The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  Suzanne’s hand closed round Malcolm’s own. He squeezed her fingers even as he sifted through fragments of information. Alistair’s face danced before his eyes. Ironic. Imperious. Cool blue eyes that could cut through to bone and a lift of a brow that could dampen all pretensions. He had never revealed much of himself. Why should one more revelation be such a shock?

  “You didn’t know,” Crispin said. “I’m sorry. Perhaps—”

  “No.” Somehow his voice came out even past the tightness in his throat and the metallic taste in his mouth. “I needed to know. And it’s hardly as though I was swimming in illusions where my father was concerned.”

  “Nor was I precisely.” Crispin gulped down a sip of tea. “With my own father, that is. He was just the pater. Patted me on the head. Gave me a pound note on occasion. Showed up at Harrow for speech day and the occasional cricket game. Belonged to White’s but seemed apolitical.”

  “My father was a diehard Tory who deplored my dangerous Radicalism.” Malcolm shook his head. He was aware of the warmth of Suzanne’s gaze on him, but he didn’t dare meet her eyes. He was afraid it would undo him.

  “You think your father’s politics were a pose?” Simon asked.

  “Perhaps. I can’t claim to have known Alistair in any sense.” Malcolm could hear his father’s voice, mocking an article Malcolm had written as at once dangerous and woefully idealistic. “But the thought of him as a committed Bonapartist—”

  “There are other reasons than ideology to become a spy,” Manon said in a quiet voice.

  Malcolm swung his gaze to her. He wondered how much, if anything, Crispin knew about Manon’s own espionage activities. He had an image of Crispin ruffling her daughter’s hair. Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to mar that unexpected vision of family bliss.

  “A good point, Mademoiselle Caret.”

  “You never guessed?” Simon asked. Malcolm could feel his friend’s intent gaze.

  “No. But then in many ways Alistair and I were practically strangers.”

  Crispin pushed himself to his feet and took a turn round the dressing room. “Our fathers were selling information to the French all these years? It’s difficult to comprehend.”

  “Chéri.” Manon reached for his hand.

  “I’m all right.” Crispin spun round and pushed his fingers into his hair. “That is, I’m not going to collapse. Never much of a Crown and country sort. Though to commit that sort of betrayal—My cousin died in the Peninsula.”

  “My brother fought there,” Malcolm said. And his father had always seemed to prefer Edgar.

  “You risked your life there as well,” Simon pointed out.

  “Which wouldn’t necessarily have been a disincentive to Alistair.”

  “Come now, Malcolm,” Crispin said.

  “Truly. I know many boys claim their fathers detest them, but in my case it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration. Save that I’m not sure Alistair’s feelings about his children were strongly enough engaged for detestation.”

  “There was a mention in the letter of something concerning Dunboyne,” Crispin said. “Does that mean anything to you?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “My grandfather has estates in Ireland. And the French were active there, especially at the time of the United Irish Uprising. Alistair despised the United Irishmen. Claimed to despise them.”

  “Harleton was using the manuscript?” Manon asked.

  Malcolm nodded, relieved at the straightforward question. “We think it was a codebook.”

  “And whoever murdered my father was after it?” Crispin said.

  “I think it’s more likely your father was murdered to conceal a secret he knew that the codebook could also reveal.”

  Simon stared at Malcolm with a shock he hadn’t shown over the revelations about Harleton and Alistair. “Harleton was using an original manuscript that may have been by Shakespeare as a codebook? ”

  “It’s quite clever actually,” Suzanne said. “The manuscript is unique. He’d have had to make a copy for whomever he was communicating with, and then no one else would have been able to break the code.”

  “So that’s why the people were after it last night when they attacked Simon?” Crispin asked.

  “Most likely,” Malcolm said. “It’s also possible Harleton or someone else encoded information in the manuscript itself. Suzette and I couldn’t find anything last night, but we only had time for a cursory examination. I want to have my cousin Aline look at it. She’s the best code breaker I know.”

  Crispin gave a quick nod. “I don’t know that I mourned him as much as a son should. As much as I’d hope my son would mourn me. And then I found the letters and wondered if I’d ever known him at all. But—He was my father. I want to know who killed him. You’ll tell me what you learn? I promise I won’t turn Hamlet and go mad with thoughts of revenge.”

  “I’ll tell you as much as I’m able. My word on it.”

  “You’re working for Carfax?”

  “I’m reporting to him. I’m working for myself.”

  Crispin’s gaze flickered over Malcolm’s face. “Do you think he knows about your father?”

  “I don’t know.” Malcolm turned over every moment of his conversation with Carfax in light of this new information. “But I’m going to find out.”

  “I assume you want to see my father’s papers,” Crispin said.

  “As soon as possible.”

  Crispin gave another brisk nod. “They’re at the Richmond villa. It’s late to go there tonight, but I can take you first thing in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” Malcolm scanned the other man’s face. “I know this isn’t easy.”

  “From firsthand experience?” Crispin gave a twisted smile. “If I have to think of myself as a traitor’s son, I can’t imagine better company.”

  Suzanne looked at her husband across the Tavistock’s Green Room, to which they’d repaired when the others returned to the stage for the read-through. One could become so caught up in one’s own secrets one quite lost track of other people’s. The fear that Malcolm would discover she had been a Bonapartist spy was part of the fabric of her life. She had grown used to it, yet it overhung everything she did. It had never occurred to her that his father, of all people, could have been a spy for the French as well.

  The lamplight in the windowless room warmed Malcolm’s ashen skin. His features were set like granite. As though he feared the least crack would unleash the torrent of feeling beneath. “Darling—” She touched his shoulder. He was shaking.

  “It could be worse. I could have faced this from someone I truly cared about.”

  She was nearly sick right there on the worn carpet.

  “You think you know the parameters of a person’s weaknesses,” he said in a low, rough voice. “You learn to live with them. And the boundaries are somehow comforting, I suppose. A bulwark against further hurt. Bad as it is, it could be worse.”

  She tightened her grip on his arm. She might be a hypocrite, but he needed comfort. Giving it to him mattered more than her own falseness.

  “I didn’t know him.” Malcolm stared at a framed playbill for School for Scandal. “I didn’t much like him. I had no illusions that he liked me. Why should learning he was a French spy make things worse?”

  “He was still your father.”

  “Possibly my father.” Malcolm gave a short laugh. “I can’t even say what I’m feeling. Angry that he was cleverer than I am? That he could outwit me at a game I flattered myself I had a passing skill for?”

  “Loyalty matters to you.”

  “Alistair was disloyal to my mother. His ideals were the opposite of mine. He was an enigma in many ways. This only renders him more so. But—Damn it.” Malcolm pulled away from her and smashed his hand against the chipped white molding.

  She wanted to sweep him into her arms and comfort him as she would Colin or Jessica, but there was no comfort for this. Damnable to watch someone one loved in pain. “With him gone, the
re are so many questions we’ll never be able to answer,” she said.

  “Alistair was a poor relation who went to school and university on the charity of the cousin who was his godfather.” Malcolm began to prowl about the room. “He came into a small fortune when another cousin died in Jamaica when he—Alistair—had just come down from Oxford. A few clever investments and he was a wealthy man. At least that’s the story I grew up with.”

  “You think instead he used money he was paid by the French?”

  “It’s easier for me to believe that than that he was a committed Republican or Bonapartist. Alistair never was a committed anything. Or perhaps it’s just that I can’t bear the thought that his political beliefs in any way approached my own.”

  “You aren’t a Bonapartist.” Amazing her voice could be so steady as she said it.

  He gave a twisted smile. “To hear my father tell it I’m a fire-breathing Jacobin who would turn England into a replica of France under the Terror. Except I don’t think it ever occurred to Alistair that I was capable of achieving so much.”

  “On the contrary, darling. Watching from the outside, I’d say Alistair had a very healthy respect for what you were capable of.”

  “If you made out anything other than contempt in his attitude towards me, you’re more discerning than I. It’s hardly anything new. It should be rather amusing.”

  She swallowed. Beneath the gnawing pain of her own fears, she ached for her husband. “Dearest, you’re entitled—”

  “He didn’t love me. I didn’t love him.” Malcolm’s voice was as flat as a sheet of glass. And perhaps as easily smashed. “A revelation about him, however shocking, shouldn’t matter.”

  “That doesn’t mean it doesn’t.”

  He stopped pacing and shot a sideways look at her. “I’m not going to collapse. Or otherwise cause complications. I’d be a fool to claim I’m at my best, but I’ll manage to be a decent investigative partner.”

  “Of course. You’re much too good at what you do to be anything else. But it can’t help but feel like a betrayal.” Stewed tea rose up in her throat as she said it.

  His mouth twisted. “If there’s one thing we should be used to in this business it’s betrayal. What else is espionage but a series of betrayals? As one does an unconscionable amount of betraying oneself, one can hardly object.”

  She met his gaze, keeping her own steady. “But one doesn’t expect it from those close to one.”

  “All the more reason for this not to matter. I wasn’t close to Alistair at all.”

  Suzanne recalled Alistair Rannoch, his mocking gaze seeming to cut through her gown and the corset beneath. She wondered, with a stab of panic, how much else he might have known about her. “I didn’t like him, either, darling. But I own I’m shocked. If nothing else he was a brilliant actor.”

  “Yes. To own the truth, I wouldn’t have thought he had the ability. But then he had a superb instinct for self-preservation. And if he’d taken French money to build his fortune, they’d have owned him, however wealthy and powerful he became. Until the war was over.”

  “But the truth would have ruined him. Even a whisper of it.” She hesitated a moment. “Somehow Harleton’s past caught up with him.”

  “ ‘Murder most foul.’ You’re saying it’s a bit coincidental that my father, to whom Harleton had written, died in a carriage accident less than a month after Harleton’s death? So it is. We have to at least consider the possibility that Alistair was murdered.”

  He said it matter-of-factly. But she could feel the tension crackling against her skin. “Darling. When they asked you to look into this no one could have thought—”

  He shot a look at her again. “You think I don’t have enough perspective to investigate? Quite possibly. But I have you to keep me in line if I can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw. And I have inside knowledge which may be of use. That has to count for something. Besides . . .”

  “What?”

  “Whatever I thought of Alistair, whatever he thought of me—or despite the fact that most of the time he didn’t think of me at all—I confess I have the damndest desire to learn the truth. Ironic, is it not?”

  “Understandable.”

  “Can I count on you?”

  “Always.” One more lie in the legion she had told her husband.

  He strode to her side and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I need to see Carfax.”

  She nodded and touched his face. “I’ll stay here and watch the rehearsal.”

  He squeezed her arm. “What would I do without you?”

  The tea rose up in her throat again. “You’d manage.”

  The man she’d betrayed from the moment they met smiled down at her as though she was his lifeline to sanity in a world gone mad. “I very much doubt it.”

  “Malcolm.” Carfax set down his copy of the Morning Post with a rustle as Malcolm stepped into the reading room. “How did you get in here? Usually I can count on White’s to be a haven from anyone who bears even the most remote taint of Whiggishness.”

  “Harry Palmerston brought me in.” Malcolm hesitated a moment inside the doorway. The room was empty save for Carfax. It smelled of newsprint and port and expensive shaving soap as it always did. As it had on the rare occasions Malcolm had come here with Alistair. He drew a breath, crossed the room, and dropped into a leather-covered chair beside Carfax. “I needed to see you.”

  Carfax smoothed the crumpled newspaper. “If you were willing to stomach White’s it must be serious. Have you found something in the manuscript?”

  “No. But I have more information to go on.” Malcolm scanned his spymaster’s face. The sharp bones, the hard spectacle lenses, the opaque gaze beneath. Carfax was not an easy father, but as Malcolm had once pointed out to David, at least he cared about his children. “Why didn’t you tell me my father was working with Harleton?”

  Carfax released his breath in a long sigh, part surprise, part what might have been triumph. “You found proof?”

  “So you did know?” Malcolm’s hand tightened round the arm of the chair, so hard the acanthus leaves carved on it were imprinted on his palm.

  “Interesting.” Carfax regarded him for a moment. “I’d have sworn you didn’t have any illusions where Alistair was concerned.”

  “Damn it, sir—”

  Carfax folded the newspaper into neat quarters. “I’ve suspected Alistair for years. Unlike with Harleton, I didn’t have any proof. If I had, I don’t think I’d have let your father continue to operate. He had a considerably keener understanding than Harleton. In truth, one of the reasons I kept giving Harleton rope was the hope that Alistair would hang himself.”

  Malcolm swallowed and tasted the ashes of bitterness. He thought he’d had no illusions about Alistair Rannoch. He thought he’d come to terms with this latest revelation. So why did he feel as though he was going to lose his breakfast over the oak furniture and Axminster carpet? “Since when have you waited for proof before bringing someone in?”

  “Use your head, Malcolm.” Carfax slapped the newspaper down on the polished top of the table between their chairs. “Alistair wasn’t an émigré or a courtesan or a minor diplomat. If I’d taken action against the Duke of Strathdon’s son-in-law who was also a prominent Member of Parliament—”

  “It’s not as though my grandfather was overfond of him.” Malcolm could rarely remember a conversation between Alistair and the duke, but he could see the contempt that had filled his grandfather’s gaze when it rested on Alistair.

  Carfax gave a short laugh. “There’s nothing like an outside threat to create family unity. Trust me, Strathdon would never have stood by while I took action against Alistair.”

  “It wouldn’t have had to be public action.”

  “People would have asked questions if Alistair had disappeared. He was friends with half the Tory aristocracy. Your aunt Frances alone would have made a fuss I couldn’t have controlled, and she didn’t even much like him.”

  And
Lady Frances Dacre-Hammond numbered two royal dukes and possibly the prince regent among her bedmates. Carfax had a point. Malcolm drew a breath. “It didn’t occur to you to tell me?”

  “I tell you what you need to know, Malcolm. Occasionally, I confess, what you force me to reveal. But what good would it have done for me to tell you this? When Alistair was alive, I couldn’t be sure what you’d have done with the truth.”

  Malcolm’s fingers clamped on the chair arm. “What does that mean?”

  Carfax adjusted one of the earpieces on his spectacles. “He was your father.”

  “You think I’d have protected him?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think you’d have had a hard time turning him over to face justice. You have a hard enough time doing that with some agents who aren’t related to you.”

  Past incidents shot through Malcolm’s mind, but he wasn’t going to let himself be distracted. “And after Alistair died?”

  “What good—”

  “When you told me about Harleton?”

  “I thought about it,” Carfax conceded. “But to be honest I wasn’t sure you’d believe me without proof. And I wanted to see what you could come up with on your own, without my muddying the waters by planting the suspicion.”

  “By God, sir—”

  “You’re in shock, Malcolm. When you can think coolly, you’ll understand why I acted as I did.” Carfax regarded him for a moment. “I’m not insensible of what you’re going through, you know. Impressions to the contrary, I am not without feeling.”

  “Sir—” Malcolm swallowed. “I never suggested you were.”

  Carfax’s gaze drilled into Malcolm’s own. “What have you learned?”

  Malcolm drew a breath. Why did answering feel like a betrayal? “Crispin Harleton found a letter from my father to his. Talking about secrets that could ruin them both.”

  Carfax’s mouth curled in a smile of satisfaction. “It’s ironic. You’re the Jacobin with the dangerous ideas that would turn society on its ear if you ever had the chance to put them into effect. I don’t think Alistair had a Radical bone in his body.”