The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  “Malcolm?” She knelt beside him and seized his hand. “Darling? God of my idolatry?”

  He opened his eyes. Even in the darkness, she caught his grin. “Worth waking up for.”

  “Are you all right?” She felt his shoulder.

  “Only my pride bruised. The shot whistled past me.” He pushed himself up. “Is he gone?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “This one isn’t.” Blanca was holding a knife on the intruder.

  Malcolm got to his feet and approached the man.

  “I didn’t warn him,” the intruder said.

  “No. You did as told.” Malcolm surveyed him. “If your former employer approaches you again, you’ll come to us.”

  The man stared at him as though he were speaking a foreign tongue. “You’re letting me go?”

  “I see nothing to be gained from turning you over to Bow Street,” Malcolm said. “And I did give you my word.”

  The intruder gave a short laugh. “Men like you don’t give their word to men like me.”

  “Many men go back on their word to others in all walks of life. I don’t.”

  The intruder studied Malcolm. “How do you know you can trust me?”

  “I don’t trust you for a bit. But I don’t see what else you can do to us.” Malcolm inclined his head to Blanca, indicating she could lower the knife. “And there’s just a chance you’ll lead your former employer to us.”

  The intruder stepped gingerly aside as Blanca lowered her knife with obvious reluctance. “Because you let me go?”

  “Because whatever he pays you I promise to double it.”

  The man gave a slow smile. “Do I have your word on that?”

  “Would you take it?”

  “I don’t know about that. But at the very least it’s a risk I’d run.”

  “Anything that would tell you who the man in the greatcoat was?” Suzanne asked Malcolm as they made their way back towards Berkeley Square.

  “Middle-aged, a flash of graying hair. He could be any of our five suspects. Or another man entirely.”

  “He risked a lot,” Blanca said. “Exposing himself. Coming to Seven Dials at all.”

  “Yes.” Malcolm tucked Suzanne’s arm more closely into his own. “Whatever’s in the manuscript, he’s willing to risk a great deal to recover it.” He glanced at the sky, which was already beginning to hold a predawn glow. “Only a few hours until I have to meet Crispin. Hardly worth going to bed at all.”

  Tuesday dawned fine and Crispin offered to drive Malcolm down to Richmond in his curricle. He gave his horses, a superb pair of matched grays, their office when they left the London traffic behind, going at a clip that set up clouds of dust from the road and stirred the cool air. Malcolm could understand the desire for speed and bracing air. Anything to provide distance from recent revelations. Even if it was an illusory distance.

  “Never spent much time at the Richmond villa,” Crispin said abruptly. “I think Father kept it mostly for rendezvous with his mistresses. And I suppose perhaps to meet with his . . . contact? Spymaster? What the devil word does one use?”

  “All of those.”

  Crispin’s York tan–gloved hands tightened on the reins. “I confess I used to think what you did sounded exciting. Used to be a bit jealous that I was here choosing horses and going to the opera and sampling the latest port while you were helping save England from Bonaparte and the French. I don’t think I had the least idea of what the reality of being a spy was. How—”

  “Ugly it is?”

  Crispin shot a look at him. “I didn’t mean—It’s different for you. You were working for your country.”

  A dozen compromises in that country’s name shot through Malcolm’s head. “So I was.”

  Crispin cast another look at him and once again Malcolm had the feeling the other man saw more than one would expect of him. “But it still must—”

  “It still comes down to lies and betrayal.”

  Crispin steered the curricle round a mud puddle in the road. “You’re glad to be away from it?”

  “I can’t really get away from it. And a part of me is glad.” He could still feel the adrenaline rush of the moment he’d tackled the intruder in the study last night. “The truth is I miss the game, dirty as it is.”

  Crispin nodded. “I can see that. You always were clever. Need to do something with those brains of yours. I don’t suppose Parliament quite fills the void.”

  “Parliament is its own sort of game. And its own set of compromises. But I still miss—”

  “The adventure?”

  Malcolm could hear his wife saying, You’re enjoying this. “For my sins—yes.”

  “But you tried to give it up?”

  “I have a strange desire to be my own master. And I have children now. I want them to be safe.” Malcolm hesitated, then added something he didn’t verbalize often. It touched too much on the personal. “And I’d like to be someone they can be proud of.”

  Crispin nodded. “I never thought much about the sort of man I was or what people thought of me. Simply did the expected. With Roxane and Clarisse . . . they aren’t mine of course, but they make me”—he flushed—“want to be a better person.”

  “Nothing to be ashamed of in that. And there’s more than one way to become a father.”

  Crispin fixed his gaze on the sleek backs of the horses. “Always liked children. But I’ve never had a chance to get to know any so well. Don’t want to intrude, of course. I sometimes think Manon thinks I overstep my bounds.”

  “She’s probably concerned about what would happen if you weren’t part of the girls’ life anymore.”

  Crispin’s eyes widened. “But I wouldn’t—”

  “Love affairs have a tendency not to be permanent.”

  Crispin’s mouth tightened. “I know. That is—” His eyes darkened, with the look of a man who doesn’t want to stare into the future. A few moments later, he turned the horses in at the drive to the villa.

  Lord Harleton’s Richmond house was a sharp contrast to the classic Palladian style of most of the villas that dotted the Thames. Instead of symmetrical white stone, the house at the end of the avenue of pleached limes was of mellow brick in the E style common in the Elizabethan era, with banks of mullioned windows, a dormer roof, and newer wings added on either side. “It was the main family estate in the sixteenth century,” Crispin said, pulling up the curricle in the gravel circle before the house. “The seventh earl—the one who got the estates restored—married an heiress with a larger property in Buckinghamshire and that became our main county seat. Father considered tearing this one down and building something more modern but never did. I’m rather glad.”

  A groom emerged to take the reins. Crispin ran up the steps and rang the bell. “Morning, John,” he said to the footman who admitted them. “We’ll be in the study.”

  “Father used the villa a lot,” Crispin told Malcolm, leading the way down the hall to the study. “Rarely closed it up.”

  The study was oak paneled and filled with gilt and claret-colored leather. The typical domain of an English gentleman, though less businesslike than some. A handsome oil portrait of a man in sixteenth-century dress hung over the mantel. Even from across the room the rich colors and play of light caught the eye. “Good God,” Malcolm said, “it’s a Rubens.”

  “Is it?” Crispin looked up from lighting a lamp. “Always thought it was pretty.”

  “One of your ancestors?”

  “No. I remember asking once. Father had the painting hung when I was a boy. He acquired it somewhere.”

  “And I’d swear that’s Cellini.” Malcolm stared at the bronze of the lamp, glowing as it flared to life. “I didn’t realize your father was a collector.”

  “Nor did I. Would have sworn he couldn’t tell a Rubens from a Rowlandson.” Crispin pulled a key from his pocket and hesitated. “I left the papers locked in here.” He opened a drawer in the desk and lifted out a sheaf of documents, then s
tepped back, almost as though afraid to touch them. Malcolm moved to the desk and studied the papers in the light of the Cellini lamp. His father’s handwriting stared up at him.

  Sick certainty settled like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach, and he knew that until this moment he had held out hope.

  My dear Harleton,

  Don’t make idle threats. You must have the wit to realize that if you could ruin me, I could just as easily ruin you. We share the same secrets and the same sins. I agree that the Dunboyne business could prove useful, but I won’t commit more to paper.

  “It’s your father’s hand?” Crispin asked.

  “Yes.” Malcolm touched his fingers to the paper, not sure what he was searching for. He felt chilled to the bone and numb to all emotion. Which was much the way Alistair had made him feel in life.

  “I’m sorry.” Crispin hesitated. “I wasn’t particularly close to my father, but—”

  “You were almost certainly closer to him than I was to Alistair, but—” Malcolm met the other man’s gaze and saw a reflection of his own confusion. “Yes. It still means something.” He studied Crispin. The other man’s face showed a newfound maturity coupled with the vulnerability of a schoolboy. “Crispin. I’ve known a number of spies. Duplicity and deceit go hand in hand with the work. Often one doesn’t like oneself very much. I don’t know that spies make the best fathers. But it doesn’t mean they love their children any less.”

  Crispin nodded slowly. “Then that applies to your father as well.”

  “Perhaps. Save that I long since came to terms with the fact that Alistair didn’t love me.”

  “You can’t know—I mean at times everyone thinks their parents—”

  “Quite. Save that in my case Alistair admitted it flat out.”

  Crispin stared at him. “He didn’t actually—”

  “To be fair, I was the one who brought it up. Still not quite sure where I got the temerity. I think I said that Carfax at least loved David, but I’d never say Alistair loved me. Alistair simply replied, ‘What on earth would make you think I did?’ ”

  Crispin shook his head. “That’s—”

  “It’s all right. It relieved me of the guilt of trying to love him myself.” Malcolm riffled through the papers. “These were all you found?”

  Crispin nodded. “You think there’s more?”

  “Spies never destroy as much as they should.” Malcolm glanced round the study. “People tend to make use of familiar objects. With someone with love of travel, I’d unscrew the top of the globe and look inside. With a bibliophile, I’d look for a hollowed-out book.” His gaze swept the pristine glass-fronted bookcase.

  “Neither describes Father,” Crispin said. “Truth to tell, I don’t think he spent much time in his study. He left accounts and the like to his estate agents. And when he was here—” Crispin’s gaze settled on a gilded mahogany cabinet beneath the windows that held an array of decanters. “I’d try the drinks cabinet.”

  “Excellent suggestion.”

  “Seriously?”

  “It sounds like just the sort of thing your father would have thought of.” Malcolm moved to the cabinet and knelt in front of it. He ran his fingers over the gilded moldings, but he could feel no hidden spring. He felt down the classical pilasters on either side, then eyed the marble top. The layer of mahogany beneath was thicker than it needed to be. “Help me lift the drinks tray,” he said to Crispin.

  They lifted the mirrored tray of decanters and set it on the desk. Crispin gave an appreciative sniff as they set down the tray. “I’ll say this for the pater, he had good taste in liquor.”

  Malcolm bent down with his ear against the green-veined marble that topped the cabinet and tapped. A spot in the right corner rang hollow. He ran his fingers along the molding beneath and one of the marble tiles slid back to reveal a shallow compartment.

  “Good God.” Crispin stared over Malcolm’s shoulder at the sheaf of yellowed papers in the compartment. “This spy business really does work.”

  “It’s not usually this neat.” Malcolm lifted out the papers and carried them to the light of the lamp on the desk.

  “It looks like Greek to me.” Crispin gave a faint smile. “And I do know that’s a Julius Caesar reference.”

  Malcolm returned the smile. “It’s a book code that’s then been transliterated into ancient Greek for good measure.” He flipped through the papers. “At least some of these look like my father’s hand.”

  “You think you can use the manuscript to decode them?” Crispin asked.

  “We’ll have to see.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Even in early afternoon the shadows cast by the plaster and oak of the ceiling of the coffeehouse were forgiving and the thick leaded glass of the windows filtered the light in a comforting way. Ladies might be rare here, but enough actresses, milliners, and ladies of the evening were present that Suzanne attracted no more than a few casual glances. Only a half hour before she had been walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park with Colin and Jessica and their governess, Laura Dudley. But then she should be used to combining the roles of mother and agent by now.

  She waited for the glances to turn away before she scanned the crowd. Something alerted her to his presence before she actually spotted him through the haze of smoke and coffee steam. There, at a table in the corner.

  She made her way across the room, careful not to walk too fast. He looked up from his newspaper, though she suspected he’d been aware of her from the moment she stepped through the door.

  The strain of the past years showed in his face. He had always been thin, but he looked leaner and gaunter. As though the need to keep going had whittled away anything extraneous. The iron resilience was still there and his eyes burned as bright as ever, but the scars of defeat showed in his face. Still, his mouth lifted in a familiar smile as she approached. Despite everything, she felt an absurd wash of comfort.

  “You look well.” He got to his feet and pulled out a chair for her.

  “Rank flattery.” She sank into the chair and stripped off her gloves.

  “Hardly.” He returned to his own chair, picked up the bottle of red wine on the table, and poured her a glass.

  She reached for the glass and took a grateful sip. The tension coiled within her was so ever present she almost forgot it was there. “I didn’t think you’d be able to come so soon.”

  “Britain is friendlier to me these days,” Raoul O’Roarke said. “My sins in the United Irish Uprising seem forgot in the wake of my supposed support of the guerrilleros in Spain. Ironic, is it not?”

  Raoul’s cover during the Peninsular War had been that he worked with the guerrilleros who had been allied with the British in driving the French out of Spain. He had in fact been a spymaster, running a network and passing intelligence along to the French.

  “An irony that works to your advantage,” Suzanne said.

  “These days one takes blessings where one finds them. Not that having been allied with the guerrilleros is a universally welcomed calling card in Britain, either.”

  After the war the restored Spanish king, Ferdinand, had repealed the constitution and re-established the Inquisition, to the despair of the Spanish liberals who had wanted the French out of Spain but had also wanted to remake their country along more progressive lines. The outcome might vindicate people like Raoul and her who had thought the best route to reform lay with the French, but she knew it sickened him to see it as much as it sickened her.

  “Malcolm made a speech about it in the Commons,” she said. “Our—that is, Britain’s—lack of support for those who fought beside the British in Spain.”

  “Yes, I know.” Raoul reached for his wineglass. “I read it. I thought I detected your hand. Or rather pen.”

  She swallowed hard at the memory of poring over the speech with her husband late one night in his study, debating, scribbling, tossing out turns of phrase. “I may have helped with the editing, but the ideas were his. I think
what’s happening in Spain makes Malcolm happier than ever that he left the diplomatic corps. He says he wonders sometimes what we were fighting for. That is, what he was fighting for. What the British were fighting for. You know what I mean.”

  “Quite.” Raoul gave a faint smile as he took a sip of wine.

  “What I’m trying to say is that Malcolm is happier in Parliament.”

  “And are you happy as a political wife?”

  She turned her glass on the tabletop. The wine glowed a dull red in the murky light. “I won’t deny I miss the excitement. But I think I’m rather a good political hostess.”

  “Rumor has it even Tories seek out invitations to your parties.”

  “I have novelty on my side for the moment.”

  “The English ton isn’t an easy world to navigate. Speaking as one who’s lived my life on the fringes of it.”

  She had known that, but she had still been overwhelmed by the feeling of stepping into an alien landscape when she and Malcolm had moved to Britain in the spring. Not a wild landscape but a garden laid out with meticulous care and governed by unwritten rules and indecipherable codes. “People are eager to see the Berkeley Square house. Redoing it has been a challenge. A welcome challenge, though I never saw myself as the decorating type.”

  “It should be child’s play for one who helped stage a medieval tournament.”

  She smiled, remembering the Carrousel in Vienna. Dear God. In some ways the Congress of Vienna seemed a much simpler time. She’d still been actively spying. But somehow in the midst of that activity she’d given less thought to consequences. “You have no idea how exhausting choosing wallpaper can be. It’s the first time we’ve had a proper home of our own. But I sometimes wonder if we were wise to move into the house. If Malcolm will ever see it as ours rather than his parents’ house.”

  “It’s a beautiful house.”

  She nodded. “I think that’s what decided Malcolm. He was planning to sell it, but we walked through and Colin was running up the staircase, and Malcolm said we’d be fools to walk away from it. But I worry it has a lot of ghosts for him. Though from what I gather he and Edgar and Gisèle were packed off to Scotland much of the time and then away at school.”