London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  Malcolm twined one of her side curls round his finger. "Someone you knew?"

  "No, but he'd been wounded on the way to meet Bertrand in Calais. I helped with bandaging."

  Malcolm nodded. He now knew the location of a number of former Bonapartist agents who were settled in London. In fact, he had helped her settle several of them. He accepted helping them and keeping their secrets without question. A sign of how far he had come since their marriage. Of how far they had come. Mostly she thought it was a good thing. But every so often she felt a faint twinge. Was she encouraging him to compromise so much that one day he would look back and hate where he had ended up? Hate the wife who had helped him get there?

  "My evening was interrupted by a summons as well," Malcolm said. He drew her over to the green velvet chair and sank into it, holding her against him as he proceeded to recount the message he'd received from Jeremy Roth and finding Teddy Craven at the Whateley & Company warehouse.

  "That's why you were sitting with the children," Suzanne said, lifting her head from her husband's shoulder to look into his eyes.

  Malcolm nodded. "One tries so damnably hard to protect them. Sometimes I look round and the world seems full of traps. Growing up is challenging enough for children who are protected and nurtured. For those with added challenges—"

  "We both faced a lot of challenges, and we managed to muddle through more or less," Suzanne said.

  He slid his fingers into her hair. "You're a marvel, my darling. What you went through—"

  "But I had more love and security in my early years than you did. More perhaps than Teddy Craven did. I don't think Louisa and Craven were the warmest of parents."

  "No." His fingers stilled in her hair. "Simon and David can do a great deal for the Craven children." A smile curved his mouth. "I never thought to see Simon an expert on putting a two-year-old down. Apparently he's the only one who can get young Jamie to sleep."

  "I'm not surprised," Suzanne said. "I remember how easily he held Colin when we first met him."

  "Yes, but it's a bit more challenging when one can't hand the child back."

  "Is he still going back to the Albany every night?"

  Malcolm nodded. "I saw him leave. David was franker than I've ever heard him about the challenges of a relationship that has to remain secret. About his parents' veiled disapproval. And the people who think worse." His brows drew together. "I don't think I properly appreciate how it is for them."

  "We've talked about the pressure on David to marry." Suzanne was confident David could withstand that pressure, but Malcolm, she knew, had doubts at times. He was less of a romantic, he said, though Suzanne vehemently denied she was a romantic. Perhaps it was that Malcolm was more clear eyed about just how strong the pressures of being born an aristocrat could be.

  "Yes, I worry about what that could do to David. But they're so comfortable with each other and we—not just the two of us, but Bel and Oliver, Harry and Cordy, Rupert and Bertrand, Crispin and Manon—are so used to seeing them as a couple that I think I forget sometimes that to the rest of the world they can't be." She felt his fingers tighten. "David reminded me that it's a hanging offense. According to laws imposed by the Parliament I'm a part of."

  "Not laws you had anything to do with passing."

  "Still."

  "You could introduce a bill to repeal them. It won't get anywhere, at least not now. But then neither will your capital punishment bill. And it would lay groundwork. Jeremy Bentham argued for repeal of the anti-buggery laws thirty years ago. And others have more recently. Juliette Dubretton—"

  "Not to mention my wife."

  "That provoked more comments than some of my articles," Suzanne said. "But a parliamentary bill would cause more talk. You'd have to consider the position you'd be putting David in though."

  "You mean because there'd be talk if he supported it? There'd be talk about me as well. There already is. Has been since David and I were boys, though it took us both a while to understand it."

  Suzanne pressed a kiss against Malcolm's throat. "Yes, dearest, but you aren't at risk of getting caught. At least not unless there's a great deal going on in your life that I'm not aware of."

  "Given my difficulties sharing myself with you, I really can't imagine doing so with another person, sweetheart. Of either gender." He turned his head and kissed her temple. "David would brave the talk. He has the courage of a soldier. But I think what's even worse for David is that the world expects him to marry and produce an heir. Which would be solved if we simply got rid of inherited privilege, as my wife advocates."

  "You advocate it too. In writing. Very cogently."

  "And yet I've benefited. Though the man from whom I inherited all this"—he glanced round their room, where so many intimate moments in their life had taken place, in this exquisite house they had inherited from Alistair Rannoch—"has no biological connection to me. What a world we live in." He laced his fingers through her own. "A bill is a good idea. But it won't begin to do enough." His gaze darkened. "I knew I couldn't leave the intelligence game, not completely. And I had no illusions I'd be able to get very much done in Parliament. But I thought at least I'd be my own man."

  Suzanne lifted her head to look at her husband, so stubbornly idealistic for all he'd deny it. "And you are, darling."

  "To a degree. Better than in the diplomatic service, where I had to argue for policies that half the time I didn't believe in. But I'm still arguing within the terms of a debate set by someone else. And the damnable thing is sometimes I get so caught up in the debate I don't see the parameters enclosing it."

  "Sometimes—" She drew a breath. There were still things she tried not to burden him with.

  "That's how you feel as a Republican living as the wife of a duke's grandson?"

  "Sometimes."

  He tightened his arm round her. "Sometimes I think Davenport has the right idea, living a life of scholarship."

  "I think Harry would go mad if he couldn't help with our investigations."

  "There is that. It's just hard not to feel tainted by the game. All the games." Malcolm stared down at his arm, curved round her own. "I've never heard David talk with such anger as tonight. In truth, we've scarcely talked at all about—about how it is for him." He was silent for a moment, one of those shifts when he talked of something he'd hitherto held close. "I remember one night the summer before we went up to Oxford. We'd gone to the theatre—As You Like It. And I glanced over and saw David watching the actor who played Orlando. Just watching him. But something about the look in his gaze—I'd realized years before, sitting in a maths class, watching David have that same look in his eyes as he glanced at another boy. But this time David turned his head as though he realized I was watching him. I think he was embarrassed at first. But then he seemed to understand that I understood. And that was that."

  "You never talked about it?" Suzanne asked.

  "Not in so many words. When he met Simon. Well, first I pretended I was deaf and blind and tried to give them as much time together as possible. But I remember telling David a few months later when it was pretty clear which quarter the wind sat in—not that it hadn't been clear from the night they met—that I was happy for him. That he had something I never thought to have. David started to protest and then said 'Thank you.' He complains sometimes about the pressure on him to marry, but even that he tends to avoid. I never heard him rail at a world that's so savagely, insanely set against him. Even tonight he was telling me how much there is to honor in Britain. Christ."

  "Given everything he sacrifices for Britain, he probably has to believe that or he'd go mad."

  Malcolm looked at her for a moment. "Insightful as always, Suzette. Perhaps that's it."

  "Simon talks a bit more."

  "To you in particular."

  "The outsiders banding together. But even Simon doesn't complain. Nothing like as much as he has cause to."

  Malcolm frowned at a patch of shadow on the carpet. "I wish I could hav
e found the right words to say to David tonight."

  "It's not as though you can fix it, Malcolm."

  "No, but—" He shook his head. "I couldn't of course tell him that I have a whole new appreciation for the challenges he and Simon face keeping their relationship secret now I know my wife's story."

  Not for the first time, Suzanne wished Malcolm could talk to David about her and the challenges of their marriage. It would be desperately good for him to have a confidant. But she knew he feared David's reaction to the truth more than that of any of their other friends. David, Malcolm said, was an Englishman to the core, with very precise ideas about what that meant. She drew a breath. "David—"

  "Believes there's much to honor in England. The country with laws on its books that would hang him and Simon. The country—"

  "I betrayed."

  "You aren't an Englishwoman. But I wouldn't be surprised if David thought I'd betrayed it now if he knew the extent of my actions."

  Her qualms of earlier in the evening came flooding back. "Malcolm—"

  "I'm not saying I regret anything, Mel. Quite the reverse in fact. You've opened my eyes to things I should have seen earlier. David and I have always seen the world in different ways."

  "The last thing I ever wanted was to come between the two of you."

  His arm tightened round her. "You haven't, beloved."

  "What did you learn about the dead man in the warehouse?" she asked.

  "He appeared to have broken in to steal something. There was a hidden compartment in the wall that had been pried open near where he was lying."

  "Empty?"

  Malcolm nodded. "It looks as though he had a confederate who turned on him and took what they had come to steal, or a second person broke in in search of the same thing."

  "Something of Craven's?"

  "There's no way to tell at this point."

  "Jeremy wants you to assist him with the investigation?"

  Malcolm nodded with the abashed look of one who didn't quite want to admit he was pleased. "Someone will have to talk to Carfax, given that Craven was his son-in-law, not to mention one of his agents. It's only sensible for me to do that. And I can probably help with Eustace and Cecilia Whateley." He twisted his head round to meet her gaze. "That is, we can, if you're willing."

  Suzanne felt a genuine smile break across her face. "Unlike you, dearest, I'm not going to even pretend I'm not pleased to have another investigation."

  Paradoxically, some of their most intimate moments had come in the course of investigations. And, a small voice said inside her head, hopefully this investigation would distract Malcolm while she looked into the rumors about the Phoenix plot.

  Malcolm smiled. "I own there's something appealing about a puzzle. Though I could wish it didn't involve Carfax, however tangentially."

  "Carfax is in the middle of too many things for that."

  Malcolm gave a wry smile and pulled her in for another kiss. "I told Roth I'd call on Eustace Whateley tomorrow. He was at Harrow a couple of years before David and me so I can use the old school tie."

  Suzanne drew back to look at her husband. "Was everyone even remotely on the fringes of the beau monde at school with you, darling?"

  Malcolm gave an abashed grin. "Most boys whose parents want them to grow up to be gentlemen go to Harrow or Eton or Winchester. So if they're remotely close to my age there's a one in three chance. Whateley's father was a banker who wanted his son to move up in the world, know the right people, speak with the right accent. Looking back, I'm afraid he suffered more ribbing from the other boys than I appreciated at the time."

  No wonder thinking among their set could be so uniform. "I don't want Colin to go away to school, Malcolm."

  He kissed her forehead. "I know. I shocked David today by telling him as much. One of the ways he and I see the world somewhat differently."

  "I imagine Simon was all for it."

  "Mmm. Though careful to acknowledge the decision is David's."

  She put her hands against his chest. "I suppose I'm afraid—"

  "That I'll change my mind?"

  Memories shot through her mind. Malcolm and David laughing over a school memory with a schoolmate. The almost palpable connection one could feel in the air when one learned two men had attended the same school. The unthinking way Malcolm would refer to someone as a Harrovian. "It's a tradition."

  "You keep expecting me to revert to type."

  "And you keep confounding my expectations. I'm sorry, darling. But—"

  "Once a revolutionary, always a revolutionary?"

  "A palpable hit. So I'm the one who's reverting to type?"

  "We're all perhaps partly a prisoner of our world. Though you have more flexibility than most. Look at how well you tolerate the world you married into because you were trying to change it."

  She choked. "Talk about flexible thinking, dearest. But you can't deny it's part of who you are. I wouldn't want it not to be. It's part of the man I love."

  "Fair enough. I won't deny it. But I won't send Colin away to school. Even if you decide you want him to go."

  "I wouldn't—"

  He kissed her nose. "My point precisely, beloved."

  Suzanne laughed and reached up to wrap her arms round his neck. "Fair enough. Unless his thinking is as flexible as yours, Eustace Whateley isn't likely to talk more freely if I go with you." She frowned, staring at her husband's cravat. "Darling. I never told you, because I was trying to keep her out of it as much as possible. Last April when Bertrand and Raoul brought Lisette to us and Lisette lost the letter in the garden. It was Cecilia Whateley who accidentally picked it up." The letter Lisette Varon had been transporting had been from Hortense Bonaparte, Josephine's daughter, to her former lover, the Comte de Flahaut. They had all had some anxious moments when it was missing.

  Malcolm's brows rose. "Interesting."

  "Apparently Cecilia was in the garden to speak with a man she'd loved before her marriage. Just to talk, she told me. I don't think she even looked at the letter. At least that's what she said, and I've been telling myself it must be true. I don't know if it makes her more or less likely to confide in me now."

  "Difficult to tell," Malcolm said. "Though it means you're already beyond social formalities."

  "There is that. But it also may mean she's wary of me. I'll see if Cordy has any connections to Cecilia. Despite the lack of girls' schools, Cordy's connected to nearly as many people in the beau monde as you. It's almost as if the two of you spent your lives preparing to run investigations into their numbers."

  Malcolm grinned. "One has to put the social tedium to use somehow."

  Chapter 5

  Suzanne again stepped out of her barouche before Marthe's establishment, this time in the fitful morning sunlight. She had breakfasted with Malcolm, Laura, and the children, and seen Malcolm off to call on Lord Carfax, but it was still early for a lady to be calling on her dressmaker. Early but not impossibly so, should anyone notice her barouche and wonder at her presence. She put a hand to her lips, tasting the tang of Malcolm's goodbye kiss in the entrance hall. He hadn't blinked when she'd told him she was going to call at Marthe's to see how the man Bertrand had smuggled into London the previous night got on. It was what she'd have done in any case, without any worry about Phoenix plots and Napoleon Bonaparte. Even her sharp-eyed maid and companion Blanca hadn't seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. She had to remember not to overthink things.

  She smiled at Randall, their coachman, as he handed her from the carriage. This time she went through the main door of the shop for the benefit of anyone watching. Marthe's assistant was behind the counter, but it was Charlotte, Marthe's elder daughter, now ten, who came forwards to greet Suzanne. "Madame Rannoch. Maman said I was to bring you back for your fitting as soon as you arrived."

  "Thank you, Charlotte." Suzanne smiled at the girl. Charlotte's gaze held both seriousness at the gravity of the situation and a sparkle of excitement. Were all spies' child
ren destined to be drawn to the intelligence game?

  Charlotte led Suzanne into the back room where her seven-year-old sister Sophie was winding lengths of ribbon. But instead of taking Suzanne to a fitting room, Charlotte opened a door that lead up to the family quarters above. Suzanne gave the girl a quick hug and climbed the stairs to Marthe's sitting room. She found Bertrand there with Marthe, which was not surprising. More startling were the looks of concern on both their faces.

  "What is it?" Suzanne asked, closing the door behind her. "Has he taken a turn for the worse—?"

  Bertrand and Marthe both turned towards her. "He's gone," Marthe said.

  "Gone?" Suzanne saw Louis Germont's feverish face against the white linen of the pillowcase. "But—"

  "I checked on him twice in the night," Marthe said. "He seemed to sleep, though his skin was hot to the touch. I gave him the comfrey you left, and he seemed easier. Then I slept for about three hours. When I went in this morning, his bedchamber was empty, and the few things he brought with him were gone."

  "He appears to have gone out the window," Bertrand said. "I found some fragments of thread that look to have come from his trousers. And, as Marthe said, he packed his things. So he didn't simply stumble out in fevered delirium."

  "How much do you know about him?" Suzanne asked Bertrand.

  "Not much, as I told you last night. He approached me through an old friend who is still employed in the foreign ministry. Germont really does appear to have been a clerk in the foreign ministry." Bertrand leaned forwards, brows drawn together. "Is there any chance he could have been faking his injuries?"

  "The wound was real enough. And if there's a way to counterfeit a fever, I have yet to learn of it. It would be very handy on occasion. But it's amazing what one can force oneself to do if the need seems pressing enough." She'd once broken into an English general's billet, stolen a coded dispatch, climbed a tree to elude pursuit, and decoded the document all the while vaguely aware of her fever spiking. She'd seen Raoul direct an entire skirmish after taking a bullet to his side, only to collapse from loss of blood when the fight was won.