London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  Suzanne felt the stillness that ran through Malcolm, though his face betrayed nothing. "What makes you think that?"

  Sue tugged at her shawl and gave a faint smile. "I've dealt with a fair number of soldiers, one way and another. During the war they were the ones most likely to have blunt. There's a certain way of carrying their shoulders, a certain swagger. You get used to spotting which are the best prospects. I'd swear this one was an officer. Or had been."

  "Do you think he was someone Ben had known in the Peninsula?" Malcolm asked.

  "Not sure. Like I said, Ben didn't talk much about the war. But they seemed on good terms. More familiar than you'd expect a gentleman to be with a man like Ben if they didn't know each other."

  "When you heard them talking," Malcolm said. "Did you hear anything that could give a clue to who he is?"

  Sue frowned and slid the fingers of one hand into her hair, heedless of her curls. "I've been going over that, even before. Before we got the news about Ben. I think I heard Ben call him something that sounded like 'En' or 'Ens.' Sorry it's not more."

  "That could be very helpful." Malcolm's smile warmed with encouragement. "Did you happen to get a look at his face?"

  Two men at the next table were arguing over a girl. Sue leaned forwards across the table. Her frown deepened. "His hair had a reddish glint, I think, beneath the hat. Side-whiskers. A bit taller than Ben, but shorter than you, I think. Oh, and he walked with a limp."

  "You have a good memory," Malcolm said.

  Sue gave a lopsided smile. "Like I said, you get used to sizing a man up in my line of work. And remembering details so you know who to approach again, who to avoid." Her gaze flickered over Malcolm's face. "Do you think you can find this man?"

  "I still have a lot of friends who were in the army. Even some officers."

  "And then what?"

  "I'll try to get answers." Malcolm reached into his pocket and pulled out a red velvet purse, heavy with coins. He put it on the table.

  Sue's eyes widened. "I didn't ask for money."

  "No, but it's the least I can do for Ben's woman and child. Call it repaying a debt I owe him." One would swear from Malcolm's voice and posture that he was remembering a real friend to whom he owed his life. Being an actor and an agent were so intertwined.

  Sue reached for the purse "You have children of your own." Her gaze moved to Suzanne.

  "We're flush right now," Malcolm said with an easy smile. He reached across the table and touched Sue's hand. "We'll call again when we have news. If you remember anything else or need to reach me for any reason, you can send a message here." He pulled a card from his pocket, not one of his calling cards but a plain white paper with a coffeehouse address scribbled on it. "Can you read?"

  "A bit." Sue peered at the card and sounded out the words. "Enough for this."

  "Good." He squeezed her hand. "I won't fail you."

  Chapter 9

  "You could make anyone trust you, Malcolm," Suzanne told her husband. "Even in the guise of a ruffian."

  Malcolm gave her a sideways grin as they picked their way down the winding street outside the Gilded Lily. "There's honor among thieves. Trust is often the best way to get people to talk. That applies even when one is in disguise."

  "But not everyone can come across as quite so compellingly honest as you, dearest. Some things come from within."

  He tightened his grip on her arm and steered her past two men arguing loudly in front of a smoke-blackened building with broken windows. "I hate to think of her stuck there. With a child."

  "You can't save everyone, Malcolm."

  "No, but you can make a start. Or you risk losing your own humanity."

  "She's a survivor. But she won't find it easy to break free of that life. Not without help." Suzanne drew a breath. The pressure of unspoken words hurt her lungs, though she couldn't have said whether she wanted more to speak or to be silent. "The brothel in Léon was a bit like that. Only we all worked for the house, instead of renting rooms."

  "Sweetheart." She could feel his gaze upon her, though she didn't dare meet his eyes. "You don't have to tell me anything. You don't ever have to speak of it again as far as I'm concerned. But if you ever want to talk, I'll always listen."

  She jerked her head up at that and met the compelling honesty of his gaze. He was open to anything and somehow that cut her to the quick. "I don't know that I want to talk about it. But it's a part of who I am. We can't either of us deny it."

  "I know who you are," he said quietly.

  She turned away and fixed her gaze on the grimy cobblestones, the chipped gilt on a fading shop sign, the cracked glass of a broken street lamp. Anywhere but on the tenderness in his gaze, which threatened to bring tears to her eyes. For some reason, since Malcolm had learned the truth, she'd quite lost her ability to hold tears at bay. "The worst was being powerless. Even as a child I hated feeling powerless. Apparently the easiest way to cajole me out of a tantrum was to make me feel I had a say in what was happening."

  "Jessica takes after you."

  "Yes." She managed a smile, then forced her thoughts back into the most uncomfortable corners of her past. "Logically, there are things I've done as an agent that I should be more ashamed of. But I chose to do them. I may have mixed feelings about the choices, I may even regret some of them. But they were my choices."

  "It wasn't through any choice of your own that you were powerless. And it's a testament to your spirit that you survived. With your fighting instinct intact."

  "Some of the other women were kind. Tried to take me under their wing. I suppose you could even say some of the men were kind. Or at least there were a few who looked at me as a person. But mostly numbness was the best I could hope for."

  Memories clustered behind her eyes. She forced herself not to shy away because really what was the point? She was stronger than that. Cobweb-hung expanses of ceiling. Stale mattresses. Probing fingers. "Women like Sue deal with the same and more every day for years. I only had to endure less than a year."

  She could feel the tension running through Malcolm. She tightened her fingers round his arm. "Save your energies for people you can help in the present, darling."

  He again released her elbow and wrapped his arm round her, this time not at all in the service of their masquerade, she thought. She allowed herself the luxury of leaning in to him. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

  They turned a corner into a more brightly lit street. The cracked pavement before them was blocked by three men sprawled in front of a gin shop. A boy who looked not much older than Colin, clad in tattered breeches and what appeared to be his father's waistcoat, slipped from the gin shop, carefully holding a sauceboat full of gin, and picked his way round the sleeping men. Malcolm drew Suzanne into the street, just as the door of the gin shop jerked open and someone threw a young man with a well-cut coat and high shirt points into the street. "Damn it, I didn't know she was your girl," the young man yelled. He stumbled backwards over one of the sleeping men, who sat up with a curse. The boy jumped out of the way, managing not to tip the sauceboat of gin.

  The young man scrambled to his feet. Suzanne kept her gaze fixed straight ahead as they hurried past. She had no desire to find herself looking into the eyes of someone she knew.

  "Was that story you told about the ambush real?" she asked Malcolm when they had slipped back into the shadows.

  "Yes, actually. Safer to use real stories when one can. Save that it was Jeremy Roth who saved me, not Ben Coventry."

  "From a French ambush."

  "Surely this isn't the first time you've considered that your people tried to kill me, sweetheart."

  "No, but—"

  "Different when you know the specifics? People died on both sides."

  It was what she had told him. It was what she had to hold on to. "One more reason to be grateful to Jeremy Roth."

  "For what it's worth," Malcolm said, "I grow cold at the thought of how often my own people must have come
close to killing you."

  "But I wasn't—"

  "You were a spy. I was a spy."

  She drew a breath, gaze on the blue-black web of the cobblestones. Malcolm's matter-of-factness never failed to shake her to the core. "What do you think about the soldier Sue says she saw Ben Coventry with?" she asked.

  "It's plausible. I don't see any reason for her to have made it up. I'm not quite as confident as she is that she could recognize a former soldier, but as a former soldier himself, one can see Coventry being hired by a fellow military man. But as to what an officer or former officer wanted with the contents of Whateley & Company—"

  "I don't recognize the man she described." And in the Peninsula, Vienna, and Brussels, Suzanne had met more than her share of British officers. "Do you?"

  "Not off the top of my head. I'll talk to Harry."

  Harry Davenport, Cordelia's husband, had been in military intelligence until he sold out after Waterloo. "If I know Harry, much as he enjoys translations, he'll be delighted to dip his toe back into intrigue."

  Malcolm grinned. "We couldn't blame him without seeming hypocrites, could we?"

  "Not in the least. It's just nice to see you admit it, dearest."

  "I never claimed not to enjoy it, sweetheart. Perhaps to question my sanity for enjoying it, but that's another matter."

  "Oh, well. If we had any claims to sanity, I abandoned them long ago. And I think a sane husband would be deadly dull."

  They had left Seven Dials behind and were walking down Piccadilly, quieting down now that the post-theatre rush was over. The street lamps glowed with familiar warmth in the misty air. Suzanne lifted her face to the damp air. A burden she hadn't known she'd been carrying had lightened in her chest. She felt an absurd desire to laugh, despite the Phoenix plot and its attendant questions, despite her concerns about Simon and David. She was walking with the man she loved, their night's mission had succeeded, and the air was a little clearer between them. Sometimes one simply had to draw a breath and savor the moment.

  "What?" Malcolm asked.

  "Nothing. Merely that tonight went well. At least we've taken a step forwards."

  "All one can ask for."

  She pressed her cheek against his shoulder as they turned into Berkeley Street. Almost home. Jessica would want to nurse. But first she wanted to look in on Colin. Every mission, however seemingly routine, she had to start and end with seeing her children. And Emily. Having another child in the nursery meant—

  Something hard closed round her arm. The next thing she knew she was spun round and whirled to the side. The hard pressure at her temple was unmistakably a pistol.

  Chapter 10

  "Don't move, either of you," said a low voice. "Don't turn round, Mr. Rannoch, and your pretty wife won't be harmed. This is just a warning. To show what will happen if you don't drop your investigation."

  "Which?" Malcolm's voice would have sounded unconcerned to any ears but her own. "We have several."

  "Don't be clever, Mr. Rannoch. Leave the Whateley & Company break-in alone."

  "We weren't the ones tasked with investigating it," Suzanne said.

  "Tell your friend Roth it's nothing more than the petty robbery it appears. Should be child's play for people of your talents."

  Suzanne let out a groan and collapsed backwards in her captor's arms in a seeming faint. The man staggered under the force of her dead weight. The gun slipped away from her temple. She spun round in his now slack hold and kicked him in the groin.

  The low-voiced man yelped and fell to the cobblestones. Malcolm pounced on his chest. The man dealt Malcolm a blow to the side of the head with the butt of his pistol. Malcolm grabbed for the man's throat. Suzanne started forwards when someone else grabbed her from behind.

  She let out an involuntary cry. Malcolm glanced round. Only a split second, but it was enough. The first man pulled away from him and ran down the street. The second man flung Suzanne to the ground and ran after.

  Malcolm pulled her to her feet. "Are you all right?"

  "Only a bruised ego. Damnation—"

  "There were two of them. With a gun." He pulled her tight against him. "I never get tired of seeing you in action. But I thought we agreed we were going to remember we were parents before we did anything foolhardy."

  "That wasn't foolhardy. I calculated the odds carefully. I didn't break away until the pistol was away from my head."

  "It was carefully calculated in the way a desperate charge is. And bloody brilliant." He kissed her hair.

  "Malcolm." She drew back and looked up at her husband. "Someone threatened us at gunpoint over the break-in at Whateley & Company."

  "And presumably not Carfax, who's the most likely person connected to Whateley and Craven to be involved in intrigue."

  "So what the devil have we stumbled into?"

  "Precisely."

  "Darling." She looked at him in the light of a street lamp. "You wouldn't suggest we stop."

  "Of course not. The threats may just be bluster. But we have to take precautions."

  Laura stared across the day nursery at Suzanne and Malcolm. "Good God. I know there's always risk, but I wasn't expecting—"

  "Nor were we, obviously." Malcolm dropped down on the settee beside Suzanne, opposite the chair where Laura sat. His tone was easy, but he stretched his arm along the back of the settee, touching Suzanne's shoulder. He always turned protective in the wake of danger. "Especially once we got out of Seven Dials. I'm not quite sure what we're in the midst of, but it seems more complicated than we at first supposed."

  "Sometimes my life seems very tame," Laura said. "I've never had anyone hold a pistol to my head. Not literally."

  "I have." Suzanne tightened her arms round Jessica, who was industriously nursing, oblivious to the danger her parents had been in. Her failure bit her in the throat. "I should never have let him get the jump on me."

  Malcolm's fingers tightened round her shoulder. "You weren't expecting it. We neither of us were. I'm cursing myself for a fool, but there's no sense wasting time on regrets. We'll be prepared next time."

  "You think there will be a next time?" Laura asked.

  "I'm not sure." Malcolm tugged off his neckcloth and stared at the spotted fabric. "Always difficult to tell how much of these sorts of threats is bluster. But we should take precautions. Addison or Valentin or Michael can go along on any outings with the children."

  Many mothers would have panicked at the suggestion that their children needed guarding, but Laura was not most mothers. She gave a matter-of-fact nod. From her first days in their household, she'd grown accustomed to the fact that occasionally extra protection for the children was required.

  "I don't think we need fear anything tonight," Malcolm continued. "Even if they are in earnest, it's too early for them to realize we aren't heeding their warning. But I'm going to speak with Addison." He touched his fingers to Jessica's head and Suzanne's cheek and smiled at Laura before he left the room.

  "He's remarkably calm for a man whose wife was held at gunpoint," Laura said.

  "He's learned," Suzanne said, as Jessica squirmed round to nurse on the other side. "Five years ago he'd have been much more inclined to wrap me in cotton wool. He's realized I can take care of myself. Or that it's useless trying to keep me out of things. Or both."

  Laura hesitated a moment, fingering a fold of her dressing gown. "I don't suppose—"

  "That this has to do with why I needed to contact Raoul? No. At least, not as far as I know. It's a bit difficult to determine what precisely is going on. But the man who grabbed me quite definitely mentioned Whateley & Company."

  Laura nodded. "You don't live an easy life."

  Suzanne looked down at Jessica. She had lapsed into sleep, one arm still curved over her mother's breast. Something about the boneless weight of her body brought a lump to Suzanne's throat. So much trust in that utter relaxation. "Coming from you, that says a lot."

  Laura shrugged. "I risked exposure. But gov
ernesses lead a fairly sheltered life. So do British women in India though I had more freedom than most. Except for when I was in Newgate, the danger was more from what I feared might happen."

  "Nine-tenths of an agent's life is often numbingly dull. Even on the most dangerous assignments. It's the ability to get through those times without being tripped up by one's own boredom that makes a good agent." Suzanne stroked her daughter's hair, still feathery, though it was beginning to fill in. "Not that I was ever bored as Malcolm's wife. But there were days at a time when I forgot."

  "What your mission was?" Laura's gaze and tone, as always, held no judgment.

  "And what I was doing to them. Malcolm and my children."

  "Your children are fortunate to have you. So is your husband." Laura glanced at three dolls, grouped together round a small doll table. Emily liked to set up tea parties. "I'd forget too. For long stretches of time. I'd sink into being Colin and Jessica's governess. I'd find myself caring about you and Mr.—Malcolm. Then I'd get a message from Trenchard. And feel a chill of dread. Though, I suppose—"

  "It awakens one from the monotony?" Suzanne asked. "There's nothing quite like the rush of danger." She looked down at Jessica, her head fallen back against her mother's arm. "Being a mother doesn't change that. But it does make one more aware of the risks."

  Blanca Mendoza pushed shut the door of Suzanne and Malcolm's bedchamber and leaned against the panels. "Mr. Rannoch and Addison are talking about things like 'points of vulnerability.'"

  Suzanne looked up from Jessica, asleep in her arms, at the woman who was nominally her maid and companion and in point of fact her companion in deception from the moment they had stumbled out of the trees in the Cantabrian Mountains and met Malcolm Rannoch and Miles Addison, who had eventually become their husbands. "We need to take precautions. But I think the threats were more bluster."