The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  Cyrus shrugged. “Smytheton always was excitable.” He rubbed the charcoal from his fingers. “Couldn’t figure out if he was warning me or seeking reassurance. Or both.”

  “Were you able to reassure him?”

  Cyrus’s smile deepened. “I told him if he had as little to do with the whole business as I did, he had nothing to worry about.” He turned, stretching one arm along the back of the bench, as though laying claim to it. “But of course from your perspective, one of us must have had a great deal to do with it.”

  “It?”

  “Don’t play games, Rannoch, you’re not pretty enough to pull off the coyness. The leak. The disaster at Dunboyne that took my brother’s life.” Cyrus’s fingers tightened on the back of the bench. He’d missed a smudge of charcoal on the knuckle of his third finger.

  “You must have wondered who was behind it,” Malcolm said.

  “Of course I wondered.” Cyrus’s voice rippled across the water. “Even without Carfax asking questions. Bungling drives me mad, but I own losing Thomas put it in a whole different key.”

  “I can understand that. I have a brother myself.” Malcolm felt the weight of Edgar’s wounded body when he lifted him in his arms after Waterloo. “And?”

  Cyrus flexed his fingers against the wood. “I’ve never been the sort to claim my friends are saints. I’ve seen enough in war to know what the most seemingly honorable men can be capable of. But one still doesn’t like to think—” He shook his head. “If there’s one line one doesn’t cross it’s betraying one’s fellows.”

  “Do you include my father and Harleton in that?”

  “Your father was—” Cyrus broke off, the explanation dangling in the air like condensed breath.

  “An outsider.”

  “No sense in wrapping it up in clean linen. At least he was an outsider when we met at university. By the time of the Dunboyne business, he’d come into his money and married your mother.”

  “But he was still an outsider.”

  “He was the Duke of Strathdon’s son-in-law.”

  “And an outsider even to my grandfather.”

  “His relationship to your mother may have had something to do with that.” Cyrus tapped his fingers on the back of the bench. “We were none of us lacking in funds at the time. At least I didn’t think so.” He cast a glance at Harry. “I always suspected your uncle’s gambling debts were worse than he let on, despite his generous income. It takes deep play and lavish living to keep up with Prinny’s set.”

  “He certainly lived lavishly,” Harry said. “I can’t claim to be privy to his finances. For what it’s worth, he managed my inheritance rather well.”

  “Your uncle’s no fool. Whatever he may let on. Always seemed proud of you.”

  Harry gave a short laugh. “I believe you were the one who said to spare the niceties, sir. Not to mention the out-and-out lies.”

  Cyrus stretched his legs out. “I don’t waste time on niceties or lies, my boy. Certainly not the polite variety. I remember your uncle showing off an essay you’d written at Eton in the coffee room at White’s.”

  The flash of surprise in Harry’s eyes was quickly masked. “He must have been in his cups.”

  “No more so than usual. Have to admit I never felt the impulse to wave Hugh’s essays round over the claret and beefsteak. But then I don’t recall any of Hugh’s efforts being particularly worth showing off.”

  “Tell us about the Elsinore League,” Malcolm said.

  He expected Cyrus to dismiss the club as undergraduate foolery. Instead, Cyrus’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know?”

  “My father and Harleton began it at university. You were all members. It was a sort of hellfire club.”

  Cyrus gave a short laugh. “Nothing like bawdy secrets to mask other secrets.”

  “What sorts of secrets?”

  “You don’t know? Interesting.” Cyrus’s gaze turned to the rippling water of the Serpentine again. “It was before the Revolution when all this started. Young men slipping over to the Continent for the Grand Tour. No one making too much of a fuss about what they brought with them when they returned.”

  “The Elsinore League were smugglers?” Harry asked.

  A slow smile crossed Cyrus’s face. “I think they saw themselves more as clever businessmen. Or agents who worked for themselves.”

  “Crates of brandy?” Malcolm said.

  “And champagne. And works of art. Acquired by a variety of means. They had the art of looting down long before Bonaparte began to move across the Continent.”

  Malcolm recalled the Rubens portrait and Cellini bronze in Harleton’s study. Crispin had said his father hadn’t been an art collector. But Alistair had. An image of Alistair’s study flashed into Malcolm’s mind. Another Cellini bronze that served as a paperweight. The Titian portrait and Canaletto landscape that hung on the walls. The Venetian decanter and glasses. A world of art treasures that were now Malcolm’s own. “For themselves?”

  “For themselves and to sell. Your father had a taste for expensive works of art without the funds to support collecting, which I think is what started it. But they quickly realized it was lucrative. And a dangerous game. Dangerous games aren’t only seductive in the bedchamber.” Cyrus stretched his booted feet out in front of him. “I confess to having one or two pieces in my possession from that time. Off-the-record.”

  “Did it stop when we went to war with France?” Harry asked.

  “On the contrary. The danger increased and so did the seduction. What could appeal to bored young aristocrats more than slipping into Revolutionary and Directoire Paris? A dangerous world where marriage had become passé and women went about without their petticoats. Smytheton and Dewhurst practically lived in Paris in the nineties, and we all visited. I’ll own to some pleasant memories of my own from those days.”

  “Did it go beyond smuggling?”

  Cyrus’s eyes narrowed. “You mean did they smuggle information? Dewhurst and Smytheton were Royalist agents.”

  “Smytheton was?” Malcolm said, picturing the Tavistock’s patron expounding on Shakespeare.

  “Carfax didn’t tell you?” Cyrus asked. “I daresay he had his reasons.”

  “Smytheton’s an unassuming sort,” Harry said. “Those can make for the best agents.”

  “And he got involved with that pretty actress of his. Pity when all that ended. Jennifer had some very lovely friends.”

  “Jennifer Mansfield?” Malcolm saw the auburn-haired actress who had prevailed upon Smytheton to take her out for lemonade during the break in the rehearsal. “I didn’t realize she was French. Or if I did know I’d forgot.”

  “I daresay she didn’t broadcast it, as we were at war with France when she came here,” Cyrus said. “Took an English name. But when I first saw her across the footlights at the Comédie-Française, she was Geneviève Manet. Smytheton brought her here in the midnineties.”

  “And the others?” Malcolm asked, filing away this information about Smytheton and Jennifer Mansfield.

  “You mean were any of them British agents?”

  “That’s one possibility.”

  “French agents?” Cyrus’s brows rose. “Not that I know of. That would be . . . interesting.” He drummed his fingers on the bench, seemingly more intrigued than shocked.

  “Have you ever heard of the Raven?” Malcolm asked.

  “Not that I recall.” Cyrus’s blue gaze betrayed neither recognition nor alarm. But then Cyrus betrayed little. “Is it a novel?”

  “It appears to be a code name. I found mentions in my father’s and Harleton’s letters.”

  Cyrus snorted. “Very likely a name they gave to one of their women.” His gaze sharpened. “Or do you think your father and Harleton were dealing in information?”

  “One of their friends dealt in information by ’98.”

  “So they did.” Cyrus’s gaze hardened. “Thomas had just been promoted to captain. I can still see him the day he found out.” H
is gaze followed a leaf as it drifted to the water. “Of course I didn’t know then that he’d volunteered for military intelligence. I’d have tried to talk him out of it for any number of reasons. Ireland was an ugly business.”

  “Did my father ever talk about it?” Malcolm asked.

  “Ireland? Of course. Your grandfather had estates there. Alistair was worried about them. Alistair didn’t have much use for rabble anywhere.” Cyrus stirred a pile of fallen leaves with the toe of his boot. “I remember drinking with Alistair at White’s when we got the news that Raoul O’Roarke had escaped to the Continent after the Uprising. Alistair swore.” Cyrus cast a sideways glance at Malcolm. “O’Roarke was friendly with your family, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, but more with my mother and grandfather than with Alistair.” Malcolm kept his gaze on Cyrus’s face, though he could feel Harry watching him.

  Cyrus nodded. “Alistair had mentioned O’Roarke before. With venom verging on contempt.”

  “Why?” Harry asked.

  “Because as I said, Alistair had no use for the rabble. And to his mind O’Roarke was the worst sort of rabble-rouser. So it wasn’t so much the swearing when he heard of O’Roarke’s escape that was unusual as the fact that his sangfroid was quite shattered. He snapped the stem of his glass and spilled claret all over the carpet. While the waiter was mopping it up, Alistair apologized to me and said he wasn’t much of a believer in justice, but just once it would be nice to see the guilty punished.”

  “I remember my parents’ quarreling during the Uprising,” Malcolm said. “Not that it was unusual for them to quarrel. But in this case Alistair accused my mother of being a traitor to her class.” It made Alistair the most improbable French agent. And perhaps therefore the best.

  “Were any of the men at that dinner party sympathetic to the United Irish cause?” Harry asked.

  “I wouldn’t have said so,” Cyrus returned. “But then, as you must know better than anyone, if they were good agents, they wouldn’t have appeared to be sympathetic to the cause for which they were working.”

  “Quite.” Malcolm studied Cyrus. He was shocked by how open the other man was being. He suspected Cyrus would only be so if he was hiding something. “When did you know your brother was part of the Dunboyne mission?”

  Cyrus’s mouth twisted. “When it failed and I got news of his death.” He shot a look at Malcolm. “I know that makes me a suspect. Though I’d hardly have had to go through Dewhurst’s things to learn military secrets.” He shook his head. “It was a bloody mess. I’m not one to sympathize with revolutionaries, but I’ll be the first to admit our own side didn’t manage things well, either. I lost friends, including one or two among the United Irishmen. And then in the midst of all that I had to tell Anne about Thomas.”

  “Anne?” Harry asked.

  “His fiancée. They’d been childhood sweethearts and had got engaged that summer. I can still see Anne’s face when I told her—wanted to be the one to break the news and rode all night to her parents’ house. She’s always been pale—that sort of fair Irish complexion that’s so dramatic with dark hair—but I’d swear every ounce of blood drained from her skin. I caught her as she fainted. For several months I wasn’t sure she’d ever recover, emotionally if not physically.”

  “Did she ever marry?” Malcolm asked.

  “Oh yes.” Cyrus flicked a leaf from the bench. “She married me. The next summer.”

  Malcolm heard Harry draw in his breath. His own gaze was fixed on Cyrus.

  Cyrus picked up another leaf and twirled it between his fingers. “Hugh’s mother had died two years before. I could say the tragedy of losing Thomas brought Anne and me together. And it did in a way. But the truth is I’d loved Anne since were children. I only offered for my first wife because I knew I hadn’t a prayer with Anne, for all she was still in the schoolroom. She didn’t look twice at me until Thomas was gone. Even now I’m quite sure of the choice she’d make were Thomas to walk back through the door.” He shook his head. “Not that I’m complaining. I have what I wanted. Which I suppose gives me a motive to have leaked the information to get rid of my brother. Save that I didn’t know Thomas would be involved.”

  “So you say,” Malcolm replied, holding Cyrus with his gaze.

  “Oh, quite.” Cyrus returned his gaze. “But then all of this comes down to what we each say, doesn’t it? Until you find proof.”

  The smell of books always brought Suzanne comfort. Even at incongruous times, such as when, disguised as a parlormaid, she had slipped into the library of a Spanish commander in order to retrieve a coded document, full-well aware that the commander could walk into the room at any moment. Compared to that, today was child’s play. All she was doing was stepping over the threshold of Hookham’s Lending Library. Save that the knowledge that her husband was trying to unmask her reverberated through her.

  She nodded to the bespectacled man behind the circulating desk. He inclined his head in response. She was a frequent visitor here, usually for purely literary reasons. She made her way past the aisle of novels she often browsed, past travel books, to a shadowed corner slightly mustier than the others, filled with volumes of classics. Harry Davenport would approve. And it wasn’t as though she never read Latin or Greek.

  She picked up a volume of Suetonius and turned the pages, though she couldn’t force herself to go so far as actually to take in the words.

  A whiff of sandalwood shaving soap alerted her to Raoul’s presence before his shadow fell over the page.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  She looked up from the Julio-Claudian emperors and met the concern in his gray eyes. “Am I that transparent?”

  “No, but you asked for another meeting after only a day.”

  She closed the book over her hand, hoping it would control the trembling of her fingers. “Do you remember when I went after the code in General Ribero’s library?”

  “I still get chills at the memory.”

  “You never said.”

  “That would hardly have helped the situation.”

  “When he came into the room, I pretended I was a maid caught borrowing a book. He was amused. And impressed that I could read.”

  “You still got the code.”

  “While I let him steal a kiss.” She pulled her hand free of the book. “More was at stake than now. And less in some ways.”

  His gaze skimmed over her face. “What is it, querida?”

  “Malcolm went to Harleton’s Richmond villa yesterday. He found correspondence between Harleton and Alistair Rannoch mentioning the Raven.”

  Raoul bit back his curse before he uttered a sound, but she could feel the unvoiced words reverberating through the air. “How the devil did they find out?”

  “Alistair referred to the Raven’s identity creating problems for him. I think he knew it was his son’s wife.”

  “But Malcolm doesn’t know that.”

  “No, for the moment Malcolm thinks it may refer to the mole who betrayed the Dunboyne business. But—”

  Raoul’s fingers closed on her wrist. “Malcolm is brilliant, querida. But even brilliant agents can’t uncover every secret.”

  “You’re saying I can outwit him?” She could hear the tension in her own voice beneath the low murmurs and discreet rustles from the rest of the library.

  “I’d be hard-pressed to bet on either of you. Save that you have one advantage in this over your husband.”

  “Your help?”

  “Without question. But what I was thinking is that you know precisely how high the stakes are.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The tapers on the dressing table wavered at the opening of the door. Suzanne’s spirits lifted, as they always did, as her husband’s image appeared in the looking glass. And then the memory of risk pulled taut beneath her corset laces and ruched bodice.

  “You look lovely.” He closed the door and leaned against the panels. “Though that dress has a distinct air of Yuletide about i
t. Must we begin celebrating the holidays already?”

  “It’s December now. And last year you admitted you enjoyed them.” She fastened her second garnet earring, chosen to go with her gown of claret gros de Naples. The color and the gold cording at the waist did give it a holiday air.

  “Last year I was basking in the glow of new parenthood and enjoying Colin’s glee. This year we’re back in the bosom of my family.”

  “You like your family.”

  “Some of them.” He advanced into the room and shrugged out of his coat. “What is it tonight?”

  “You’re impossible.” Warmth shot through her at the simple triviality of the conversation. “Who kept track of your engagements before you had a wife?”

  “Addison.” He tossed his day coat over a chairback and began to loosen his cravat. “But we were in Lisbon in the midst of a war. It was simpler.”

  “Tonight is Emily Cowper’s rout.”

  He tossed the crumpled cravat after the coat. “Good, that should give me a chance to corner Dewhurst.” He perched on the edge of the chair and regarded her. “Not an unproductive day so far. How about you?”

  “The same.” She swung round on the dressing table bench to face him. Their eyes met with the familiar challenge of a shared investigation. “You first.”

  “Hugo Cyrus claims the Elsinore League smuggled works of art out of the Continent. Which fits with what I saw in Harleton’s study. And with Alistair’s art collection.” His gaze rested for a moment on the Boucher oil on the wall over her dressing table.

  As with the Berkeley Square house, Suzanne knew Malcolm’s conflicted feelings about his father had warred with his genuine admiration for Alistair’s collection. “Even if they were acquired illicitly, you not keeping them would hardly have rectified the situation, darling.”

  “Quite,” Malcolm said, though his tone betrayed the lingering bad taste in his mouth. “Cyrus also admitted that his wife had been betrothed to his brother Thomas. And that he’d long loved her, though she didn’t look twice at him until after Thomas was killed at Dunboyne.”