London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  Raoul drew a sharp breath. "Laura and I—"

  "Spare me the protestations. I've spent enough time with the two of you to recognize you for a couple." Malcolm leaned forwards, arms on the table. "Speaking from personal experience, relationships being complicated doesn't weaken them. And it's amazing what one can work through."

  Raoul met his gaze for a long moment. "You put up with a lot, Malcolm. You'd be pardoned for wishing me at the devil."

  "We're all glad to have you back in London."

  Raoul hesitated a moment. "It means a great deal to stay in Berkeley Square. And not just because of Laura."

  "We enjoy having you here." Malcolm tossed down a swallow of coffee. "Mel's happier when you're about."

  Raoul shot a surprised look at him.

  "I'm not jealous," Malcolm said. "Not in that way. Mostly not in that way. But she's happier when she can see you. She gave up her whole life to marry me, and I didn't even realize she was doing it and ask her if she really wanted to make that decision. I'd like her to have as much of her old life as possible."

  Raoul continued to stare at him, gaze frozen in shock. "Malcolm—"

  "What I'm trying to say is that I'm glad you're here. Colin and Jessica should have a chance to know their grandfather." He reached for the coffee pot to refill their cups again. "And I've rather come to like having you about myself."

  Raoul drew a breath that seemed to crack in the still air. But before he could speak, the door opened and Valentin came into the room. "This just came for you, Mr. Rannoch," he said, holding out a paper.

  Malcolm opened the single stained, unsealed sheet. It had been sent on from the coffeehouse he used to pass messages when he was concealing his real identity. It was from Sue Kettering, Ben Coventry's mistress, and she wanted to see him.

  "How have you been?" Malcolm dropped into a chair across the table from Sue at the tavern on the edge of Seven Dials where she'd told him he could find her. "I've thought about you a great deal."

  She gave a brief laugh. "I know how to take care of myself. Wouldn't have survived this long if losing someone could destroy me."

  "And your boy?"

  Sue dragged a hand across her eyes, smearing her eyeblacking. "Jemmy's starting to understand. He doesn't ask when Ben is coming back anymore. But I don't think he quite understands Ben isn't coming back at all."

  "It's good if he can hold on to memories of his father."

  She gave a quick nod. "I didn't come here for sympathy. I've been trying to think of anything that might help you learn what—learn who did this to Ben. I didn't think this mattered because it was a fortnight before he died. But—One night when we stayed with him, Ben came in late. He looked shaken. He was pale. Paler than I've ever seen him. I said it looked as though he'd seen a ghost. He started to laugh, but then said maybe that wasn't so far off." She hunched her shoulders, pulling her tattered shawl closer about her. "He said one of the worst betrayals he'd seen during the war, in the Peninsula, was committed by one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. That it was hard to imagine such beauty existing with such treachery." She lifted her gaze to Malcolm's. "And that he'd seen her in London."

  Suzanne was still at her toilette when Malcolm returned to Berkeley Square. Malcolm leaned in the doorway for a moment, watching her finish applying blacking to her eyelashes.

  "Darling." Suzanne regarded him in the looking glass, taking in his claret coat and spotted handkerchief. "You've been working."

  "Sue Kettering asked me to meet her." Malcolm looked at Jessica, who was sitting on the carpet by the dressing table, pulling lengths of ribbon out of one of the bottom drawers and dangling them for Berowne to bat at. Laura must have taken the older children down to the breakfast parlor. "Mel." Malcolm pushed the door to and advanced into the room. "Is there any chance you crossed paths with Ben Coventry in the Peninsula?"

  "No. That is, I don't recall ever hearing his name." Suzanne turned round on the dressing table bench and scanned her husband's face. "Darling? What is it?"

  "Sue said a couple of weeks before he died Ben mentioned catching a glimpse of a woman in London. A woman he knew from the Peninsula. One of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. Who'd committed one of the worst betrayals he'd ever seen."

  "And you thought—" Suzanne drew in and released her breath. "Darling, I was hardly the only female agent in the Peninsula who ended up in Britain."

  "No, but—"

  "And flattered as I am, I'm sure there are many who could be described as beautiful."

  Malcolm nodded. Jessica grabbed hold of his boots and pulled herself to her feet. Malcolm swung her up in his arms.

  Suzanne stared at the blacking brush, then tucked it into its inlaid drawer. "I can't swear I didn't cross paths with him without knowing his name. But he'd have to have somehow learned the truth about me for that comment to make sense. And if I was that sloppy, I wouldn't have survived this long."

  "A point." Malcolm pressed a kiss to Jessica's forehead. "But whomever he saw it wasn't just an agent. It was someone he knew had betrayed Britain. Or at least betrayed something or someone. "

  Suzanne nodded, carefully matter-of-fact. "Which would apply to me. But—"

  "It could apply to others. It may be nothing to do with Whateley & Company and Coventry's death. But—"

  Suzanne stared out the window for a moment. "Darling. Maria Monreal. I haven't seen her, but from Harry's and Oliver's responses I imagine she's quite beautiful."

  "But not a traitor to Britain. Or—" Malcolm met her gaze. "Not that we know of."

  "Precisely. If she had been playing both sides and Coventry knew and threatened to expose her now, when she's trying to build a life in Britain, that would give her a reason to have killed him."

  Malcolm shifted Jessica against his shoulder. "According to Ennis and Sue Kettering, Coventry broke in alone."

  Suzanne leaned forwards to scratch Berowne under the chin. "But it looks more and more as though a second person broke in. Maria broke into the Brook Street house two nights later." She got to her feet, shaking out her scalloped skirts. "Suppose, for all her denials, she also broke into Whateley & Company the same night Ben did. Perhaps on Carfax's orders." Jessica stretched out a hand to Suzanne. Suzanne laced her fingers through her daughter's own. "Perhaps she didn't kill him because of the papers, but because he recognized her."

  Malcolm drew a breath. "I need to see Carfax. Not that I have a prayer he'll actually tell me anything."

  Chapter 31

  "Oh, Malcolm, good." Carfax looked up from the papers strewn over his desktop. "I saw you much more in evidence at the ball last night than you generally are at a social engagement, so I presume the investigation is proceeding apace? Beyond your accusations about Whateley & Company and my role in it?"

  Malcolm dropped into one of the straight-backed chairs. "We've made progress."

  "Which you aren't prepared to share with me." Carfax pushed his spectacles up on his nose. "Fair enough."

  "Fair enough?" Malcolm was wary of anything approaching reasonableness from the earl.

  "I'm not precisely in a position to make demands. Provided you tell me in the end whatever concerns my family. Or the country."

  "And you're confident I will?"

  "You're still loyal to your country even if you're one of the last people I'd want to see running it. And you're enough of a father yourself to understand my feelings about my family." Carfax coughed and aligned a sheaf of papers. "Do you still think Maria Monreal was behind the Brook Street break-in?"

  "It appears that way." Malcolm hesitated, aware of the pressure of the hard slats against his back. To voice the obvious next question seemed a betrayal of a trust that went back over a decade. But Oliver had already betrayed that trust by lying and refusing to explain himself. And Malcolm needed to know what Carfax knew. "Did you know Oliver knew Maria Monreal?"

  "Oliver?" Carfax looked up at Malcolm in seemingly genuine surprise. Then his eyes narrowed. "Are yo
u saying Monreal was Oliver's mistress? Is Oliver's mistress?"

  "Oliver claims not."

  Carfax gave a short laugh.

  "And oddly, I'm inclined to believe him."

  "You would. That's the romantic in you talking, Malcolm."

  "I'm not in the least romantic. If you mean I love my wife, so do you."

  A dry smile that held more regret than Carfax normally admitted to curved the earl's mouth. "I never had any illusions that Oliver was in love with Bel. It was one of the reasons I wasn't overjoyed when he offered for her. But Bel's always been practical. I thought they had a reasonable chance of making it work."

  Isobel, Malcolm had sometimes thought, might be Carfax's favorite child. She was more of an intellectual than her sisters, but Carfax's relationship with her didn't have the layers of father-and-son and earl-and-heir that weighted his relationship with David. And Isobel might perhaps come the closest of all the Mallinson children to possessing some of Carfax's hardheaded pragmatism.

  "Has Oliver had mistresses in the past?" Malcolm asked.

  "My dear boy. Do you think I've had my daughters' husbands watched?" Carfax demanded.

  "Yes," Malcolm said.

  Carfax gave a faint smile of acknowledgment. "Keeping an eye on Trenchard and Craven was difficult enough. I may have made myself generally aware of Oliver's activities, but not to the point of knowing whose bed he shared." Carfax adjusted his right spectacle earpiece. "To own the truth, I'd prefer not to know that about my sons-in-law. Unless it has implications beyond the personal."

  "Had you ever sent Oliver to meet with Maria Monreal?"

  "Why on earth would I send any of you to meet with one of my agents?" Carfax's tone made it quite clear that the "you" referred to with mild contempt was Oliver, David, Simon, and Malcolm himself. "Yes, all right, I might send you, but only because you're so damnably good at your job. And I never even sent you to meet with Maria."

  "Oliver's your son-in-law. Maria's your agent. And there's some connection between them."

  "Former agent. But, yes. It's concerning." Carfax tapped his fingers on the ink blotter as though he could summon answers. "What's Oliver's story?"

  Malcolm repeated the account Oliver had given him. Hardly sharing his friend's secrets, as he was quite sure the account was a lie.

  Carfax picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers. "If he's telling the truth, Maria could have set up her meeting with him at Somerset House."

  "To get close to your son-in-law."

  "Presumably."

  "Why?"

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't need you to investigate, would I?"

  "Did she know anything about Whateley & Company?"

  "Not to my knowledge. It was never essential to anything she worked on for me, and when have you ever known me to share information that isn't essential?"

  "Do you think it's possible Maria was playing both sides in the Peninsula?"

  Carfax's brows snapped together. "What makes you say that?"

  "Two weeks before he was killed, Coventry saw a beautiful woman in London whom he recognized from the Peninsula. He said she had committed one of the greatest acts of treachery he ever saw."

  "And you think Maria—"

  "It's only a theory. One of several."

  Carfax stared down at the ink blotter. "I'd like to say it's impossible. But of course one can never really be sure of one's agents."

  "In which case, she might be working for your enemies now."

  "An interesting theory." Carfax sat back in his chair, still twirling the pen. "Whom did you have in mind?"

  "You tell me. Who are your greatest enemies now the Bonapartists are defeated?"

  "I wouldn't say defeated. Held at bay."

  "Sir, you can't seriously think there's a threat—"

  "I think there will always be a threat. It's only a few months since there was an assassination attempt on Wellington."

  "In Paris."

  "Conspiracies can cross borders. And then, of course, there are the conspiracies at home. The machine breakers. The Radicals willing to go further than you. Not to mention foreign spymasters, many of whom would like to see a change in the French and Spanish governments, not to mention our own."

  "Where's Fouché these days?" Malcolm asked, seizing on this opening.

  "Fouché?" Was it his imagination, Malcolm wondered, or was Carfax's voice just a shade too casual? "In exile in Trieste, last I heard."

  "Last you heard? You may not be tracking Oliver's every movement, but don't tell me—"

  "Yes, all right. I get regular reports on Fouché."

  "Surely if you think there really could be a plot to reinstate Bonaparte—"

  "Or more likely a surrogate. Getting Bonaparte off St. Helena wouldn't be easy. But Fouché's a pragmatist who bends with the prevailing wind. A Bonapartist restoration would be a desperate gamble. Which doesn't mean it couldn't cause the devil's own havoc. But it would be the act of a burning idealist."

  "If any enemy of yours is behind the break-ins, there's no reason to think it has anything to do with Bonaparte."

  "True. But we never wrote down anything at Whateley & Company about our unofficial business. I fail to see what Fouché or some other enemy might have been after at either Whateley & Company or the Brook Street house."

  "Yes," Malcolm said, "that remains the question."

  Carfax leaned back in his chair. "Speaking of enemies, I saw Raoul O'Roarke come in with you last night. Is he staying with you?"

  Malcolm leaned back in his own chair, mirroring the earl's posture. "Yes, as I'm sure you were well aware. He stayed with us when he was in London last April, as I'm sure you're also well aware. He's an old friend of my family's." There was no reason to think Carfax knew O'Roarke had worked for the Bonapartists in Spain. He considered O'Roarke an enemy based on the United Irish Uprising and O'Roarke's Republican principles. If Carfax knew anything more, it was most likely that O'Roarke was Malcolm's father. Which was tiresome, but not dangerous.

  "A dangerous man, O'Roarke," Carfax said. "I always thought he was the most dangerous of the United Irishmen. Far more of a risk than that foolish idealist, Fitzgerald. Even when circumstances made him our ally in the Peninsula, I can't say I trusted him. And now he's working against the Spanish government—But I daresay you're in agreement with that."

  "With the Spanish wanting their constitution restored and the Inquisition suspended? Can you doubt it?"

  "Purely rhetorical. Politically you're a natural ally of O'Roarke's. Just remember that the things you spout off about in theory, he actually seeks to put into practice."

  "So you're saying he's more effective than I am? Or braver?"

  "Hmph," Carfax said.

  "I assume you're having him watched in London?"

  "Given his friendship with your family, not to mention the fact that he's staying with you, you can hardly expect me to answer that, Malcolm."

  "I presume you aren't suggesting O'Roarke might be behind the break-ins and Coventry's death?" Malcolm said. It was a bold question, but bold moves were often called for with Carfax.

  "I wouldn't put it past him," Carfax said. "Especially if he thought he could gain information about me. But as I don't know what information the thieves were after, it's impossible for me to say."

  "Or at least impossible for you to share with me."

  "If I thought O'Roarke was a creditable threat in this I'd tell you, Malcolm." Carfax sat forwards, hands on the desktop. "Acknowledge his friendship with your family. Have him in your house. Discuss your Radical views with him. But don't make the mistake of thinking your shared views equate to shared tactics. O'Roarke is far more ruthless than you'll ever be."

  It was, Malcolm suspected, not unlike what his father would say. It was what he once would have said himself. He was no longer entirely sure it was true. "Are we done, sir? Or do you have more questions about my friends and domestic arrangements?"

  Carfax frowned in the way he once wo
uld have when he called Malcolm or David "scamp." "By all means, get back to your investigating and make yourself useful."

  Malcolm started to push himself to his feet, then said, as a seeming afterthought, "You did send Oliver to Whateley & Company to discuss Louisa's marriage settlement, didn't you?"

  Carfax riffled through the papers on his desk as though looking for something. "Of course. Why else would he have been there?"

  Malcolm couldn't always tell when Carfax was lying. But just then he was quite sure the earl had done so.

  "Malcolm." Lucinda ran out of a downstairs parlor as Malcolm emerged from her father's study.

  "Lucy." Malcolm masked his qualms to give David's little sister a quick smile. He remembered holding her when she'd been a baby, years ago, at the age of thirteen. She'd felt so fragile and wobbly and unbelievably tiny. Later, he'd got quite comfortable tossing her up on his shoulders. But the thought of ever being a parent himself had still seemed as distant as the moon.

  "Can you come into the parlor for a few minutes?" Lucinda asked. "I have tea."

  The youngest in the family by many years, not yet formally out in society, and the only young Mallinson left at home, Lucinda often seemed to make a plea for attention. But Malcolm read something more in her anxious gaze. "Tea would be welcome," he said, and let her pull him into the blue-papered parlor. A tea service stood on the satinwood table. Lucinda poured two cups, her hands jerky.

  "What is it, Lucy?" Malcolm asked, perching on the scrolled arm of a sofa.

  Lucinda's gaze darted over his face as she put a cup of tea in his hands. "I don't suppose you can tell me anything. And while part of me wants desperately to know what's going on—I mean how could I not be curious?—there's another part that would distinctly prefer not to know. But I know you're looking into the break-in at Whateley & Company and the one in Brook Street, and I daresay a great deal else. And I think you should know."

  Malcolm took a sip of the delicately scented tea, which Lady Carfax had specially blended at Fortnum's. "Know what?"