The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  “Interesting. He didn’t need to admit that last.”

  “No. It was confessed with a touch of bitterness that hinted at genuine guilt. But it could have been a clever feint. I suspect Hugo Cyrus is a very clever man.” Malcolm began to undo his waistcoat buttons. “He also mentioned Alistair’s distaste for the United Irishmen. Hardly a revelation, though it makes it even harder for me to reconcile Alistair as a French agent.”

  “Perhaps his distaste over the Irish rebellion was part of his cover.”

  “Perhaps. According to Cyrus, Alistair snapped a glass in two when he heard Raoul O’Roarke had escaped to the Continent after the Uprising.”

  “Of course,” she said, keeping her voice steady. “If O’Roarke was friendly with your mother and grandfather, he’d have known your father.”

  Malcolm nodded. “I knew Alistair despised O’Roarke’s politics, but I didn’t realize how deep it went.” A shadow flickered in his eyes, but whatever it was, he wasn’t ready to discuss it with her. As she had trained herself to do, she bit back the questions that rose to her lips.

  “In any case, we know it wasn’t Alistair who was behind the Dunboyne leak,” she said.

  “Cyrus said none of the men at the dinner party were particularly sympathetic to the United Irishmen as far as he knew.” His gaze flickered to her. “Harry went with me and was quite a help with Cyrus. He claimed—protesting a bit too much perhaps—not to be concerned by his uncle’s possible role in the affair. And he said Cordelia would be better at talking to his uncle than he was.”

  “Cordy said much the same. She took me to visit Archibald Davenport. Along with the children, of whom Mr. Davenport is obviously quite fond. Cordy says he was very supportive of her after the scandal. He evidently cares for her.”

  “And?” Malcolm’s gaze brightened with the scent of information.

  “Apparently your father and Lord Harleton left the dinner party early because Lord Harleton challenged your father to a duel.”

  Malcolm let out a whistle. “Good work, Suzette. Over?”

  “A lady with whom they had both formed a liaison. At least ostensibly. Mr. Davenport thought there might be more behind it. Apparently Harleton made some comment about Alistair taking ‘it,’ too, if he had the chance. In light of what Cyrus said, I wonder if the ‘it’ could be a piece of smuggled art?”

  “Perhaps. Did Davenport know the lady’s identity?”

  “He claimed not to, and I don’t think he was lying.”

  Malcolm frowned at his shirt cuff as he unfastened it. “Interesting. It could mean nothing. But anything that connects Alistair and Harleton is of interest. I’ll talk to Aunt Frances again. God knows they didn’t like each other, but they moved in the same set, and she’s a keen observer.” He grimaced.

  “You hate poking into personal secrets,” Suzanne said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “With a passion.”

  “Difficult to separate the personal from the political in this world.”

  “And one often has to ferret out the secrets before one can tell the difference.” He pulled his shirt over his head and went to take his shaving kit from atop the chest of drawers. “Time to get to work.”

  “Malcolm.” David Mallinson touched Malcolm’s arm as Malcolm emerged from the card room at Emily Cowper’s. “I’ve been wanting to thank you.”

  Malcolm grinned at his friend. It seemed an age since they had spoken, though it had only been a few days. David’s calm good sense was just the leavening Malcolm needed. “You’re the most generous of friends. For what?”

  “The men posted at the Tavistock.” David scanned Malcolm’s face. “How worried should I be?”

  “They’re likely to come after the manuscript again. I’d like to say we’ll stop them, but of course I can’t be sure. They may come to Berkeley Square instead of the Tavistock, though the manuscript isn’t at either.” It was in fact at his aunt Frances’s, where Aline could work on it, though the plan was to move it every day.

  “Good God,” David said. “The children—”

  “Trust me, we’re prepared. And it would be a mistake to try to persuade Simon to stop the production.”

  David grimaced. “How did you know I was considering that?”

  “Because it’s what I would do if Suzette were the one in danger. And it would equally be a mistake.”

  David passed a hand over his face. “I know it. And it’s not that I’d want him to. That is—A part of me would like nothing better than to pack up for Paris for a month.”

  “You and me both.”

  “You? You have an investigation again. You’ve come alive.”

  Malcolm gave a reluctant smile. “Perhaps.”

  David’s gaze darted over his face. “I won’t ask you what my father told you—”

  “David—”

  “No, it’s all right, I know he tells you things he doesn’t tell me. I don’t envy you. It’s difficult enough being his son, but he’s even more ruthless as a spymaster than as a father. But is there any way he can turn this against Simon?”

  Malcolm had been giving that possibility honest consideration from the moment Carfax had arrived on his doorstep two nights before. “I don’t think so. But you can be sure I’ll warn you if things change.”

  David nodded. “I need to find Simon. He’s trying to charm Lord Thanet into giving the Tavistock money, and if I leave him alone too long he’ll get too clever for his own good. Are you looking for Suzanne?”

  “For Dewhurst actually. Have you seen him?”

  “He ducked into the library.”

  Malcolm half-expected Dewhurst to be closeted in a secret meeting, but instead he found the earl alone with a copy of Debrett’s. Dewhurst’s ruddy face darkened to purple as Malcolm came into the room. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Malcolm dropped into a wing-back chair beside the one Dewhurst occupied. “Haven’t you heard about my habit of escaping into the library at entertainments?”

  Dewhurst’s scowl deepened. “I hear you sought Carfax out at White’s. Are we safe from you nowhere?”

  Malcolm leaned back in the chair. “I thought if I called upon you at home you’d refuse me entrance.”

  “Damn right I would.” Dewhurst slammed his book closed. “It’s only respect for Emily that has me still sitting here.”

  “Precisely why this is where I sought you out.”

  Dewhurst snatched up the glass on the table beside him and took a long swallow of cognac, then set it down. “If Rupert sent you, I have no desire to listen to an emissary.”

  Was there a touch of hope beneath Dewhurst’s acerbic tone? “Why would Rupert send me?”

  “Because my son isn’t speaking to me. Thanks to you.”

  Despicable as Dewhurst’s actions had been, it was hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for a father who had lost his son. “Lord Dewhurst—You credit me with too much influence if you think anything I did or said is responsible for your son’s actions. Rupert is his own man.”

  Dewhurst reached for the glass of brandy. “If it weren’t for you, Rupert would never have learned—never got such a pack of lies into his head. If it weren’t for you—”

  “Bertrand Laclos would still be presumed dead?”

  Dewhurst’s fingers tightened round his glass as though he wished it were Malcolm’s throat. “In my judgment, Wellington and Castlereagh made a grave error forgiving Laclos for his crimes and permitting him to return to England. You can’t tell me you didn’t have a hand in that.”

  “If you mean I had a hand in Bertrand’s name being cleared of wrongful accusations of treason, I’m happy to say I did.”

  “Arrogant puppy.”

  “Me or Bertrand?”

  “Both of you.” Dewhurst clunked down the glass. “What do you want, Malcolm?”

  “It’s odd, I’ve known you since boyhood, but I didn’t realize you and my father were friends.”

  Dewhurst gave a short laugh. “
We weren’t, particularly.”

  “You were in a club together.”

  Dewhurst’s gaze narrowed. Then he raised his glass and took a drink of brandy. “It was scarcely the sort of thing we’d discuss with children. Not uncommon for young men to form such societies at university.”

  “I understand the Elsinore League is still active.”

  “Perhaps. I haven’t been involved for some time.”

  “You were at a dinner with a number of the members nineteen years ago.”

  Dewhurst stared at him for a moment. Then he clunked his glass down again, sloshing brandy onto the tabletop. “Out with it, Malcolm. What do you want?”

  “Tell me what happened at that dinner.”

  “You know damned well what happened or you wouldn’t be asking these questions. Papers were leaked that led to the regrettable blunder that was the Dunboyne affair. From my dispatch box, to my eternal shame. If you’re asking about it now, new evidence must have come to light.”

  “We think we may be able to figure out who gave out the information.”

  “ ‘We’?” Dewhurst drew his handkerchief across his mouth. “Carfax sent you. I’d have thought he’d have had the wit to realize you aren’t the best emissary. If there’s one man in London I’m not inclined to talk to—”

  “Sir—” Malcolm sat back and studied Dewhurst. “I think you’d rather talk to me than Carfax.”

  Dewhurst picked up his glass as though he wished it were a dagger. “Carfax told you to use the events of two years ago to get me to talk, didn’t he?”

  Malcolm regarded Dewhurst in the light of the tapers burning on the mahogany table between them. “You know Carfax.”

  Dewhurst tossed down a swallow of brandy. “And are you going to do so?”

  “If I threatened you, would you believe me?”

  Dewhurst looked up and regarded Malcolm with what might almost have been a hint of appreciation. “An hour ago, I’d have said you didn’t have the guts. Now I’m not so sure. You’re tougher than I thought, Rannoch. And God knows I already knew you could stab a man in the back.” He leaned back in his chair and reached for his glass. “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you see anything out of the ordinary that night?”

  Dewhurst turned the glass between his fingers. “Do you know about the duel?”

  “Father and Harleton, yes. Ostensibly over a lady.”

  “Ostensibly. Quite. I always thought there was more to it as well. Seemed to come out of nowhere. I did my best to make myself scarce. No desire to get caught up in their quarrel.”

  “You didn’t wonder about it?”

  “Not a great deal. Neither your father nor Harleton held a great deal of interest for me.” Dewhurst took a sip of brandy. “Of course once we knew about the Dunboyne information being leaked it overshadowed everything else that happened that night. Carfax insisted on talking to all of us. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended that Carfax thought the leak might have come from me.”

  Malcolm regarded him without speaking.

  Dewhurst took a sip of cognac. “Given that you accused me of framing Bertrand Laclos as a traitor, I imagine you’d find a certain poetic justice in me being the culprit. But even granted I were entirely lacking in morality—which seems to be your opinion—why would I have risked my fortune and my family honor helping the Irish rabble?”

  It was, Malcolm had to admit, a point, especially given the lengths Dewhurst had gone to perpetuate the family line. “The allure of risk? The challenge? Loyalty to your friends among the United Irishmen?”

  “Any friends I had who joined the United Irishmen ceased to be my friends by doing so. I saw all too clearly in France that the Jacobins and their successors would bring about the end of our way of life. Unlike others who tend to romanticize them.”

  “My father would have agreed with you.”

  “Alistair was not without sense. You don’t see that your sympathies are playing with fire, Malcolm. You never have. For God’s sake, that rabble killed your wife’s parents.”

  “Actually, French soldiers killed my wife’s parents.” French soldiers misdirected by his own hand, something for which he would never forgive himself. “But Suzanne is not consumed by revenge. Nor does she want to turn the clock back to before the Revolution.” In fact, Suzanne’s humanity when it came to viewing the Revolution and revolutionaries was one of the things he loved about her.

  “She’s a woman. They tend to be soft on these things.”

  “Have you met my wife?”

  “Capable as Mrs. Rannoch is, she’s still a woman. My daughter-in-law Gabrielle tends to take too soft a view as well.” Dewhurst took another sip of brandy. “If Carfax is fool enough to put this investigation in your hands, don’t waste time on me. Instead wonder about Horace Smytheton and what that French actress mistress of his got up to before she left France—and after. Not to mention how quickly he took in Manon Caret. That whole theatre is a nest of sedition. Oh, that’s right. Forgot you were friends with Tanner. More and more nonsensical that Carfax trusted you with this.”

  “Smytheton got Jennifer Mansfield out of France?”

  “Geneviève Manet. When she reigned over the Comédie-Française as Caret did later. Only La Belle Manet was working for the opposite side. At least supposedly.”

  Malcolm sorted through this barrage of new information. “Jennifer Mansfield—Geneviève Manet—was a Royalist agent?”

  “Carfax didn’t tell you? Odd when he told you so much. Perhaps he wanted to see how far you’d get on your own.” Dewhurst got to his feet and moved across the room to a cabinet that held a set of decanters. “That’s how Smytheton met her. He was working with the Royalists in the nineties. Along with me. I wouldn’t precisely say we were friends, but we were colleagues. He has more wit than he lets on. Much like Harleton.” Dewhurst unstopped a decanter and refilled his glass. “You know about Harleton working for the French?”

  “Yes.”

  “We didn’t then, of course. Smytheton and I were in and out of France, helping get Royalists out and funneling gold and advice to the counterrevolutionaries. Smytheton had a house in Paris, made a show of being part of society, while I did more of the reconnaissance.”

  “And Geneviève Manet?”

  “Was giving information to the Royalists. We had a plan to try to break the king and Marie Antoinette out of prison.” Dewhurst crossed back to his chair and dropped into it. “Didn’t come to anything in the end, but Smytheton liaisoned with Manet. In more ways than one. Which fit with his cover, of course. English aristo besotted with a French actress. Then one night he came hammering on the door of my lodgings and said we had to get Geneviève out of Paris. The French were on to her.”

  “And he needed your help?”

  Dewhurst smiled. “I was the one with the operational knowledge.”

  “So you helped them?”

  “Oh yes. I had no reason at the time not to think of Geneviève as an ally.”

  “At the time?”

  Dewhurst frowned into his glass. “I began to hear rumors not long before she fled to England. One of my contacts was exposed, a man only Smytheton and I should have known about. I wondered—” He took a swallow of brandy. “It would be a clever way to hide an agent in enemy territory. Get them to rescue her because she was supposedly spying for the other side.”

  “Did you talk to Smytheton?”

  Dewhurst snorted. “He’d have called me out. The man truly was besotted, that was no pose. And then . . .” He hesitated, as though measuring how much to reveal to Malcolm. “We were sending a shipment of arms to the Royalist rebels in the Vendée. On a smugglers’ boat. We’d used them before and everything had gone like clockwork. This time, French troops were waiting for us. I was on the boat myself. I barely escaped, had to hide out for a fortnight and pay a fisherman to sail me back to England. When we investigated, the leak was put down to Smytheton having let a letter go astray.”

&nbs
p; “But you think Geneviève took it?”

  Dewhurst wiped a drop of brandy from the side of his glass. “Actually, I began to wonder if Smytheton wasn’t Geneviève’s dupe but her accomplice.”

  “You think Smytheton was a French spy?”

  “I wondered. I wasn’t the only one who did. I went to some efforts to look for proof, but couldn’t find anything. In the end Smytheton retired from the business.”

  “Meaning he was forced out?”

  “I think he realized it was prudent to focus on the theatre. Whatever he and Geneviève may have done, the rest of us judged they couldn’t cause any problems now. Or so we thought. And then they took in La Caret.”

  “About whom nothing has ever been proved, either.”

  “Quite.” Dewhurst gave a smile of satisfaction. “It’s Carfax’s problem, not mine, thank God. But I’d look into what’s going on at the Tavistock.”

  “What about the others?”

  “Bessborough and Cyrus and Davenport? They weren’t British agents. As to whether any of them worked for the French, if I knew I’d tell you.”

  Malcolm sat back in his chair. “Cyrus says you were smuggling works of art out of the Continent, starting before the Revolution.”

  Dewhurst raised his brows. “Quick to admit his sins, our Cyrus.”

  “So you’re admitting it?”

  Dewhurst leaned back in his chair. “I’ll admit the others were interested in filling their libraries and salons with old masters. And in the risk and adventure that went with it. I had more important things to do in Paris at the time.”

  “So you weren’t involved in the smuggling?”

  “Not seriously. I may have a piece or two.”

  “Apparently, the night of the dinner when they were quarreling over the lady Harleton asked my father what he had done with ‘it.’ Could that have been a work of art?”

  “Possibly.” Dewhurst reached for his glass. “But I know no specifics.”

  “Alistair went to Argyllshire to stay with Lord Glenister for a fortnight not long before he died. Was that a gathering of the Elsinore League?”