The Duke's Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "Yes." He peered into the glass and drew the razor over a part of his chin he'd missed.

  "We need entrée. We don't want to be denied admission anywhere."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Sorry?"

  He looked at her over his shoulder again, the razor clutched in one hand. "To have dragged you back into"—he waved his free hand in a gesture that encompassed the house, Berkeley Square, London society—"all this."

  "Darling. I don't deny I'm missing Italy far more than I'd have expected six months ago. But—" She sat up and drew her knees up under the sheet. "It's good to be home."

  His gaze locked on her own for a long moment that echoed back to those moments in the Tavistock Theatre a year ago when he'd first learned the truth of her past. "We can't stay, sweetheart. For any number of reasons."

  "I know. It doesn't stop me from enjoying being here." She hugged her arms round her updrawn knees and rested her chin on them. "Laura and Cordy and I received the cut direct in the square garden yesterday. From Lady Langton."

  Malcolm's brows snapped together.

  "Darling, we knew it would happen. Laura knew it would happen."

  "Did the children—"

  "Colin asked some questions." Mélanie stroked Berowne who was curled up at the foot of the bed. "And I think Livia understood. Because she'd seen it happen to Cordy. As Laura pointed out, Lady Langton has six daughters to marry off. She has to worry about appearances."

  Malcolm turned back to the glass and dipped the razor in water. "I'm sorry beyond words—"

  "Darling. Spare your energies for the things we do really need protecting from. Not that I admit to needing protecting."

  Malcolm set down the razor. "It will be good to get back to Italy as soon as we can."

  In some ways. And yet—She looked at the windows. The cool crystalline winter light would always say Berkeley Square to her. The sheet was soft beneath her fingers. Somehow, even the lavender smelled different here from in Italy. She gave Berowne a last scratch beneath the chin, pushed back the sheet, and reached for her dressing gown. "I don't think we're going anywhere right away. Not until—"

  "We find Gelly."

  "And Carfax is out of prison."

  Malcolm was patting his face dry. He looked up at her, the snowy towel clutched in both hands. "I don't have to—"

  "Darling, at the very least you need to learn the truth. Even I don't want to leave him in prison if he's innocent. I wouldn't wish that on anyone." She shrugged on the dressing gown. "Besides, we don't know how it might connect to the League—"

  "We were dealing with the League from Italy." Malcolm tossed down the towel and moved towards her.

  "But now we're here where it's so much easier." Mélanie met him in the middle of the room, wiped away a bit of shaving lather he'd missed near the corner of his mouth with her thumb. She drew his head down and reached up to kiss him. "We're back for the moment, and reasonably safe. We should take advantage of it."

  He returned the kiss with great willingness, but when he lifted his head, he smiled down into her eyes, his own at once tender and hard. "I know that look. It usually means we're about to go into danger."

  "It usually means we're about to discover information."

  "Which can amount to the same thing."

  She put her hands on his chest. "We need to find Gisèle. We need to learn who killed Miranda Spencer. We need to find out what the hell Raoul is up to. I think we have more than enough to keep us busy."

  Chapter 19

  "It's good to see you back in London, Malcolm."

  There was no reason, Malcolm told himself, to look for irony behind the foreign secretary's tone. Castlereagh and Carfax were colleagues and allies, but wary allies. Malcolm doubted Carfax would have trusted so valuable a secret as the truth of Mélanie's past to the foreign secretary. Not unless he needed something very valuable indeed. And if Castlereagh did know, Malcolm very much doubted he'd have kept quiet. He was a brilliant man, but his thinking was narrow. Which made the risk, if he ever did learn the truth, all the greater.

  "We came back because of my grandfather's health," Malcolm said, letting himself into the chair Castlereagh waved him to. "He's much improved, fortunately. He sent my brother-in-law and me to London on business." Malcolm settled back in his chair. "I arrived to the news about Carfax."

  "A shock, that." Castlereagh frowned at his ink blotter. "Difficult to imagine a man one's worked with—"

  "You believe it, then?"

  Castlereagh rubbed at a smudge on the blotter. "It isn't up to me to judge that."

  "And you weren't sure about me."

  Castlereagh met and held Malcolm's gaze. When Malcolm had been arrested for Tatiana Kirsanova's murder in Vienna, the foreign secretary had remained scrupulously neutral. Malcolm could understand that diplomacy had required him to do so, in the midst of the Congress, with Malcolm arrested by their Austrian hosts. He had more difficulty accepting that he was also quite sure Castlereagh had had personal doubts about his attaché's innocence. Though, with the perspective of four years and a wealth of personal experience of betrayal, he was closer to understanding.

  "I try not to let personal feelings cloud my judgment, Malcolm."

  "Fair enough. So what's your rational assessment when it comes to Carfax?"

  Castlereagh reached for the cup of tea beside his inkpot. "Carfax was found with the young woman's body."

  "Which hardly proves anything. My dear sir, Carfax is about as likely to frequent a brothel for the usual reasons as you are."

  Color touched Castlereagh's sharp cheekbones. He was notorious for his fidelity to his wife. "Carfax, on the other hand, would be more likely to have unusual reasons to frequent one."

  "And to kill there?"

  "For God's sake, Malcolm, you worked for the man. And for years he was in military intelligence. He was an agent in the field."

  "None of which explains why he isn't offering an explanation. Or why the government aren't covering up the situation as a matter of course."

  Castlereagh's shoulders snapped straight. "Rannoch, you forget yourself—"

  "On the contrary, sir. Since I've stopped being your attaché, I've begun to remember who I am. Not entirely yet, perhaps, but I'm getting there."

  "Malcolm—"

  "A man privy to the most dangerous secrets in Britain is caught with a dead young woman in a brothel in suspicious circumstances. He refuses to explain himself. Even Bow Street have doubts."

  "Obviously not enough—"

  "Someone pressured Sir Nathaniel to have Carfax arrested."

  Castlereagh's face went still. "You're involved in something very dangerous, Malcolm."

  "Hardly for the first time. In the past, you were frequently the one who asked me to involve myself in danger."

  "In the past, you worked for me."

  "And you thought you could control what I discovered?"

  "I never thought I could control you, Malcolm."

  Malcolm sat back in his chair. "Did you know Matthew Trenor was one of Miranda Bentley's clients? And there the night she was killed?"

  Castlereagh's brows drew together. "Yes, I learned that in the report from Bow Street. A number of men were there the night she was killed. And I fear Trenor was not the only one of my aides to frequent the Barque of Frailty. But none of them was in the room with her dead body."

  "If Carfax had killed her, don't you think he'd have taken care not to be found in the room?"

  Castlereagh pushed his chair back and strode to the windows looking out on Downing Street. "You've been out of Britain for six months. You've been out of the diplomatic corps for almost two years. The war's over. Things have changed. In ways you have no knowledge of."

  "You mean the security of the country necessitates getting rid of Carfax?"

  "Don't be ridiculous, Malcolm. I was sorry when you left the service. But you made a very cogent case for why you disagreed with official policy. You have a family to think of. Stay
out of this. For their sake. And your own."

  "And leave an innocent man in prison?"

  Castlereagh shot a look at Malcolm over his shoulder. "Can you say with certainty he's innocent?"

  "Can you say with certainty he's guilty?"

  Castlereagh turned his gaze back to the window. "We have to let justice take its course."

  "You'll forgive me if I don't believe that it will do so." Malcolm pushed himself to his feet. "Is this to do with the Wanderer?"

  Castlereagh went still. Then he swung round and stared at Malcolm, his gaze gone cold with something Malcolm had rarely seen in the foreign secretary's eyes—fear. "What do you know about the Wanderer?"

  "Frustratingly little. What do you know?"

  Castlereagh tugged hard at a shirt cuff beneath his coat sleeve. "If concern for your family won't get you to stop, then have a care for the good of your country. For God's sake, leave this alone."

  "This is interesting, I confess." Charlotte Leblanc settled into a tapestry settee in a snug sitting room in her rooms in Leicester Street. Her maid had admitted Mélanie without hesitation. "Does Raoul think you can succeed where he failed?"

  "I'm not sure Raoul thinks he failed," Mélanie said. She was seated in a straight-backed chair at right angles to Charlotte. The room was small but snug with a fire and furnished with the same casual elegance with which Charlotte dressed.

  Charlotte lifted a silver coffeepot and poured Mélanie a cup. "Raoul's always been ruthlessly honest. He can't have deceived himself that he got the information he wanted."

  "I'm sure he hasn't." Mélanie accepted the cup Charlotte was holding out to her. "And also sure that he hasn't given up."

  "I have no doubt of that." Charlotte poured a cup for herself. "And so he sent an ally."

  Mélanie took a sip of coffee. It had that indefinable Parisian taste. "And I'm not sure I'd say Raoul and I are allies."

  Charlotte lifted a brow. "Interesting. Also a good tactic. Send an ally in pretending not to be an ally. I've done it myself."

  "So have I. And Raoul and I discussed my talking to you. But things have changed."

  "Obviously. You're married to an English aristocrat."

  "Malcolm's Scottish and he doesn't have a title. But I meant things have changed in the past two days."

  Charlotte's gaze remained steady, but Mélanie caught a spark of interest. "I confess you intrigue me. Go on."

  Mélanie picked up her spoon and stirred her coffee. She was combining her genuine questions about Raoul with a strategy for drawing Charlotte out. Truth mixed with deception. A tactic she had learned from Raoul. "You know Raoul. Have you ever fully trusted him?"

  "No." Charlotte took a sip of her own coffee. "But you have quite a different relationship with him."

  "Had."

  "Whatever's between you, you're obviously still close. And he's apparently close to your husband."

  "Yesterday he lied to both of us. That changes things."

  "It can hardly be the first time he's lied to you."

  "No. But this is different. Were you meeting Julien St. Juste in the Chat Gris?"

  "Julien was in the Chat Gris?" Charlotte sounded surprised. It was probably a genuine reaction. Probably.

  "Raoul spoke with him after you left. But he didn't tell us until we had a report elsewhere that they were seen together. When we asked him about it, he said he happened across Julien. But Malcolm and I are both sure he wasn't telling us the truth. At least, not all of it."

  "You think Raoul is working with Julien?"

  "That's partly why I came to see you."

  "You think Raoul would have confided in me?"

  "I know the League have been trying to hire Julien."

  "If so, that would seem to preclude his working with Raoul. And also my confiding in you."

  Mélanie took another sip of coffee. "I think in this case, we might be able to offer each other beneficial information." Which wasn't entirely a lie. "Assuming Julien isn't working for the League, what do you think he and Raoul might be planning?"

  Charlotte's eyes narrowed. "How well do you know your sister-in-law?"

  Mélanie kept her coffee cup steady in suddenly nerveless fingers. "What does Gisèle have to do with this?"

  "I don't know her, of course," Charlotte said. "I only have Raoul's story to go by. But do you think there's any chance she could be playing Tommy?"

  Gisèle's gaze in the moments before Eckert's men burst in shot through Mélanie's memory. Hard and yet pleading. She had certainly seemed more in command of the situation than Mélanie had expected. But to what end it was difficult to say.

  Charlotte turned her coffee cup on its saucer. "I doubt Tommy would admit he could be played. But from everything I've heard about Arabella Rannoch, her daughter must be a formidable woman. As must your husband's sister from what I've heard of him. And I don't think Raoul would be above recruiting Arabella's daughter."

  Mélanie took refuge behind her coffee cup, not sure whether to be more horrified because she could imagine the truth of what Charlotte was suggesting, or because if it was true, and Charlotte suspected and was working with Tommy, Gisèle was at appalling risk. "It's an intriguing thought," she said. "But I think you're making the mistake of seeing Gisèle through the lens of our own lives. She's scarcely left off being a girl."

  "The same could be said of you when I first met you."

  Mélanie remembered that meeting. Charlotte had fascinated her, a woman who had made a life for herself as a spy, much as the celebrated actress Manon Caret had. Though Charlotte, even more than Manon, had been an independent agent. "To say that Gisèle's life has been more sheltered than mine would be a gross understatement. Her family have been at pains to keep her out of the spy business."

  "Which may have made her all the more curious."

  Mélanie strongly suspected that was the case. "But not a trained agent. Raoul's always been careful about whom he employs. And it doesn't explain his meeting with Julien."

  "No," Charlotte agreed, "it doesn't. If Raoul's working with Julien, he must be planning something quite significant." Her brows drew together. "He's worked against Britain for a long time, after all."

  "In Spain. In Ireland. Not directly."

  "No, but those other avenues are now closed to him." Charlotte leaned forwards to pick up the coffeepot. "We're all finding things to do with ourselves since the war. Interesting to contemplate what Raoul might have found. A little more coffee?"

  Chapter 20

  "Charlotte thinks I recruited Gisèle to spy on the League?" Raoul said, his gaze appraising. "I have to credit her for a clever scenario."

  Mélanie had told him Charlotte's theory about Gisèle, though not her suggestions about what he might be plotting with Julien. She needed to hear his response. And to warn him and the others. They were gathered in the Berkeley Square library—Malcolm, just back from his interview with Castlereagh, Laura, and Harry and Cordy, who had just arrived.

  "Yes," Malcolm said, watching his father. "It is clever."

  "And you wonder if I'd actually have done it?" Raoul, who was standing by the fireplace, picked up the poker and pushed a log back into the grate. "Leaving aside my affection for Gisèle, my loyalty to Arabella and Frances, my loyalty to you—I wouldn't be a very good spymaster if I turned an untrained agent loose on an undercover mission against the Elsinore League."

  Malcolm nodded. Like her, Mélanie was quite sure he recognized the logic of what Raoul was saying. While, at the same time, not being completely certain.

  "But Gisèle could be trying to spy on Tommy and the League on her own," Harry said. He gave no sign of noticing the undercurrents, but when did Harry not notice undercurrents?

  "Charlotte seems to have wondered," Mélanie said. "I think that was genuine. And she implied that Tommy wouldn't listen to her concerns. Without outright admitting she knew anything about Gisèle's connection to Tommy at all."

  "Which puts Gelly at risk from the League." M
alcolm pushed himself to his feet and strode to the library windows. "Whether she's really working against them or not." He stared at the leafless branches of the plane trees in the square garden. He must remember playing there with Gisèle when they were children.

  "It's a risk." Raoul's gaze fastened on Malcolm, at once uncompromising and startlingly tender. "But Belmont apparently doesn't believe whatever suspicions Charlotte may have, and the League are more likely to listen to him."

  "And Gelly seemed very much in command when I saw her yesterday," Mélanie said.

  "We know she's not a prisoner," Laura said.

  "No," Malcolm agreed. "But if she was reckless enough to do this, she may be reckless enough not to leave when she should."

  Cordelia frowned. "Do you really think—"

  She broke off as the door swung open. They all looked round as Gisèle's husband strode into the room.

  Andrew's gaze fastened on Mélanie's face, like that of a drowning man who feels a rope slipping from his grasp. "Gelly ran away from you?"

  "From Sam Lucan. But I think it was clear she didn't want us to find her." Mélanie made her voice as gentle as possible. But there was no point in keeping it from Andrew. In his place, she'd want to know. "I don't think we can begin to understand what’s driving her."

  "She seems much more focused and driven than I credited," Malcolm said.

  "That's plain." Andrew wiped a hand across his brow. "Especially after what Judith told me."

  "Judith heard from her?" Malcolm said.

  Andrew met his gaze, a soldier giving a report even though the battle seems lost. "Gelly went to see Judith. Just after she got to London by my calculations. She told Judith she'd come to town on business for you. That Ian and I were in London. Judith was surprised, but didn't see any reason to be concerned or to try to detain Gelly or follow her."