The Tavistock Plot

by Tracy Grant

  Julien gave a faint smile. "Sometimes." He hesitated a moment. "I realize how fortunate I am. I shall endeavor not to make a mull of it."

  "My dear fellow. I think everyone thinks that when they marry. Well, everyone who isn't a hopeless, pompous idiot."

  "I'm relieved not to be in that category."

  "You're a lot of things, St. Juste. But not that." Malcolm leaned forwards, arms on the table. "Knowing Aunt Frances, she'll have no trouble getting you the license today. But I'm going to have to give her the names for the license. I'm going to have to tell her about you."

  "I know." The truth settled in St. Juste's eyes. A truth discussed, acknowledged, but perhaps not really faced until now. "I always liked your aunt. She had the good taste never to show any interest in my father. Despite his making some rather heavy-handed attempts at flirtation. I think she'll keep it to herself."

  "I have no doubt she will. I think she can also keep the archbishop silent for a few hours. But the Archbishop of Canterbury is inherently political. Manners Sutton, the current archbishop, is the brother of the Chancellor of Ireland, who could be called a friend of Carfax."

  "Yes, I know." Julien's gaze was focused. "This is all going to unravel very quickly. All those damnable jokes about a wedding ending a man's peace are going to come true, and in this case it has nothing to do with actually being married. All the more reason to make sure Kitty and I are legally married first."

  "I couldn't agree with you more."

  "We were hoping—if you and Mélanie are willing, we'd like to have the wedding in Berkeley Square."

  "My dear fellow. We'd be more than happy."

  "So of course you'll have to tell Mélanie. And O'Roarke and Laura. And since Frances will know and we can't ask her to keep it from Archie, you should tell the younger Davenports as well. I don't think you have many secrets from them. And I need to tell David. All things considered, I'd like to have him there. And Tanner."

  Malcolm nodded. "I wish Gelly could be there."

  "So do I." Julien reached for his tankard. "She's probably the first person I let myself consider family."

  Chapter 32

  Lady Frances Davenport stared at Malcolm. "My word. I confess I thought that I was far too jaded to be shocked, long before I stumbled into your world of agents and double agents. And then I thought I'd become quite accustomed to everyone's having a secret identity. Even those closest to me. But I never expected to find the dead coming back to life. Or to realize that I could still be shocked by Carfax."

  "Nor did I," Malcolm said. "On either count."

  "Arthur was an engaging little boy," Frances said. "And a quite charming young man. I can't believe I didn't—"

  "Believe me, I'm asking myself the same thing. Of course, part of a good disguise is playing off expectations. Very useful to have everyone think one is dead."

  "It was such a tragedy. His death. His supposed death. He seemed to have such promise. His cleverness was quite apparent, though I don't think he had an easy childhood." Frances glanced towards the door to the drawing room where Archie could be heard playing with their nine-month-old twins and Frances's ten-year-old daughter, Chloe. "The late Lord Carfax was hardly the warmest of fathers, even by beau monde standards. I don't think his wife had a very easy time of it. I was thinking of her actually, that night at Vauxhall when we saw Josefina perform last September, and then again when you had Josefina and her family to dine. Josefina seems to have built quite a happy life for herself in London. I don't think Pamela Carfax ever did. I fear at the time I didn't appreciate enough how hard it must have been for her, being an outsider. Sometimes one is so on the inside oneself one can't see it."

  "I've certainly been guilty of that." Malcolm thought of Mélanie and then, unexpectedly, of Oliver Lydgate, visiting Carfax Court in their Oxford days. If Oliver hadn't been an outsider, Malcolm doubted Carfax would ever have been able to recruit him.

  "However little I think of the current Lord Carfax, Arthur's father was worse," Frances said. "Well, perhaps I shouldn't say that, for the present Carfax has so much more power and is a much cleverer man, which allows him to accomplish so much more. But his elder brother was a wretched human being."

  "Julien said you had the good taste to refuse his advances."

  "Good heavens, I should think so. Even in my youth I had some discrimination. And they were singularly crude advances. I remember one night at Vauxhall being distinctly unnerved. Hubert Mallinson actually came to my rescue."

  "Julien thinks his father may have been an Elsinore League member."

  Frances's brows rose. "That would explain a great deal about Carfax's attitude towards the League."

  "Yes, that's what Julien and I both thought."

  "We'll have to ask Archie. It's possible he even knows. There's seemed no need to discuss the late Lord Carfax. Suddenly this makes him quite relevant."

  "Yes," Malcolm said, "it does. And casts an interesting light on the games the League have been trying to play with his son."

  "I like him," Frances said. "That is, I like Mr. St. Juste and I liked Arthur Mallinson. And he's been treated quite appallingly."

  "You think you can get the license?"

  "Oh, yes." Frances tucked a pale blonde curl into its pins. "I'll say the Arthur Mallinson in question is a country cousin who got a young woman with child and is eager to have the wedding handled quickly, without it coming to Carfax's attention. That should buy Julien and Kitty a bit of time. But once the archbishop lets out the name Arthur Mallinson to someone, Carfax will know to be on his guard."

  "I can't imagine Carfax isn't already on his guard where Julien is concerned. This should at least give Kitty and Julien enough time to get married without Carfax's trying to stop the wedding."

  Frances's carefully plucked brows drew together. "Do you really think he would?"

  "Julien does, and he arguably knows Carfax better than any of us."

  "But surely Julien is a threat to him, married or not."

  "I think Carfax may have moved beyond that. He may have decided that to outwit the League he has to resurrect Julien. I can see his thinking that, and Julien says he's been hinting at it. That in a sense makes Julien his heir. And we know how Carfax is about his heir's marital prospects."

  Frances took a sip from the cup of tea on her escritoire. "Actually, Carfax is Julien's heir." She set the cup down, sloshing tea, which was unlike her. "You don't think—"

  "That Carfax would have Julien killed? No, not on moral grounds, but because if he thought it a viable course of action, he'd have done it long ago. But judging by his attitude towards David, he's likely to have very definite ideas about the sort of earl he wants Julien to be."

  Frances snorted. "I would think even Carfax would realize he can't control Julien St. Juste."

  "Have you ever known Carfax to believe he can't control anything?"

  Frances tugged her handkerchief from the gathered cuff of her long sleeve and blotted the spilled tea. "Kitty would make an admirable countess."

  "Kitty's a revolutionary, in her way. And you know what Carfax thinks of those. I suspect he'd prefer a more settled alliance."

  "Whatever else Carfax is, he's no fool. I can't imagine his thinking Julien would be happy with anyone remotely settled."

  "Who said anything about Carfax's thinking marriage equated to happiness?"

  "You have a point there. Although he found happiness in his own marriage. At least, he did until Amelia learned about Gelly." Frances folded the handkerchief and smoothed her violet-striped taffeta skirt. "If you ask me, Amelia may be more of a threat than Carfax. Not to Julien's marrying Kitty, but to Julien's becoming Arthur again."

  "She married Carfax when he was Hubert Mallinson."

  "And she was quite besotted with him and content to be an army wife. But she's had over two decades of being a countess. More to the point of thinking of her children as an earl's children. And she's rather less besotted with Carfax after the revelations about G
isèle."

  "You're a very astute woman, Aunt Frances."

  "I understand ambition and what it can mean to give something up. Especially in the beau monde." She reached for the paisley shawl draped over the back of her chair. "I should get to the archbishop without further delay. I trust you have a clergyman to perform the ceremony?"

  "Already working on it."

  "My word." She wrapped the shawl round her shoulders and pushed another pin into her hair. "I feel as though I were assisting with an elopement. It makes me feel quite schoolgirlish."

  She got to her feet, but turned back at the door. "You realize we're on the verge of a scandal that is going to shake Mayfair—not to mention Westminster."

  "Oh, yes."

  "I used to love a good scandal. Now all I can think of is what it will do to those I care about."

  Mélanie stared at her husband. She had come back to Berkeley Square from the Tavistock during the midday break. Laura was out and might have something interesting to report when she returned, Raoul said. But before she could ask more questions or share her discoveries about Will, Malcolm had come in with news that dwarfed all other revelations.

  Her shoulders shook with laughter. She put her head in her hands.

  "Darling?" Malcolm said. He was sitting beside her on the library sofa.

  "I'm not sure what other response is possible." She looked up at him, then at Raoul, who was sitting on a chair beside them, apparently equally amazed. "On my first mission I tried to steal a paper from Carfax's nephew."

  "Technically, you tried to steal it from Carfax," Malcolm said, "given that Hubert Mallinson has never had any legitimate right to the title."

  "Which makes the whole thing all the more absurd." Moments from the past shot through her memory. The night she had met Julien. The night she had spent with him. The journey to protect Hortense Bonaparte. His mockery, his flirtation, his unexpected moments of caring for Hortense and perhaps for her. Her panic when she'd seen him again in London a year and a half ago, a panic which seemed rather laughable now. Telling Malcolm about him for the first time. "All this time. I thought Julien was someone from my past we were entangled with. And it turns out you knew him years before I ever did."

  "I knew Arthur Mallinson," Malcolm said. "You could say I didn't know Julien St. Juste at all."

  "But they're the same person, on some level." Mélanie met Malcolm's gaze. "Perhaps more so than any of us realized."

  She looked at Raoul. So did Malcolm. Raoul was watching in silence, his face bemused.

  "You really didn't know?" Malcolm said.

  Raoul shook his head. "No suspicion. Arabella didn't tell me, but then there were a number of things she didn't tell me. And this certainly explains a lot about St. Juste."

  "He's David's cousin," Mélanie said. "And Gisèle's." She looked at Malcolm. "You grew up with him."

  "I knew him," Malcolm said. "Until he seemingly died when I was seven. He was kind to David and me. Kinder than a lot of boys his age were. He drove Carfax and his father mad. You can imagine the sort of tongue he had on him as a teenager."

  Mélanie smiled. "And this means Carfax—Hubert Mallinson—"

  "Is a fraud." Malcolm's voice was iron cold. "Hard as it is to believe, I don't seem to have appreciated the depth of his crimes."

  "I told St. Juste only yesterday that half of being a strategist is improvising," Raoul said. "Carfax seems to have done that brilliantly when his brother discovered Arthur's crimes, and Arthur staged his assumed death. Brilliantly or diabolically. Or perhaps both."

  "But the risk—" Mélanie said.

  "Carfax is a man who lives with risk. Calculated risk, but sometimes extreme risk. He had papers to keep St. Juste from reappearing for a long time."

  "And I suspect he thought it likely Julien—Arthur—would get himself killed," Malcolm said.

  Mélanie looked at Raoul and then back at Malcolm. "This means Napoleon Bonaparte's wife was the lover of one of Carfax's agents."

  "I don't think so, precisely," Malcolm said. "That is, I don't think St. Juste was Carfax's agent, precisely. He made it clear he was going his own way and choosing his own jobs from the first, and I think he was telling the truth. I can't imagine he told Carfax a number of Josephine's secrets. It certainly doesn't sound as though he told her about Queen Hortense and her child. For one thing, Carfax would almost certainly have used the information. For another, St. Juste's loyalty to Josephine and Hortense has always been apparent."

  "That's true," Raoul said. "Even when I thought him far more ruthless than I do now. Still, learning he was Carfax's nephew would shake a number of those who have employed him through the years. I can imagine the shock waves through intelligence circles."

  "It's rather remarkable he told Kitty the truth of who he is," Mélanie said. "One might say it proves how he feels about her. Though that's been apparent for some time."

  "Speaking of which," Malcolm said, "I hope you don't mind hosting a wedding."

  Mélanie felt an unbidden smile break across her face. "I've been thinking they'd get round to it. And yet—" She shook her head. "Even a few months ago, if you'd have told me Julien would ever be married—"

  "A lot's changed." Malcolm's face grew serious. "Julien wants the wedding quickly. Aunt Frances is getting a special license from the Archbishop of Canterbury. They'd like to be married tonight. To make sure Carfax doesn't interfere."

  Mélanie met her husband's gaze. Somehow, for all she thought she'd accepted the truth of Julien's past, the implications really hadn't hit her until now. "It's not going to be easy for them."

  "No," Malcolm said. "A lot will have to do with what Carfax wants and how he decides to play things. I think he's accepted that Julien has to emerge as Lord Carfax. I'm not sure he's accepted the idea of Kitty as Lady Carfax."

  "You think he'd try to stop the wedding?" Mélanie asked.

  "Given how he's tried to manipulate David, you think Carfax would cavil at that?"

  The thought of Carfax's bursting into their drawing room just as the minister asked if anyone knew of any impediment would have been funny if it hadn't seemed quite so real a possibility. "It seems clear Carfax wouldn't cavil at much of anything," she said.

  "Though given his determination to have an heir for the earldom, you'd think he might be pragmatist enough to realize he should settle for having Julien married," Raoul said.

  "You're assuming Carfax can be pragmatic when it comes to his goals," Malcolm said.

  "He can," Raoul said. "On occasion."

  "Then there's the League," Malcolm said. "They're not going to like this at all."

  "Julien's marrying Kitty, or Julien's emerging as Carfax?" Mélanie asked.

  "Both. They wanted to use the truth of who Julien is against Carfax. I think that's why they've been so lenient with him. They've been hoping to win him for their side in their battle with Carfax. He's going to be openly declaring himself their enemy. I think that's another reason he wants himself officially tied to Kitty. So their bond is legal whatever happens to either of them. He admitted as much to me. He and Kitty are going to come round in a bit with the children. Julien wants to talk to David, and I said I'd go with him."

  Mélanie squeezed her husband's hand. That talk was not going to be easy for David, and she was glad Malcolm could be there for it. "I'll talk to Mrs. Erksine about putting together a wedding supper. I need to go back to the theatre in a bit. It's actually a bit of an echo of the revelations about Julien, though nothing like so shattering. Still, it's interesting. I know where Will came from." She told them, quickly, along with the information that Donald McDevitt was his cousin.

  "It doesn't prove Will isn't undercover," she said. "And it doesn't relate directly to Thornsby, though Donald was with Thornsby the first time Will saw him in London. I need to talk to Donald. Perhaps—"

  She broke off at the sound of the front door and voices. They went into the hall to find Laura as well as Cordelia, Harry, Livia, Drusilla, and
Archie Davenport, Harry's uncle and Frances's husband. "I have some interesting discoveries to report," Laura said. "I thought we should all gather together. Frances is out, but Archie left word for her to come here. Perhaps you want to get Ben and Nerezza. Their perspective could be helpful, especially Ben's."

  Mélanie and Cordelia took Livia and Drusilla up to the drawing room, where Ben and Nerezza and Blanca were playing with the other children. Blanca assured Mélanie she could watch all the children, though with a look that said she wanted an explanation later. By the time Mélanie and Cordelia came back downstairs with Ben and Nerezza, Kitty and Julien had arrived with Kitty's children. Leo and Timothy happily ran upstairs to join the other children, Leo carrying Genny. The adults moved into the library. The news of Kitty and Julien's imminent wedding provided a brief distraction from whatever Laura had to relate.

  "Please," Kitty said, with a smile and quick look at Julien, "no ghastly chorus of best wishes. We're hardly love's young dream and we're doing this for practical reasons."

  "Among other things." Julien reached for her hand.

  Kitty squeezed his fingers, but said, "Yes, but Laura has news far more important than our own."

  Frances arrived with the promised special license as they were settling themselves. Which was a good thing, Mélanie realized, as Laura launched into her account of her morning and her talk with Edith Simmons.

  "Good God," Cordelia said. "I thought we'd at least come to terms with who the League were and what they were capable of. Even if we didn't know quite all the names, we've known from the first that they were a group of men who plotted their own advancement under cover of being a hellfire club. Or at least we thought we did."

  "The original hellfire clubs included ladies," Frances observed. She looked at her husband. "Archie, did you know any ladies were Elsinore League members?"

  Archie had been a League member for over three decades, giving information to Malcolm's mother, Arabella, and to Raoul. Though since his marriage to Frances, he was certainly not trusted by the League. "My darling." Archie was frowning, but he gave his wife a faint smile. "Surely I'd have told not only you but everyone in this room."