London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  David swirled the brandy in his glass. "Not sending Teddy back to Harrow. Or any other school."

  "You know my opinion of the public school system." Simon reached further under the table for a wooden top.

  "Yes, but—"

  "But what?" Simon sat back on his heels and regarded David. "That was theoretical and this is an actual boy?"

  "No. Well, perhaps a bit." David stared into his glass. "It's history. Tradition. The role he'll be expected to play. Unless you manage to foment a revolution, he'll have to manage estates, take his seat in the House of Lords."

  "I'm not trying to foment a revolution. Well, not that drastic a one. And I wouldn't have a prayer of success if I tried, whatever your father's fears. And if Teddy's going to take his place in the House of Lords, I'd say all the more reason for him to have a broader view of the world than is to be found in our public schools."

  David took a swallow of brandy, feeling the weight of responsibility for the four small people sleeping upstairs.

  "Not that you have to take my advice." Simon got to his feet. "It's your decision. To all intents and purposes you're their father now."

  David swung towards his lover. "But you're their—"

  Simon met his gaze and raised a brow. "Honorary uncle? Not a position with a great deal of authority."

  For some reason, fear squeezed David's chest. "Damn it, Simon, you know you'll always be a part of their lives."

  "Probably. In what capacity remains less clear."

  Simon's blue gaze held challenge, which was not unusual, and, more surprising, an echo of David's own fear. "You don't trust me," David said.

  Simon turned and put the top on the sofa table with the care of one settling the most fragile porcelain. "I trust you with my life, David." His voice was rougher than David had ever heard it.

  "But you don't trust I won't leave you."

  Simon turned back to him. His gaze was unusually free of mockery, which somehow was terrifying. "Can you really tell me that you've never considered taking a wife?"

  There it was, the thing that hung between them, that they alluded to but almost never openly discussed. David couldn't have said why putting it into words should make it worse, but somehow it did. An unnamed threat now hung in the air, like a monster from one of the children's storybooks that came to life when one breathed its name.

  They'd rarely talked about the future in concrete terms. When they left Oxford, they'd agreed to share lodgings in London without discussing what it meant. At least, not openly. David had always thought Simon's heart had sung at the decision the way his own did. That Simon, like him, had known how significant a decision it was for the future. Fully as significant as a proposal accompanied by all the formality of asking a girl's father for her hand. He could still remember Simon grabbing him and kissing him behind the door the first time they visited the Albany flat and saying, with uncharacteristic seriousness, "You make me very happy." That was probably the closest they'd ever come to wedding vows.

  And yet all the pressures of the expectations of the heir to an earldom were still there. "Of course I haven't thought of it," David said.

  "No?" The challenge was back in Simon's eyes.

  Memories jabbed his mind like shards of glass swirling in his brain. "Only to realize how impossible it would be. For any number of reasons. I know what I owe you, Simon."

  "And you know what you owe your name. You're a man who takes his commitments seriously, David. Difficult when those commitments conflict."

  "You don't believe in owing anything to a name."

  "No, but I understand what it means to you. In a perfect world I don't think there would be peers. But if there have to be, I think you'll make about as good a one as possible."

  "That's kind of you."

  "I didn't say it to be kind."

  David took a swallow of brandy. It couldn't numb the disquiet within him. The tension, not just between the expectations of a future earl and his love for Simon, but between the weight of his heritage and the ideals he passionately believed in, had gnawed at him for years. "I'm not necessarily saying I think it's right that I'll be Earl Carfax. No, hear me out." He put out a hand before Simon could protest. "I'm not saying I'd abolish the House of Lords as quickly as you would, either. To own the truth, I'm still sorting out what I think about all of it."

  Simon dropped down on the sofa arm. "Fair enough."

  "I wish to the devil I wasn't heir to the earldom, for God knows how many reasons. But given that apparently I will be Earl Carfax, I'll do my best. By my tenants. By those dependent on the estates. To use my voice in the House of Lords well. To steward what's been given me. I'll preserve the estates for the next earl. But that's going to have to be my second cousin Michael or one of his sons. I'm not going to take a wife or father a child. I've known that—well, forever, really. Certainly since I met you."

  Simon crossed his legs and linked his hands round his knee. "That's why you waltzed with Lady Clare Townsend twice at Lady Cowper's ball last week? Why you took Georgiana Darby driving the month before?"

  "I took Georgiana driving because it's her first season and she's shy and I promised her brother I'd help her get about. I waltzed with Lady Clare once because my mother brought her over to me and it would have been rude not to ask, and again because it would have been equally insulting not to dance with her twice." All of which was true. But David felt himself flush. "You can't seriously think I'm contemplating—"

  "No. But your parents continue to put agreeable girls in your way. It's clear what the girls are thinking. I can't imagine it's never crossed your mind as well."

  "It would never work."

  "So you've thought about it enough to realize it would never work?"

  David leaned forwards, his head in his hands. He felt as though he'd run the length of the Serpentine. "I said that at the start. And of course I worry about the girls' expectations. Lady Clare as good as told me—" He bit the words back. It was too much, even to share with Simon.

  "What?" Simon asked.

  David looked up and tossed down the last of his brandy. "She implied that she knew about us. And that she'd be quite comfortable with our continuing our relationship while she lived as Lady Worsley and had my children."

  The conversation, and Lady Clare's complete composure in making her offer, had shocked him, but Simon nodded. "I'm not surprised. She looks a hardheaded young woman, she's been out for a few seasons, and she wants a husband. God knows there are worse compromises made on the marriage mart every day."

  "Good God, Simon."

  "I'm not saying I advocate it, but I can understand her making the suggestion. Even admire her forthrightness. It's not so very different from what Rupert and Bertrand and Gabrielle have."

  "Rupert married Gabrielle when he thought Bertrand was dead. I don't think they'd have any of them willingly entered into such a relationship."

  "Nor do I, though it did give Rupert an heir. I suppose if you weren't particular about bloodlines you wouldn't even need to sleep with her. She could find her own equivalent of Gabrielle's Nick Gordon."

  David stared at his lover. "You aren't seriously saying you advocate such a scenario."

  "No. Merely pointing out your options."

  "It's not an option. For one thing, you'd never go along with it. You hate lies."

  "I can understand some people's need to live with lies. But I have no intention of being part of such an arrangement. I'm merely trying to make sure you understand your options."

  "The option to have a marriage built on lies, without you?"

  "With a woman like Lady Clare, you'd at least only be lying to the world round you, not to your wife. And another man might be more willing to go along with it than I am."

  David flinched inwardly. He looked at the only person he'd ever been intimate with. "I don't want another man. I want you."

  Simon leaned back, one hand resting on the sofa back behind him. "It's a conundrum, isn't it?" His gaze was
unwavering. "Whatever you choose, David, that choice has to be yours, not mine."

  "It's our life. Together."

  "But being the future Earl Carfax is your obligation. Your heritage. Whatever I think of inherited privilege, I'm not going to take that away from you. That's a burden I don't think either of us could live with."

  David set his brandy glass on the sofa table. His fingers shook. The oak and satin of the sofa were solid beneath him but he felt as though he stood on shifting waters, cut free of his moorings. "Have you been waiting all these years for me to leave you?"

  Simon gave a twisted smile. "Mostly I've tried to enjoy what we have in the moment. But I've always known, even if I didn't consciously admit it, that this was a choice you'd have to face one day. That I'd have to step back and let you make it."

  David pushed himself to his feet. Perhaps he'd been wrong about that moment in the Albany being the closest they'd come to wedding vows. He crossed to Simon's side, bent down, and kissed him. "I'm not going anywhere. Now will you stop worrying about things that will never come to pass and help me figure out how to raise our children?"

  Suzanne woke with a jerk, every nerve tensed for the sound of sniper fire. Or a crying child. One way and another she could scarcely remember when she had last slept soundly. The dark bars of the canopy frame and the pale silk of the canopy stretched above her. Berkeley Square. Their house. The bed she shared with Malcolm. No sound of footsteps. No crying from Jessica's cradle or the night nursery. But the candle she and Malcolm had left burning still flickered on the night table on his side of the bed. If Malcolm had fallen asleep, he would have extinguished it first. Instead, its glow illumined her husband, sitting up in the bed next to her, the arms that had been embracing her when she fell asleep now wrapped round his knees.

  "Darling?" She pushed herself up against the pillows. "What is it?"

  "Nothing." His quick smile gleamed in the moonlight. "Just couldn't sleep. Sorry I woke you."

  "You didn't wake me. And it's clearly not nothing." She put a hand on his arm and felt the tension running through it. God knows she'd felt tension when he'd made love to her, but afterwards, lying with her head on his chest and his arms encircling her, she'd thought the tension had eased in ways that went beyond physical release.

  "Merely playing out scenarios."

  "About Oliver?"

  "No. You're right, we need more information. About this Phoenix plot of yours."

  Suzanne drew a breath. It had been a hellish day. Oliver's lies had come fresh on this new reminder of his wife's betrayal. And his father's. "Hardly mine."

  "Figure of speech. But you can't deny it changes things."

  "Malcolm." She leaned forwards so she could see the candlelight falling over his face. "It's unsettling. But there's no reason—"

  "You can argue about what it would mean if Napoleon Bonaparte escaped St. Helena, but it would certainly change things."

  "I think it's far more likely the supposed plot is a trick of Fouché's to curry favor with the Bourbons. Even if there really is a plot, it's highly unlikely it would succeed."

  He swung his head round and met her gaze, his own hard. "But if it did?"

  The few inches of bedlinen and embroidered silk coverlet between them suddenly seemed an impassable distance. As vast as the gulf between two countries, between two sets of beliefs, between two visions of the world they wanted for their children. They agreed about so much, and yet . . . "After Waterloo, I told Raoul that I wouldn't stop fighting for the things I believed in, but I'd only do so openly, as your wife. That I wouldn't work behind your back. I meant it."

  "I have no doubt you did, my darling. But as so often in this damnable business, it's far easier to state a principle than to follow it,"

  "Malcolm, I wouldn't—"

  "You've gone behind my back a score of times, sweetheart. When you and O'Roarke rescued Manon and goodness knows how many others. When Fouché tried to blackmail you in Paris. I'm not saying you were wrong to do so. I'd have made the same choices myself."

  That day in Brussels, the nineteenth of June, the day after Waterloo, when she told Raoul she would no longer work as his agent, she'd wondered when she would see him again. She'd been sure she would never work with him again. Yet it had only been a few weeks later that she'd been sitting across a café table from him in Paris, insisting she wanted to help him rescue Manon. "It was before you knew the truth about me. It's different now."

  "Those choices might be different. We'd be fools to think every possible choice you might face would be."

  Suzanne pushed herself up against the pillows. "Darling, what are you saying?"

  Malcolm's fingers tightened round his knees. "Mel, what would you do if you really thought Bonaparte could be restored? Or perhaps it's more important to say, if the monarchy could be got rid of?"

  For a moment she saw British soldiers encamped in the Bois de Boulogne, thronging the quais and boulevards. The instinctive rage she had felt in Paris in the months after Waterloo shot through her. "I live here. With you. And our children. I'm not going to rush off to be part of a revolution." She swallowed. "Whatever I might want."

  A faint smile shot across his face, but his eyes were bleak in a way they had been in the early days of their marriage. "Always honest, my darling. But even if O'Roarke isn't involved, even if Manon isn't. Even if it's a plot of Fouché's to entrap Bonapartists and curry favor, people you know, people you care about, will be caught up in it."

  The single candle made a small island of warmth round them, bleeding into shadows. "Malcolm, what are you afraid of?"

  His dark gaze gave a glimpse of the scenarios he'd been playing out in his mind. "Of us being on opposite sides."

  Outside the circle of candlelight, the dark of the night enclosed them. Alone in their bed in the dark. Nowhere to run. "Darling, we were—"

  "On opposite sides for years. Quite. But this time we'd both know. And I'm afraid we could get to a point where neither of us could do what we consider our duty without acting against the other."

  "We wouldn't—"

  He raised a brow. "We've neither of us changed that much, my darling."

  "Malcolm. What would you do if you'd been the one to hear rumors about the Phoenix plot?"

  "I've been asking myself the same question." He rested his chin on his knees. "I don't know. I don't think I'd have told you. At least not until I heard more. I wouldn't have wanted to put you in that position."

  "You'd have tried to stop it without my finding out?"

  A smile like a whisper of December sun twisted his mouth. "I wouldn't have had a prayer of doing so. I don't know if I'd be stupid enough to try." He reached across the coverlet and took her hand. His fingers were cool and blessedly familiar. "If it weren't for the children, I might suggest we consider living apart until we get through this."

  "Darling!" Ice shot through her. The spectre of him leaving her had hung over her from the moment she agreed to be his wife. But this was the only time in all the years of their marriage, through revelations she had thought would smash it to bits, that he'd come close to suggesting they separate. "You don't want—"

  "Of course I don't want to be apart from you." His fingers tightened over her own. "But it's one way we could get through this. I wouldn't put Colin and Jessica through that, though."

  "It's not just that." She looked down at their intertwined fingers. "I don't pretend to have the least idea what we should do. But I do know we can't get through it by running. We have to muddle through it together."

  Malcolm lifted her hand to his lips. "That's my Mel. You've always been braver than I am. But then, I'm the man who went to the Continent for the better part of a decade to avoid confronting my demons at home."

  "You can't compare this to—"

  "No. Of course not."

  Had there been just the faintest of pauses before his denial or was her mind playing tricks on her?

  As though perhaps he understood, Malcolm leaned ba
ck against the pillows and drew her down beside him. "And anything that pulls former Bonapartists out of the shadows, that could involve us, however tangentially, increases the risk—"

  "Stop jumping at phantoms, darling." Suzanne settled back against her husband's shoulder. "There's no reason this should lead to my being exposed."

  Malcolm's arm tightened round her. His gaze was on the canopy again. "I've stopped trying to keep track of the number of people in London who know about your past. Let alone the number of people in the world in general."

  "Most of them with secrets of their own." She shifted back slightly so she could look at him. "There's no sense imagining all the things that could go wrong, dearest. All we can do is focus on getting through it a moment at a time."

  He turned his head. Across a few inches of linen, his gaze was sharp and yet unexpectedly open. "Is that what you did for the five years I didn't know?"

  "Mostly. When I could. I'd have gone mad otherwise."

  He touched her face. "I don't know how you did it."

  "It's the same thing we're both doing now."

  "We have each other to talk to. And an escape plan." He turned his gaze back to the canopy. "Sometimes I think—"

  "Darling, no." She meant to keep her comment light, but her voice came out sharper than she intended. "Running away won't solve anything, even if we do it together."

  His fingers moved against her shoulder, but he kept his gaze on the canopy. "We'd be safe."

  "We're safe now."

  "The safety of those living under a knife blade."

  She rolled onto her side and curled into him. "We're agents, darling. We always live under a knife blade."

  "And ever since I married you, ever since we had Colin, I've dreamed about escaping an agent's life."

  "You really think Carfax would let go you go if we went to Italy?"

  "Even Carfax's reach has its limits."

  "Yes, but unless we can slip into the realm of the fairies, I'm not sure we can get beyond it."

  He grinned. "I'm not that important. If, God forbid, Carfax learned the truth about you, even you wouldn't be that important."

  Malcolm was almost a son to Carfax, which made it a deal more complicated. Even if Carfax would let one of his most talented agents go, she wasn't sure he'd do the same for his almost-son. Or that he would forgive that almost-son's wife if he knew how she had betrayed her husband. But Suzanne merely said, "There's a risk to our sanity as well. We'd both go mad."