The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)

by Grant, Teresa

  “Spoken like a very young man. I’ve been concerned about this liaison of yours for some time.”

  Crispin folded his arms across his chest. “Surely a man in your position has more important things to worry about than a love affair.”

  “Actually, it’s my position that gave me the cause for concern.” Dewhurst surveyed him with what might have been pity. “My dear boy, there’s no easy way to say this. The lovely Manon was a French agent.”

  Crispin swallowed the instinctive retort. He had to be careful to protect Manon. “Just because she’s French and an actress—”

  “My dear boy.” Dewhurst crossed to Crispin’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s considerably more than that.”

  Crispin squelched the impulse to jerk away from Dewhurst’s touch. “Assuming that were true—and I don’t for a moment admit that it is—what makes you so sure I haven’t known all along?”

  “I can’t but admire your loyalty to your mistress, Crispin, mistaken as it may be. But you’re also a loyal Englishman. You wouldn’t.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you don’t know me at all.”

  Dewhurst’s gaze hardened. He took a step back, pushing Crispin away. “You fool. You’ve succumbed to her wiles.”

  “Call it what you will.”

  “Chéri?” Manon’s voice came from the wings. “Where are—”

  “Don’t come out here, Manon!” Crispin yelled. “It’s a trap—”

  At least that was what he meant to say. He only got the words half-out because Dewhurst’s fist smashed into his jaw and sent him crashing to the stage floor. Manon’s footsteps pattered against the boards. Then he heard her go still. Dewhurst had pulled a pistol from his greatcoat. “You leave me with no choice but to get rid of the pair of you,” Dewhurst said.

  Crispin stared up at the earl. “You’re mad.”

  “I’m a man who knows how to do what needs to be done.”

  Malcolm ran down the passage from the stage door, Suzanne beside him, to see Crispin sprawled on the floorboards, Manon standing in the wings, and Dewhurst holding a pistol on them.

  “Don’t be a fool, Dewhurst,” Malcolm said. “You can’t kill all of us.”

  Dewhurst jerked instinctively, the pistol swinging towards Malcolm. And therefore Suzanne, damn it. But they were better able to protect themselves than were Crispin and Manon.

  “You don’t know what they’ve done, Rannoch.”

  “I know what you’ve done. And I know what you fear losing. More to the point, so do Harry and Cordelia and Archibald Davenport and Raoul O’Roarke. You can’t contain this.”

  Dewhurst’s gaze filled with rage and the recognition that he was trapped. “Then I can at least take out one harlot of a spy.”

  His arm swung towards Manon. Crispin screamed and tried to hurl himself at her. Suzanne, running full tilt, got there first and knocked Manon to the floor. Malcolm hurled himself at Dewhurst. They slammed into the boards. The gun went off, and Malcolm heard his wife scream.

  CHAPTER 40

  For a moment, every ounce of blood in Malcolm’s veins turned to ice. He saw what happened in agonizingly slow fragments, as though he were moving through water. Manon collapsed on the boards, Suzanne sprawled on top of her, stiffening at the impact of the bullet, blood spurting from her shoulder. Then she screamed and somehow he could breathe again.

  He was across the stage on the floor beside her, holding her in his arms. He could feel the shudder of her breath against him. He was dimly aware of Manon’s anxious gaze as she knelt beside them. Suzanne’s eyes fluttered open. “Darling. Malcolm. I’m fine.”

  “You’re bleeding.” The blood was soaking through the sleeve of his coat where he held her. He tugged at his cravat, still holding his wife.

  “I’ll hold her, Mr. Rannoch,” Manon said.

  A satisfied grunt came from across the stage. The conclusion of a series of thuds Malcolm had scarcely been aware of. Crispin had tackled Dewhurst and was sitting atop the earl’s chest. As Malcolm glanced up, Crispin drew back his fist and slammed it into Dewhurst’s jaw.

  “Is he unconscious?” Malcolm asked.

  “For the present.” Crispin stared down at the earl. “I never until now understood the impulse to commit murder.”

  “Don’t let him move.” Malcolm was stripping off his cravat. The bleeding had slowed on Suzanne’s arm.

  Suzanne turned her head towards Manon. “Help me get my clothes off so Malcolm will see I’m not dying.”

  With Manon’s help, Suzanne got her spencer off and her bodice loosened, an easier task thanks to the nursing flap. Malcolm pulled a flask from his greatcoat pocket and splashed some whisky on the wound, then bound his cravat round it. A temporary dressing, but it would do until they got home.

  Dewhurst stirred. “What—”

  “Shall I hit him again?” Crispin asked.

  Dewhurst drew a breath of outrage. “You arrogant—”

  Footsteps thudded in the wings. Rupert appeared at the edge of the stage. “Malcolm, I came when I got your message—Good God.”

  “Rupert,” Dewhurst said.

  “Don’t.” Crispin slammed a hand on Dewhurst’s chest. “Don’t even try to lie your way out of this. You have four witnesses.”

  “Witnesses to what?” Rupert asked.

  “Your father tried to kill Manon and me,” Crispin said.

  The sort of silence that follows the discovery of Polonius’s body fell over the stage.

  Malcolm helped Suzanne to her feet, his arm round her. With his free hand, he reached in his greatcoat pocket and pulled out his pistol. “Let him get up,” he said to Crispin. “But don’t even think about running, Dewhurst.”

  Dewhurst stood and smoothed his coat, quite as though he were in a diplomatic council chamber. “I must say, I never thought this is what it would take for you to be talking to me again, Rupert.”

  Rupert stared at his father. “My God, sir. Whom were you working for? Besides yourself.”

  Dewhurst regarded his son as though Rupert had already retreated an uncrossable distance and there was no calling him back. “For you.”

  “Don’t put this on me.” Rupert fairly spat the words. “I had no say in the matter.”

  “For my descendants. For your Stephen. For people like us.” Dewhurst took an impatient step forwards, as though he could physically breach the gulf between them. “Damn it, Rupert, don’t you see there’s been a war for the past twenty years and it’s not a question of countries. Our way of life is under attack. Your way of life too, Rannoch.” His gaze shot to Malcolm. “From the Jacobins in France, from the machine breakers here at home, from the upstarts like O’Roarke in Ireland, from the rabble all over the Continent who employed people like her.” He jerked his head at Manon.

  “And that was the point of this Elsinore League of yours?” Malcolm said. “To attack the rabble?”

  “Simply fighting the French did nothing to mend matters here in England. We wanted to preserve an appropriate balance of power. To keep our friends in positions to wield influence.”

  “And line your own pockets,” Suzanne murmured.

  Dewhurst ran his gaze over her. “That wasn’t our goal, Mrs. Rannoch.”

  “No?” Malcolm said. “I can’t but think it was at least Alistair’s. Cardinal de Rohan had insulted your friends—”

  “Rohan was a threat to France’s stability and with it that of the Continent.”

  “So you set him up for ruin,” Malcolm said. “And helped bring down the French monarchy and turn France over to what you would call the rabble.”

  Dewhurst twitched his cravat straight. “We were young. It was an unfortunate incident. But we learned from our mistakes.”

  “Mistakes which could ruin you.”

  Rupert was staring at his father as though he had transformed into another creature. “After what you did to Bertrand, I wouldn’t think any action of yours could surprise me. But by God—Have you no limits?”<
br />
  “Of course I have limits. I know precisely to whom and what I’m loyal. I know what I owe to my name and my family. Something you’ve always been inclined to forget, Rupert.”

  “Don’t you dare.” Rupert’s voice rose to echo into the flies. “I’m loyal to the people I love. That has to come first.”

  “You. Both of you.” Dewhurst looked from Rupert to Malcolm and shook his head. “If we lose this war it will be due to people like you. Not understanding where your loyalties lie. Putting the personal before the needs of your family.”

  “Family are personal,” Rupert said.

  “That’s just where you’re wrong, my boy. Family are a trust. An obligation. One’s role in life.”

  Rupert stared hard at his father. “I don’t think you gave a damn about family. I think it’s a façade. I think you’re driven by one thing and that’s power for yourself.”

  “Alistair certainly was,” Malcolm said. “I imagine it was a good alliance as long as your self-interests coincided. But then they diverged. When was that? After your difficulties two years ago in Paris?”

  “Those difficulties were all in your head.”

  “And Wellington’s and Castlereagh’s. You haven’t been assigned to a diplomatic mission since. You’re out of the corridors of power. But Harleton still tried to blackmail you into protecting him, didn’t he? Did he threaten you with the truth about the necklace?”

  “Harleton thought he was going to be exposed.” The words seemed to be torn from Dewhurst’s throat. “He threatened to expose the business about the diamonds if Alistair and I didn’t protect him. He broke the one cardinal rule of the League.”

  “Which is?”

  “Never to use our information against each other. We knew our interests might diverge, but we never turned on each other.”

  “And so you got rid of Harleton,” Malcolm said.

  “You can’t seriously expect me to answer that.”

  “My God,” Rupert said. “I didn’t think you could possibly prove more of a monster—”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Malcolm said, “but the pieces don’t add up. Harleton couldn’t have made your role in the affair of the necklace public without ruining himself along with you and Alistair. He might have blustered and made threats, but the two of you would have laughed in his face. And it didn’t explain why you wanted the Hamlet manuscript. Until we made a discovery in the manuscript itself that made it all fall into place.”

  The fear that shot into Dewhurst’s gaze, though quickly veiled, told Malcolm he was on target. “Do pray enlighten me,” Dewhurst said.

  “I think my wife should do that, she’s the one who put the pieces together. Darling?”

  It was only the start in Suzanne’s gaze that made Malcolm realize the endearment he’d employed unthinkingly. He kept his gaze steady on her own, not taking it back. “It was really Archibald Davenport,” she said. “He discovered the real secret in the Hamlet manuscript. The identity of Francis Woolright.”

  “Who?” Rupert said.

  “An actor in Shakespeare’s company who was Eleanor Harleton’s lover. And married her after her husband was executed in the wake of the Essex rebellion.”

  “Entertaining as this ancient history is,” Dewhurst said, “what the hell does it have to do with—”

  “Because Francis Woolright’s real identity was a secret, one he guarded closely. He’d left his family to become an actor, and he had no desire to go back. Yet he or Eleanor Harleton cared enough about his heritage to hide it in a speech they added to the manuscript.”

  Rupert frowned. “Are you saying—”

  “The speech mentions a raven and a dove. Which I believe is the original emblem of your family.”

  Rupert stared at his father. “By God—”

  “Don’t listen to them, Rupert, it makes no sense.”

  “On the contrary. It makes a great deal of sense.” Rupert swung his gaze to Malcolm and Suzanne. “Did this Francis Woolright and Eleanor Harleton have a legitimate son?”

  “Yes,” Malcolm said.

  Rupert’s gaze moved back to his father. “All this talk about rights and legitimacy. And you aren’t even the rightful Earl Dewhurst. I’m not Viscount Caruthers.”

  “That’s not—”

  “You tried to have Bertrand killed to get an heir to a title that isn’t even rightfully yours.”

  “What about Alistair?” Dewhurst demanded.

  “Alistair was the one who pieced together the truth about Francis Woolright after Harleton showed him the manuscript,” Malcolm said. “You had to get rid of both of them.”

  Dewhurst folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t prove any of that.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Rupert. “But we can damn well try.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Crispin put a glass of cognac into Manon’s hand. The girls were safely asleep upstairs. She and Crispin had both stared at them for a long interval, though Manon had refused to meet his gaze afterwards. “Are you sure you aren’t cold, darling?” He reached for a shawl that was draped over a chairback.

  “I’m fine, Crispin.” Manon jerked away from his hand. She was leaning back on the settee, calling on her acting talents to maintain her usual negligent attitude. “It was Suzanne who was almost killed, not me.”

  “It was you Dewhurst was trying to kill.” Crispin stared down at her with that look that said he wanted to put his arms round her again. And if he did so it would undo her.

  “If it comes to that he was trying to kill you, too.” Manon’s fingers tightened round her glass. She stared at it for a moment, the fear of those moments on the Tavistock stage shooting through her, then took a quick sip. To prove she could do so.

  Crispin took a turn about the hearth rug. “Malcolm says I should point out to you that marrying me is by far the best way to protect the girls.”

  “Malcolm Rannoch said that?”

  “Yes.” Crispin frowned at the memory. “I was braced for a fight and sure he’d try to talk me out of it.”

  “So was I.” Manon considered Suzanne’s British husband. “I wouldn’t have thought a man of his type would be able to see beyond the confines of his world. Though I must say he impressed me today.”

  “What about me?”

  She smiled, wondering how many more times she’d stare into those blue eyes. “You impressed me as well, mon cher. It was quite masterful how you took down Lord Dewhurst.”

  Crispin took a step closer to the dressing table. “Don’t try to change the subject. I mean what about me being able to see beyond the confines of my world? Malcolm’s right: If you marry me, it will be easier for me to protect the girls.”

  She tilted her head back, surveying his familiar features, the curly hair that fell over his forehead, the curve of his mouth, the unexpected stubborn strength in his jaw. How had she ever been so foolish as to let him become so important to her? “Do you think I would marry only to protect the girls?”

  He swallowed. The look in his gaze was fear. It occurred to her that he was terrified she wouldn’t say yes. “No, of course not. But I also know you’re concerned for their safety. As am I.”

  “My dear Crispin, if you’ve learned anything at all about me you must realize I’ve done rather well protecting them my entire life.”

  “And you think I’m a callow amateur, blundering about in a game I don’t understand.”

  “Never that, chéri. Though it’s quite true you don’t understand it. Fortunately for you.”

  “God.” He took a turn about the hearth rug. “It’s a wonder you ever wasted any time on me at all.”

  “Crispin . . .” She hesitated, words she dare not say hovering on her lips. For to say, It’s precisely because I love you that I can’t marry you, would be to give the game away. “I couldn’t possibly consider our time together wasted.”

  “An agreeable interlude then?” His mouth twisted. “Look, Manon, I know your past—No, that’s not what I
mean,” he added as she gave a sharp laugh. “I know you’ve been with men who are more brilliant than I. I have no illusions. But the one thing I do have is an old family name and a title and fortune and all the trappings that go with it. I know that seems particularly hollow after today’s events, but it gives me a certain influence. Which I know is precisely what your people were fighting against, and I daresay there’s a great deal to be said for their argument, but right now, here, it’s an advantage.” He dropped down on one knee before her. “For God’s sake, let me do what I can.”

  “My dear Crispin.” She reached out and touched his face. “It’s the most generous offer I’ve ever received. But you’d get tired of it, you know. Having a wife who couldn’t be received in your world.”

  “You mean the world of my father? Who was a French spy himself? I don’t give a damn about it. But I can’t imagine a world without you and Roxane and Clarisse.” He sat back and scanned her face. Suddenly he no longer looked like a schoolboy. “Or are you saying you’d get tired? Of me?”

  “No.” She touched his face again, against her better judgment. “I never thought I’d say this to a man, but oddly enough, I don’t believe I would.”

  He seized her hand and drew it against his mouth. “Well then.”

  “If the truth ever came out—”

  “We’d go to Italy or Switzerland or America. I’ve enough money. Amazing how that can cushion most blows.”

  She drew a breath, hovering on the edge of something she hadn’t thought possible. “I wouldn’t give up the theatre.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to.”

  “There’ll always be a risk—”

  “Life’s a risk.” He got up on the settee beside her and took her in his arms. “It helps to take the risk with the right person.”

  Manon laughed, despite herself. “You’re very stubborn.”

  “Say it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?”

  She drew a breath that trembled between fear and wonder. “Yes, Crispin. I’ll marry you.”