London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "A word, Cuthbertson." Malcolm contrived to block the other man's way in the crowd. "Then you can seek out Lady Tarrington."

  Cuthbertson met his gaze for a moment, then gave a crisp nod and followed Malcolm into an anteroom without protest.

  "I understand what you're doing, Rannoch," Cuthbertson said, as Malcolm closed the anteroom door behind them. "And I honor you for it."

  "You understand?" Malcolm regarded the other man in genuine puzzlement.

  "You naturally feel it is your duty to protect Jane—Lady Tarrington. I assure you, my intentions could not be more honorable."

  Despite the events of the day, Malcolm choked back a laugh. "I'm very fond of Laura, but if I acted protective she would no doubt laugh, or tell me to mind my own business, or both. Her life is her own to decide about as she chooses."

  Cuthbertson frowned, then gave a smile. "I've been wanting to thank you for everything you've done for her."

  "We're very fond of her," Malcolm said. "She's come to be like one of the family."

  Cuthbertson shook his head. "I still can't credit her as a governess. But I'm glad beyond measure she found friends. Davenport always said you were a good man, but I had no notion how very true it was."

  "Most people would do a great deal for someone who loved their children so well."

  "You know that's not true. Or governesses would be treated far better."

  "A point. But Suzanne and I hardly did anything but act on the call of friendship."

  "I can never forgive myself for being so far away when she needed help."

  Cuthbertson's blue eyes darkened with a concern that seemed genuine. Even to Malcolm, braced to look for deception. "You could have had no notion she was in need of help. Or even alive."

  "No." Cuthbertson shook his head. "Waterloo changed a lot." His gaze moved to the door to the room where his comrades were gathered. "And I don't just mean the end of the war. Suddenly a different sort of future seemed possible."

  Malcolm nodded. "It wasn't long after that I started thinking about returning to Britain."

  "I saw men doing it all round me," Cuthbertson said. "Selling out. Proposing to sweethearts. Settling in the country. But I had no desire to come back. In fact I wanted to stay as far away and as busy as possible."

  "You don't have family here?"

  "A brother, comfortably ensconced in the country raising children. He'd like to see me settled. But I had no desire to settle. Until—" Cuthbertson drew a breath. "As soon I heard Jane was alive, I got leave to come to England."

  "To see Lady Tarrington."

  "Of course."

  "Not so you could attempt to bring Carfax down?"

  Cuthbertson went still. Scarcely a muscle moved in his face, but Malcolm caught a trace of the hardened agent in the flicker of calculation in the other man's gaze. "Why—"

  "Spare me the protestations, Cuthbertson. Oliver told me. Not willingly. He's not the sort to betray his friends—" Malcolm drew a breath, for that was just what Oliver had done to him and David and Simon. "I learned enough that he didn't have much choice but to tell me."

  Cuthbertson's gaze stayed steady on Malcolm's face. "What precisely did Lydgate tell you?"

  "You worked for Carfax. So did he. So did a number of others. Carfax had holds on all of you. One of you learned Craven had information that could be used to counter Carfax's power over you. You asked Fitzroy to find someone to recover it from Whateley & Company."

  Cuthbertson folded his arms across his chest. "That's quite a story, Rannoch. Can you prove any of it?"

  "I could bring Fitzroy in here. He's determined to do the honorable thing, but for that very reason I don't think he could lie to my face if I confronted him with the truth." Malcolm watched the other man for a moment. "I'm not without sympathy. I work for Carfax myself, and though I wouldn't precisely say he has a hold on me, I also know I'll never entirely break free. If I'd known you were trying to recover these papers, I don't know that I'd have tried to stop you. But now a man is dead."

  Cuthbertson drew a sharp breath. "That wasn't—"

  "Part of the plan? No, I know it wasn't. But it changes things. You're a man of honor, Cuthbertson." Even as he said it, Malcolm could imagine Suzanne shaking her head over his word choice. To her, honor was a smoke screen used to cover a multitude of sins. But the wording would resonate with Cuthbertson.

  "Can you say so?" Cuthbertson asked. "Knowing what you know?"

  "That you worked for Carfax? Whatever else he may be, Carfax does serve his country. And I worked for him myself. Though one could make a fair case it's difficult to maintain any sort of honor in the intelligence game."

  Cuthbertson's mouth twisted. "It began as an adventure. God help me, I loved the challenge. Each step seemed justified. Until I looked back suddenly and saw the lines I'd crossed, the impossibility of ever going back."

  "I know the feeling. But one can still hold on to something of oneself. I've seen enough of you to know that you've managed to do that. A man was killed on a mission for you. You're the sort who looks after your own. You have to want justice for him."

  Cuthbertson's gaze went dark with torment. "I didn't even know his name. I didn't know Ennis's name until later. The less we all knew, the better, that was the plan. No way to trace the plot back to us if we couldn't connect the dots ourselves. God, I hate this sort of plot. I'd much rather be running the risks myself than hiding behind others."

  "If you had, Carfax would have followed the trail straight to you. This was a clever way of going about it."

  Cuthbertson grimaced. "But it cost Coventry his life. It wasn't his fight." He stared at Malcolm for a moment, almost pleading. "Do you know? Who killed him?"

  "Not yet. Is there any chance Carfax was on to you?"

  "With Carfax, there's always a chance." Something leapt in Cuthbertson's eyes. "Is that it? Do you think Carfax was behind Coventry's death?"

  "Someone else broke into the warehouse. If Carfax knew what you were doing, he'd have had a motive to send someone to intercept Coventry."

  Cuthbertson nodded. "Which would mean Carfax knows about us."

  "Not necessarily who is involved but the group in general." Malcolm studied Cuthbertson for a moment. That open, honest gaze was probably one of his best assets as an agent. "Who was the ringleader for your group?"

  Cuthbertson scraped his hands over his face. "I don't know."

  "That's what Oliver said."

  "Do you believe us?"

  "I'm not sure. But I could see the ringleader's logic in keeping his identity secret. Or hers."

  Cuthbertson's eyes widened slightly at that last. Which probably meant he really didn't know the ringleader's identity.

  "Who asked you to go to Fitzroy?" Malcolm asked.

  Cuthbertson drew a breath. "I can't say."

  "Can't or won't?"

  "You said I was a man of honor, Rannoch. As one yourself, you must understand."

  Which meant he wasn't going to get anywhere with a direct attack. "What do you know about Eustace Whateley?" Malcolm asked.

  "Not a great deal."

  "But you knew Carfax was using Whateley & Company for his own purposes?"

  Cuthbertson gave a curt nod.

  "Could Whateley have been one of his agents?"

  "Good God."

  "Is it so surprising? Craven was."

  "Whateley wasn't, that I know of. Which doesn't prove a lot." Cuthbertson stared across the room. "I've lied about a lot. I've taken information from people who trusted me. I've used friends for cover." He took a turn about the room. "But you've got one thing the wrong way round, Rannoch. I wasn't using Jane as cover for coming back to England. I came back because I heard she was alive. I agreed to be part of bringing down Carfax because I learned she was alive. Because for the first time in years, I cared what happened to me. I wanted to be free. So I could have a future." He gave a rough laugh. "And now that's smashed to bits."

  "Not necessarily," Malcolm said. "Fo
r one thing, we still don't know where the papers are."

  Malcolm left the anteroom mulling over ways to get Sylvie to talk to him before the company moved into the dining room where they'd be trapped at the table for multiple courses and lengthy toasts. To his surprise, Sylvie met his gaze across the room and moved towards him. "Oliver warned me," she murmured, brushing past him in a stir of gold tulle and Parisian scent. "We'd better get this over with."

  Back in the same antechamber, Sylvie regarded him with the bright gaze he remembered from the Carfax Court dinner table all those years ago. Harder now, more discontented, but fundamentally still the same girl. "I knew it. I knew as soon as you started poking into Whateley & Company. I told Oliver you were going to come too close to the truth."

  "I'm sorry," Malcolm said.

  "Sorry you figured it out?"

  "Sorry you came under Carfax's influence. It's not easy, as I know to my own cost."

  Sylvie spun away, gloved hands locked together. "I thought it was exciting at first, God help me. Coming to the notice of one of the most powerful men in Britain."

  "It can't have been easy living as an émigrée."

  "No." She shot a look at him. "Despite your wife being one, I don't think you can have any notion of how hard it really was. How could you, with your name and your fortune and your grandfather's title behind you? You went to Harrow and Oxford with half the powerful men of your generation. Your father went to school with their fathers. How many times I'd find myself lost at the dinner table in the midst of stories that went back to before anyone in my family set foot in Britain. And we were constantly scraping to keep up appearances. Once I worked for Carfax I had enough pin money to keep my wardrobe up to date." She flashed a half-defiant look at Malcolm.

  "I know my wife enough to appreciate the importance."

  Sylvie gave a dry smile. "Oliver understood. What it was to be an outsider. And what it was to be Carfax's." She tugged at her glove. The gold embroidery on it flashed in the candlelight. "I don't know that Oliver and I could have made things work. I suspect I wouldn't have done well in lodgings, eating mutton five nights a week. But I wish we'd had the chance to try. We should have had the chance to try."

  "Oliver said Carfax insisted you marry St. Ives."

  "If I'd married Oliver, I'd have been a lawyer's wife scarcely even on the fringe of society. He wanted me well positioned to gather information among the beau monde." She tugged at her second glove. "He also dictated the men I dallied with after my marriage." She looked up to meet Malcolm's gaze, her own hard. "Shocked, Malcolm? It's one of the most effective ways for spies to gather information, after all."

  Malcolm knew that. He certainly wouldn't have thought Carfax would cavil at seduction as a tool of information gathering. Was he surprised because he had known Sylvie since she was a girl? Because Carfax had?

  Sylvie smoothed the fingers of her glove. "I don't know that my marriage to St. Ives would have stood much of a chance in any case. I'm the sort who grows restless, and St. Ives bored me from the first. But Carfax as good as ensured we didn't have a prayer. Not out of malice. I don't think he thinks of me enough for that. We were collateral damage."

  And Carfax had always been ruthless about accepting collateral damage.

  "Rather different from what he asked you to do, I suspect," Sylvie said. "His official agents like you and Tommy Belmont are the prized racehorses in his stable. And yet we both know what it is to do his bidding." She looked down at her fingers. "I don't know that you'll believe this, but while I may not be a faithful wife, I've never numbered Oliver among my lovers. Not out of any conviction on my side. God knows, not out of lack of caring. Some things haven't changed. But Oliver takes his marriage more seriously than I take mine." She regarded Malcolm for a moment. "I know or can guess how angry you must be at Oliver."

  "Can you?"

  "I know betrayal. Knowing what you and David and Simon mean to Oliver, I can guess what he means to you."

  Malcolm gave a short laugh. "We obviously mean less to Oliver than I assumed."

  Sylvie shook her head. "You would see it that way. But if you'd seen the way it's eaten at him all these years—"

  "Not enough to stop."

  "Oh, but he did. As much as one can ever stop working for Carfax. In some ways I think your friendship mattered to him more than anything. In fact—"

  "What?"

  "I think that was part of what drove him to work for Carfax. That he wanted to be part of your world."

  Malcolm gave a harsh laugh.

  "Not just the fine houses and horses and being able to hunt and belonging to the right clubs and the rest of it. That sort of thing has always mattered more to me than to Oliver. It was what the four of you shared."

  Malcolm's mind shot back to an Oxford tavern. "Oliver didn't need a fortune to share it." His voice came out lower and rougher than he intended.

  "Didn't he? What would have happened if he'd come down from Oxford and set up as a solicitor, while David went into Parliament and Simon wrote plays and you joined the diplomatic service? You wouldn't have consciously intended to drop him, but he'd have played on a different stage."

  Scenes from the past hovered on the edges of his memory, but he wasn't ready to explore his feelings with Sylvie. "How much did you know about the Whateley & Company break-in?"

  "As little as possible. Much safer that way. I didn't even know where we were looking for these papers of Carfax's. I didn't know the man killed at Whateley & Company had been working for us until Maria told me. I've made a lot of mistakes, Malcolm, but I'm good at self-preservation."

  "You must be worried."

  "That Carfax is on to us? How could I not be?"

  Malcolm watched her for a moment, seeing the girl with blonde ringlets in a flounced white dress. Seeing her staring at Oliver across the dinner table. According to Oliver, she'd been Carfax's creature even then. "I know how hard it is to break away from Carfax, but I'm not his creature in everything. What does Carfax have on you, Sylvie?"

  "My dear Malcolm. You can hardly expect me to answer that."

  "I might be able to help you."

  Sylvie shook her head. "Oh, Malcolm. I was far beyond help while you were still a starry-eyed undergraduate who had no notion of the word 'spy.'"

  Chapter 36

  Lisette Varon stared up at the Rannochs' Berkeley Square House. The iron spikes of the area railings. The hard glass of the windows, which told of no fear of the window tax she had learned of since her arrival in Britain. Or the candle tax, judging by the amount of light glowing behind the drawn curtains. The bright, clean light of wax tapers. It had been one thing to climb through a window six weeks ago, in the company of comrades who called the Rannochs friends, driven by the needs of the moment. It was quite another to walk up to the front door. She had felt a jolt of trepidation the three times she had been to the house since her arrival in London. And those times, she had been invited. Now she was arriving unbidden, long past the hour for calling.

  She drew a breath, climbed the steps, and rang the bell.

  Valentin, the footman she remembered from her other visits, who spoke English with a Belgian-French accent, opened the door. "Mademoiselle Varon." He stepped aside to admit her to the house without question.

  Lisette stepped into the entrance hall and stopped short at the sight of a tall man with disordered brown hair who stood by the console table, scribbling on a piece of paper. It was Jeremy Roth of Bow Street, she realized. She'd met him at a dinner the Rannochs had given not long after her arrival in Britain.

  "Mr. Roth."

  "Mademoiselle Varon." He inclined his head.

  "I was looking for Mr. or Mrs. Rannoch."

  "So was I. They're out. Wellington's Waterloo banquet."

  Of course. How could she have forgot the anniversary of the day that had changed so much for so many of them? "Do you know if Mr. O'Roarke went with them?"

  "Apparently. Lady Tarrington as well. I was just leaving
them a note."

  Odd to think of Raoul at a banquet to celebrate the British victory. Surely it would test even his skills at dissembling.

  Lisette surveyed the man before her. She knew he'd come to the Berkeley Square house with a man from the Preventive Waterguard the night she and Raoul and Bertrand had sought refuge there. But she also remembered Malcolm Rannoch saying Jeremy Roth was a friend and a man he trusted. "The Rannochs undertake investigations with you."

  He smiled. "It might be more accurate, at times, to say I undertake investigations with them, but yes, we've worked together on more than one occasion."

  "And you're working together now. The murdered man at the warehouse by the docks."

  "Not many have heard of him. Or are paying attention."

  "Partly why it drew my notice." Lisette fingered a fold of her muslin skirt. A British officer of the law was her natural enemy, in many ways. But he was the friend of her friends. His gaze was shrewd and direct, and his smile showed welcome humor. Sometimes, Raoul had told her, one has to trust one's instincts. "I have a message I need to get to them. Time is of the essence."

  Roth gave a quick nod. "I can escort you to Apsley House. I'm sure we can get someone to take a message in to them."

  "You're very kind."

  He gave a quick smile and held out his arm. "I'm well enough acquainted with the Rannochs to know that if a friend of theirs says time is of the essence, the situation is probably urgent indeed."

  Reliving Waterloo would never be the same, Malcolm realized, before the first covers had been removed, the first speech started, the first glass of claret lifted. His memories of Waterloo were now bound up with the knowledge that his wife had been working for the opposite side. That his father had fought on the opposite side and had killed one of his own allies to save Malcolm's and Harry's lives.

  Suzanne was seated across the table next to Fitzroy. A favored spot. Wellington had always been fond of her. Her smile was serene, the smile of a wife pleased at the victory but aware of what it had cost. Even now he knew the truth, it was almost impossible to find cracks in the veneer of her performance.