London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "I doubt Harry considers it wasted."

  Cordelia set down her cup, hard enough to spatter tea in the saucer, and hugged her arms about herself. "Sometimes I wonder what Harry sees in me."

  "Cordy, you can't be serious."

  Drusilla and Jessica were tugging a doll between them. "Share," Cordelia said.

  Suzanne got up to put another doll in Jessica's hand. When she returned to the sofa, Cordelia had pulled the cherry-colored gauze of her scarf close about her. "When we first met, Harry was dazzled by me. I think he imagined me as all sorts of things I'm not and never will be. He understands me now. So much better than he did at first. But I still think he thinks I'm a better person than I am."

  It was so like the thoughts Suzanne sometimes had about Malcolm that the breath stopped in her throat. She realized she was clenching her pearl bracelet tight enough to snap it and forced herself to loose her fingers. "Perhaps you're the one who's too hard on yourself, Cordy."

  Cordelia shrugged.

  Drusilla pulled a white horse from the basket and held it out to Jessica. "I shared, Mummy."

  Cordelia smiled at her daughter. "Excellent, darling." She looked at Suzanne. "It's funny. We want our children to learn to share. But it's damnably hard to share's one's spouse."

  "There's sharing, and sharing," Suzanne said. "I don't think Harry would much welcome your wanting to share him. But—"

  "I should trust him?"

  "That, too. But when it comes to sharing, perhaps sharing your feelings with him wouldn't hurt."

  Cordelia regarded her for a moment. "Is that what you do with Malcolm?"

  Suzanne swallowed. Hard. "When I'm brave enough."

  Malcolm found Carfax in the Morning Room at White's talking to the Duke of Wellington. Probably coincidence that two men connected to the Whateley & Company investigation happened to be in conversation, but Malcolm was wary of coincidence. Though still British ambassador to France, Wellington was in London for the upcoming Waterloo anniversary. Last night at the Tavistock Wellington had been talking to Carfax as well, along with Lord Liverpoool, the prime minister. Of course, that might indicate the duke was considering a government position when he gave up the ambassadorship. A post in the government would mark him as a Tory, but given the views Malcolm had heard Wellington espouse, that should hardly come as a surprise.

  "Malcolm." Wellington greeted him with an easy smile that gave no hint that he knew anything of Malcolm's questions to Fitzroy. But while Wellington was blunt-spoken and impatient of pretense, Malcolm had also seen the duke be more than capable of deception when the situation required it. "I assume you're braving White's to meet with one of us. Carfax, at a guess? I heard a rumor you're in the midst of another investigation, though I couldn't quite make sense of what it's about."

  Malcolm met the duke's gaze. "I'm still endeavoring to do so myself, sir."

  Wellington gave a grunt of acknowledgement. "You'll work it out. Or Suzanne will. Caught a glimpse of her in the salon at the Tavistock last night. Along with the lovely Lady Tarrington. Glad she's going about. I remember her as a girl when I was in India, long before she married. Thought it a sad waste when I heard she'd married Jack Tarrington, truth to tell."

  "No argument from me there," Malcolm said.

  Wellington's eyes glinted in acknowledgement. "Cuthbertson looked quite taken with her last night."

  "I believe he also knew her in India."

  Wellington nodded again. "Good man, Cuthbertson. Solid." From the duke, that was high praise. He nodded to Carfax and moved off.

  Carfax regarded Malcolm. "I suppose you're here about the break-in in Brook Street."

  "Do you know everything that happens in London, sir?" Malcolm asked. Though in fact, his suspicions would have been roused if Carfax had claimed not to know.

  "No, but I make it my business to know when it's in the homes of my children."

  "You may not have trusted Craven with information, but someone thinks he possessed something worth recovering."

  "Don't think I haven't been pondering that."

  "Sir." Malcolm took a step forwards. "You have to stop pretending your business at Whateley & Company is unconnected to the break-in."

  "Craven wasn't actively involved in Whateley & Company and yet the thieves went to Brook Street rather than to Eustace Whateley's home when they didn't find what they wanted. For that matter, if they were after something connected to something I was involved in, you'd think they'd have ransacked Carfax House."

  "Even trained agents would hesitate to ransack Carfax House if they had a care for their lives." Yet Malcolm had to admit Carfax had a point. Still—Loyalties tugged in Malcolm's mind. Suzanne's words the night before echoed in his head. "Is there any chance Wellington was on to what you were doing with Whateley & Company?"

  Carfax's brows snapped together. "What do you know?"

  "Two can play at withholding information unless it's necessary, sir."

  "I have no reason to think the duke knows anything about Whateley & Company."

  "But if he did, he might not be happy about some of the uses you've put it to."

  "One can hardly call Wellington effusive, but he's always been grateful for the information I've acquired for him."

  "And he prefers not to ask questions about where the information comes from."

  "Most people prefer not to ask questions when it comes to intelligence. But Wellington isn't squeamish."

  Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. "Who were the guns that the thief saw at Whateley & Company intended for?"

  Carfax hesitated. "Rebels in Naples."

  "Why would you want to help rebels in Naples?"

  "Because they had information about the Elsinore League." Carfax adjusted his spectacles. "I wouldn't say that to many people. But you, of all people, should appreciate why such information would be valuable."

  It was a greater admission than Malcolm would have expected the earl to have made. And Carfax might well have made it precisely to disarm Malcolm.

  "Wellington doesn't, as far as I know, know a great deal about the Elsinore League," Carfax continued. "But if he did, I think he'd agree with me."

  That might well be true. And if Fitzroy was to be believed, he hadn't been acting for Wellington in any case. "It continues to look as though two people broke into Whateley & Company," Malcolm said. "The man Coventry and someone else who killed him. The intruder who broke into Brook Street appears to have been working for the second person as well."

  "I understand you found a bracelet the intruder dropped," Carfax said.

  Malcolm hesitated. But he wanted to see Carfax's response. "Harry thinks it belongs to a woman named Maria Monreal who was an agent in the Peninsula. Have you heard of her?"

  Carfax's brows rose. "Interesting." He pushed his spectacles up on his nose. "Yes. You could say she was one of my agents, though I only met her once or twice. She was very capable. I saw her a few times more after she settled in London. I assumed she was retired. But it's difficult to leave the game, as you know. I suppose it's not entirely surprising someone hired her."

  "You didn't hire her yourself?"

  "To search the house where my son and grandchildren live?"

  "They weren't hurt. If she'd succeeded, they might not even have known. And you might not have wanted to tell David about whatever it was you were after."

  "Possibly. Assuming I really was after something."

  Carfax sounded convincing. He might even have been telling the truth.

  Harry had called once before at the neat house in Half Moon Street that was now Maria Monreal's abode. She'd wanted to get a message to a former contact in Spain and Harry had helped trace him. A former lover, he'd assumed, though he hadn't asked, just as he hadn't asked how she paid for this elegant house, small but exquisitely proportioned. The sort of house in which well-to-do widows lived. Or in which gentlemen set up their mistresses. But of course he hadn't asked about that either. There were a lot of things
he'd never asked Maria. Even when they were at their most intimate, their relationship could hardly have been called—intimate.

  Harry rang the bell at the glossy green-painted door. A maid answered, a bright-eyed young woman with coppery curls and a Yorkshire accent. She hadn't been there the last time he'd seen Maria. He gave her his card, fully prepared to hear Maria was not at home, but a few moments later the maid returned to say her mistress would receive him.

  She conducted him up the stairs to a sunny parlor hung with pale green silk. Maria came forwards as the maid showed him in. He'd have known the sharp, proud bones of her face anywhere, yet in some ways she couldn't have looked more different. The hair that had been twisted into a loose knot or left tumbling over her shoulders in Spain was arranged in an intricate twist with ringlets spilling about her face, not natural curls but the sort it took Cordy or her maid a meticulous effort with the curling tongs to create. In the Peninsula she'd worn plain gowns of wool or cotton. Or sometimes breeches and a shirt. The few times he'd seen her in a more elaborate gown, it had usually been spattered with dust. Now she was in diaphanous muslin, embroidered and flounced and edged with pale green cording. Harry knew enough to recognize the elegant lines of a Parisian dressmaker.

  But then he probably looked different as well. Civilian clothes. More scars, though most of those were hidden.

  "It's good to see you," she said with a faint, familiar smile as the maid closed the door.

  "You as well," Harry said, and then wondered if he'd betrayed Cordy by uttering the very words.

  "I've wanted to talk to you many times," she said. "But it didn't precisely seem appropriate to call. I don't expect your wife knows about me." Her tone held just the faintest of questions.

  "She didn't," Harry said. "She does now."

  "I see." Those words too held a further question, and a sense that she wouldn't as yet push for more information. She dropped down on the sofa, one arm extended along its back, her flowered silk shawl trailing off her shoulder. "We didn't have much chance to talk the last time I saw you. I gather you've left the army?"

  "Not precisely a sacrifice."

  "And you're settled in London full time now?"

  Harry moved to the chair opposite her and dropped into it. To treat the interview as too formal seemed to dignify too much the idea that there was a need for formality. "With my wife and daughters."

  Her brows rose. "I forgot you had a second."

  "Almost two years ago now."

  Maria tilted her head back and regarded him for a long moment. He'd seen the same look in her eyes when she evaluated how to approach enemy terrain. "I remember you swearing you'd never so much as meet your wife again."

  Harry could hear his voice, could see himself, so determined, so absolute. So defiantly sure he saw the world for what it was. So alone. "A lot of things have changed."

  "You forgave her?" Maria's voice hovered somewhere between disbelief and scorn.

  Harry saw his wife, pulling him into a desperate embrace at the Duchess of Richmond's ball, sitting beside his sickbed after Waterloo, smiling at him across their library with ink on her nose. "I'd say more we both decided to put the past behind us."

  Maria shook her head, stirring the ringlets about her face. "You're either a fool or an incurable romantic, Harry."

  "I'm certainly a fool. On occasion others have accused me of being a romantic. Not that I'd ever admit to it."

  Maria adjusted her shawl. It slithered back off her shoulders. "I hope she realizes how fortunate she is."

  "I don't know. I do know that every day I find I can scarcely believe my own good fortune."

  Maria regarded him for a moment, her gaze now level and direct, the gaze of a comrade at arms. "I'm not surprised you're still in love with her. It was always plain to me that would never change. I am surprised you're apparently still existing in this state of newfound bliss. Especially after three years."

  He saw the nursery before he'd left, Livia bent over her book, Drusilla arranging her dolls in a house of blocks, a glass of milk spilled, Cordelia blowing him a kiss from the floor where she was looking for a lost doll shoe, seemingly torn between frustration and laughter. "I wouldn't call it bliss. Everyday reality, which is much more agreeable."

  "Dios, you're far gone."

  "Perhaps. Perhaps it's a delusion I'll wake from." He kept his voice light, because he feared Maria might be closer to the truth than he'd ever want to admit. "But meanwhile, I'm happy in a way I'd once have sworn only fools or madmen could be."

  Maria tilted her head to once side. "I worry about you, my dear. Do you really think she'll be faithful this time?"

  Unbidden fear shot through him. Which it shouldn't, because he'd known Cordelia's being unfaithful was a possibility from the moment they reconciled. "I don't know," he said. "I think she means to be now. And that counts for a lot."

  "My dear. You sell yourself short."

  "No. I know what we have." He hesitated, then added something he'd only admitted to Malcolm. "If she were unfaithful again, I think I'd prefer not to know."

  "Good God, Harry." Maria's gaze moved over him as though looking for injuries. "What happened to the hardheaded realist who was my lover? Are you so determined to be blind?"

  "I'm so aware of what I have. And determined to preserve it."

  "Even at the risk of living a lie?"

  Harry could hear the scorn with which he'd have greeted such a pronouncement in past years. The same scorn he heard in Maria's voice. But now—"What Cordy and I have isn't a lie," he said. "Whatever else happens."

  "Well." Maria's dry tone made the single word both a comment and a question. "All I can do is wish you very happy." She pushed herself to her feet and crossed the room to a table that held a set of decanters. "But I don't think you came here just to reminisce about old times. You may not be an agent officially any more, but you haven't left the game."

  "Not entirely." Harry settled back in his chair in the sort of pose that invited confidences. "My friend David Worsley's house in Brook Street was broken into last night."

  "I'm sorry to hear it." Maria lifted a decanter, cocked a brow at Harry, and poured two glasses.

  "He's raising his late sister's children. He's living with them in the house that belonged to his sister and her husband. Lord and Lady Craven."

  He couldn't read the smallest jerk in Maria's hand as she poured the brandy. But was she holding her hand just a bit too carefully steady? "Should the name mean something to me?"

  "I assume so. Given that I found this in the house." Harry reached inside his coat and pulled out the bracelet.

  Maria watched him for a moment, her face a mask. Then she gave a rueful smile. "Devil take it. I knew you were a friend of Worsley's. What possessed me to wear jewelry you would recognize?"

  "I don't imagine you were planning to lose it."

  "No. There is that."

  "What were you doing in the house, Maria?"

  Maria picked up one of the glasses and tossed down half the contents, then crossed to Harry and put the other glass in his hand. "I did know Lord Craven. He didn't have anything like your understanding. Or your wit. Or your skill in other ways. But he amused me for a while."

  "Good God, Maria," Harry was startled into saying.

  She raised a brow. "We all take our pleasures where we find them. Craven was Carfax's son-in-law and one of his agents. I expect you know that. He called on me because Carfax wanted information about some people I had known in Spain. One thing led to another. My society is more confined since I've come to England. And he was clever enough to be amusing at times. I even went so far as to write him a letter that was rather indiscreet. I've managed to establish a quite comfortable life here in England. You aren't the only one who values what you've built since the war."

  "You're saying you broke into the Brook Street house to steal the letter back?"

  "Is that so surprising?" Maria dropped back down on the sofa. "Your own wife's history must
have taught you what scandal can do to a woman."

  "Craven's been dead over three months."

  "And now Lord Worsley is living in the house. I have no notion where Craven hid the letter."

  "If that alarmed you, surely you'd have worried when David moved into the house."

  Maria twitched the folds of her shawl closer about her. "I've been engaged in a rather agreeable flirtation with Reggie Sanderson. A former major in the 95th. I knew him a bit in Spain and we met up again in London. Lately it's turned more serious. And it occurred to me—Well, if you can sing the praises of marriage, can you blame me for contemplating it?"

  Harry folded his arms across his chest and regarded her. "You're saying you're considering marriage to Sanderson and that suddenly made you worried about this indiscreet letter to Craven?"

  She reached for her glass and took a sip of brandy. "I assume in your besotted state you understand the advantages of marriage, and there are rather more advantages for a woman than a man. Reggie has many things to recommend him, but he doesn't quite have your flexible thinking. I think that letter might give him pause."

  "David would hardly show it to him."

  "There's no telling what might happen if it fell into the wrong hands."

  "Did you find it?"

  "No. Though I was interrupted before I could search the whole house, as you must know. It seemed prudent to beat a retreat."

  Harry leaned back in his chair and considered his former lover. Their affair had been brief. But one learned a lot about an agent working with them. And whatever mistakes he'd made in his marriage, he wouldn't have survived as a spy if he hadn't learned to read people. "It's a good story, Maria. There may even be truth in it. But not the whole truth. I could always tell when you were lying."

  "You're jumping at shadows, Harry."

  "I think not."

  "My dear." She set her glass down with care, barely sloshing the brandy. "If I was I lying, do you imagine there's a chance I'd tell you the truth?"

  Chapter 21

  "Raoul!" Lisette Varon ran down the passage and seized his hands. She wore a blue sprigged muslin dress and her thick fair hair was caught back with a blue ribbon. A far cry from the male attire she'd worn when he and Bertrand helped her escape France a month and half ago. Or the evening gown of Suzanne's she'd dressed in to elude pursuit when they'd sought refuge at the Berkeley Square house in the midst of a ball.