The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  “A love affair doesn’t necessarily spell ruin in these circles.” Love affairs, Suzanne had learned, were not flaunted as openly in London as in Paris or Vienna (where some of her friends could move about openly as couples with their lovers), but though the veneer of respectability was slightly stronger, amorous intrigues seemed just as common. It had been an open secret, Malcolm’s cousin Aline had told her, that the late Duke of Devonshire lived in a menage-à-trois with his wife and his mistress Lady Elizabeth Foster. On the other hand, Suzanne’s friend Cordelia’s childhood friend Lady Caroline Lamb had caused no end of scandal with her affair with Lord Byron, because she flaunted it so flagrantly. It wasn’t what one did, said Cordy, who had her own past, it was how openly one did it. “Of course talk always has more power to ruin the woman involved,” Suzanne said, thinking of Caro and Cordy.

  “Precisely.”

  Suzanne looked at her husband and could tell they were both thinking back to a matter they’d investigated at the time of their wedding. “You think Harleton devised the manuscript as a way of concealing the names of his lovers?”

  “It’s hard for me to imagine Harleton having the wit to devise a manuscript that could even remotely plausibly be by Shakespeare. But he could have hidden the information in an existing manuscript.”

  “And a former mistress is behind the attack on Simon?”

  “It’s the likeliest explanation.”

  The door creaked as Berowne pushed his way into the room. Suzanne bent down to pet the cat. “Whoever was behind the attack went to considerable lengths. Which argues wealth. And desperation. Someone with a great deal to lose. At the very least a less than complacent husband.”

  “Or secrets that go beyond a love affair. A child perhaps.”

  Malcolm didn’t pause before he said it, though she could hear his questions about his own parentage, never fully voiced between them, echoing in the air. And then there was the son his late half-sister, Tatiana Kirsanova, had gone to such lengths to conceal, who now lived in London.

  “It can be a powerful motive.” Suzanne scooped up Berowne and held him against her. “Whoever was behind the attack isn’t likely to give up. And they may realize we have the manuscript.”

  “I hope they do.” A smile curved Malcolm’s mouth. “We’ll be prepared if they come calling. But we should plant guards at the theatre as well. David wouldn’t forgive me if anything happened to Simon. For that matter, I wouldn’t forgive myself.”

  “Nor would I.” She pictured the precious stack of paper, now locked in the desk in Malcolm’s study. “If Harleton used an existing manuscript to encode the information, the manuscript itself could be genuine. Even our glance in the library just now confirmed it’s old.”

  He met her gaze and she could feel the air tighten between them, this time with excitement. Shakespeare was one of the first things they’d shared. Strangers in what was to all intents and purposes an arranged marriage, with so many lies between them, they’d been able to cap each other’s quotes. On their wedding night, when words like “love” had seemed as distant as Illyria, they’d been able to quote Romeo and Juliet to each other. Shakespeare quotes had been their own private code, a way to express emotions they still couldn’t and might never be able to properly put into words, a shared language that marked out territory uniquely their own.

  “It could be,” he agreed. He pushed his fingers through his hair. “And God help me, of course I’m sorry for what happened to Simon, but—”

  She shifted Berowne against her shoulder. “You’re excited.”

  “It is a welcome distraction.”

  From his father’s death. From the stresses and unresolved issues of their return to Britain. From her own fears of discovery, as long as Manon’s connection didn’t drag them onto dangerous ground. The bond between them had always been strongest when they were able to work together on a mystery. Where some couples might bond over glasses of champagne or a moonlit stroll in a garden, they could over missing papers, complex codes, or mysterious deaths. “And a chance to work together.”

  A smile lit his eyes. “Quite.” He crossed the room and slid his fingers behind her neck. She tilted her head back, but as he bent his lips to hers a knock fell on the door.

  “I’m sorry, sir.” The voice of Valentin, the first footman, came through the door panels. He was not quite three-and-twenty, but after the battle of Waterloo and the subsequent events he had gone through with Malcolm and Suzanne in Paris, he was unflappable. “But Lord Carfax is below. He’s asking for you to come down at once. He says it’s urgent.”

  Valentin had shown Lord Carfax into the library and had poked up the fire and lit a brace of candles and two lamps. Malcolm came into the room to find his mentor, spymaster, and best friend’s father by the drinks trolley pouring himself a glass of brandy. Carfax set down the decanter and replaced the stopper. “Sit down, Malcolm,” he said without looking round.

  Malcolm advanced warily across the Aubusson carpet. Through the years, those words from Carfax had taken on an ominous ring. In Malcolm’s boyhood, the earl had been a commanding but distant presence who appeared on speech days and other special occasions at Harrow and occasionally poked his head in the schoolroom or nursery when Malcolm visited Carfax Court. Carfax burdened his son, David, Malcolm’s best friend, with expectations but was generally kind to Malcolm if rather dismissive. Then in the wake of Malcolm’s mother’s death, Carfax had found Malcolm a diplomatic post. With an intelligence component. Malcolm wasn’t sure what would have become of him if Carfax hadn’t come to his rescue in the midst of that personal crisis. He knew full well he owed the earl an incalculable amount. Malcolm respected Carfax, knew he would be forever in his debt, perhaps even cared for him, if one could apply such simple words to such a complex man. And at the same time Malcolm knew he couldn’t trust him.

  Malcolm dropped into one of the Queen Anne chairs. He remembered sitting in a similar chair at the age of fifteen when Carfax called him and David in for a rare grilling about where they had disappeared to the previous evening (he’d seemed, if anything, disappointed to learn they had slipped out of the house to go to a lecture by William Godwin). Malcolm wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Carfax remembered that incident as well and had set the scene accordingly. He wasn’t above making use of the past.

  Carfax took an appreciative sip of brandy. “Your father kept a good cellar, I’ll give him that.” He ran his gaze over Malcolm, no doubt taking in his rumpled coat and lack of a cravat. “Sorry to have called so late. My apologies to Suzanne.”

  “Suzette’s used to it. What’s happened?”

  Carfax regarded Malcolm over the rim of his spectacles. “I understand Tanner came to see you this evening.”

  “That was quick even for you.” Malcolm stared at Carfax. The light from the brace of candles on the library table bounced off the lenses of his spectacles. Good God. Malcolm’s stomach lurched. “Did—”

  “My dear Malcolm. I admit to finding Tanner’s views dangerous, but do you really imagine I’d have my son’s friend attacked on a London street?”

  Malcolm’s fingers sank into the carved walnut arms of the chair. “Yes, if you thought it necessary to achieve your ends.”

  Carfax gave a smile that was a tacit acknowledgment of a point scored. “Possibly. But I don’t dislike Tanner, you know. Nor do I actively wish to pick a quarrel with my son.”

  Like the rest of David’s family, Carfax maintained the fiction that David and Simon were friends who shared lodgings. Simon was even invited to Carfax Court on occasion. Malcolm suspected that Carfax had known the truth of David’s relationship with Simon Tanner from quite early on. He wasn’t even sure Carfax had moral objections or that he wished the relationship to end. But Malcolm had no doubt Carfax expected David, as his heir, to marry and produce a son. Malcolm had seen in Paris what tragedy those tensions could lead to. Still, as Carfax said, there was no reason Malcolm knew of for the earl to have taken such drastic action now
.

  “Do you know who did have Simon attacked?” Malcolm asked.

  “No, as it happens.” Carfax advanced across the room at a measured pace and sank into the other Queen Anne chair. “Nor who is after the Hamlet manuscript.”

  Malcolm was suddenly and keenly aware of the frame of the chair pressing through the cassimere of his coat. “You know about the manuscript.”

  Carfax removed his spectacles and folded them. “My dear boy, that’s why I called on you.”

  “To ask me about a manuscript that may be by Shakespeare?”

  “To order you to examine it. And bring me what you learn.”

  Malcolm stared at his former spymaster. “What the hell is in the manuscript?”

  Carfax set the spectacles on a table beside the chair. “Surely the fact that it may be by Shakespeare makes it valuable enough.”

  “Not to explain your interest. Need I remind you that I don’t work for you anymore, sir?”

  “My dear Malcolm. I won’t insult your intelligence by pretending to believe you could have thought walking away from the intelligence game was as simple as resigning from the diplomatic corps.”

  “I’m not obligated to follow your orders anymore. I have a right to demand an explanation.”

  Carfax gave a short laugh. “You’d have demanded it anyway.”

  “Probably.”

  “Undeniably.” Carfax picked up his spectacles and turned them over in his hands. Malcolm sometimes wondered if the earl actually needed them or if he had appropriated them as an effective prop. “How much did Tanner tell you about where the manuscript came from?”

  Malcolm hesitated. He always did so before revealing information to Carfax, but there didn’t seem any harm in this. “He said Crispin Harleton found it among his father’s things after Lord Harleton’s death.”

  “And Crispin gave it to the lovely Manon Caret, who is sharing his bed.” Carfax lined the spectacles up on the chair arm. “Old Lord Harleton was at Oxford with your father, wasn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. They seemed of an age. My father was hardly given to reminiscing about his undergraduate days with me.” Malcolm swallowed. Five months after Alistair Rannoch’s death, the mention of him still brought the bitter bite of an emotion Malcolm could scarcely name. Save that it at once chilled and scalded.

  “They were in the same year, I believe. A year behind me. Along with Glenister and Hugo Cyrus and Thanet. Harleton always struck me as a gullible sort. A follower more than a leader. But then I imagine that’s how he fell into their clutches. You’d think it would be the independent rebels, but so often it’s the fools.”

  “The fools who—”

  Carfax picked up the spectacles, unfolded them, and set them on his nose. “Harleton was a French spy.”

  After almost a decade in the intelligence game, hearing that someone one had considered trustworthy was an enemy agent was not as surprising as it would once have been. Even so, Malcolm blinked, trying to reconcile his image of a portly, red-faced man sitting over a bottle of port with a Bonapartist agent. “For how long?”

  “Since before Bonaparte came to power. I suspect part of Harleton’s idiocy was a pose, part was simply who he was. Sometimes having a less complicated brain can be an asset in an agent. Present company excepted.”

  Malcolm leaned forwards in his chair. “You knew the whole time?”

  “No, I regret to confess it was 1802 before I discovered it. When I went to Paris during the Peace of Amiens. Don’t let my idiocy get about.”

  “You funneled misinformation through Harleton?”

  “He was useful.” Carfax turned his brandy glass in his hand. “Not clever enough to realize he was being used.”

  “And after the war?”

  “No point in causing a scandal and embarrassing the family.”

  “His sister is married to your cousin.”

  “Quite. I saw no need to do anything.” Carfax settled back in his chair. “Until a month or so before Harleton’s death.”

  “What did Harleton do?”

  “It wasn’t what he did so much as the political situation in general. Even you can’t be blind to the risk that the machine breakers and dissenters in the north will join up with former Bonapartists.”

  “That assumes you see any call for reform as a step towards treason.”

  Carfax shook his head with a smile that was almost affectionate. “You have a keen understanding, Malcolm, but thank God men like you aren’t running the country. Suffice it to say, it seemed like a good time to make an example of a man like Harleton. I was preparing to move against him when he died.”

  “Where does the manuscript fit in? Are you saying the manuscript is a fake? Harleton created it?” Malcolm kept his gaze from straying to the door to the study where the manuscript currently resided. He had no intention of surrendering it to Carfax. “Because from my preliminary examination, it certainly appears old.”

  “It may be genuine for all I know. I doubt Harleton would have had the wit to create it on his own. But Harleton used it as a codebook. I had agents look for it after he died, but they couldn’t find it. I don’t know where he had it hidden away.” Carfax set his glass down on the table. His gaze hardened. “I need those codes broken, Malcolm.”

  “The war’s over.”

  “The intelligence game doesn’t stop.” Carfax tented his fingers together. “It’s interesting that the manuscript surfaced at the Tavistock. You know about Manon Caret.”

  “I know what’s been rumored about her.” Manon Caret, former leading lady at the Comédie-Française, had fled Paris—rumor had it only a hair’s breadth ahead of Fouché’s agents—while Malcolm was attached to the British delegation two years ago. “I have yet to see proof.”

  “With a woman that clever, there wouldn’t be any.” Carfax leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together. “Interesting that she became the mistress of the son of a former spy.”

  “You’re suggesting that a former Bonapartist agent got her hands on a codebook of another Bonapartist agent and had her lover bring it to Simon Tanner? Knowing Simon is close to me and also to your son? Whatever else she may be, I think we can agree Manon Caret is no fool.”

  “A point. I still find her involvement suspicious. I’m sure you’ll discover the truth of whatever role Mademoiselle Caret played, Malcolm. And who else may have been involved in this along with her.”

  “Don’t you think I’m too close to Simon to be looking into all this?”

  “No.” Carfax let his shoulders sink into the chairback. “I have every faith in your ability to be fair-minded, Malcolm.”

  “Convenient.” Malcolm crossed his legs. “So you think this manuscript was hidden away until Crispin just happened upon it after his father’s death?”

  “Not quite. I suspect the manuscript relates to why Harleton was murdered.”

  He should have seen it coming. But Carfax could still catch him unawares. “I thought Harleton’s death was an accident.”

  “Really, Malcolm. A former spy accidentally shoots himself while cleaning his gun? If you’d believe that for a minute civilian life has made you soft.”

  “I don’t suppose I would have done if I’d known Harleton was a French agent. Whom did you task with the investigation?”

  “I didn’t. I suspected someone from Harleton’s past got rid of him, and I saw no need to waste our energies on a Bonapartist feud. The manuscript surfacing changes things.”

  “So you want—”

  “—you to decode whatever’s in the manuscript and learn who killed Harleton. I know you now have Parliament to distract you, but really for a man of your talents it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  Suzanne stared at her husband across the candle-warmed rose-and-blue medallions of their bedroom carpet. “Do you believe Carfax?”

  Malcolm shrugged out of his coat and tossed it over the tapestry chair. “I don’t believe he made the whole story up. That’s a long w
ay from saying I believe all of it. I’ve learned never to take Carfax at face value. I’m not sure he’s been entirely forthcoming about what he thinks is in the manuscript.”

  Suzanne scanned her husband’s face. She could feel the intensity rippling through him. “But you’re going to do as he asked?”

  Malcolm’s gaze shifted over the shadows cast by the dressing table and chest of drawers and escritoire. A chill coursed through her. “I’m going to decode whatever may be in the manuscript. And to learn what happened to Harleton. What I do with the information once I decode it and how much I tell Carfax remains to be seen.”

  There was no other answer she’d have expected Malcolm to make. And she could do nothing to dissuade him. But she felt as she had after she’d fallen into the Carrión River in January.

  He moved across the room and dropped down on the bed beside her. “That is, we’re going to decode the manuscript and learn what happened to Harleton.” He gave a faint smile. “I hope. I shouldn’t speak for you.”

  She leaned in and kissed his cheek. Her mouth felt like ash. “Of course, dearest. You can’t think I’d let you have all the fun. Do we begin by talking to Crispin?”

  “And Manon Caret. Carfax confirmed she’s a former French spy.”

  “It’s been a fairly open secret,” Suzanne said in an equable voice. “At least in intelligence circles.”

  “Quite.” Malcolm laced his fingers through her own and stared down at their clasped hands. “I’ve come to quite like Manon since she’s been at the Tavistock. Whatever her activities during the war, one can’t but admire what she’s built here. I find myself loath to disrupt her life.”

  Suzanne swallowed. Hard. “Investigations have a way of disrupting lives, darling. And it may prove to have nothing to do with Manon’s past activities. It seems shockingly risky for her to have given the manuscript to Simon only to try to steal it back.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t realize what it was when she gave it to Simon.”

  That, Suzanne had to admit, was a possibility.