they did.” Raoul crossed one booted foot over the other. “They’re powerful men. They’ve pooled their resources to become even more powerful.” He smoothed a crease from his sleeve. “Did you ever wonder why two astute politicians like Castlereagh and Canning let things get so far between them that they actually fought a duel and Canning ended up wounded?”

“The Elsinore League were behind that?” Suzanne asked.

Malcolm’s mouth tightened. “Father never liked Canning.”

“In the fallout, Alistair received a cabinet position himself,” Raoul said. “And Dewhurst was able to get funding for his Royalist activities which Canning had been holding up. I’m quite sure the League are also responsible for exacerbating Wellington’s difficulties after his time in India. Wellington’s temper is certainly part of it, but without the League, Richard Wellesley would have been able to get his brother a command in the Peninsula much sooner.”

“So in that case their interference benefited the French,” Suzanne said.

“Inadvertently.”

“And Hugo Cyrus was promoted to general,” Malcolm said.

“Quite.”

“How do they do it?” Malcolm asked. “Blackmail?”

“Frequently. Sometimes more complicated ruses worthy of an intelligence mission. There are enough of them to provide cover for each other, and the one who gets his hands dirty is rarely anywhere close to benefiting from that particular manipulation. They have friends and relatives to protect them. And they’ve made themselves feared.”

“I wonder if they knew Lord Harleton was a French spy,” Suzanne said.

“They must have done,” Malcolm said. “Dewhurst suspected him.”

“I suspect they’d have seen it as an advantage,” Raoul said. “In aiming for a balance of power favorable to their own interests, it would help to have a foot in both camps. Or rather several camps.”

“Did you know Harleton was a member when you recruited him?” Suzanne asked, before she could think twice.

“You recruited Harleton?” Malcolm asked Raoul.

“For my sins. And yes, I suspected he was an Elsinore League member at the time. It was part of why I thought he’d make a doubly interesting asset.”

Malcolm folded his arms. “So Harleton and my wife shared a spymaster.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Raoul said, “but you could say so. Save that Harleton was purely a source of information, not a field agent. And I never trusted him.”

“And you trusted me?” Suzanne asked, genuinely curious. It wasn’t a word they used easily.

“As much as I trusted anyone.”

“How did you learn about the Elsinore League in the first place?” Malcolm asked. “Did they try to recruit you?”

Raoul laughed. “Hardly. As I said, I didn’t run in their circles.”

“How then?” Malcolm’s gaze drilled into the other man.

Raoul hesitated. Suzanne saw his fingers tense on the chair arms. “From your mother.”

Malcolm’s gaze locked on Raoul’s own. “She stumbled across evidence in Alistair’s things?”

“There was no stumbling about it. Arabella had been investigating the Elsinore League for years.”

Malcolm stared at the enemy spymaster who had fathered him. “She—O’Roarke, are you saying you recruited my mother to spy for you?”

Raoul returned his gaze. Suzanne saw something shift in her former lover’s eyes, something she could not have put a name to, save that she had the oddest sense they were about to step over some sort of invisible barrier. “No,” Raoul said. “I’m saying she recruited me.”

CHAPTER 36

Suzanne could not suppress a gasp. Malcolm’s gaze was trained on Raoul. “My mother recruited you to be a French spy?”

“No. Arabella’s sympathies were surprisingly liberal, but she was loyal to her country. She was working against the Elsinore League.”

Malcolm shook his head in disbelief. “How—”

“I believe she learned about them when she was on the Continent with your grandfather. Talleyrand may have told her some details, possibly Peter of Courland as well.”

“They’re known abroad?” Suzanne asked.

“Oh yes. I believe they have international members.”

“Is Talleyrand a member?” Malcolm asked.

“I’ve wondered about that, though I’m now inclined to think he was more interested in investigating the League. Which may be why he piqued Arabella’s interest. At first I think she was merely curious. Later—”

“After Tatiana was born,” Malcolm said.

“Yes. Learning about the League became a welcome focus, a distraction. But the more she learned about them, the more convinced she became that they needed to be stopped.”

“And you?”

“Agreed with her. They were opposed to everything I was working for—in Ireland, in France, in Britain. Even as I worked for other causes that one remained.”

Malcolm swallowed. Suzanne could see the past swirling like bits of mosaic in his head. “Is that why she married my—Alistair?”

“She denied it was the only reason, but I think it was part of it. She already knew he was one of the founders.”

“Dear God.”

Suzanne touched her husband’s arm, dragging him back to the present.

“Why in God’s name didn’t you tell us any of this sooner?” Malcolm asked.

Raoul drew in and released his breath. “Because I had given my word to your mother. She didn’t want you involved. The League have proved themselves willing to kill those who stand in their way. And I think she didn’t want to put further strain on your relationship with Alistair.”

Malcolm gave a short laugh.

“You thought of him as your father,” Raoul said. “Or at least Arabella believed you did.”

Malcolm drew a breath.

“I can understand if you have trouble believing it,” Raoul said.

“No.” Malcolm frowned at his hands. “The odd thing is I’ve never been able to make sense of why my mother married Alistair. This at least has some logic to it.” He looked up at Raoul. “Did she use her knowledge of the League to force Alistair to get you out of Ireland?”

Raoul’s mouth tightened. “It was more than that. Simply knowing about the League wouldn’t have hurt Alistair. They were too careful. Arabella had learned something about a particular mission of theirs, something she could tie Alistair to directly. Something that would destroy him.”

“What?” Malcolm’s voice was frayed to the breaking point.

“She wouldn’t tell me. I had to piece together that it was even to do with the League.”

Malcolm pushed himself to his feet and took a turn about the room. “I think I may have an idea. In October of 1785 Bessborough saw diamonds hidden in a bottle of claret on Dewhurst’s yacht. We found loose diamonds hidden at Harleton’s house. And Bessborough mentioned that Dewhurst and Alistair hated Cardinal de Rohan.”

This time it was Raoul’s turn to look at Malcolm in shock. “Good God.”

“Malcolm.” Suzanne stared at her husband. “Are you saying Alistair and Dewhurst and Harleton stole the queen’s diamonds?”

“The irony being that they never really were the queen’s diamonds.” Raoul ran a hand over his hair as though in an effort to reorder his thoughts. “In fact, the necklace was designed for a royal mistress.”

“Madame de Pompadour,” Malcolm said. “Louis the Fifteenth commissioned the necklace for her, didn’t he? But then the king died before it was paid for.”

“And the jewelers tried to sell it to Marie Antoinette.” Suzanne conjured up bits and pieces of the story she’d heard as a child. “But she refused.”

“Perhaps because she didn’t want a necklace that had been designed for her father-in-law’s mistress,” Raoul said. “Perhaps because she saw the folly of such extravagance in a time of privation. She wasn’t nearly so heedless as her reputation would lead one to believe. Leaving the jewelers in a quandary. Until an enterprising young woman named Jeanne de la Motte enters the picture.”

“Did you know her?” Suzanne asked.

“I met her once or twice. Striking. And a keen understanding. Under different circumstances she might have made a good agent. She seems to have been driven by personal ambition. She and her lover tried to entrap Cardinal de Rohan into buying the necklace by creating a false correspondence with Marie Antoinette in which the queen asked him to buy it for her. They even hired a prostitute to impersonate the queen. Supposedly their motive was greed. They planned to make off with the necklace themselves. But I’ve always wondered if there was more to their choice of Rohan.”

“Dewhurst was in France then,” Malcolm said. “He’d gone to school there. Alistair and Harleton were in and out. They could have found Jeanne, they could have financed her.”

“She was tried,” Suzanne said. “She didn’t implicate them.”

“She was probably well paid not to.” Malcolm took another turn about the room. “She sought refuge in England after she got out of prison.”

“And they hid the diamonds?” Suzanne asked.

“They couldn’t have sold them,” Raoul said. “At least not all at once. They might have taken bits and pieces through the years.”

Malcolm nodded. “Aunt Frances has a diamond pendant Alistair gave her, a particularly fine stone. I wouldn’t be surprised if—” He broke off.

“It’s all right,” Raoul said. “I already knew about Fanny and Alistair.”

“I should have realized. You seem to know more family secrets than I do myself. More to the point,” Malcolm continued, “the diamonds could be what Harleton was referring to in his quarrel with Alistair when he said Alistair would take ‘it,’ too, given the chance.”

Suzanne shook her head. “To meddle on that level—”

“They wouldn’t have known quite the extent of it at the time,” Raoul said. “If Malcolm is right, their aim was to bring down Rohan. They’re clever men, but I doubt they foresaw that the public wouldn’t believe Marie Antoinette was innocent of the conspiracy. That the affair of the necklace would be seen, at least in retrospect, as playing a role in bringing down the French monarchy.”

“So if the truth came out, diehard Royalists like my father and Dewhurst would be seen as having helped incite the Revolution.”

“Yes, that might well have seemed like too much even to them,” Raoul said. “I can see Alistair going so far as to save my hide to keep the secret. He valued his reputation.”

“Though in other ways he strikes me as more of an Iago than a Rodrigo,” Malcolm said.

“This explains what Alistair and Harleton and Dewhurst had to fear,” Suzanne said. “But it doesn’t explain why someone would have wanted to kill Alistair and Lord Harleton. It doesn’t even precisely explain the importance of the manuscript unless someone thought it could lead to the diamonds.”

“Alistair and Harleton had the power to destroy Dewhurst,” Malcolm pointed out. “But he could equally destroy them, and it’s difficult to see why it should come to a crisis now.”

“Carfax was on to Harleton,” Suzanne said, sorting through the mosaic of information. “Harleton could have used the diamonds to pressure Dewhurst and Alistair to protect him.”

“Which would give Dewhurst a motive to kill Harleton but not Alistair.” Malcolm prowled back into the center of the room. “We know Rupert saw the three of them meeting in secrecy at his sister’s not long before Harleton was killed, and Rupert says the meeting appeared contentious. It’s not a stretch to think that related to the diamonds in some way.”

“Suppose someone had uncovered their involvement and wanted revenge,” Suzanne suggested. “Someone connected to Jeanne de la Motte? Or to Cardinal de Rohan?”

Raoul’s gaze shifted between them, a faint smile curving his lips. “It’s edifying to listen to your expertise. I can’t match either of you as an investigator, but I should add that the League don’t always work in concert. Obviously all the members can’t be in on every scheme.”

“You think some of the other members learned about the affair of the diamonds and took revenge?”

“I think it’s not unimaginable that other members would have thought Alistair, Harleton, and Dewhurst had overstepped their brief.” Malcolm dropped down on the sofa beside Suzanne again.

“Dewhurst.” Suzanne frowned at a loose thread in her sleeve. “He’s what’s out of place in all this. If the motive was vengeance or even to silence the conspirators, why is Dewhurst untouched? Has he simply avoided it? Or—”

“Is he the one behind the attacks,” Malcolm finished for her.

“And I think you’re right, we—you—haven’t arrived at the importance of the
Hamlet
manuscript yet,” Raoul said.

“Which is where this whole thing began.” Malcolm scrubbed his hands over his face. “Who would have thought we could uncover a conspiracy of this magnitude and still be looking for answers.”

 

“Darling—” Suzanne reached out and gripped her husband’s hand. She had no right to either the endearment or the gesture anymore, but somehow both came naturally.

Malcolm to her surprise did not jerk away from her touch or her words. Perhaps he was unaware of both. His gaze was fixed on the cool gray light, spilling through the windows onto the Aubusson carpet and oak and bronze velvet, touched with winter. “I always saw my mother as a victim. Of circumstances, an unfortunate marriage, the demons that drove her. Someone who reacted, who sought escape. And I suppose she was all those things at times. But she was also—” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine. She actually married Alistair to obtain information—”

Suzanne thought it was her jerk of response that made him break off. He swung his gaze to her though he didn’t release her hand.

“It can seem a reasonable option at the time,” she said.

He didn’t flinch away, from her gaze or from the implications. “I think Arabella despised Alistair even then. And you didn’t—”

“Despise you? No. Far from it. I already knew you were one of the best men I’d ever encountered. Which I suppose makes what I did worse.”

“Not taking your children into account.”

She swallowed. Her throat ached, not with loss but with sympathy. “I don’t imagine your mother was even thinking about children at the time. I didn’t, until I knew I was carrying Colin. By the time she was pregnant with you, she was locked into her choices.”

Malcolm’s mouth twisted. “I always knew her children weren’t at the forefront of the choices she made. This doesn’t change that.”

“And yet she gave up her greatest bargaining chip to save her son’s father.”

“Or to save the man she loved or the man whose cause she believed in. Or whom she needed to further her own ends. In an odd way one could argue O’Roarke made more decisions taking me into account than she did.”

For a moment, she felt that saying anything would be akin to treading on broken glass. “I can’t pretend to understand him, Malcolm, particularly after the past three days. But I think you matter to him more than you realize.”

His brows drew together, but he didn’t give an instinctive denial. He glanced down at their clasped hands. She thought he would drop hers at once when he realized he was holding it, but instead he squeezed her fingers. The barest contact but enough to send a shock to the soles of her shoes. “There’s a lot to discuss but no time to wallow. Not now. We have work to do.”

 

“Darling?” Cordelia set down her pen and looked at Harry across the library table. “Is something wrong?”

Harry smiled at his wife. She had an ink smudge on her nose and her hair was slipping free of its pins and she looked impossibly lovely. “Do I look as though something’s wrong?”

“Well, you don’t generally stare at the same page for a quarter hour.”

Harry glanced down at the Cicero speech on the table in front of him. “Probably a mistake to even try to work until the investigation is wrapped up. But I felt the need to make the attempt.” In truth, what he’d felt the lure of was time in the library with Cordelia, the familiar smells of ink and leather and paper, the sound of pens scratching, and Livia and Drusilla playing with their dolls on the carpet before the fireplace. What had once been his solitary refuge was now the heart of family life.

Harry flipped the book shut. “It’s odd how one can live with a person for years and then realize one doesn’t really know them at all.”

Cordelia flexed her fingers. “Unless you’ve made some sort of unexpected discovery about me, I assume you mean—”

“Archibald. He seems to have paid rather more attention to me than I credited at the time. Strange how one can miss so much about events one lived through.”

“Or one sees them later from a different angle.” Cordelia glanced at her children. “God knows I was dreadfully inclined to neglect everyone’s perspective but my own as a child.” She picked up the pen and twirled it between her fingers. “There’s always seemed to be something a bit elusive about Archie. As though there’s another story hidden beneath the surface that we may never know. Every so often I’d get little hints of it. I remember we were once sharing a drink after we’d been to the theatre and he said, seemingly apropos of nothing, that the most beautiful woman he’d ever known had never been his mistress. I’ve always wondered what the story was behind that.”

Harry frowned, something teasing at the edge of his consciousness.

“Colin said he got to see Mr. O’Roarke,” Livia announced from the hearth rug in the silence. “He came to Berkeley Square.”

“Yes, I imagine he needed to talk to Malcolm and Suzanne.” Cordelia turned towards the girls.

“I like Mr. O’Roarke,” Livia said, fingers busy plaiting a doll’s yellow hair. “He tells good stories. When are we going to see him again?”