The Duke's Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "And you were indeed of assistance, as I hear it."

  "Yes, I believe I was. Not for entirely altruistic reasons. I've always found O'Roarke useful. But I've always liked him as well. In any case, that was all in the future when Arabella was with child. We didn't speak much of her pregnancy, but I offered her my wishes for a safe delivery. She said—" Talleyrand stared into the fire, his expression oddly arrested. "She curved her hand round her stomach, much as I've seen Frances and Lady Tarrington do in the past days, much as I've seen many pregnant women do through the years. She said she wasn't unhappy to be having another child. But that she feared the pregnancy might be a mistake that would come back to haunt her."

  Malcolm held Talleyrand's keen gaze. "Because of the father."

  "Presumably."

  "Arabella was apparently at pains to keep his identity secret. Unusual pains."

  "And that makes you think there may be political ramifications?" Talleyrand asked.

  "There's something that made her determined to keep it from Aunt Frances, in particular." Malcolm studied the prince. "You must have wondered?"

  "Obviously. But, as I said, I knew few details of her personal life in those months."

  Malcolm was aware of the list Raoul had given him tucked inside his coat. His mother's love affairs had been a part of so many investigations he could almost speak of them with equanimity. Almost. "It's no secret Arabella had lovers in her pursuit of the Elsinore League."

  Talleyrand twitched a frilled shirt cuff smooth. "The thought, of course, occurred to me at the time. I confess I even made inquiries of one or two agents in London. Arabella was unusually circumspect in her personal life in the weeks round which your sister must have been conceived."

  "Gelly never asked you about the League, did she?"

  "No. But that doesn't mean she didn't have suspicions. Your sister is an astute young woman, Malcolm. It runs in the family."

  "And I begin to think trying to protect her may have been one of my worst mistakes."

  Talleyrand continued to watch Malcolm. "If I knew who Gisèle's father is, or knew anything that I thought would help you find your sister, I'd tell you, my boy."

  That was quite an admission, coming from Talleyrand.

  Malcolm almost believed it.

  The last person Malcolm had to see was his cousin Aline, who was like a sister to Gisèle. He found her in an upstairs sitting room. Her husband had taken their daughter downstairs to play with the other children. Allie had never been overly demonstrative, but she crossed right to Malcolm and hugged him tight.

  Malcolm's arms closed round his young cousin.

  Allie pulled her head back and looked up at him. "I keep thinking I should have seen something. I was so busy with that wretched code on Boxing Day—"

  "That code may prove vital." It had revealed that the information his mother had intercepted two decades ago, that both the Elsinore League and Malcolm's former spymaster, Lord Carfax, were suddenly bent on finding, concerned something or someone called the Wanderer. "None of us saw anything, Allie," Malcolm said. "Gelly hadn't said anything recently to make you think she was planning anything?"

  "No. Well—" Aline frowned. "Yesterday morning, we were playing with the children, and she looked at Ian crawling after Claudia and said it was good he'd always have so many people to love him." She looked at Malcolm, in that fearless way she'd always been able to confront hard truths. "Do you think she was planning to leave then?"

  "I don't know," Malcolm said honestly. "But I don't see how you could possibly have guessed it if she was. Allie—did Gelly ever seem curious about her father?"

  Aline's eyes widened. "You think that's why she left?"

  "It’s one possible reason."

  Aline rubbed her arms. "We talked about it off and on, growing up. But not as much as you'd think, considering neither of us knew the identity of our father. We hadn't discussed it in years. But only a week ago—no, a bit more, it was before Christmas—we were wrapping presents in the old drawing room. And she suddenly asked me if I ever wondered about my father. I said truthfully that I had much more important things to think about these days, and it really didn't matter. Gelly got an odd look in her eyes. She said she used to feel that way. But lately she'd been thinking it might matter more than she'd ever have dreamed possible."

  Malcolm found Mélanie in the study with Andrew. Andrew was frowning, as though in contemplation, but at Malcolm's entrance he rose and moved to the door. "I'll see if the carriage is ready."

  Andrew had always been tactful. This was probably his and Mel's last chance for a private goodbye.

  Mélanie got to her feet as well, and gestured to a valise beside her chair. "All the essentials."

  Malcolm nodded and crossed to her side, but instead of taking the valise, he put his hands on her shoulders. God knows he'd left often enough—too often—during the war, but on missions within Spain. The dangers may have been worse, but his return hadn't been so open-ended. And she hadn't been at nearly as much risk herself. "Promise me—"

  "At the least hint of danger, I'll leave for Italy."

  Malcolm looked down into his wife's face. He remembered saying goodbye to her the first time he'd left after their marriage. The same brilliant sea green eyes and winged brows and ironic mouth. The walnut brown hair escaping in tendrils about her face. Yet he knew her so much better now. "Why do I not believe that?"

  "Darling." She put her hands on his where they rested on her shoulders. "We have to trust each other to make the right choices."

  He took her face between his hands. "The stakes have never been higher, sweetheart. And we've never been a continent apart."

  "And if things go well, we won't be." Her throat tightened. "We always find our way back to each other. It's a bit redundant, but be careful yourself, darling."

  He kissed her and pulled her into a tight embrace, committing the moment to memory.

  Somehow, the longer they were together, the more he was aware how fragile everything between them was.

  Mélanie clung to him for a moment, then pressed her lips to his cheek. "I love you, darling. Don't forget that until I'm here to tell you again."

  Chapter 5

  Cordelia cast a glance at the lamplight spilling over the delicate blue and gold of an Aubusson carpet and the pale blur of furniture under Holland covers. "What are we looking for?"

  "Anything out of the ordinary," Mélanie said. "The Elsinore League built these rooms. Tommy works for the League. Gisèle left with Tommy."

  "Nothing in these rooms could be called ordinary," Raoul murmured.

  Mélanie lifted her lamp. The carpet was spread over a dirt floor, but the walls were painted. With a series of floor-to-ceiling murals, depicting characters from Shakespeare plays, though no production Mélanie had ever seen featured the scenes displayed here. Malcolm had searched the rooms, cut into the rock off the secret passage that led from Dunmykel's library to the beach, for clues to his mother's missing papers, and come back grim-faced, but this was the first time Mélanie had seen them.

  Hamlet—he seemed to be Hamlet judging by the black clothing and clichéd wild-eyed stare—was ravishing a golden-haired, white-clad Ophelia against a stone wall in a bizarre perversion of the "get thee to a nunnery" scene. Gertrude disported with Claudius, Polonius, and a third man who was probably supposed to be old King Hamlet, though whether he was a ghost or in the flesh remained unclear. Romeo and Juliet were twined together in a position that appeared to defy the laws of physics. Desdemona and Othello were making the beast with two backs while Iago observed them from behind a tapestry. A black-veiled Olivia was enjoying the ministrations of an identical pair in blue doublets who must be Viola and Sebastian.

  Mélanie stood still, breath caught at the sheer audacity of it, skin flushed with reluctant heat. Crude, blatant, yet undeniably arousing.

  Laura broke the silence, her voice unusually dry. "Were you ever here?" she asked Raoul.

  "No." His voice t
oo was dry, his gaze even more dispassionate than usual as he scanned the walls. "Archie told Arabella and me about the rooms. Bella may have explored them. I never did. And I profoundly hope Strathdon has never seen them. I doubt his morals would be shocked, but I'm not sure he'd recover from the perversion of Shakespeare."

  He lifted a corner of the Holland cover on the object in the center of the room. The lamplight gleamed off the polished wood of a table. The other Holland-covered objects proved to be a set of chairs upholstered in a tapestry that echoed the theme of the murals and a marble-topped Boulle sideboard with gilt comedy and tragedy masks on the doors. The interior was filled with crystal glasses etched with more erotic scenes and bottles of whisky, brandy, claret, and port.

  "The brandy's been moved," Raoul said, studying the dust in the cabinet in the light of his lamp. "Within the past fortnight, I'd say."

  "The League can't have met here in at least a year and half," Laura said. "Not since Alistair died."

  "One wouldn't think so," Mélanie said. "Though they could have pulled up by water and gone through the passage. But presumably not in the past three weeks while we were here."

  "Tommy likes brandy," Cordelia said.

  "So he does." Raoul moved towards one of the archways opening off the main room. Laura went with him. Mélanie and Cordelia moved to another. The archway gave on to a smaller room. It, too, was painted with murals. These depicted the four lovers from A Midsummer Night's Dream in every possible combination. Titania's court were engaged in an orgy in a mural on the ceiling. A carved four-poster bed took up most of the chamber, a fairytale creation of white and gold and gauzy hangings. Nude nymphs twined themselves round the table legs and the gilded bedposts. Something else gold glinted at each of the four corners of the bed. Finely wrought handcuffs and leg irons.

  "A lot of the images aren't much different from what one sees for sale in stalls in the Boulevard St. Martin," Cordelia said. "But I have to say there are some it's never even occurred to me to try."

  "There are some I don't think are physically possible," Mélanie said.

  They turned back the sheets and mattress, tapped and twisted the gilded nymphs, unscrewed the finials, pushed back the Turkey rug to tap the floorboards. The other side rooms proved to be decorated with variations on Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. More beds, a chaise-longue, a hamper of fancy dress—with a great many low-cut bodices and codpieces, all manner of swords and daggers, and a collection of birch rods.

  They met Raoul and Laura in the Merry Wives of Windsor room. "Damn it," Mélanie said, as they shared their lack of success. "Now I'm going to have these images running through my head the next time we go to the theatre. I can only imagine how Malcolm feels." She started to drop down on the edge of the bed, thought better of it considering what had no doubt transpired there, and found herself staring at bit of gilding on the dark wood. Only this wood wasn't gilded, it was inlaid with silver filigree. She bent down and picked up a piece of gold braid, her fingers suddenly nerveless.

  "What's that?" Cordelia asked.

  "I think it came from the gown Gisèle was wearing two days before she disappeared," Mélanie said.

  "It doesn't prove anything," Cordelia said, hands curled round a glass of whisky. They had retreated upstairs to the library.

  "No, but combined with the brandy being moved, it strongly suggests Gisèle was in the secret rooms with Tommy." Mélanie took a sip from her own glass.

  "If he convinced her he had information about her father and that her father is an Elsinore League member, he could have taken her there to tell her about her father," Laura said.

  "Quite," Raoul agreed. "Or to show her some evidence, though if so they took it with them or we missed it. And I refuse to believe Tommy Belmont could outwit all four of us."

  "So do I," Mélanie said. "And you're right, Tommy and Gisèle obviously spoke together before they left New Year's Day morning. It doesn't change so very much that they spoke in the secret rooms. Save to put the League squarely in the middle of it." And to put Gisèle and Tommy in a setting designed for seduction.

  "The bedsheets were clean," Laura said. "Unless they stripped the sheets and had one of the maids make the bed up fresh, nothing happened there recently."

  Mélanie met her friend's gaze. That was perhaps the most reassuring thing she'd heard all night. Yet just the fact that Tommy had taken Gisèle into the rooms suggested they were on terms of intimacy that could not but be disturbing.

  Andrew pushed a piece of his scarcely touched beefsteak round his plate in the coffee room of the White Hart in York. "Almost certain they're headed for London now."

  "Almost," Malcolm agreed. Rain lashed the inn windows and beat on the roof. "Though they laid some good false trails. Enough to convince me we're probably right about their destination."

  Andrew pushed his plate aside and rested his elbows on the table. "When we get to London, I'll go down to Kent to talk to Judith. She may have heard from Gelly. And you'll have better sources for scouring London."

  Malcolm nodded and took a sip of ale from his tankard. It wasn't a bad plan. His cousin Judith, Frances's second daughter, was also like a sister to Gisèle. "I don't have the connections I once did. But there are people I can call on." Including some former Bonapartists he'd helped Mélanie settle in London.

  Andrew reached for his own tankard but turned it in his hands instead of drinking. "You must have better sources than Darcy."

  "Darcy?" Malcolm asked. Usually he was quicker to catch clues.

  "Darcy scours London for Lydia and Wickham. He manages to find them."

  "Andrew." Malcolm's hand shot across the table to grip his brother-in-law's own. "I'm still not quite sure what this is. But it's no simple elopement."

  "It's certainly not simple." Andrew tossed down a long draught from his tankard. "If Mélanie left you, you'd try to find her, there's no sense in even asking that. But what would you do if, when you found her, she didn't want to come home?"

  Malcolm kept his fingers steady on his own tankard. The question was closer to what he had actually imagined than Andrew could possibly know. "I'd never want Mel to be anywhere other than where she wanted to be. Not that I think I could compel her in any case."

  "Quite." Andrew stared into the depths of his tankard.

  "But I flatter myself I know her enough to know her happiness is with me. And I flatter myself I know Gelly enough as well."

  Andrew's gaze shot up to meet Malcolm's own. "You haven't seen much of her in ten years."

  Malcolm accepted Andrew's gaze. "True enough."

  Andrew scraped a hand over his hair. "I shouldn't—"

  "No, that was above the belt. Nothing more than I myself point out frequently." Malcolm curled his hands round his tankard and leaned forwards across the table. "Look, Andrew." He searched for words and found himself wondering what his father would say in the same circumstances. "We can never really be sure of what another person might do. Even with those closest to us. I've had that lesson driven home more than once through the years." With the pain of a dagger thrust at times. "So you're right, I can't promise you Gisèle didn't leave the child she seems to adore and the man she seems to be head over ears in love with and elope with Tommy Belmont. But I can tell you that explanation goes against all my instincts. And for all my sins, I'm still a decent judge of my fellow humans. It also goes against everything I know of my sister. And for all I was gone for a decade, I do think I know her reasonably well."

  Andrew's gaze locked on his across the table. "Have I told you you're a good fellow, Malcolm?"

  "That has nothing to do with why I said it."

  "No. And I do—appreciate it. Value your judgment. I just can't—help but worry."

  Malcolm took a sip from his tankard. "My dear fellow. Who can?"

  Andrew gave a quick smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. Malcolm looked round to order another round of ale. The coffee room, low-ceilinged and dar
k-paneled, as such rooms often were, was crowded with a combination of travelers and locals. Damp greatcoats and pelisses steamed on a settle by the stone fireplace. Waiters bustled in and out with trays and tankards. Malcolm had just caught a waiter's eye, when the door of the coffee room burst open. A man in a damp greatcoat, hair streaming rainwater, was flung onto the coffee room floor. A second man, who had done the flinging, strode in after him and slammed the door shut. "Keep your filthy hands off my wife."

  A woman two tables over from Malcolm and Andrew screamed. Another woman in the corner put her arms round her two young children.

  The man with the dripping hair pushed himself to his knees and lunged at the second man's ankles. They went crashing into a table. "Bloody hell," a stout man sitting at the table yelled as his ale tipped over.

  The man with the dripping hair, now on his feet, drew back his fist to hit his attacker and instead hit the stout man's companion as he jumped up from the table. The companion gave a grunt of rage and punched back.

  "Let's get out of here," Malcolm muttered to Andrew.

  The route to the door went past the table engulfed in the brawl, which somehow now included three more men. Others in the coffee room pushed back their chairs and either moved out of the way or ran to join the fight. As Malcolm and Andrew neared the door, one of the brawlers skidded on the spilled ale and crashed into a waiter who had tried to back out of the fray. A covered dish, two tankards of ale, and three glasses of wine fell to the floorboards. The waiter shouted. Malcolm and Andrew dodged round the chaos. The man in the damp greatcoat, now grappling with the stout man, lurched against Malcolm. Malcolm felt a sharp slice across his ribs. He twisted away and pushed after Andrew to the door.