The Carfax Intrigue

by Tracy Grant

  "It attracted notice. Which I suspect was his intention."

  "I wouldn't doubt it. But nor would I doubt that he believes passionately in his subject." Odd words to use about the former Julien St. Juste. But Malcolm had no doubt they were true.

  "It was a bold move, if perhaps not the wisest one." Barrington frowned. He wasn't known for his own speeches but for his efforts rounding up votes behind the scenes. "Everyone's asking how he's going to position himself. Is abolition his issue?"

  "I think he's interested in justice. In a number of ways."

  "He could be a good asset. Can we count on him?"

  "For what? You can count on him to stand up for what he believes in."

  "Humph." Barrington took a swig of port. "That's the trouble with fellows who have no need of office or support from the party. They're too damn likely to strike out on their own. Or perhaps I should have said you're too damned likely. You don't need us either, Rannoch."

  "The new Lord Carfax's sympathies certainly lie with the Whigs."

  "Ha. Never thought I'd hear the words 'Whig' and 'Carfax' coupled. But are you sure you don't mean with the Radicals?"

  "Very likely."

  "Like your own sympathies."

  "He's his own man. But you can count on both of us for most votes."

  "And in the matter of the queen?" Henry Brougham, who among other things was the queen's advocate, strolled up to join them.

  "I believe the queen has been ill used," Malcolm said. "So does Julien. Carfax."

  "The queen could be the key to advancing our agenda," Brougham said.

  "The queen is a woman who has been in an appalling situation since she married our present king."

  "And she's a public figure," Barrington said. "Like queens before her. My God, Rannoch. I know you don't need office for the financial benefits, but surely you appreciate what we could do if we were in power. Electoral reform. Catholic Emancipation. Abolition when the time is right."

  "When the time is right."

  "Which will be never if the Tories remain in power." Barrington regarded Malcolm. "Which I know has been for all of your adult lifetime. Trust me, things could be different."

  "I believe that," Malcolm said. "The question is how different?"

  "Given what we have now, does that really matter?" Brougham asked.

  "Yes. When one weighs the degree of compromise that's worth it."

  Barrington grinned. "You're starting to think like a politician, Rannoch."

  "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or an insult."

  "Nor am I, truth to tell." Barrington clapped Malcolm on the shoulder, nodded at Brougham, and moved on to speak to Lord Grey.

  Brougham watched Malcolm a moment. "You know how strongly I believe in abolition. You know even the slightest advantage could tip the scales for the queen and against the king. And in doing so, sever the king from his Tory cronies."

  "I'm not entirely convinced the last would happen. But I take your point."

  "So I may depend upon you to do anything in your power to help?"

  "What do you have in mind, Brougham?" Malcolm asked.

  "I have it on good authority that there are letters that could support the queen's case."

  Malcolm took a drink of champagne, as casually as possible. "Surely, letters—"

  "Anything could tip the balance. Carfax—Hubert Mallinson—is trying to buy them." Brougham's gaze settled on Malcolm's face. "But I expect you already know that."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Don't underrate yourself, Rannoch. I certainly don't do that."

  "Don't overrate me, Henry."

  "I'd never do that either." Brougham took a drink of champagne himself, holding Malcolm with his gaze the entire time. "So I assume if you have the papers, you'll know what to do with them."

  "My dear Henry. You're far too shrewd to assume anything."

  6

  "Lord Carfax." A woman's voice assailed Julien as he led Laura off the dance floor. Lady Harley, who had been a friend of his father's. Very likely a mistress. Her hair was the same gold it had been a quarter century ago. But then, Julien himself knew all about the uses of hair dye.

  "Or perhaps I should say Arthur." Lady Harley tapped him on the arm with her fan. "After all, I've known you since you were a boy. Your father would be glad to see you back here."

  "I sincerely doubt that, ma'am."

  "Don't be naughty, Arthur. He'd rather you had it than his brother." She glanced up at the stuccoed ceiling Julien's father had commissioned when he redid the house. "After all, he built all this."

  "So he did. And you probably have more insights than I do into what he'd have wanted to become of it. But then, I can scarcely claim to have known my father. If you'll excuse us, Lady Harley."

  "Nothing like old family friends who think they know one," Laura said as they moved towards the French windows.

  "She didn't really know me at all. Though I think she knew my father quite intimately. When he first married my mother. In the days when he was redoing the house." Julien looked at the plaster ceiling again and then at the gilding on the French windows that had also been part of the renovation when his father added the balcony. "My mother's fortune turned Carfax House into what it is. Which means it was built on the back of slaves. Including a number of my mother's relatives. My relatives."

  Laura watched him for a moment. Julien felt himself flush. It was not a way he usually talked. At least, not so bluntly. Laura had a quality of listening that made people confide.

  "Gold," she said. "It's the lure in the New World with its so-called Indians. And also the lure in India itself. We do it a bit differently there. But there's still a denial of humanity."

  Julien met her gaze and nodded.

  "I grew up in it," Laura said. In figured bronze silk, pearls round her throat and at her ears and in her titian hair, she was the picture of a Mayfair lady. But something in her gaze cut through to the hard reality beneath the façade of life in the beau monde. "I can't say I didn't know what the British were doing was wrong, because a part of me understood it was, even when I was far too young to articulate it. I spoke up at times. Partly because I believed it was wrong, partly to shock people."

  Past scenes, many in this house, shot through Julien's mind. "I know a bit about that."

  "But I can't claim to have fought it. We deny the humanity of people who happen to look a bit different. Of course, my husband would point out we do the same for the Irish, who look like us. All it takes is an excuse to draw some sort of artificial boundary. And British fortunes are built on the backs of those very people we claim couldn't be British."

  "Such as the fortune I've just inherited."

  "And the one settled on me by my first husband's family. They had holdings in India. My late father-in-law was almost the definition of unscrupulous."

  "My father could have given him a run for his money. They may well have been colleagues." Laura's first husband's father, the Duke of Trenchard, had been a prominent member of the Elsinore League. Questions about his own father that he wasn't quite ready to confront shot into Julien's mind like bits of broken glass poking through the cloth one tried to use to tidy them away.

  Laura met his gaze with the look of one who felt those same cuts. "So they may."

  "So you've started a school with your inheritance."

  "It puts some of the money to use. There's so much injustice in the world one can almost begin anywhere and feel one's making a difference."

  "A polite way of telling me I've done far too little."

  "On the contrary. I heard your speech. More than that, I've seen other things you've done. My husband's been fighting his whole life, and I know he often wonders what it's for."

  "Yes, I've called O'Roarke some unpleasant things. Which rather justified my own lack of action."

  "Seeming lack."

  "You're too kind, Laura."

  "Or perhaps perceptive. Agonizing over past actions is singul
arly useless, as my husband would say. But he wonders more often than I'd like if he's simply been beating his head against a wall."

  "Your husband inspired and continues to inspire a number of people. Including me. Though I'm damned if I'll ever let him see it."

  "I rather think he does."

  Julien found himself grinning. "O'Roarke is far too acute."

  Laura smiled in response. "I tell him sometimes that if he could just see how it matters to his children, he'd realize how much it was worth it. They'll remember what he's done when they look back at this time. As will others, I trust. But even they should give him hope."

  Julien felt a mantle settle over him that was still not familiar. "It changes one, being a parent. I remember the day I learned about Genny. The world had a clarity I'd never known before. At the same time, I felt as though if I put one foot wrong, I'd smash through glass."

  "I know the feeling. Though with a bit of time, one learns to just muddle through."

  "The wonder never quite goes away, though. At least, it hasn't for me." For a moment he saw the children upstairs in the nursery, when he'd smuggled ices up half an hour since. "I don't think I'd want it to. Terrifying as the responsibility is."

  "No," Laura agreed. "It hits one all over again at unexpected moments."

  Julien looked across the room. "I'll never really know what it was like for my mother. Growing up as she did. Viewed as an outsider. With cousins who were her father's property. And I'll certainly never understand what it was like for those cousins. Or for my grandmother, or my great-grandmother, who died a slave. I don't suppose my mother could fully understand their lives either. Whatever else she endured, she grew up in luxury. I'm not sure I ever want Genny to understand it. But I think it's desperately important that she does, as much as she can. And the boys."

  Laura nodded. "I think it's one of the greatest challenges for a teacher. Or a parent. Helping children see how the world looks through someone else's eyes."

  Julien looked across the room. "There's a lot of injustice in the world. One finds it back to Homer. Kitty and Mélanie would remind us that women have been treated unjustly throughout history. Davenport could give a slew of classical examples. It's all intolerable. But this is—it goes back less than three hundred years. Ancestors within our memory made this travesty. And people have been pointing out how wrong it is from the start. When I really stop and think, I shudder at the injustice. And by the time I was sixteen, I thought nothing could shake me."

  Emily Cowper smiled at Mélanie. "No wonder you don't care about vouchers to Almack's. I can't tell you how many people who have no trouble being admitted to Almack's asked me with envy if I could help secure them an invitation to Carfax House tonight."

  Mélanie laughed. "You know it's not like that, Em." In truth, she was quite relieved that Laura's situation as the wife of a divorced man rendered her outside the strict bounds required to be granted vouchers for Almack's and gave Mélanie an excellent excuse not to attend either. But though she had never much cared for the assemblies, and had only attended because it seemed to be part of her role as Malcolm's wife, she had grown very fond of Emily, who was one of the patronesses. In fact, for all the strictures of Almack's, most of the patronesses were quite daring and diverting, a paradox that still puzzled Mélanie.

  "Some people manage to be outside society but still have society—or a good portion of it—clamor to come to them. Of course, it helps to have been born a Rannoch—or rather, the Duke of Strathdon's grandson—or a Mallinson." Emily frowned. "I can't believe it was less than a year ago I introduced Kitty Ashford—Lady Carfax—to you in my ballroom. Though I suppose it was really Malcolm who did the introducing." She unfurled her fan, peacock blue to match her gown. "I was actually concerned for you that night because Mrs. Ashford had known Malcolm in the Peninsula and it was clear they were well acquainted. I had no notion she'd known Arthur Mallinson there as well. I had no notion Arthur Mallinson was alive." Emily looked across the ballroom at Julien, who was leaning negligently against a column and conversing with Henry Brougham and Lady Frances, Malcolm's aunt, the picture of an accomplished host. "When I look for cues, knowing who he is, I can see it. But I don't think I'd ever have recognized him. Even if I'd sat at table next to him or danced a waltz with him. Which, come to think of it, I did."

  "One sees what one expects. Part of the secret of being undercover."

  Emily shook her head, her glossy dark side curls stirring about her face. "But I knew Arthur. I danced with him at children's balls. My brothers played with him. I even imagined marrying him and being Countess Carfax. Which is rather an interesting thought." She glanced round the ballroom. "He was always intriguing, but I never guessed how much. Still, I can't believe I didn't know him when he appeared in London all these years later."

  "You weren't looking for him. And people change a lot from fifteen to forty."

  "Boys, especially. They either get even duller or much more interesting." Emily's gaze moved to Kitty, who had abandoned her post at the head of the stairs and was talking to the Duke of Wellington, smiling up at him with just the right degree of dignity, flirtation, and the sangfroid of a beau monde hostess. Julien turned his head at that precise moment and looked at Kitty. "It's probably a good thing I never let myself be too infatuated with Arthur Mallinson. He's obviously besotted with his wife." She cast a quick look at Mélanie. "Have I said something funny?"

  Mélanie was looking at Julien, who had caught Kitty's gaze. Kitty echoed his smile for a moment. As in a well-crafted play, a moment could say a great deal. "Just that I'd once have laughed at the idea of Julien's being besotted with anyone. But, yes, I think he is."

  "And she seems equally fond of him, for all neither of them makes a show of it. A very good thing. I thought Harry—my Harry"—Emily glanced at Lord Palmerston, who was leading Manon Harleton onto the dance floor—"was a bit too fond of her. Not, of course, that marriage necessarily changes these things, but I rather think that in their case it will."

  "Yes, I think so," Mélanie said.

  "She looks very comfortable," Emily said, as Kitty turned back to Wellington. "It can't be easy taking over Carfax House."

  "She's a very accomplished woman. And she's good at playing a role."

  "That should serve her well in London society." Emily regarded Mélanie, amusement and curiosity dancing in her gaze. "You're not going to tell me what really happened, are you?"

  "Em—"

  "No. I know, you can't." Emily waved her fan. "I should be used to it by now." She looked at Julien again. "He was always different. I don't mean his mother. She was beautiful and quite fascinating. But Arthur always seemed to be laughing at the world. And I always had the sense he was ten times cleverer than the rest of us. I think he'll be quite an asset to the Whigs."

  "He's his own person."

  "So's Malcolm. So's Mr. Brougham, for that matter, and I can't deny he's useful." She glanced at Queen Caroline's defense lawyer, now talking with Rupert Caruthers. "Much as he annoys me."

  Henry Brougham had run off to the Continent three years ago with Emily's sister-in-law Caroline. Not William Lamb's wife Caro, who had been Byron's mistress, but "Caro George," who was married to George Lamb. Emily had gone to the Continent to persuade her sister-in-law home.

  "Caro and George seem happy these days," Mélanie said.

  Emily wrinkled her nose. "They're settled. I'm not sure it's the same thing. And, of course, there's going to be no avoiding Brougham for the next months. And he's going to take full advantage of it. Everyone's going to be taking advantage of everything they can in politics as this business between the king and queen plays out, I suspect. It's ghastly and quite fascinating. No quiet autumn in the country this year." Emily's delicate brows drew together. "One can't deny the queen has made a spectacle of herself. But she's been appallingly treated. Do you know she says she did commit adultery once but it was with the husband of Mrs. Fitzherbert?"

  Maria Fitzherbert was
the prince regent, now the king's, first wife, whom he had married without royal permission. The marriage was considered invalid because of the lack of royal permission. "Well said," Mélanie said.

  "Yes, I thought so." Emily scanned the ballroom. "It's an eclectic crowd."

  "Jul—the new Lord Carfax has a wide acquaintance."

  "He's been abroad."

  "A number of the people here are people he met abroad." That was true, actually. Julien had insisted on inviting people like Sam and Nan alongside his uncle and aunt and senior politicians and diplomats. "They can decide if they want to come," he'd said. And, of course, everyone was so curious they had come.

  "They're going to be bohemian too, aren't they?" Emily said. "And not worry about what anyone thinks, and because they're Mallinsons they'll still be at the center of things, like you and Malcolm."

  "We aren't at the center of things."

  "Ha. You may manage to remove yourselves a bit because you don't go out as much, but you still receive just as much notice when you do. Possibly more. There's nothing like being sought after. And it helps your plays. And Malcolm's career." Her gaze went from Julien to Kitty. "It will be interesting to see what the Carfaxes do."

  "Yes," Mélanie said. "It certainly will." She watched the crowd shift, and suddenly found herself looking at the sleek dark hair and florid profile of Sir George Dalton. She met Kitty's gaze across the room, and then Laura's, and Cordy's. It was time to go to work.

  7

  Cordelia, having caught Mélanie's eye, excused herself to the Duke and Duchess of Trenchard and slipped across the room towards Mélanie. Mélanie had made a similar excuse to move away from Emily Cowper. She and Cordelia met in an embrasure that had a good view of the ballroom. Which gave them an excellent view as Kitty paused to speak with a footman coming through the archway from the supper room with a tray of champagne. The picture of a conscientious hostess, a little nervous about her first ball. She couldn't have done it better, Cordelia thought. The footman moved on. Addison was a little shorter than most of the footmen engaged for the ball, but he moved with such assurance it was scarcely noticeable. He drew up beside a group that included Sir George Dalton, the tray angled just so.