The Duke's Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "It's more than that." Scenes from their time at the villa ran through her mind. Sharing newspapers and coffee on the terrace. Sipping wine and watching the sunset. Jessica on Raoul's shoulders. Colin and Emily on his lap. Capping each other's Shakespeare quotes. Strategizing over the Elsinore League papers.

  Malcolm's gaze remained steady and, at the same time, oddly warm. "True. We aren't the people we were when we left Britain. God knows, I'm not. But that doesn't take away the fact that we could end up on opposite sides."

  She drew a rough breath.

  "I wouldn’t want either of you to do anything but follow the dictates of your conscience."

  "That's the sort of thing that sounds splendid and rational, Malcolm. And it's hellishly difficult to put into practice."

  "Fair enough. But we may have to learn how to do so." Malcolm frowned. "Did Trenor say anything of note before I got there?"

  "Only if one were a dramatist like Simon, trying to capture the scene. He was trying desperately to hold on to his manners while being caught in a very compromising situation."

  "He certainly seemed genuinely confused. And rather endearingly attached to the younger Miss Simcox. But his elder brother happens to have been one of Miranda Spencer's clients. And to have been in her room just after her body was discovered."

  Raoul looked between Mélanie and Malcolm. "You're sure Gisèle ran on her own? I have a fondness for Sam, but I wouldn't say it extends to trust."

  "Nor does it on my side," Mélanie said. "But Gisèle's running on her own fits with what I saw earlier when I spoke with her. She seemed—" Mélanie hesitated.

  Malcolm watched his wife and was aware of Raoul doing the same.

  "Like a different person," Mélanie finished.

  Malcolm swallowed, picturing his sister as he had last seen her. He'd accepted long since that he'd never really known his elder sister Tatiana. But Gelly—"As I suppose we all can in the right circumstances," he said.

  They were in the Berkeley Square library. Malcolm and Mélanie had returned to the house to find that Raoul had just got back from his inquiries into Charlotte Leblanc. Cordy had taken her daughters to the Davenport house now that Harry was back, and Laura, Colin, Jessica, and Emily had gone with them. Malcolm, Mélanie, and Raoul had the house to themselves, save for Valentin, who had produced coffee and then retired to the kitchen.

  Raoul picked up his coffee and blew on the steam. "Gisèle has a lot of Arabella in her."

  "Sam and his friend Nan thought it was more than that she and Tommy were lovers," Mélanie said. She hesitated. "Though they didn't rule that out."

  "Nor would I," Malcolm said.

  His wife shot him a look of surprise.

  "I think she loves Andrew," Malcolm said. "But I'd be a fool to think that rules out—all sorts of things."

  "Sam didn't know more about what Belmont and Gisèle were doing?" Raoul asked.

  "He said not," Mélanie said. "And it had the ring of truth. He also mentioned seeing someone else recently." She splashed more milk into her coffee. "This is quite like old times, in some ways. I always used to take it for granted that you were keeping secrets. This time, I confess, it surprised me."

  Raoul raised a brow. "You're a step ahead of me."

  "Sancho—Sam—was contacted by Julien a month since."

  Raoul let out a whistle. Entirely believable. "And?"

  "Sam saw you in conference with Julien last night in the Chat Gris," Mélanie said. "Sam thinks Julien's working for you. That you're setting up a network."

  Raoul's gray eyes gleamed with amusement. "Querida, even I don't have time to plot with everyone I hold a conversation with."

  Mélanie picked up a spoon and stirred her coffee with methodical strokes. "Julien isn't everyone."

  "No. Which is why, when I caught sight of him in the Chat Gris—quite by accident—"

  "A very coincidental accident," Malcolm said.

  "Not so very," Raoul said. "Considering St. Juste and I were both in London, it's not surprising we both happened to be in a coffeehouse frequented by French agents. It's where I found Charlotte."

  "And?" Malcolm said.

  Raoul returned his cup to its saucer. The silver-edged rim didn't so much as waver in the lamplight. "As I said, I caught sight of St. Juste, just as Charlotte was leaving. Given recent events, I was curious about what he was doing there. I also wanted to see if I could get him to talk about the Wanderer, and how Arabella got those papers."

  "It didn't occur to you that he might be trying to kill you?" Mélanie asked.

  "First you accuse me of plotting with him, then you're worried he's going to assassinate me."

  "Both are reasonable possibilities."

  Raoul sat back in his chair, one of the high-backed Queen Anne ones that flanked the fireplace. "He told you he wasn't going to agree to the Elsinore League's proposition."

  Mélanie set down her coffee cup, rattling the china. "Since when have you taken Julien at his word?"

  "I don't. But I tend to agree with you that, at the moment, he tilts more towards ally than enemy. Though given that he's recently had dealings with the League—not to mention that they tried to recruit him to kill me, not to mention that he's connected to Carfax, and that both Carfax and the League are after papers he wrote that Arabella stole two decades ago—I wanted to learn as much as possible. So I stood him a bottle of Bordeaux and spent an hour or so trying to discover what he was doing in London while he tried to discover the same about me. Along with more than one question about you, which I answered as evasively as possible. He flat out laughed when I asked him about the Wanderer and said that if I had any illusions he'd talk about that, Italy really had addled my brain. I told him Gisèle had disappeared. He showed very believable surprise, which may or may not have been feigned. In the end, the bottle was empty, we were both more fuzzy-headed than was good for us, and neither of us had discovered anything."

  "And then?" Mélanie said.

  "He left the coffeehouse. I waited until he was gone and made my back to Berkeley Square by a roundabout route. Unless I'm slipping, I wasn't followed, by Julien or anyone else."

  Mélanie leaned forwards and fixed Raoul with a hard stare. Malcolm knew that look. It was almost impossible to hide from. "You didn't say anything about this to us when you got back last night."

  "I was going to." Raoul gave a faint smile. "I fully accept that it's better to share information."

  "That's a bit of a change," she said.

  "Surely it would be stating the obvious to say we've all changed. Yet old habits die hard. I knew St. Juste's presence would worry you. I didn't have anything concrete to report. I didn't—"

  "Want me going in search of him?"

  O'Roarke gave a faint smile. "You can't deny your position in London is more precarious than it was. And while I'm inclined to think that on the whole Julien's feelings make him less of a danger where you're concerned, rather than more, there's no denying it's a complicated situation."

  "So you were being overprotective, like Malcolm."

  Raoul gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Call it what you will. It wasn't very sensible to think I could keep anything from either of you."

  Malcolm studied his father. Raoul's words were entirely plausible. So was his demeanor. And yet, Malcolm was quite sure that his father, the man he had come to trust and confide in in the past year, had just lied to him.

  Chapter 17

  Mélanie sat back in her chair and reached for her coffee cup, willing her fingers not to tremble. Raoul had lied to them. She didn't risk a glance at Malcolm, but she was sure he had felt it as well. She could only guess what it meant to him. It stabbed her like a knife cut, though at one time she'd have said she was quite prepared for her former spymaster to lie.

  "I take it you got no more news from your surveillance of Charlotte Leblanc?" Malcolm said.

  Raoul shook his head. "Not so far, beyond the report Victor brought Mélanie."

  "Could St. Ju
ste have been in the Chat Gris to see her?" Malcolm asked. His voice was cool and neutral, giving no hint of the storm that must be roiling inside him.

  "I've been wondering just that ever since last night." Raoul picked up his coffee cup and turned it in his hands. "I don't know that they ever worked together, but they certainly could know each other from the Peninsula."

  "In which case, does Julien have something to do with Gisèle's disappearance?" Mélanie asked, pleased to find she had command of her voice.

  "As I said, his surprise when I told him about Gisèle was very believable," Raoul said. "Which I'd expect of Julien, in any case. We know the League have been attempting to obtain Julien's services. It seems more and more likely the League are behind Gisèle's disappearance in some way. Belmont works for them. Charlotte's working with Belmont. She as good as admitted she's working with the League too. Even though Julien turned the League down, it's not impossible that he's working with them now. Or Charlotte could have sought him out on behalf of the League."

  "Beverston knows something about Gisèle, I'd swear it," Malcolm said. "I didn't do a very good job confronting him about it."

  "You weren't going to get him to talk," Raoul said. "At least you got a reaction out of him. And then there's the question of the men who attacked you and Harry. Is that to do with Gisèle, or the Wanderer, or your investigation into Carfax's arrest?"

  Malcolm's mouth tightened. He was staring at his hands. "You're both kind not to ask why the devil I'm spending time on Carfax's arrest at all. Though in truth I probably wouldn't have taken the time to go up to see Beverston were he not Tommy's godfather and an Elsinore League member."

  "Darling." Mélanie reached for his hand. "No one would expect you to simply stand by while Carfax was in prison."

  "No?" He looked up and met her gaze. "I was sorely tempted to do just that when I first heard. But I don't think he did it."

  "Nor do I," Raoul said.

  Malcolm's gaze shot to his father.

  "Carfax is quite capable of murder," Raoul said. "But if so, he'd give himself an escape route. I want to know what he's concealing. And what he was after in the brothel. I can't claim to know Carfax anything like as well as you do. But I've observed him with Lady Carfax. Not that he couldn't surprise us, but I suspect he was seeking information."

  "He wouldn't be the first spymaster to look for it in a brothel." Mélanie met Raoul's gaze, remembering the first moment she'd been alone with him in that narrow room in the brothel in Léon, her confusion and dawning interest when she realized what it was he really wanted from her. She hadn't trusted him then. She'd learned to do so. "You wanted me to spy on someone who was a client."

  "So I did," Raoul said. "And from the start your abilities surprised me."

  "And I later recruited Rachel Garnier to do much the same," Malcolm said. "Miranda Spencer's client list reveals some interesting things. It includes several Elsinore League members. Not necessarily surprising—it was a popular brothel with those in prominent positions, and God knows League members frequenting a brothel isn't surprising. Any of them could account for Carfax's interest in Miss Spencer, though Beverston apparently saw more of her than any of the others."

  "Carfax might have sought her out for information on the League," Raoul said. "Or she could have been working as an agent for him for some time gathering information on any number of people."

  "Either of which might give a number of people motives to have killed her," Malcolm said. "She also numbered Matthew Trenor among her clients. Whose younger brother Mélanie happened to stumble across in her escape today. It's difficult to see how that could have been set up, and Alexander Trenor comes across as a very unlikely conspirator, but it's still surprising. Also, Daisy Singleton remembers Matthew Trenor being blank-faced after Miranda Spencer was killed. And said that Miranda had marks on her wrists once after she'd been with him."

  "Their father's Lord Marchmain, isn't he?" Raoul said.

  Malcolm nodded. "A powerful family. But I doubt Marchmain has the influence to have Carfax arrested to protect his son. Not unless Carfax was in on it."

  They were analyzing the case, as they had so often in the past. Proposing theories, building on one another's ideas. Mélanie remembered a moment in Italy, standing with Malcolm and Raoul on the edge of Lake Como, analyzing evidence and marveling at the alliance between them.

  Save that Raoul's lies about Julien meant they weren't allies at all anymore.

  "You're sure she ran off on her own?" Cordelia asked. "She might have been afraid of this Sam Lucan if Tommy left her with him."

  It was a variant of the same question more than one of them had asked in the course of the evening. They had gone to Frances and Archie's for dinner and were gathered round tea and coffee in the drawing room while the children played round the fire with Christmas gifts.

  "I could see it in her eyes," Mélanie said. "Before Eckert's men broke in. She came into the room to stop me from hurting Sam. She didn't want to see me, but she wouldn't let him be hurt. And she looked at me with—apology. Like a woman who knows the consequences but is very committed to her course of action."

  Frances added milk to her coffee, fingers white round the eggshell porcelain of the jug. "At least we know she's unhurt. And her own mistress."

  Malcolm shot a look at his aunt.

  "Andrew's not here," Frances said. "I can be franker about the realities. It never made sense to me that Gelly had been forced away."

  Mélanie tightened her grip on her own cup. Her fingers felt not quite steady, for any number of reasons. "Whatever's between Gisèle and Tommy, he wasn't staying with her at Sam's."

  "But she'll have gone to find him now," Malcolm said.

  "Which makes Charlotte our best avenue to find them," Raoul said. "They'll be careful because we're on to them, but he'll almost certainly communicate with her again."

  Which was probably true. Mélanie took a sip of coffee. God, it was hard to investigate without knowing if they could trust Raoul.

  "Sanderson claims not to have heard anything about Gisèle." Archie had paid a visit to their source within the Elsinore League. "But he said there's something afoot. The League are after information and very excited about getting it."

  "The Wanderer?" Harry said.

  "I asked Sanderson," Archie said. "He heard the name once. He's not sure what it means. Save that it seems to mean access to power. But he did say that when Lord Wyncliffe died recently, he admitted on his deathbed to Lord Beverston that he'd retrieved information about the Wanderer twenty years ago and then lost it. That seems to be what set them searching at Dunmykel."

  "Wyncliffe was one of Arabella's lovers. He was on the list you gave me." Malcolm cast a quick glance at Raoul, as though for the moment he'd forgot his questions about his father.

  Raoul nodded. "In '98."

  "And he was at the house party at Dunmykel when Arabella climbed into my room with the papers," Frances said. "So if Wyncliffe had them, perhaps Arabella took them from him, rather than directly from St. Juste."

  "Tommy Belmont may well know we found information about the Wanderer in Lady Arabella's jewels," Laura said. "Perhaps the League think Gisèle possesses more information."

  "That's certainly likely," Malcolm agreed. "But as to what Gelly thinks she's doing—"

  "Investigating on her own," Frances said.

  Malcolm met his aunt's gaze again.

  "She's Arabella's daughter," Frances said. "And mine. If she got it into her head she could learn something that you couldn't—"

  Malcolm nodded. "I forget sometimes that playing with fire is almost a family pastime."

  "The Wanderer could be what the League want from Julien St. Juste," Cordelia said.

  "Quite," Raoul agreed. "But not necessarily what Julien's doing in London. Unless he's decided to work with them."

  Mélanie took another sip of coffee, pleased her fingers were steady. "Julien runs risks but not simply on a whim. The League want him.
He's in London, where the League are based. Either he's made an alliance with them or he has other vital business."

  "You said it was clear in Hyde Park six months ago that things weren't done between him and Carfax," Harry said.

  Malcolm met Harry's gaze. "You think St. Juste has something to do with Carfax's arrest? Or Miranda Spencer's murder?"

  "There's obviously an old and strong connection between Carfax and St. Juste. Carfax is in prison and acting strangely. St. Juste is in London."

  "It's suggestive," Raoul agreed, in the voice of one sifting the evidence (as opposed to the voice of one possessed of evidence he wasn't sharing). "Though none of it explains what he wants with Robby Simcox."

  "Unless—" Cordelia broke off.

  Mélanie looked at her friend.

  "He couldn't have employed Robby Simcox to kill Miranda Spencer, could he?"

  Mélanie drew a breath. Funny. She'd have said she had few—no—illusions about Julien. But the thought of him being behind a young woman's murder still brought her up short.

  "I would think it would have been difficult for Simcox to get into the Barque of Frailty," Malcolm said. "Mrs. Hartley is very careful."

  "And Robby Simcox doesn't sound as though he has the finesse for that sort of job," Mélanie said. "But if Mrs. Spencer had information about Julien, it could explain Carfax's interest in her."

  "And Beverston's," Malcolm said.

  "Dear God," Frances said. "It's almost as though it's all connected. Carfax. Gisèle. This St. Juste."

  "It may well be," Malcolm said. "Though I can't see how the pieces fit together at present."

  "We know Carfax wants the papers about the Wanderer too," Mélanie said. "Perhaps he thought Miranda Spencer could tell him what the League know about them."

  "And he's not talking because he doesn't want to reveal anything about the Wanderer?" Harry asked. "Given the secrecy and urgency surrounding the Wanderer, that has a certain logic."

  Frances tucked a curl behind her ear. "Arabella certainly behaved as though the papers were valuable. And dangerous."