by Tracy Grant
Harry touched one of the carnelians. "I think your intruder is a woman named Maria Monreal. I know her. Or, at least I knew her. In the Peninsula. She's a Spanish noblewoman whose husband died fighting with the guerrilleros. At least that's the story she told when she offered her services to British intelligence."
"And you worked with her." Malcolm had worked with Harry in the Peninsula on more than one occasion, but there was much about his friend's work in military intelligence that he did not know.
"On a few missions. On one of which I gave her the bracelet. Presented it to her ostentatiously in a crowd in a tavern, as it happens. She was posing as my mistress and it needed to look believable."
That sounded more like Harry than the more conventional explanation when a man gave a woman a piece of jewelry. And yet—"Did you have any idea she was in London?" Malcolm asked.
Harry nodded. "She settled here after the war. I saw her once. When she needed assistance."
Which was more noteworthy, because since Harry had been back in London, he and Cordelia had been reconciled. "Do you think she'll tell you the truth about the Brook Street break-in?" Malcolm asked.
"I don't know. But I probably stand a better chance of getting the truth from her than you do. I'll just have to explain it to Cordy."
Malcolm studied his friend. Close as they were, neither pressed the other for confidences. Quite the reverse. Their friendship in some ways was built on their mutual understanding of the other's secrets. And yet they did confide in each other. More perhaps than in other friends. Despite the fact that he'd known Harry for much of the time Harry and Cordelia had been apart, Malcolm had never known Harry to so much as look at another woman.
Davenport's gaze was steady, though a touch of color stained his cheeks. "Not that I had as varied a career as Cordy in the years we were apart. But Maria was one of my few—transgressions, or whatever one chooses to call it."
Malcolm swallowed. Odd how one could know someone so well and yet still feel awkward round certain topics. "You know how fond I am of Cordy, but I imagine she'd be the first to agree that anything you did in the time the two of you were apart hardly counts as part of your marriage. Not the marriage you have now."
"Perhaps. Perhaps what I'm really afraid of is how little it may matter to her." Harry gave a twisted smile. "Always difficult to be rational about these things. Even when one prides oneself on one's rationality."
And always difficult to know how to talk about them, even to a friend with whom one shared so much. "I think you're wise to honest about it."
"Is that what you do with Suzanne?" Harry's color deepened. "Not that—"
"I have past indiscretions to confess to? True enough. None since my marriage."
"That," said Harry, "is blatantly obvious."
Malcolm cast a sidelong glance at his friend. "I don't know whether that's a compliment or an aspersion, Davenport."
"My dear fellow, what do you think?"
Malcolm grinned and felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders. "But that doesn't mean there aren't things I have to confess to Suzanne." Memories shot through his mind. The night he'd proposed on a balcony overlooking the River Tagus in Lisbon, what he'd told Suzanne, and what he hadn't. Staring at her in Vienna over the murdered body of Tatiana Kirsanova, knowing Suzanne believed Tatiana to be his mistress, unable to say Tania was in fact his sister. Handing papers over to Wellington that would expose a French spy ring, the guilt rank in his throat, a guilt he hadn't shared with her for over a year, though he hadn't yet known she was a French agent herself.
"And you're honest about it." Harry's tone made it not quite a question.
"Yes. Most of the time." Malcolm gave an abashed smile that he hoped covered the multitude of issues between him and Suzanne that he was keeping from Harry.
"Impossible to manage honesty all the time, isn't it?" Harry stared across his study at a pastel drawing Livia had done of her stuffed cat. "I suppose—I never thought to have what I have with Cordy. Sometimes I even forget how precariously balanced it is. But I never forget for long."
"And you fear this could upset that balance?"
Harry nodded.
"I can see that. Speaking as one who's all too aware of the fragility of any relationship. But surely it's better if she learns it from you."
"I think so." Harry drew a rough breath that trembled with the fragility of hope. "I hope so."
Cordelia looked up from the table in the nursery where she and Livia sat together over a slate and a book. Her husband stood in the doorway, watching them with that smile she sometimes saw in his eyes when he looked at her and the children but didn't realize they were watching. She looked up and smiled at him. An answering smile crossed his face. Along with a concern she hadn't noticed before.
"Malcolm was just here," he said. "I need to go out for a bit."
"Of course." Not surprising, given that they were in the midst of an investigation. But something in Harry's gaze made Cordelia kiss Livia's hair and say, "See how far you can read ahead, darling. I need to talk to Daddy for a minute." She glanced towards the hearthrug, where Drusilla sat playing with blocks, then moved to the doorway and took her husband's hand. "Is everything all right?"
Harry cast a glance at their daughters, then drew her into the passage. "Someone broke into the Craven house in Brook Street last night. David and Simon and the children are fine," he added quickly, in response to the concern that must have showed in her eyes. "Malcolm and Suzanne went there last night. They found a bracelet the intruder apparently dropped. It seems to belong to a woman I knew in the Peninsula. Maria Monreal. She worked as an agent for the British and then settled in London."
"My God." Cordelia leaned against the doorjamb and looked up at her husband. "It seems we can't turn round without fairly tripping over someone one of us knew. Though given the number of former agents who've sought refuge in England, I suppose it isn't as surprising as it seems at first blush."
"Perhaps not." Harry's gaze was fixed closely on a patch of light from the nursery windows spilling onto the passage carpet, as though it presented an unusual conundrum. "So I've told Malcolm I'll talk to her. She may speak more freely to me."
"That makes sense." Cordelia glanced into the nursery at a cry from Drusilla, ascertained that it was a crow of delight, and looked back at Harry. "I know you've been itching to get involved."
"Perhaps. And yes, it does make sense." Harry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "But it does rather put us in the position we were in in Paris when the investigation involved Edmond Talleyrand and Gui."
It was a moment before she understood. Her hands closed on the doorjamb, so hard a splinter went into her palm. Damn. She'd always known Harry hadn't been celibate in the time they'd been apart. Once or twice he'd come out and admitted it. But she'd never had a name. Let alone the name of someone he knew well enough to have a relationship he could put to use in the course of an investigation.
Which, of course, was no more than she'd done with Edmond Talleyrand and Gui Laclos. She'd even admitted to caring for Gui. She should be relieved Harry had found consolation. It should help balance the scales a bit. She had no right to be jealous. Which made it all the worse that she was.
She met Harry's gaze with a determined smile. "I don't see why that should be a problem. It's long past my turn to be forbearing."
Harry watched her for a moment with the gaze she couldn't read easily but which always seemed to see so much. "Speaking from personal experience, knowing one should understand isn't the same as understanding."
"So you're saying it was more difficult for you when I had to talk to Edmond and Gui than you admitted at the time?" she asked.
Harry leaned against the doorjamb opposite her. "No comment."
The light in the passage was shadowy, but it caught other scars in his gaze. Old wounds, wounds she had perhaps reopened without thinking in the course of their investigations in Paris and London. "I wouldn't have talked to t
hem if you'd told me it disturbed you in the least."
"Which is precisely why I didn't say anything."
"Well, then." What they had almost lost, what they had and how precious it was, hung between them. "You can't think I won't rise to the challenge." She glanced into the nursery again. Livia's head was bent over her book. Drusilla was on her stomach, lining the smaller of her dolls up in front of her block tower. Cordelia turned back to Harry, angling herself to pitch her voice away from the nursery. "Tell me about her. Not those details, but—You know what I mean. I'd rather understand."
"I met her on a mission," Harry said. "Well, pretty much everything I did in the Peninsula involved a mission one way or another. Liaising with a group of guerrilleros in this case. They were delayed and Maria and I were stuck together in a Spanish village for a fortnight."
"Boredom." Cordelia managed a smile. "Odd how it can be an aphrodisiac."
"I suppose so, in a way. It wasn't—It was a diversion." Harry dragged the toe of one of his boots over the carpet. "But I suppose you could say we were friends, after a fashion." He looked up at her with a crooked smile. "At the time, it never occurred to me that it would ever bother you."
She bit her lip. For some reason that cut through her even more. "I think it would have, even then. Though I wouldn't have admitted it." What had she been doing when Harry formed a liaison with this woman? Playing cards at a house party, sipping champagne by the Thames, waltzing in the heat of an overcrowded ballroom? Whose bed had she been sharing? "Did you see her again after that?"
"Once or twice on missions."
Cordelia's throat tightened. He didn't say whether or not he'd slept with her again, but in a sense it didn't matter. In the years since she and Harry had reconciled and she had met the Rannochs, Cordelia had seen just how much agents could share on missions, and how strong were the bonds that could form. Those bonds in some ways seemed more of a threat than physical intimacy. She knew full well how cheap one could hold that. "And in London?"
"In public a few times. Once when she needed my assistance." He hesitated. "I'd have told you, but—"
"You were helping a fellow agent. Telling me could have jeopardized the mission."
"Cordelia—" Harry put out a hand in the shadows, then let it fall to his side. "You told me in Brussels that you wouldn't share anyone else's bed in the future. It occurs to me that I didn't say the same. But—"
"You didn't need to make promises, Harry." Her throat had gone thick. "I know you. Once our vows were real again you wouldn't betray them."
He gave a twisted smile. "You sound very certain."
"I am." Probably a deal more certain than he was about her, she realized. With good cause.
Harry's gaze lingered on her face. His eyes were dark, yet strangely open. "Even in the Peninsula. It couldn't ever have become more than a diversion."
"You were in the middle of a war."
"I was still besotted with my wife."
For the first time, Cordelia wondered about the life Harry might have had if they hadn't met, if she hadn't danced with him that night at Devonshire House, if he hadn't tumbled so desperately and inexplicably into love with her, if she hadn't accepted his proposal. Who might he have met and loved if he hadn't been wasting his heart on a woman who didn't deserve him? "You wasted a lot of time on me."
His smile deepened. "I wouldn't say it was wasted."
"No?"
"You're here with me now."
Cordelia went to her husband's side and put her arms round him, feeling the warmth of his skin through the layers of shirt and waistcoat and coat. "I don't deserve you, Harry." She pressed her lips to his jaw. "Perhaps that makes me anxious more than anything."
He pulled her out of view of the nursery and kissed her with unexpected fierceness. "My dear girl. If you think you have anything to fear, you don't know me at all."
Cordelia returned his embrace. And yet this Maria Monreal meant enough to Harry for him to call her a friend. Harry had few friends, and he didn't take any of them lightly.
Malcolm pushed shut the door of Fitzroy's study. "Did Wellington have you investigating Whateley & Company?"
Fitzroy pushed himself to his feet. "Malcolm, I told you—"
"That was before I knew Carfax is running Whateley & Company as his own private service to smuggle information."
The start of surprise in Fitzroy's gaze seemed genuine. But while his friend wasn't an agent, he was experienced enough to know something of deception.
"Let me tell you what I think happened," Malcolm said. "You can nod or let me try to read it in your face. Wellington got wind of what Carfax was doing. Perhaps of a specific mission he disagreed with. Carfax has been known to make some unsavory alliances. He asked you to investigate. Somehow you or Wellington learned enough to determine there were likely papers in the warehouse you wanted to get a look at. You needed someone to break in. Someone who couldn't easily be traced back to you. Someone who wouldn't ask questions, as Davenport or I would have done. So you went to your friend, Ennis, who engaged his friend, Coventry. You didn't realize someone else was after the papers or that Coventry might end up dead—"
"Malcolm, no." Fitzroy's voice cut across the room with sudden force.
"No, what?" Malcolm asked.
Fitzroy scraped a hand through his hair. "I suppose I should be relieved even you can be wrong. But I can't bear to see you putting together false theories. Especially involving the duke." He regarded Malcolm for a moment. "Is that why you said all that? To get me to talk?"
"No." Malcolm leaned against the table, hands braced behind him. "I really thought I was on the right track. But I'm glad my theory was at least good for something. Go on."
Fitzroy drew a rough breath and took a turn about the room. "You know—You know, Malcolm, how much I trust you. I've trusted you with my life. I'd willingly do so again. I'd trust you with Harriet and our children without a second thought. No man more so. But there's such a thing as a confidence. When a friend, someone one trusts, asks one to do a thing and keep it in confidence, one doesn't ask questions. And one respects the confidence."
Malcolm met his friend's gaze. Unusual to see such torment on Fitzroy's usually equable face. "Someone asked you to find someone to break into Whateley & Company and asked you to keep it in confidence?"
Fitzroy drew a breath. "If that were the case, I could hardly tell you without breaking the confidence."
"Who?"
"And I certainly couldn't answer that."
"Fitzroy, a man is dead."
"And nothing I tell you can change that." Fitzroy's sunny face could take on an unusually stubborn set.
"And someone broke into the Craven house in Brook Street last night. The intruder got out the window, but only after Simon tackled them only feet away from the nursery."
"Good God." The shock in Fitzroy's gaze again appeared genuine. "Are David and Simon and the children all right?"
"Yes, though they had a scare." Malcolm fixed his friend with a hard stare. "Ennis came to see you yesterday. It wasn't to orchestrate this?"
"Malcolm"—Fitzroy's voice shook with what seemed like outrage—"do you really think I'd have anything to do with breaking into the home of a friend? Where children were sleeping? Who have already been through far too much?"
Malcolm continued to hold Fitzroy's gaze for a long moment. One could never be certain of anything. But he was strongly inclined to believe Fitzroy was telling the truth in this at least.
Which only made the situation more complicated.
Chapter 20
Cordelia and her daughters were waiting in Berkeley Square when Suzanne, Laura, and Raoul returned with the children. That wasn't surprising. Livia did lessons with Colin and Emily most afternoons. But the concern Suzanne caught at the back of her friend's gaze was another matter. She waited until Laura had taken the three older children up to the nursery, and Raoul had left to "call on friends" (or, in other words, to make inquiries about the Phoenix p
lot). At last, when she and Cordelia were settled in the small salon with a tea tray and Jessica and Drusilla playing on the carpet at their feet, Suzanne said, "Cordy? Is something wrong?"
"No. That is—" Cordelia set down her teacup and drew a breath. "Harry recognized the bracelet dropped by the woman who broke into the Brook Street house last night. He's questioning her. She's someone he worked with in the Peninsula."
"Thank goodness, we weren't sure we'd—" Suzanne stared at her friend, taking in the taut confusion in Cordelia's gaze. "Oh, dearest. I'm sorry. It can't be easy."
"I'm being silly." Cordelia cast a quick glance at Drusilla and Jessica, pulling a collection of dolls out of a wicker basket, then looked back at Suzanne. "I knew he wouldn't have been celibate the entire time we were apart. He admitted as much to me. I confess I felt a small twinge, but I told myself I had no right to feel it and didn't let myself dwell on the possibilities. Well, not much at any rate." She took another sip of tea. "It's different somehow. Having a name. Not to mention knowing he's talking to her." She stared into her cup.
Not for the first time, Suzanne wondered about Malcolm's past. Except for Tatiana Kirsanova, who had proved to be his sister, and a few eligible debutantes she knew had aspired to marry him, she'd never heard rumors about him and another woman. But he'd been five-and-twenty when they met and far from inexperienced. He was no rake. Which meant any past relationships were likely to have been longer term. She couldn't imagine Malcolm making love to a woman without being emotionally invested. Which in itself was unsettling.
She couldn't ask Malcolm, of course. Especially not now, when she had burdened him with so much else. When he was so scrupulously careful to leave her own past in the past.
"Cordy," she said, "Harry wouldn't—"
"No, of course not." Cordelia gave a quick smile, a bit too bright. "That is, I very much doubt it, and if I have any qualms it's no more than I deserve. Harry as much as said he never really forgot me. But it can't help but remind me that Harry might have had an entirely different life if he hadn't wasted time on me."
