“Lady Gwen,” the Duke of India said, once she was standing in front of them. There was no chair for her, of course. “You may begin.”
Gwen bowed her head. The Duke of India had publicly reprimanded a meddling upper-class woman who had sought to close down the brothels near army garrisons, pointing out that British soldiers risked their lives to defend Britain from foreign invasions. He might be a stubborn son of a bitch who thought everyone should do as he said, as she’d heard him called more than once, but he cared deeply for his men. Maybe he would extend some of that tolerance towards her.
“Sir Travis Mortimer was murdered by Sir Charles Bellingham,” she said, bluntly. “The murder was planned and authorised by Ambassador Talleyrand.”
She waited as the stir ran around the room, wondering just how much they already knew. Lord Mycroft knew, of course, but had he told them? Or had he decided that Gwen should have the credit for solving the mystery? It might counterbalance their desire to punish her for embarrassing herself.
“The motive for the murder was simple; the execution was not,” she continued, once quiet had returned to the room. “Sir Travis had been intimately involved in drafting a treaty with the Ottoman Empire, a treaty that would have prevented the French from pressing against the Ottomans and allied their formidable land army with British naval might. Added together, we could have swept the French out of the Mediterranean and even invaded Eastern Europe, bringing France to her knees. It was worth any risk to prevent the treaty from ever being signed.
“In order to do that, the treaty had to be discredited. The Airship Treaty made considerable concessions to the Turks in exchange for a long-term alliance. If the motives of the principle writer could be cast into doubt – and he was no longer able to defend himself – the treaty would be delayed, if not destroyed. Sir Travis had to be accused of being a Turkish operative, accepting bribes to write a treaty that favoured the Ottoman Empire. With such an accusation hanging over his head, impossible to disprove, the treaty would not be ratified by Parliament.”
She paused, composing her next words carefully. “Public opinion, right now, is strongly in favour of war with France,” she said. “The French knew that they were being blamed for the undead rampage in London during the Swing. There was – is – a very real possibility that we would go to war, with or without the Turks. Talleyrand, I suspect, knew the danger from his mind-reading assistant; France could hardly become more compromised if they were implicated in Sir Travis’s death. If there was to be war, they would have a better chance if it was fought before the treaty was signed.
“I do not know when or how Sir Charles made contact with the French. I do know that he possessed an unusual talent, one that nullified magic in contact with his body. Among other things, a Sensitive simply couldn’t read him; Sir Travis found him a good companion simply because he could stand to be near Sir Charles without being driven away by a barrage of uncontrollable emotions. Sir Charles did not, unfortunately, share his feelings. His motivation for joining the French was to extract revenge on Polite Society for turning on him when his origins became public. Talleyrand was able to exploit his feelings to France’s advantage.
“That night, Talleyrand went to visit Sir Travis, perhaps intending to try to bribe him into abandoning the Treaty. Murder is risky, after all, and France might have ended up at war with the British Empire. Whatever was said between them, Sir Travis clearly refused to budge. Talleyrand left Mortimer Hall and gave Sir Charles the signal to move in. With the help of an underground magician, he broke into Mortimer Hall and killed Sir Travis, taking a number of his papers afterwards. Thus committed, he went to Hiram Pasha’s house, killed the Turkish spy and left the papers there for us to find.
“Prior to the murder, the French worked hard to create a link between Sir Travis and Hiram Pasha. The Golden Turk, a gambling hall, claimed that Sir Travis owed them money. In reality, the manager took a hefty bribe to forge the debts, ensuring that our attention would be drawn to Hiram Pasha, who was supposed to have backed the debts. They thus created the impression that Sir Travis had been taking money from the Turks all along. The Airship Treaty might therefore have been dictated in Istanbul.”
She paused, wishing that she could take a sip of water.
“At that point, chance intervened,” she admitted. “The Golden Turk’s manager had visited Mortimer Hall several times before the murder, telling Sir Travis’s maidservant that he owed the gambling hall money. Sir Travis, of course, dismissed those debts. The maid did not know any better, however, and so when Augustus Howell visited Mortimer Hall and read the maid’s mind, he believed that Sir Travis was in debt.”
The table rustled again. Gwen smiled and waited for them to calm down before continuing.
“I will have to go back in time here,” she warned. “Sir Travis was engaged – secretly – to Lady Elizabeth Bracknell. Unfortunately, Lady Elizabeth had compromised herself earlier in life, allowing Howell to blackmail her. She couldn’t pay the price he demanded and so Howell went to Sir Travis, intending to tell him what his intended had been doing before she was engaged to him. Instead, he discovered that Sir Travis owed money and offered to pay his debt. Ruining Lady Elizabeth would have been less profitable than getting his hooks into a government official.
There was a long pause. “Howell met with failure,” she explained, “but didn’t expose Lady Elizabeth. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I think he must have expected Lady Elizabeth to have some influence over her husband – or that the debts would eventually grow to the point where Sir Travis would be desperate for a loan. Howell could wait patiently for the right moment to use his information. However, more or less by accident, he distracted me from the truth.”
Her lips twitched. “I was warned by almost everyone not to go near Howell,” she said, dryly. “If they’d been more honest about him, I might have realised the truth sooner.
The humour faded. She didn’t want to talk about the next part to anyone.
“Sir Charles worked hard to attach himself to the investigation,” Gwen admitted. “I was... rather taken with him and allowed himself to get too close to me. In hindsight, he dropped plenty of hints about Sir Travis gambling, even mentioning the Golden Turk before the manager sent a demand notice to Sir Travis’s estate. Eventually, we went to the Golden Turk and discovered the debts, which led us to Hiram Pasha’s house. There, we found the papers suggesting that Sir Travis had been a spy. The case against him seemed airtight.
“It wasn’t until I read through Sir Travis’s journal and his notes that I realised that some of the gambling debts were definitely faked,” she said. “There was no logical reason for him to fake a trip to Istanbul; he didn’t need to hide in London while gambling – and he certainly hadn’t done it on a regular basis. Why should he have? And if some of the debts were fake, it was quite possible that they all were fake. Indeed, his journal mentioned nothing about the gambling exploits Sir Charles had told me about. Instead, it talked about Sir Charles having a soothing effect on the Sensitive.
“I went to Sir Charles’s house and confronted him. He confessed to having killed Sir Travis, then tried to kill me. I was unprepared for his talent; in hindsight, I should have realised the implications and taken someone else along to provide support. He came very close to killing me outright. I barely managed to escape. When I did so, the first person to arrive was Simone, the so-called daughter of Ambassador Talleyrand – and a Talker in her own right. I went with her to the French Embassy, spoke briefly to Talleyrand, then returned home.”
She drew a long breath. “Sir Travis was no traitor,” she concluded. “I believe that we can consider the Airship Treaty without worrying about the motives of the writer.”
There was a long pause.
“You mentioned that he got close to you,” one of the councillors said. “What exactly do you mean?”
Gwen felt her cheeks warm under their gaze. “He attempted to seduce me,” she said, bluntly. If they in
sisted on talking about it, she could talk. “I believe that he felt he could influence me. He was wrong.”
“One would hope so,” the Duke of India said, scowling at the councillor. “She would be far from the first official to get into trouble with the opposite sex.”
He looked up at Gwen before anyone else could say a word. “Thank you for your report, Lady Gwen,” he said. “Please wait in the antechamber. We will inform you when we have finished our deliberations.”
Gwen nodded, curtseyed to the table and walked out of the room. The antechamber was surprisingly shabby, but comfortable; a maid offered her a cup of tea or coffee as she sat down on the sofa. Someone – she suspected Lord Mycroft – had set up a chessboard in the middle of the room. It was hard to be sure without getting up and looking at the board properly, but it looked like the game he’d been playing with Talleyrand.
She wasn’t too surprised when, thirty minutes later, Lord Mycroft came into the antechamber and sat down in front of the chessboard. Or when something clicked in her mind.
“You knew,” she said.
Lord Mycroft raised a single elegant eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
Talleyrand, Gwen thought, as she stood up. He’d said exactly the same thing, word for word.
She sat down on the other side of the chessboard. “You knew who’d murdered Sir Travis,” she said. “Your brother already did the legwork.”
“I knew why Sir Travis had been murdered,” Lord Mycroft said. “There was no other logical motive. But I didn’t know who. My brother... had other affairs to handle.”
He picked up the white queen and held it out to her. “Besides, you needed something to boost your reputation,” he added. “Solving the case alone would solidify your position, I calculated, but destroying Howell’s blackmailing empire made you immensely popular.”
“Popular enough for people to forget that Sir Charles took me for a ride?” Gwen asked, bitterly. “I acted the fool. People won’t forget.”
“The world is full of people who were foolish in love,” Lord Mycroft said. He started to put the pieces back in their starting positions. “You are far from the first person to allow love to blind you. Unlike many, you were capable of realising your mistake and acting on that realisation. Quite a few officials who should have known better allowed themselves to be blinded by love – or lust.”
“I’m a girl,” Gwen reminded him. “It’s different for men.”
“Sometimes,” Lord Mycroft said. “I have a list of men who cannot be trusted with anything sensitive because they compromised themselves... and then refused to learn from the experience. Compared to many of them, you didn’t do too badly at all.”
Gwen looked down at the chessboard. “Which piece am I?”
Lord Mycroft shrugged as he picked up the white king. “The king isn’t a piece so much as it represents a line of succession,” he said. “It cannot be taken, merely trapped; a threat to the king forces all else to be dropped while the king is protected. In our case, the king is England itself. We must protect England, even at the cost of the other pieces.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Gwen said.
Lord Mycroft tapped one of the knights. Gwen had to smile.
“You aren’t so hidebound as many others,” he explained. “And that gives you an advantage.”
He put the king down and looked up at her. “The Privy Council has decided to commend you for doing an excellent job,” he said. “There was some suggestion that you might have allowed your heart to mislead you, but it was voted down by a large majority. Some rumours will slip out, of course...”
“Of course,” Gwen agreed.
“... But they will receive no support from the Privy Council,” Lord Mycroft concluded, flatly. “Indeed, you will be honoured for your conduct.”
Gwen flushed. Praise from Lord Mycroft was rare.
“I made mistakes,” she confessed. How close had she come to surrendering completely to Sir Charles? “I...”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Lord Mycroft said. “You have to learn from the experience.”
Gwen nodded, mutely.
“There will be no open admission of what happened to either Sir Travis or Sir Charles,” Lord Mycroft said. “Sir Travis’s death will be blamed on Howell; we can tell a few rumourmongers that Sir Travis refused to be intimidated and Howell killed him in hopes that it would save his life. Few people would question that story. Sir Charles’s death will be blamed on one of Howell’s rogue magicians. You will be credited with rushing to his rescue and killing the rogue before he could escape.”
“There are holes in that story,” Gwen pointed out.
“But it will be generally believed,” Lord Mycroft said. “Both of them will be buried as heroes – and the Airship Treaty will not be brought into question. The Privy Council will debate it later today and Parliament will, I suspect, have the opportunity to vote on it within the week. If we’re not at war by then, that is.”
Gwen winced. “The French will know the truth, won’t they?”
“They can’t say anything without admitting their own role in Sir Travis’s murder,” Lord Mycroft said. “The truth will leak out, sooner or later, but by then it should no longer matter.”
“I hope you’re right,” Gwen said. She hesitated, then asked the question that had bothered her before she went to sleep. “Is the Airship Treaty a mistake?”
Lord Mycroft snorted. “Every solution to every problem faced by the British Empire, or every other nation, causes problems in its own right,” he said. “That’s the lesson of history, Lady Gwen. It never really ends.”
He tapped the white king. “And we spend all our time trying to prevent the king from being trapped,” he added. “That’s why the French were so desperate.”
“They feared that they might be trapped,” Gwen said, in understanding. “Are they trapped?”
“Not yet,” Lord Mycroft said. “And we don’t want to trap them.”
He smiled at her. “If you don’t want to play,” he said, “you can go back to Cavendish Hall.”
Gwen hesitated, then risked a different question. “Is it likely that I will ever find love?”
Lord Mycroft showed a hint of surprise before it faded away into nothingness. “You are operating outside society’s conventions,” he said, finally. “I think you would manage to find someone, if you looked in the right place. But so few of your class marry for love.”
“I will be more careful in future,” Gwen admitted. She’d never really thought of Lord Mycroft as a father figure before, but who else could she ask for fatherly advice? Doctor Norwell? “Is it wrong of me to feel bad about that?”
“When... something bad happens to a woman, something caused by a man, she may well end up blaming all men for it,” Lord Mycroft said. He didn’t say the word outright, but Gwen knew what he meant. “That you still want to find someone speaks well of you, I think. But just remember to be careful. There are worse things than losing one’s reputation that can happen to you.”
Gwen nodded and stood up.
“You did very well,” Lord Mycroft said. His expression hardened, just for a second. “And the Privy Council will ensure that everyone knows that we are satisfied.”
“But it won’t be enough to convince Polite Society,” Gwen objected. Even the Privy Council couldn’t control the gossips. “They...”
“They will do as they are told,” Lord Mycroft said. “But I’d suggest that you stayed away from balls for a few months. You’re supposed to be in mourning.”
“Understood,” Gwen said.
With that, she walked out of the room and headed back to Cavendish Hall.
Chapter Forty
Ididn’t know that you were going to marry Sir Charles,” Lady Mary said. “He should have asked your father’s permission before asking you.”
Gwen gritted her teeth. It had taken her nearly three weeks to work up the courage to visit her mother and in that time the rumours had gr
own massively out of control. According to the gossip running through Polite Society, Gwen and Sir Charles had been secretly engaged before Sir Charles had been brutally murdered by one of Howell’s magicians. It was all Dreadfully Romantic, according to society’s queens, and Gwen had been bombarded with commiserations from just about anyone who was anybody.
“He wasn’t going to marry me, mother,” Gwen said. It was hard enough to say those words, even though she knew that her mother would understand. “The story they told you is a lie.”
She ran through everything that had happened between her and Sir Charles, ending with the moment she’d killed him. Lady Mary listened quietly, without saying a word; Gwen found that more worrying than outright shouting. But then, her mother should understand. She’d been through something similar herself.
“I was in love,” she concluded, bitterly. “If he’d pressed, I don’t know how far I would have gone.”
“And you shouted at me for my mistake,” Lady Mary said. “What were you thinking?”
Gwen winced. She knew that she deserved that, but it didn’t make it any easier.
“I didn’t understand what you went through,” she said. Her isolation from society hadn’t really helped either. She’d had few of the outlets used by other young ladies. “I think I understand how you must have felt after your relationship failed.”
She’d known that her relationship with Sir Charles could have easily destroyed her career, even though she was the only Master Magician known to exist. Lady Mary hadn’t had that support; if she’d been discovered to be pregnant, her reputation would have been utterly shattered, ruined beyond repair. Gwen still found it hard to forgive her mother for aborting her half-sibling, but she understood what her mother had felt. God would judge her, in due course. Gwen no longer wanted to try.
“I didn’t want to see you make the same mistake,” Lady Mary said. She looked up at Gwen, her dark eyes fixed on Gwen’s face. “Did you... did you let him go inside you?”
The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) Page 37
