The Cocoa Conspiracy

by Andrea Penrose

  9. Remove from the oven and cool on wire racks.

  10. When completely cool, store in airtight cookie tins in a cool, dry location.

  “Slàinte mhath.” The brandy in Henning’s glass cast a swirl of fire-gold patterns over his rugged face. “I was beginning to get a bit worried about you two,” he said as Saybrook and Arianna entered the parlor. “Pour yourselves a drink and let us toast to dodging disaster.”

  “Amen to that,” said the earl. He chose port.

  To Arianna’s eye, its dark ruby richness was uncomfortably close to the color of blood, but the sweetness was soothing on her tongue.

  “Slàinte mhath,” she repeated, moving to the hearth and warming her hands over the dancing flames. A wrapper of finespun merino wool had replaced her purloined finery, and between the soft fabric and the flickering fire, the lingering chill was finally dispelled from her bones.

  Saybrook sunk into the armchair facing the surgeon. “Much as I appreciate your peculiar sense of humor, Baz, I would appreciate it if you would stubble the clever remarks.” A grunt rumbled in his throat as he shifted his long legs. “And cut to the bloody chase, now that Arianna is here.”

  “I’ve missed you too, laddie,” drawled Henning, lifting his glass in ironic salute.

  The earl responded with a rude suggestion.

  “And you, Lady S.” His tone turned a touch more serious. “You are a feast for sore eyes. Indeed, it warms me from my cockles to my toes to see you standing in one piece.”

  She returned his smile. “It’s good to see you too, Mr. Henning. Ignore Sandro’s snarls. You know he’s always in a foul temper when he’s hungry. I’ll fetch a plate of chocolates from the kitchen to sweeten his mood.”

  “I don’t want chocolate,” growled the earl. “I want information.”

  “And you shall have it, just as soon as I return with some sustenance,” said Arianna. She had come to understand that his barbed exchanges with Henning were part of some arcane masculine ritual of friendship. By the time she came back with the confections, the needling would be done and they could get down to business. “Besides, I am famished, and you know that I think better on a full stomach.”

  “Given your ideas of late, perhaps I should be quaking in my boots,” retorted her husband.

  “Ha! You may have to eat those words.”

  A short while later, the sultana-and-almond-filled chocolates consumed, the glasses refilled, Henning sat back and cleared his throat. “Well, now, it seems we are to have another one of our councils of war. Shall I start it off? Sandro has been pestering me for hours to explain why I am here.”

  The earl gave an impatient little wave.

  “Don’t rush me,” retorted the surgeon. “It’s a long and complicated story. But I shall try to keep it short.”

  “Do,” growled the earl.

  “As you know, I headed north to Scotland on the same day you left for Vienna. When I arrived in Edinburgh, my nephew was still missing, so . . .” He shifted uncomfortably. “I haven’t spoken much to you about this, but I’ve kept up ties with a group of old friends who espouse the idea of independence from England. The Crown brands their ideas sedition, while I . . . I support many of their aims, even if I don’t agree with some of their more radical efforts to achieve them.”

  “Dio Madre, you need not explain yourself to us,” said Saybrook. “I guessed as much, and respect your choices.”

  “Auch, I know that, laddie, and am grateful. But this is about more than me and my personal feelings.” He blew out his cheeks. “Suffice it to say, I’m trusted enough in the underworld of Scottish patriots that people are willing to talk.” The air leaked out slowly. “And what I heard made my hair stand on end.”

  Saybrook was staring down at his glass, a habit that hid his dark eyes.

  “We know that Whitehall has long suspected that the French have had agents in both Scotland and Ireland, looking to encourage unrest—and perhaps even rebellion,” continued Henning. “And of course they are right. Money has been funneling in from the Continent for years. Most of it has been spent to buy loyalty from the locals, who in turn use it to support their families.” He looked up, the harsh shadows accentuating the lines that furrowed his face. “Poverty is rampant, for many of the English lords treat their Scottish tenants as a lower form of life than their hounds or horses. That’s why I’ve turned a blind eye on what was going on.”

  “But with the war over and Napoleon exiled on Elba, it seems that the threat should be over,” said Arianna.

  “You’re right, lassie. The threat should be over,” replied Henning. “But the more I delved beneath the surface, the more it became apparent that friends and foes were not what they seemed—which is why we have been chasing the wrong scent in our hunt for Renard.”

  “Let me guess,” said Saybrook slowly. “You’re about to tell us that conceited coxcomb, Comte Rochemont is, in truth, a cunning conspirator who has spent years betraying both the Royalist cause and Britain, correct?”

  “Correct,” confirmed Henning. “For nearly a decade, the duplicitous bastard has been running a network of agents provocateurs for Napoleon in Scotland. I was away on the Peninsula for some of those years, and then living in London. So I’ve kept at arm’s length from the activities, and never knew the identities of the men in charge. Had I paid greater attention to what was going on in the North, I would have also learned that Rochemont wielded an iron hand within his fancy French velvet glove.”

  “That would explain Rochemont’s many so-called hunting trips across the border,” mused Saybrook. “Under the guise of a frivolous sportsman, he was overseeing his network.”

  Henning made a face. “Aye. And it seems he ran a clever operation. Recruits were flattered and stroked. Those who showed intelligence and idealism were brought up through the ranks and assigned ways to weaken England. All very comradely, right?” The sardonic laugh couldn’t quite cover the pain in his voice.

  Arianna felt her throat constrict.

  “Except those who disagreed with the methods or tried to resign were beaten into line by Rochemont’s henchmen,” Henning went on. “Or they simply disappeared.”

  “I am sorry about your nephew, but you cannot blame yourself, Baz,” said Saybrook softly. “You have read history—from the very first, rulers and demagogues have always found it easy to seduce young men with fire in their bellies.”

  “I should have had my eyes and ears open. Then I would have been able to counsel Angus,” said Henning bleakly.

  “Yes, and he would have ignored you,” countered Arianna. “When you were his age, would you have listened to your elders?”

  The surgeon frowned, and then crooked a grudging smile. “No, I would have told them to go to hell.”

  “There, you see.” She set down her glass. “But before we go on about Rochemont’s past, I think you had better hear what I have to say about tonight.”

  Her husband looked at Henning and then gave a gruff nod.

  Arianna quickly detailed what she had seen in the kitchen.

  “His hands were burned?” said Saybrook.

  “Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “Which has to mean he killed Kydd. Any other explanation seems absurd.”

  “But why?” mused Saybrook.

  “He must have suspected that Kydd was having second thoughts. And perhaps he feared that things were getting too cozy with me,” she said.

  Her husband took his time in answering. “Perhaps. And yet, an assassin, be it Rochemont or one of his cohorts, could not have known that you and Kydd would be walking that way.”

  “A good point,” said Henning.

  Arianna thought back over her encounter with the young Scotsman. “Kydd was quick to suggest we walk that way,” she said carefully. “He hinted that he had an important meeting. He was nervous and on edge, so I would guess that he had a rendezvous planned with his killer for later in the evening.”

  “Pure speculation,” the earl pointed out.r />
  “As is your guess that someone lobbed a bomb at us with the intention of murdering both of us.”

  “The evidence of a lethal metallic sphere—what we in the military called a grenade—is inarguable,” said Saybrook. “How it came to explode by Kydd’s head is, I grant you, not something we know for sure.”

  “There are too damn many unknowns in this bloody case,” muttered Henning. “One would almost think Grentham manipulated you into taking this assignment because he was sure you would fail.”

  Arianna swallowed hard, the lingering sweetness of the wine turning sour on her tongue.

  “Another speculation,” said Saybrook curtly. “We could sit here and spin conjectures all night. What facts are we missing?”

  Her head jerked up. “I—I was just getting to that. After Rochemont went out, I decided to have a look around his quarters. Hidden inside his jewel case was a coded letter.”

  A sound—a snarl?—vibrated deep in Saybrook’s throat.

  “For God’s sake, give me a little credit for clandestine conniving,” she snapped, feeling a little defensive. “I was exceedingly careful about leaving no trace that it had been tampered with. I made a copy and put the original back exactly as I found it.”

  He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “Then how did you come to be chased within an inch of your life by the comte and his hellhounds?”

  “As it happens, I heard him returning and knew I didn’t have time to put his desk back in order and escape. So I threw some things around, including the jewel case, and pocketed the baubles to make it look like a robbery.”

  Without further comment, Saybrook extracted the paper from his pocket. Slowly, precisely, he unfolded the creases and began studying the contents.

  “Bravo, lassie,” said Henning. “Perhaps your clue will help us figure out what Rochemont and that bastard Talleyrand are up to. I don’t know what new mayhem the two of them are planning together. But mark my words, I think we’ll find that Talleyrand is at the heart of all this. He just has to be.”

  The earl kept on reading.

  Arianna bit her lip, uncertain whether to feel angry or guilty. Had she been stubbornly reckless simply to prove her independence?

  Tearing her gaze from his profile, she forced a careless shrug. “One other thing. It may mean nothing, but one of the kitchen maids mentioned that Talleyrand is expecting a special guest for next week’s gala Carrousel, and apparently it’s a matter of great secrecy. According to her, the person is a general, however she didn’t remember his name . . .” Her brows pinched together. “Save for the fact that it has something to do with water.”

  “A general,” repeated Henning. “That’s hardly a notable personage these days. After a decade of constant wars, they are as common as cow dung.”

  “Water,” she mused, then repeated the word in several different languages. “Anything strike a bell?”

  Henning shook his head.

  Preoccupied with the coded letter, Saybrook didn’t answer.

  “Sea . . . Spring . . . Creek.” Each elicited a negative response from the surgeon, so she abandoned the effort. “Perhaps something will come to us later. In any case, it’s likely not important.”

  At that, Saybrook grunted, showing that he had been listening, if only with half an ear. “We’ve enough word games to occupy our attention.” He rose and went to the desk to fetch his notebooks, which contained the other coded document. “It’s been a long day. Why don’t the two of you get some rest.”

  “What about you?” asked Arianna.

  Saybrook picked up a pencil. “I want to work for a while longer. Now that I have two samples, I might see something new.”

  “Can I help?”

  “I don’t know.” His temper sounded dangerously frayed.

  Arianna was about to retort when all of a sudden, she spotted the uncertainty in his eyes.

  He’s not angry at me—he is angry at himself.

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sandro,” she whispered as Henning bid them good night and headed off to the spare bedchamber on the floor above.

  “Ah, yes—it’s only a matter of life and death,” he replied, his voice sharp with sarcasm. Unknotting his cravat, he tugged it off and tossed it onto the sofa. “Sorry,” he muttered after expelling a low oath. “This whole damnable mission has me feeling as if I am dancing on a razor’s edge.”

  “While playing blind man’s bluff,” she added.

  A ghost of a smile flitted over his lips. “With two grenades in my outstretched hands, the fuses cut short to explode at any moment.”

  “Is that all?” She waggled a brow. “And here I thought you were trying to do something difficult.”

  He laughed.

  “Come, get some rest.”

  “I will.” His gaze had already slipped down to the papers. “I’ll just be a little while longer.”

  Arianna woke several hours later, her mind too restless to sleep any longer despite the bone deep fatigue of her body. A hazy gray glow had begun to lighten the horizon. Clouds hung low in the pewter skies, heavy with the promise of rain.

  Stifling a yawn, she pulled on her wrapper and padded out to the parlor.

  The candles had burned out and in the murky shadows, she saw that Saybrook had fallen asleep in his chair. Tiptoeing across the carpet, she stood over his chair and watched the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

  “Sandro.” The word was a whisper that barely stirred the air. She pressed a palm lightly to his unshaven cheek, feeling the rough stubbling of his skin, the faint thud of his heart. Shadows, dark as charcoal, hung in half moon smudges beneath his closed eyes, and the hollows in his cheeks made his face look even leaner.

  When Arianna had first met her husband, he had been thin as a cadaver and living on a diet of laudanum—a pernicious mix of liquid opium and precious little else. It was a wonder that he had survived the dangerous web of intrigue that had first drawn them together.

  Actually, it’s a wonder that either of us survived.

  Grentham . . .

  No, she would not think of Grentham. The tangle of deceptions and betrayals was twisted enough here in Vienna. If the threads, once unknotted, eventually led back to the inner sanctum of Whitehall, they would deal with that when the time came.

  Slipping the coded papers out from beneath Saybrook’s sleep-slack fingers, Arianna carried them over to the desk.

  “Patterns, patterns,” she murmured to herself, feeling a bittersweet smile tug at her lips on recalling her late father’s admonitions.

  See the patterns and you see the logic, poppet, he would always say. Then it’s simple to solve the problem.

  Oh, what a sad disappointment she must have been for him. Here he had passed on his gift for mathematics, only to have his own flesh and blood refuse to join him in a business partnership of manipulating numbers into profits.

  Resolutely setting aside such distracting thoughts, Arianna smoothed out the two coded sheets. The past could not be changed, but the future lay here under her gaze, waiting, waiting.

  Waiting for a look to unlock its secrets.

  She began counting the frequency of individual letters within the seemingly meaningless string of gibberish. As Saybrook had pointed out, having two examples should increase the chances of cracking the encryption.

  Her pencil point tapped against the blank sheet of foolscap she had set between the two coded messages. Tap. Tap. For the next hour she worked in methodical silence, save for an occasional tap, drawing up grids and testing her hunches.

  Damnation. Frowning in frustration, she sat back for a moment to rub at the crick in her neck. If only the letters were numbers, she thought. Equations seemed so much more straightforward.

  “Speak to me,” she crooned, hoping to coax some stirring of inspiration from her own muzzy brain.

  A tiny draft curled through the window casement and tugged at the corner of the paper she had found in the chocolate book. Arianna was abou
t to press it back in place when another gust lifted it higher and a ray of early morning light skimmed across the page.

  The wind blew again, and the paper fluttered anew, forming a soft, creamy curve that brought to mind the shape of a ship’s sail. A bizarre flight of fancy, stirred by fatigue ? Arianna wasn’t sure why the momentary image triggered a sudden thought.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Rochemont’s desk. The polished pear wood . . . the fancy pens . . . the crystal inkwell . . . the single leather-bound volume prominently positioned on the leather blotter.

  The Corsair. A wildly romantic poem by Lord Byron.

  She had thought it odd, for Rochemont didn’t seem the type of man who read poetry. And yet, the ribbon bookmark had been set at a certain page of Canto II, and a word in one of the stanzas had been underlined with several bold slashes.

  Demons.

  It had stuck in her mind because it had seemed such a strange choice to highlight.

  “Demons,” she murmured aloud.

  At the sound, a prickling of gooseflesh raced down her arms.

  No, the idea was absurd—a figment of an overwrought imagination.

  But as Arianna tried to dismiss it, a niggling little voice in her head reminded her that Sandro always stressed the importance of intuition. Trusting a hunch was key to solving conundrums.

  With rising excitement, she pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and quickly drew in a rough Vigenère Square. Using “Demons” as the key word, she worked through the conversions. It was a slow, tedious process, but when she was done, the result was no longer gibberish.

  After checking and rechecking, Arianna was sure she hadn’t made a mistake.

  Setting down her pencil, she hurried over to give his shoulder a shake.

  “Sandro, wake up! I have something to show you.”

  20

  From Lady Arianna’s Chocolate Notebooks