The Mayfair Affair (17 page)

"Oh, yes," Malcolm said. "Probably more than you'd admit."

"Then believe me when I say that if I thought leaving Britain was the safest course for both of you, I'd be the first to suggest it."

Malcolm shook his head. "You've both always been too quick to run risks. Christ, you married Suzette to an enemy agent."

"Whom I would trust with my life."

The intake of Malcolm's breath was like broken glass. For once, Raoul's voice was totally without irony. Not for the first time, Suzanne felt she had become an observer to what passed between the two men.

"You know what we're risking," Malcolm said, almost in the tone of a man speaking to a friend. Or to a parent. "If Carfax learned—"

"Carfax wouldn't have Suzanne arrested."

"Don't be so bloody sure."

"Think, Malcolm. The toast of the beau monde? The wife of his protégé and his son's best friend? All other things aside, Carfax would be worried about appearances."

"But—"

"Will you stop talking about me as though I'm not here?" Suzanne said.

"I'm sorry," Raoul said. "But for once, the fact that people tend to sadly underestimate women works in your favor. It's protection of a sort. Your friend Crispin Harleton's been married to Manon Caret for two months, and her having been a French agent is a fairly open secret."

"That's a good point, darling," Suzanne said. "If anything, Manon was a more formidable agent than I was."

"But Crispin isn't a British agent. And Manon wasn't spying on him while they were involved."

"You're right. It makes my crime greater."

"It isn't a question of crimes, sweetheart. It's a question of what Carfax or anyone else in authority will see as unforgivable."

"Your family name still provides a degree of protection," Raoul said.

Malcolm was frowning at the medallions on the carpet. "If Carfax knew the truth, he'd be likely to use it as leverage himself."

"Oh, yes" Raoul said. "I imagine he might."

Malcolm's head snapped up. "Then, for God's sake—"

"It might put you in an untenable situation. But it would give you time to leave the country. Meanwhile, there's no need to bolt."

"We're not going anywhere." Suzanne took a step closer to Malcolm.

"You may have to," Raoul said. "But not yet."

She swallowed, but knew to take her victories where she could get them.

Malcolm gave a curt nod.

"Do you recognize the hand that penned the note?" Suzanne held it out to him again.

Malcolm drew a breath and scanned the note. "No. But other than Carfax and David, I wouldn't recognize the hands of most of those present tonight."

"He has an agent's skills," Suzanne said. "He got that letter to the footman without being seen."

"Most likely another Elsinore League member," Raoul said.

"Obviously, I need to keep the appointment," Suzanne said.

Malcolm's gaze snapped to her face.

"How else are we going to learn what he wants?" she asked.

To her relief, Malcolm nodded. Then he raised a brow. "Surprised I agreed? We have to learn who he is, to ensure you're safe. I hope you aren't going to suggest going alone."

"Of course not. We'll need someone there to follow whoever the blackmailer is. And you certainly have the skills to stay hidden.''

Malcolm nodded again. "O'Roarke? I think we could use your help, as well."

"Of course."

"Pity I returned the papers. "

"You aren't suggesting I actually give them to him."

"No, but we may need them as a bargaining chip."

"I wouldn't bring them to the first meeting, in any case. He couldn't expect it." She shook her head.

"What?" Malcolm and Raoul asked, in almost the same breath.

"I was remembering when we assisted Isabella Flores, just after we got married. I thought how foolish she was to have committed her secrets to writing and put herself in such a situation."

"It's hardly the same," Malcolm said. "Your blackmailer doesn't have written proof."

"That we know of." She hunched her shoulders.

A shadow crossed his face. "And you did this in the course of your work—"

"Not an adolescent love affair? All the worse for me. I should have known better."

"We can all be caught," Raoul said. "It goes hand in hand with being a spy."

Suzanne untied the cream satin ribbons on her evening slippers and unwound them from about her silk-stockinged ankles. "Malcolm, there's something else. I didn't want to say it in front of Raoul. Not until I'm sure."

"What?" Malcolm took a quick step towards her. "More threats?"

"No. Suspicions." She swallowed. Malcolm was a childhood friend of the Mallinsons. She was crossing a line even by voicing her suspicions. "I think Mary Trenchard may be pregnant."

Disbelief filled his gaze. "In God's name, why—"

She recounted her conversation with Cordelia.

Malcolm's brows drew together. "That's hardly proof—"

"No. But it would explain Trenchard's anger and trying to cut Mary out of his will."

He gave a curt nod.

"Cordelia and I can talk to her, darling. Even if we're wrong, we may shock her into telling us why she and Trenchard did quarrel. Unless—"

"No, you're right." He tugged off his cravat. "It's the sensible thing to do. I have to think like an investigator. And if you are right, she needs help." He squeezed his eyes shut. "Dear God, I don't think David would understand."

"You don't know that."

"I know David. Simon could help—"

"Malcolm." She cast a glance at the cradle where Jessica slept. "Let's find out if it's true first."

He nodded.

Suzanne realized her fingers had frozen on the loosened slipper. She tugged it from her foot. "I've put you in an appalling situation."

"You haven't put me in anything." Malcolm shrugged out of his evening coat. "Unless you killed Trenchard."

She let the slipper thud to the floor and started on the second one. "It's not funny, Malcolm."

His gaze was so gentle it cut through her. "I think finding the humor in the situation may be the only way we can survive this, my darling."

She turned her head away before the softness in his gaze could sear her. "Malcolm—"

"If we end up having to leave Britain, it will be on my head as much as yours. We're both spies."

"Only one of us spied on Britain. But I was thinking about before. You broke into Carfax's study."

"Spying on my spymaster?" He moved to the pier table and unstoppered the whisky decanter. "I've always enjoyed matching wits against Carfax."

Suzanne dropped the second slipper after the first and began to unroll her stockings. "I never meant to turn you on Carfax."

"No?" Whisky splashed into a glass. "Carfax stands for everything you were fighting against."

Carfax's voice at the Carfax House dinner table last week, cutting to shreds a reform speech David had made, echoed in her head.
You must understand what can come if the rabble get control, my dear,
he had said, suddenly turning to her
. Your family lost everything in the Revolution.
"Yes, but—" She bit her lip. "You know what I mean."

"I don't, actually." He crossed to her side and put a glass of whisky into her hand. "Carfax ran the intelligence network you were working against. Surely you don't prefer to have us on opposite sides."

"Of course not." Her fingers tightened round the etched glass. "But I never meant to make you—"

"Disloyal?" He took a sip of whisky and regarded her over the rim of the glass. "You preferred to keep the disloyalty on your side?"

"I went into this with my eyes open."

Malcolm turned his glass in his hand, watching the play of candlelight on the pale gold liquid. "I've hardly been in lockstep with Carfax, even without you."

She stared at his profile in the flickering shadows. "Malcolm, you have to be—"

"Angry?" His gaze jerked to her face.

"Yes."

He was silent for the length of a rifle shot. "Anger wouldn't get us very far."

She tossed down a swallow of whisky. It left a trail of fire down her throat, but somehow didn't warm her. "I'm worried about what denying it will do."

He stared into her eyes. The gentleness was gone. "Believe me, my darling, I'm not denying anything. I'm trying to find a way forwards."

Honesty was what she wanted. She shouldn't flinch from it. "There have to be times you want to scream at me."

"I've done that, as I recall." He set his glass on the chest of drawers and crossed to her side. This time he was the one who took her face between his hands. "You must have wanted to yell at me any time these past five years. Among other things, for working for a man who had so little to do with what I believed in myself, let alone what you believed in."

He was offering her a way out, but it was too simple to take it. "You care about him."

"My feelings for Carfax may not be as complicated as yours for O'Roarke, but they are certainly conflicted." He leaned forwards and brushed his lips across her brow. "My loyalties have changed, as well."

She looked up at him in inquiry.

"Because I'm loyal to you."

Her throat closed. A traitorous pressure built behind her eyes. "You can't, Malcolm. You can't—"

"Put personal loyalties before other loyalties? I can't help it. It's the way I am."

She tilted her head back, afraid of what she saw in his eyes. It was a commitment that could destroy both of them. "Dearest—"

"If that's a burden, sweetheart, it's a burden you need to learn to live with. You owe me that much."

She shook her head. "How can I argue with that?"

"Then don't try."

"In some ways it was simpler—"

"When we were on opposite sides?"

"God help me, yes."

He slid his fingers into her hair and lowered his mouth to hers. "Since when have we preferred things simple?"

James was at the desk in his study when the footman showed Malcolm in. He got up and came forwards to take Malcolm's hand, but his gaze went back to the paper-strewn desk. "I only brought a fraction of Father's files back from Trenchard House yesterday, and I already feel as though I'm drowning."

"Give yourself a few days. Unless, of course, you don't want to stop and think."

"Spoken as one who's been here." James passed a hand over his face. "Hetty and I told the boys this morning. Not that we could really explain anything to Eddy, of course, though Hetty held him. Fitz asked if I was going to die next. I told him no, I wasn't in the least bit sick. Fitz said Grandpapa hadn't been either."

"When Alistair was killed, Colin asked me if I cried. He said he'd cry if I died."

"What did you tell him?"

"That Alistair and I hadn't been as good friends as he and I were. As I hoped we always would be."

James waved a hand towards one of two leather-covered chairs before the desk, then picked up a stack of books and dropped into the other. "I remember when I first saw Fitz lying in Hetty's arms. So tiny. So helpless. So miraculous. It hit me like a blow to the gut."

"How much you loved him?" Malcolm asked.

"That, yes. But also the fact that I was a father. And that I hadn't the least idea what being a father meant. My only model was Trenchard, and all he'd done was show me by example everything I didn't want to be for my son."

"I could say the same for Alistair Rannoch." In many ways, the best example of fatherhood Malcolm had had was Raoul O'Roarke. That should be ironic. But somewhere, beneath all the revelations of the past three months, was the acknowledgement of a bond that went back to before either he or O'Roarke had known Suzanne.

James glanced down at the signet ring on his left hand, as though it still seemed alien. "One has to invent it all from scratch. Hearing Trenchard's voice issue from my mouth is my deepest nightmare."

"I don't think you need fear that coming to pass."

"I hope not. But I can't deny he certainly left his imprint on me one way and another. Every so often I catch a trace of his inflection in my voice. Talk about self-loathing."

Malcolm studied the newly made duke. "What did you and your father quarrel about two nights before he died?"

Wariness flashed in James's usually open gaze. "Who overheard us?"

Malcolm sidestepped the question. No need to get the Trenchard staff in trouble if he could help it. "So you don't deny you quarreled?"

James gave a wry smile, though his gaze remained hard. "Somehow I think if I denied it that would only increase your suspicions." He leaned a hand on the desktop. "I should have realized you'd find out. I should have decided telling you was the honorable thing to do. But I told myself it would only serve as a distraction."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of what's a distraction?"

James glanced across the room at the gilt-framed painting over the mantel. Henrietta, Eddy in her lap, Fitz beside her. Lawrence's work undoubtedly. A similar painting of Suzanne and the children hung in the Berkeley Square house. "I almost didn't enter Parliament, you know, because I knew my doing so would fit right in with Father's plans. I could suddenly quite understand what drove Jack to rebellion. Then I realized that giving up something I wanted, to spite Father, was just another way of letting him control my life."

"A mature decision."

"I have flashes of them. I stood for a borough that wasn't in his gift. I was determined to be my own man. Even once I became his heir, I was determined to keep this something that was mine. As long as I stayed my own man, I told myself he couldn't touch me."

Malcolm watched him. "And then?"

Anger darkened James's blue eyes. "I was offered an undersecretaryship a fortnight ago. The Board of Trade."

"My congratulations."

"Not the most glamorous of postings perhaps, but I'm young for it. I was thrilled. Nothing like feeling one's achieved something on one's own merits."

"But Trenchard—"

"Used his influence to get me the posting. More than that. Resorted to blackmail. And of course, by the time I found out, I'd already accepted and couldn't back out." He grimaced. "Now that I'm Duke of Trenchard I'll have to leave the House, but I won't have to give up the posting. Irony of ironies."

"What did Trenchard say when you confronted him?"

"That that was the way the game was played, and I should stop being naive. I told him I'd never aspired to play his game. He called me an idealistic fool and said if it weren't for him I'd never amount to anything. He said for all his excesses, Jack had at least understood hard choices." James's fingers curled inwards against the embossed leather of the desktop. "He didn't actually say he wished I had died instead of Jack. But I've been in politics long enough to be able to read subtext."

"It's difficult to imagine Jack in Parliament."

"Perhaps if Father had pulled enough strings. We weren't people to him, we were pieces to be manipulated as he saw fit. He treated his family—he treated the world—as something that could be molded to his will."

Malcolm had once accused Raoul O'Roarke of treating him and Suzanne as pawns, but he had to acknowledge now that it wasn't so simple.

James unclenched his fingers as though with an effort. "I was angry enough to have killed him. I came closer to striking him than I thought possible. But I didn't go back into the house two nights later and shoot him. Do you believe me?"

"I'm inclined to."

James gave a bleak smile. "You're honest, Malcolm. A good quality in an investigator, if perhaps uncomfortable for your friends."

James glanced round the room—the papers on the desk signed with his father's bold signature, the ducal seal beside the ink pot. "I tried. To build my own career. Hetty and I tried to build a house that's ours. To raise our children out of the Trenchard shadow. Father intruded himself on my career. And now Hetty and I are going to have to live in Trenchard House, raise our children there. Father may be gone, but there's no escaping him."

"I didn't want to move into the Berkeley Square house," Malcolm said. "I was determined to sell it, until I realized how happy the children would be there. Where else would we have a chance of finding a house that looks out on a square garden? Even then I had qualms. But Suzette redid the house, so that now it seems like ours." His enemy-agent wife, locked into a false persona, had created a home that seemed authentically theirs. That still seemed authentically theirs, for all her lies.

"But you didn't inherit your father's position along with his house."

"No. But power doesn't have to be used to beget more power, as Trenchard treated it. This gives you a chance to mold the dukedom into something of your own."

"We've hardly been allies in Parliament, Rannoch."

"No. But I respect that you believe in what you're doing."

James inclined his head, as he might across the House of Commons in acknowledgement of a point scored. "I'm going to see Hawkins, the family solicitor, and ask him about Emily Saunders. You should come with me."

"You're sure you want me there, Tarr—Trenchard?"

"You'd best call me James. I can't get used to the Trenchard yet. And yes, I may not have my father's force of will, but I'm not generally in the habit of doing things I don't want to do. You're going to question me about what Hawkins has to say. You're going to question Hawkins. If I don't give you a verbatim report of the interview you'll think I'm lying and wonder why. Easier for both of us if you hear what Hawkins has to say firsthand."

"Commendable."

"Besides—"

"Yes?" Malcolm asked.

James pushed himself to his feet. "I could use the moral support."

Mary Trenchard had had a mourning gown made up, a dull black bombazine with jet buttons on the bodice and cuffs. A duchess probably had her dressmaker prepared to produce mourning wear at the drop of a hat. But even the flat fabric couldn't disguise the bloom in the duchess's cheeks. Now the idea had struck her, Suzanne wondered how she could have been so blind.

Mary accepted Cordelia's condolences with composure. The rawness of the night of the murder was gone. She had some—perhaps more than some—of her father's nerves of steel. All the more impressive now Suzanne knew what she might be hiding.

"I'd offer you tea," Mary said, "but I find myself in need of something stronger. Would you like a glass of Madeira?"

"Precisely what is called for," Cordelia said.

"Have you come to update me on the investigation, Mrs. Rannoch?" Mary asked. "Or to ask me more questions?"

"A bit of both." Suzanne accepted a crystal glass of Madeira engraved with the Trenchard arms. "Did you know the duke had rewritten his will?"

The dowager duchess's hand faltered ever so slightly as she set down the decanter. "My husband was scrupulous in attending to his fortune and estates. I imagine he often adjusted his will. He had numerous children and grandchildren and other dependants to account for."

"These changes involved taking away money that had been set aside for you."

The duchess sank down on the sofa, back ramrod straight, glass held between her fingers. "I didn't know that. But it was his decision to make."

"Does it surprise you?"

"As I told you yesterday, Trenchard and I were strangers in many ways."

Suzanne surveyed the duchess. The proud angle of her head. The rigidity of her clasped hands, the firm line of her mouth. It would take a shock to break through that iron control. "How long have you known you were pregnant?"

Mary Trenchard's brows snapped together. "What on earth gave you the idea—"

"The buttons on your gown strain across your chest. Your color is high and it owes nothing to rouge. You started to take a drink and put your glass down as you felt queasy."

"Wouldn't you be queasy if your husband had just been murdered?"

"Very likely. It doesn't explain the other indicators."

"The impertinence—"

"Mary," Cordelia said. "You must know enough of my marriage to know I, of all people, would understand."

"There's nothing to understand." Mary raised her glass to her lips again, then set it down abruptly. "For God's sake, Cordy, don't paint everyone with your brush."

"Fair enough." Cordelia's shrewd gaze reminded Suzanne of the way her friend looked at Livia and Drusilla when she was worried about them. "It's beastly," Cordelia said. "But I know Suzanne. I'd trust her with my most precious secrets. And she and Malcolm have an infernal knack at ferreting out secrets."

Mary Trenchard drew in her breath, as though for an instinctive denial. Then the breath seemed to rush from her lungs. Her backboard-straight shoulders slumped beneath the twilled black bombazine of her gown. "I could deny it. I probably should go on denying it. But I know enough of Malcolm and Mrs. Rannoch to know you are all too right. And I'm too tired." She reached for her glass. "Of course if it were merely a grieving widow's pregnancy I'd have nothing to worry about." She set down the glass. "I've known or suspected for a month or more. I've been certain for the past fortnight. Trenchard, unfortunately, could be damnably observant, though in the general run of things I'd have sworn he scarcely looked at me."

"This is what you quarreled about?" Suzanne asked.

A spasm of remembered horror crossed Mary's face. "I returned home from Sally Jersey's to find him waiting for me—an unusual occurrence, but I didn't guess what he was going to say until he slammed the library door shut and actually said the words."

"There was no possibility it could be his?" Cordelia asked in a soft voice.

"None." The duchess set her glass down with precision. "I was stupid. I should have made sure I had that option in the event of catastrophe, but I was never very good at manipulating Trenchard, and he hadn't shown that sort of interest in me in some time. Ten to one he'd have sensed something was amiss if I'd tried to seduce him. And I couldn't bear one more pretense in a life full of them."

A few months ago, her own life shrouded in pretense, Suzanne would have sworn the duchess was a stranger to the word. "You'd given him three children," she said. She was well enough versed in the beau monde now to know that once a wife had provided her husband with an heir—and ideally a second son—many husbands were willing to turn a blind eye to her indiscretions.