The Tavistock Plot

by Tracy Grant

  "Trust is a rather amazing gift."

  "You gave it first. You told me who you are."

  His gaze scoured her face. "I never consciously decided to, you know. It just seemed obvious to me that you needed to know."

  "Well, then."

  "I love you, Kitkat. I think I've said those words more in the last four-and-twenty hours than I have in my entire life."

  She reached up to kiss him. "I love you ridiculously, Julien. I'm not sure what's come over me, but I don't even feel foolish saying it. Well, not very."

  He settled into the kiss and held her to him. "I expect we'll go back to something like normal. I can't imagine either of us continuing long in this sea of sensibility. But I'm never quite going to be the person I was before I met you."

  "I think you were becoming the person you are now long before you I met, my darling. But I'm glad I was there at the right time."

  He caught her hand and kissed it. "My loving you has nothing to do with timing and everything to do with who you are, sweetheart. Though it's probably just as well I didn't meet you at the age of twenty. I'd have been sure to make a mull of it."

  "And I'd only have been fourteen."

  "Mmm." He rested his cheek against her hair. "There is that. All things considered, it's a good thing I went abroad."

  "Julien." She put her hand up and turned his face back towards her own. "You were forced abroad. You were little more than a child."

  "I'd done some very adult things." He frowned. "I seem to have discovered at some point in the last year that I have a conscience. Or perhaps I grew one."

  "Stop being provoking. You've always had quite a fine-tuned conscience."

  He laughed. "Like the pianoforte at Carfax Court that's been ignored since my mother died. A good instrument, but sadly out of use."

  She put her hands on his chest. "Will you stop and let me finish, you provoking man? I'm trying to be serious for once, and tell you what you mean to me, which is difficult enough for me without your complicating it. I may never manage to say this again. I think about my own boys, and I can't forgive Carfax, and especially your father, for what you went through. But I'm inestimably grateful things worked out so that we met."

  He turned her hand over in his and kissed her palm. "As am I. And my darling girl, what I'd gone through at sixteen is nothing compared to what you'd gone through."

  She shrugged. "Folly to compare wounds. We've both been cut rather deeply. No sense in feeling sorry for ourselves. But if ever we're going to do so, this does seem a night to give way to sentiment. Kiss me again, Julien. It's still our wedding night, and I don't think it's been ruined in the least."

  Malcolm stripped off his cravat. "Julien and Kitty are married. Simon and David seem more secure than they have in a decade. The papers are published. Carfax came into our house without my throttling him. And soon he won't be Carfax anymore. Not a bad day."

  Mélanie unfastened her second earring. "We still don't know who killed Thornsby."

  "No." Malcolm tossed the cravat onto the green velvet chair. "But we know the assassination plot isn't a real threat. There's nothing to hang over your opening."

  Mélanie watched her husband in the light of the Argand lamp. It picked out strands of bronze in his hair, warmed his skin, shot through the fabric of his shirt. "You can't think that matters beside the investigation."

  Malcolm crossed to her side and cupped a hand round her cheek. "I think the opening is in two days now, and it's your priority, as it should be. We have time to investigate what happened to Thornsby. We don't face an immediate threat."

  Mélanie scanned his face. "You're saying that because you don't want to disrupt the play."

  "I'm saying that because the play is important. And I'd never forgive myself if this interfered with it."

  "You're going to go on with the investigation, and you want me to focus on the play."

  "I'm going to poke a bit round the edges. If I discover anything significant, I'll tell you. But there's no urgency, as I said."

  "The League—"

  "The League have always been a threat, and still are. The information about Lady Shroppington is interesting. But it doesn't change anything immediately. If I had a bill up for vote you'd tell me to get through that while you looked into things. This is no different."

  She held his gaze. "Darling—"

  He put his hands on her shoulders. "We're partners, sweetheart. Nothing's changed."

  She pulled him close and held him to her. Because she couldn't bear it if it had.

  Chapter 40

  Malcolm found Beverston in Hyde Park again. The morning after Julien and Kitty's wedding and Simon's arrest dawned fine, but with a sharp chill that made Malcolm grateful for his greatcoat and the thick scarf Addison had tossed to him on his way from the house.

  "Rannoch." Beverston reined in to allow Malcolm to pull up beside him. "Two days in a row. I take it you have fresh news?" His gaze flickered over Malcolm's face with a trace of concern. "Is Benedict all right?"

  "Ben's fine and proving quite insightful. Though he's a bit shocked, as we all are, to have learned your godmother is working with the Elsinore League."

  Beverston's hands jerked on the reins.

  "I must say I'm impressed," Malcolm said. "With all we thought we knew about the League, we had no notion women were involved."

  'They aren't, in general," Beverston said.

  "So Lady Shroppington was an exception? Was she Alistair's mistress?"

  "Was she his what? No."

  "I'm particularly intrigued that you fell out with her. I assume you had your reasons, because she doesn't strike me as an easy enemy to make. Just as I assume she had her reasons for casting her lot with Alexander Radford, rather than you."

  Beverston put up a hand to tug the brim of his hat lower on his head. "You don't know what you're dealing with, Rannoch."

  "I know that Alexander Radford and Lady Shroppington's faction are, or at least were, trying to kill the woman your son loves, because she could identify Radford."

  "Which should tell you how dangerous the situation is. And also, possibly, why I put myself on the other side."

  "Because you were so horrified they were trying to kill Nerezza?"

  "Among other things."

  "Did you try to persuade Lewis to turn on them?"

  Beverston's mouth hardened. "Lewis was very set on the course he'd taken. After one or two attempts, I knew there was no dissuading him. Until—"

  "What?" Malcolm said, as Beverston stared at the leafless tangle of branches ahead.

  "I don't know that this will help you, Rannoch, but I suppose there's no harm in telling you. I saw Lewis in White's the day before he was killed. He interrupted me in the midst of a rather good beefsteak and a particularly fine claret. He wanted to know about Horace Smytheton's role in the League."

  "Smytheton?" Sometimes Malcolm almost forgot that the Tavistock's patron had ever been a League member.

  "Yes, that was rather my reaction," Beverston said. "I told him Smytheton had worked with Alistair and Dewhurst in France but that he hadn't had much to do with the League in years. And he'd never really been a significant member. That's hardly a secret."

  "Did Thornsby say why he was asking about Horace?"

  "No. And I didn't think much of it, because it was hard for me to imagine anything to do with Horace Smytheton being of much interest. But as he turned to go, he looked back at me and said he was changing his mind about what was important. At the time, I thought he was talking about that actress he was besotted with. But now I think it may have been something else entirely."

  "Lewis Thornsby?" Sir Horace Smytheton regarded Mélanie over the tea table in the green room. "I'm sorry the young man is dead, but I can't say I ever spoke more than a half-dozen words to him. Agreeable enough chap, but very little actual knowledge of the theatre, you know. The one time I tried to talk to him, he kept muddling Ophelia and Cordelia."

  Mélanie added mi
lk to her tea. They were in a break in the dress rehearsal. "He asked Lord Beverston about you the day before he was killed."

  Sir Horace's brows drew together. "That's right, forgot Beverston was a friend of the Thornsby family. We're actually distantly connected, you know—Beverston and I, that is. Smythe and Smytheton. Both branches of the same family, if one goes back to the Civil War. But even when I was involved with the—er—League"—he cast a quick glance round the green room, where various of the company were relaxing with tea and studying scripts—"I didn't have much to do with Beverston."

  Mélanie took a drink of tea. She was going on five hours sleep, with little more than twenty-four hours until the opening. "Did Thornsby ask you any questions?"

  Horace added some sugar to his own tea. "One of the few times we talked, he asked me how it had worked when I'd married Jenny. What my family had thought. I told him all the family I cared about had come round, and I was happier in the theatre than in society. Said I'd never regretted following my heart. That my only regret was keeping the marriage secret for so many years. Not hard to tell the boy was asking about it because of Letty Blanchard. Of course, I had the benefit of a comfortable fortune, which Thornsby didn't. Don't think I steered him wrong, do you?"

  "I think Lewis Thornsby was very set on what he wanted, when it came to Letty Blanchard." In fact, it seemed the one clear thing about Thornsby. "And I don't see how it could be wrong to tell the truth about how happy you are with Jennifer."

  "Perhaps Thornsby was asking Beverston what he knew about my marriage to Jennifer."

  "I don't think so. Beverston told Malcolm that Thornsby very clearly asked about your role in the League."

  Sir Horace clunked down the sugar bowl. "Thornsby was involved with the League?"

  "Apparently."

  "He must have been following up on old gossip, then. I haven't had anything to do with the League in years." He patted Mélanie's arm. "It's a tragedy, my dear. But you can't let it dim the opening. You've written a splendid play. You need to focus on that." He put some almond cakes on a plate. "Promised these to the girls. Can't keep them waiting."

  Mélanie watched Sir Horace cross the room and settle himself on the sofa, where his ten-year-old daughter was entertaining her baby sister. Mélanie had always liked him. And she certainly believed he'd left the League behind. And yet—

  "What is it?" Simon came over to the tea table, a pencil stuck behind his ear, blue shadows of fatigue pulling at his face, eyes alight with intensity.

  Mélanie took another drink of tea. "Did you ever see Thornsby talking to Horace?"

  "Sir Horace? Not that I can recall. You know what little use Smytheton has for anyone who can't dissect the finer points of Shakespeare. Why?"

  "Thornsby asked Beverston about Horace the day before he was killed. Horace can't imagine why. According to Malcolm, Beverston couldn't either. Something doesn't quite add up."

  Simon glanced at Sir Horace and his daughters. Jennifer had joined them, and seemed to be remonstrating with Horace not to give the baby so many bites of almond cake, though she was smiling as she said it. "Whatever his past, Smytheton isn't a man who seems to have secrets these days. Though I suppose we've learned not to say that about anyone."

  "No." Mélanie swallowed the last of her tea. "Sir Horace told me to focus on the play. And he was right in that."

  "We're as ready as we're ever going to be." Simon poured himself a cup of tea and took a grateful swallow. "Or at least, more ready than I've felt before a score of openings. With just enough still to work on for no one to get too complacent."

  Mélanie smiled at him. "That's because you didn't write this one."

  "Yes, which allows me to be confident in just how splendid it is. And ticket sales are excellent."

  "Thanks to the gossip." Horrible to think they were benefiting from Lewis Thornsby's murder.

  "Partly thanks to the gossip. Partly thanks to your being a leading light of the beau monde. The point is, whyever they bought tickets, we'll have a full house to appreciate a brilliant play." He scanned her face. "It's quite normal to be nervous. I'm nervous before every opening."

  "Yes, I'd have been nervous, no matter what. But you have to admit these past few days have been particularly fraught."

  "A massive understatement, my sweet." He took another swallow of tea. "At least Carfax is less of a threat. Less than he's been in all the time David and I have been together."

  "That's a lot to be thankful for. It's just that—"

  She broke off as Letty Blanchard slipped into the green room, cast a quick glance about, and then walked straight over to them. "I'm sorry." She looked between Mélanie and Simon. "I thought I could keep quiet about this. I thought that was the best thing to do. But I'm sick to my stomach, and I don't think I can go on tomorrow if I don't tell you."

  Simon set down his tea cup. "Then we'd best find somewhere quiet to talk." He put a hand on Letty's arm and led the way to a rehearsal room close to the green room.

  Letty drew a breath as Simon closed the door. She didn't sit in any of the straight-backed chairs scattered round the room, but stood twisting her hands together. For all her rouged cheeks and blackened lashes and fashionably cropped hair, Mélanie was reminded of nothing so much as her children when they were owning up to something.

  "Lewis told me he knew who the mole in the Levellers was. When he proposed to me. The night he was killed. I'm not sure why he said it. He seemed to realize he shouldn't have, the moment he did. I think perhaps he wanted to impress me. To get me to take him seriously. But I think he was going to meet the mole that night. I think that's why he went back to the Tavistock."

  "Why didn't you say so sooner?" Mélanie asked.

  "I couldn't. I—"

  "Letty—" Will opened the door and froze on the threshold, still in his shirtsleeves from rehearsal. "Oh, sorry. I wanted to talk to Letty about our last scene."

  Letty turned to him, her gaze stricken. "Oh, God, Will, I’m sorry."

  "Why? It's going quite well. I just thought—"

  "Not the scene. I told them. That Lewis told me he knew who the mole was."

  "Good God. But what's that to do with me?" Will asked.

  Letty stared at him, while Mélanie and Simon both went still. "Because I thought—"

  "You thought I was the mole?" Will stepped into the rehearsal room and slammed the door shut behind him. "You thought I'd do that to my friends? To all the things I believe in?" He turned away. "My God, Letty, what a bastard you must think me."

  "No! I just—I'd never have suspected you on my own. But Lewis said he'd started to suspect in Lancaster. That the attack wasn't what it seemed, and that if I knew what had really happened, I'd feel very differently about those I cared about. I couldn't make sense of it, but you were attacked in Lancaster and you're someone I— " She bit back the words and looked away. "I had a horrible feeling it meant you were behind it." She forced her gaze back to his face. "I knew if that was true, you'd have reasons. Even then, I wasn't sure. But I couldn't take the chance and betray you—"

  Will stared at her, his face a taut study in conflict. Mélanie cast a quick glance at Simon but knew better than to speak. If they weren't in the middle of an investigation, they'd have both slipped from the room.

  "You thought I'd have sold secrets," Will said. "Hurt my friends. Your friends. Why on earth would you want to protect me?"

  "Will, you provoking idiot." Letty crossed to him with a swish of her sarcenet skirts and seized the front of his waistcoat. "Don't you realize that my instinct was to protect you, no matter what? Don't you realize what you mean to me?"

  Will stared down at her, face still as ice over a roiling river. "You made what I mean to you perfectly clear when you set your cap at Lewis Thornsby."

  "Will." Letty's gaze clung to his face. "You know I wasn't—"

  "You weren't in love with Thornsby? No, I didn't think you were. But you can't deny you were ready to marry him."

&nbs
p; "I didn't accept his proposal."

  Will drew a rough breath. Her face was inches from his own and it was clear how much that cost him. "You didn't turn him down either, did you?"

  "No, not right away. I wasn't sure—"

  "He could keep his fortune?"

  Letty didn't flinch. "I deserved that. And no, I wasn't. But I also wasn't sure I was ready to give up the theatre." She drew a breath, gaze still trained on his face. "And even more, I wasn't sure I was ready to give up you."

  Will's hands came up to grip her arms. For a moment, he seemed one thought away from pulling her to him. Instead he said, "You already gave me up."

  "But I'd have lost the chance of getting you back."

  "You could have married Thornsby and taken a lover."

  "You're assuming I'd have done that to Lewis. I'm not quite so cold as you think me. And even if I'd been willing to play Lewis false, I know you. You wouldn't have lived a lie."

  Words Mélanie had heard David use about Simon. She didn't risk a glance at Simon, but she knew instinctively he recognized it too.

  "No," Will said. "I wouldn't. No matter how much I wanted it."

  It was Letty's turn to go still, as his words sank in. "You—"

  "I confronted Thornsby the day before he was killed. Because I was worried he was leading you on. At least, that was my excuse. The truth is I was more than half driven by jealousy. The truth is I couldn't get you out of my thoughts, Letty. Even if you thought I was worth less than a handsome fortune. Even if, apparently, you thought I was a conscienceless traitor who would turn on his own friends."

  "I never said—"

  "You thought I'd be capable of the action. I don't see how such a betrayal could be justified. If I had done it. Which I didn't." He looked at Mélanie and Simon. "I have no way to prove I'm not the mole, but I hope to God at least you believe me, because they have to go on searching for the actual mole."

  Letty let out a breath like one who'd been pulled from drowning. "Thank God. I've been so terrified ever since Lewis told me."

  "So, you do believe me?"