The Tavistock Plot

by Tracy Grant

  Raoul closed the door and leaned against it. "Normally I consider it best to leave friends to their secrets. It's the only way to have a remotely comfortable life as an agent. Assuming an agent can have a comfortable life. But there are exceptions. I know you were at the Tavistock last night. And I can guess why."

  Kitty's hands tightened on her bonnet. She'd always liked Raoul, long before she learned he was Malcolm's father (really, now she knew, it seemed incredible that she hadn't seen it sooner). And long before she knew he had been a French agent, on the opposite side in the Peninsular War, even if they were now allies against the Bourbons in the shifting landscape that was Spain. She accepted that, like her, he wanted what was best for Spain. But she'd also always known he was dangerous. Perhaps never more so than when he was at his friendliest. "Then surely you can also guess why I might not have told Malcolm. Assuming your guess is correct, which, of course, I'm not admitting at all."

  "I have a fairly shrewd notion." His gaze was level and direct. Quite like Malcolm's when he cut straight through to the truth. "And I understand. But Thornsby's murder changes things."

  Kitty dropped down in a straight-backed chair, the same one she had sat in waiting for Malcolm all those months ago. "Thornsby's murder has nothing to do with it."

  "That you know of."

  "Who?" Kitty's voice came out sharper than she intended. "Who among us do you think might possibly have been involved—"

  "Impossible to know how the threads may be tangled. You must realize that."

  Kitty put a hand to her head. She did, perhaps more than she was acknowledging. "If you're so sure, you could tell Malcolm yourself."

  Something shifted in Raoul's gaze that hinted that his relationship with his son had perhaps not always been as remarkable as it now seemed, that even now Raoul was not entirely sanguine about it. "I think he needs to hear it from you. Or Tanner. Otherwise, it could do incalculable damage."

  "To what?"

  "To his friendships with both of you."

  "Is that what Malcolm and I are? Friends?"

  "I think you know that. Kitty." Raoul took a step forwards, then checked himself. "I know the pull of competing loyalties. I know the instinct to keep secrets. I've followed it more times than I can name. More recently than I care to admit. But it can destroy lives."

  His gaze, which could be so cool and dispassionate, held ghosts that were very present. Kitty suppressed an impulse to close her arms over the frogged braid on her bodice and kept her hands folded in her lap. "We just need another day or two. Maybe less."

  "And then? If you don't tell him the truth, he'll piece it together."

  Their friendships were all so delicately balanced. She and Malcolm had managed to become friends again, of sorts—oddly going back to what they'd been before they were lovers. And her friendships with all the others in the family were built on her friendship with him. Even her friendship with Raoul, whom she had known longer. It was so long since she'd had friends that it sometimes took her by surprise what those friendships meant to her.

  "You can't tell me you don't think it's important," she said.

  "Of course, I believe it's important," Raoul said. "How could I not? But as with so many things, it comes down to weighing choices. And I think recent events tip the scales."

  She held his gaze for a long moment. "In my shoes, would you tell Malcolm?"

  He drew in and released his breath with a harsh scrape. Raoul had always been ruthlessly honest. "I'm not sure. I'd like to think I would. But past experience suggests I might not. I'm not always as good at learning from experience as I should be."

  "And you think I can do better?"

  "That's up to you."

  "So you're not going to tell Malcolm?"

  He gave a faint smile. "I was determined eight years ago not to get between you and Malcolm. My feelings on that score haven't changed. So, not yet." His face went serious. "I make you no promises if things shift. I'll try to warn you before I do, but we're all going to have to react in the moment."

  She studied him a moment. "You're happy, aren't you?"

  He smiled again, this time in a way she hadn't seen in their years in the Peninsula. "Yes, I am. It is possible, you know. However one feels about one's past. You have much less to reproach yourself with than I do."

  A bitterness that might be the aftertaste of the morning coffee lingered on her tongue. "That's a matter of perspective."

  "The people who care about you would like nothing better than to see you happy. And there are a number of people who do care about you. Very much."

  She met his gaze, not trying to veil her own. "I know what I've found here. Believe me. And I'm grateful for it. But as you said, life is always a matter of choices."

  "Just don't forget to weigh what would make you happy. And your children."

  "Are you saying you think Julien would?" She had never thought to feel such a stab of guilt at saying Julien's name.

  "That's for you to work out. There are different types of happiness."

  "I don't think you went looking for it yourself."

  "No, it found me. And I almost let happiness slip away. I might have done if Laura hadn't been so eminently sensible. And so willing to run risks."

  "I'll admit I never thought to see you living the life you are now. But just because you can pull it off doesn't mean I could. Or God knows, that Julien could."

  And yet, she couldn't deny that she had been happy this past autumn and winter, far more times perhaps than she ever had before. And most of those moments involved Julien.

  With whom she might have just smashed her relationship to bits.

  Chapter 8

  Harry Davenport set down his pen and flexed his fingers. "Malcolm. Come to rescue me from mind-numbing edits?"

  "I suspect so. But you may not be happy. A lot's happened since I last saw you." Which had been the previous afternoon when they'd played catch with the children in the Berkeley Square garden. Hard to believe that was less than four-and-twenty hours ago. Malcolm hooked a chair with his foot and dragged it over to the desk so he could sit and tell Harry about last night's events.

  "Good God," Harry said when Malcolm had done. His voice held shock and perhaps the faintest undertone—not of hurt, but of a sense of having been left out.

  "Yes, it's a long time since Mel and I've been through so much without you and Cordy. Trust me, we'd have told you sooner if we could. It all unfolded very quickly."

  "Don't worry, Rannoch. I'm just selfish enough to be sorry I was home last night double-checking footnotes while you were out tackling villains."

  "If it's any comfort, I'm the one with sore knees this morning. And chasing Billy, only to have to let him go, is hardly a novel experience. I'm sure we'll have another chance."

  Harry twirled his pen between his fingers. "How much do you think Carfax knows?"

  "More than he's letting on. I'm not sure how much more." Malcolm hesitated a moment. But this was Harry he was talking to. "I'm not sure how much Kit knows either. Or Simon." Or Kitty, but even with Harry he wasn't yet ready to share Kitty's confession to an affair he still thought was cover for something else.

  Harry sat back in his char. "This is bound to be challenging."

  "It’s a damnable puzzle. And it's Simon's theatre."

  "And the Levellers are tangled up in it, one way or another."

  Malcolm nodded. "I've warned Roth I won't be able to share everything with him."

  "Yes, that's a given. More challenging is what you're going to want to do with the information yourself."

  Possibilities he was not yet ready to face swirled like puzzle pieces in Malcolm's brain. "You mean if this assassination plot is real?"

  "I doubt it is. But investigations always uncover things. Things a number of people—including sometimes the investigators—would prefer remain decently hidden. But once one's uncovered them, one can't forget. And this investigation happens to be smack in the middle of your friends. Our fri
ends."

  With almost anyone else, Malcolm would have protested. Instead, he sat back in his chair and met Harry's gaze across the desk strewn with pages of Harry's latest monograph. "It's been hard, letting Simon go his own way and turning a blind eye. But I've been managing. It's not as though I don't do it almost every day with my father. Not to mention with my wife, if rather less often." He could say that to Harry. There was almost no one else he could say it to.

  Harry, being Harry, accepted this as the reality it was. "Yes, but the Levellers are something you might have once been involved in yourself."

  There it was, a reality that couldn't but be at the back of Malcolm's mind whenever the Levellers came up. His mind shot back to Italy a year and a half ago. Kit Montagu had hidden his involvement with the Levellers and the Italian Carbonari from Malcolm and then said matter-of-factly that he couldn't be sure which side Malcolm would be on as an MP. And when Malcolm had later expressed his shock at Kit's response to Mélanie, Mel had gently pointed out that Malcolm sat in the Parliament that had passed the laws Kit and his friends were fighting, even if Malcolm hadn't voted for those laws.

  Once, Malcolm and Simon and David and their friend Oliver had been not unlike the Levellers. Simon was certainly living up to their youthful ideals. Which meant he couldn't talk about his activities to Malcolm. Or to David. "I don't know that it necessarily follows that I'm more likely to agree with the Levellers than I am with O'Roarke or Mel."

  "No, but confronting their activities could be akin to confronting your past. Not always an easy thing. Speaking as one who finds confronting the past damnably difficult. Of course, I have far more to regret than you do."

  "Speak for yourself, Davenport. And have I mentioned how annoying it is when you know me better than I know myself?"

  "Hardly that. But sometimes the view from the periphery is a bit sharper." Harry swung his feet up onto the desk. "I don't envy your and David's and Rupert's work in Parliament. I'd go mad trying to negotiate, making deals to go a few steps forwards, having to retreat a few steps back. But I'm incredibly grateful you that do it. For the sake of my daughters. For the sake of the future for all our children and all of us. And at times I envy the courage it takes for you to keep doing it."

  Malcolm gave a short laugh. He had found Harry wounded and face down in the mud at Waterloo. "You're one of the bravest men I know."

  "There are different types of bravery. The battlefield is nothing compared to this."

  Malcolm crossed his legs and stared at his boot toes. They'd got mud-spattered on the walk here. "I wonder sometimes if it's bravery or cowardice. Seeking refuge in a world where I'm viewed as a Radical, yet as you say, I'm only inching things along while Simon is fighting for all the things we believed in."

  "You're fighting for them too. Oh, don't get me wrong. Simon's incalculably brave as well. There's a role for both of you. And David and Rupert. And Mélanie and Raoul. As you said, you've all been managing to go along without coming into conflict. Which is why the investigation is challenging."

  "Simon could have a lot of reasons for keeping secrets."

  "So he could. And you wouldn't lightly betray a friend."

  "As my father says, loyalty comes down to a matter of choices. There's also the fact that I might find myself in agreement with whatever Simon's doing." He hesitated a moment. "Or that Mélanie would, and I wouldn't."

  "Is that what really worries you?"

  Malcolm settled deeper in his chair. "Possibly. Probably. It always hangs over us. Sooner or later we'll face a situation where we don't agree. I always thought it would involve France or Spain. But it might hit much closer to home."

  "I can't solve that for you, old man. And you're not going to know how to handle it until you actually confront it. If you actually confront it. No sense in wasting time on it before."

  "Easier said than done. But yes. Meanwhile, can you take me to talk to Thomas Thornsby? I think you know him."

  Harry grinned. "I'd be insulted if you didn't ask me to. Thomas is far more conventional than I am. But he has a keen understanding. I enjoy working with him. I'm damned sorry he's lost his brother and is caught up in this. But I'm glad I can help."

  "You're the best of good fellows. I have to meet Roth and go to the theatre to break the news to the company, but not for another hour or so. Actors aren't early risers. Perhaps we can see Thomas first."

  Harry swung his legs down from the desk. "I thought you'd never ask."

  Cordelia Davenport stared at Laura. "Good God. I feel like a horrible person. With Mélanie busy with the play and Harry's monograph done except for painstaking edits and this fiendishly cold weather, I confess I've been wishing something exciting would happen to shake things up. But I never wanted—"

  "Of course not," Laura squeezed Cordelia's hand. "And I confess I've felt much the same at times. All the holiday flurry over and Raoul and Malcolm and Mélanie all busy—Not that I don't quite enjoy teaching and devising curricula, and planning to open a school is exciting of course, but at times—" She glanced across the library where Colin, Emily, and Livia Davenport were playing with their toy castle and the new carriage that had been a Christmas addition, while Jessica and Drusilla Davenport arranged stuffed animals. It would normally be lesson time, but the children were as excited as she was at a break in the routine. "And, of course, it's dreadful, but wringing our hands won't help poor Mr. Thornsby." She refilled their coffee cups.

  "We've known Lewis Thornsby's elder brother Thomas for years," Cordelia said. "He's not anything like as serious a scholar as Harry, at least not yet, but he comes to meetings of the Classicists’ Society. I remember thinking when I met Lewis how different they were. Thomas looks as though he scarcely takes his head out of his books. He does have an interest in Edith Simmons, but then she's a classicist too."

  "So are you," Laura said.

  Cordelia raised her brows, then smiled. "Yes, I suppose so. What an odd thought. When I was a girl, I quite liked classics and my Latin and Greek were quite good. And the lives of the Julio-Claudians were far racier than any French novel. Who wouldn't be intrigued? But by the time I was sixteen I'd have been horrified at the label." She glanced at the girls. "I hope my girls never equate being a bluestocking with being unattractive. I used to like helping Harry with his research when we were first married. It was one of the things we could enjoy together. Well, that and a few other things." She gave another faint smile. "So when we started living together again, it seemed natural to help him."

  "You do more than help him," Laura said.

  "I think so. Now. I'm a co-author on the latest monograph. I go to most Classicists' Society meetings. That's where I met Edith. I think she thought I was a dreadful society fribble at first, but after I made some remarks on Suetonius, she unbent. You'd like her. She's also a governess. I suspect that if either she or Thomas were better situated in terms of fortune, they'd be married by now."

  Laura set down her coffee cup. "That's interesting. Letty Blanchard told Mélanie that Lewis Thornsby was the heir to a tidy fortune from his aunt. She wasn't sure what would happen to it now. But it might go to his brother."

  Cordelia's finely arced brows drew together. "These things so often come down to money. Harry would do better talking to Thomas Thornsby than I would, but I can take you to see Edith. She's refreshingly direct." Cordelia reached for her coffee and took a thoughtful sip. "Though I suspect she's also the sort who's very good at keeping secrets."

  Chapter 9

  After unsuccessfully checking at his lodgings, Malcolm and Harry found Thomas Thornsby in the reading room of the Classicists' Society. It was in a small, anonymous building in Marylebone, and perhaps fittingly for the home of a group dedicated to studying the ancient past, it looked to have been little changed since the middle of the last century. Malcolm found it far more restful and less stuffy than most gentlemen's clubs, not least because it did not have a prohibition against ladies. The classical busts in the hall had the look
of old friends and the scratched wood and faded upholstery spoke of comfort.

  Thomas Thornsby was in the midst of putting papers into a sheaf of foolscap with crisp, precise motions that indicated an effort to hold feeling at bay. He did not seem to notice their entrance at first. He looked up with a start, face drawn. "Harry. I won't be able to make the Society meeting this afternoon. I confess it's the last thing on my mind just now. I only came by to pick up some papers. I need to go back to my parents'."

  "Of course. I thought you might be there already, but your valet said you were here. My condolences." Harry was not the sort to easily express his emotions, but oddly such expressions from him had a genuine ring when they could sound like platitudes from others. "I met your brother at the theatre once or twice. He was a good fellow. You know Malcolm Rannoch, don't you?"

  "By reputation." Thornsby shook Malcolm's hand. "I understand you're assisting Bow Street with the investigation. I was glad to hear it. Is that why you've come?"

  "Not solely," Malcolm said. "I wanted to offer my condolences as well. But yes, I'd be interested in anything you feel able to share about your brother."

  Thomas glanced to the side. He was shorter than his brother, with brown hair already beginning to thin at the crown, and a blue gaze clouded with grief. "I'm not sure how much I have to share. Lewis and I had gone in different directions of late. Or perhaps what had been true our whole lives just accelerated. He was never much of a scholar. I have little taste for the theatre. Prefer quiet evenings with my books."