The Mayfair Affair

by Tracy Grant

  "Laura may have seen the letter," Malcolm said.

  "Laura and the murderer," Raoul agreed. "Assuming Miss Dudley isn't the killer, which I'm inclined to agree with you she most likely isn't."

  Suzanne pushed her fingers into her hair. "Does Lord Carfax know his son-in-law was an Elsinore League member?"

  "I don't know." O'Roarke turned his whisky glass in his hand. "Carfax doesn't have a source like Davenport inside the League, but he's certainly shown himself interested in them."

  Malcolm looked from Raoul to Suzanne. "You think Carfax married his daughter off to get information about the Elsinore League?"

  Suzanne returned her husband's gaze. "Do you think he wouldn't do it?"

  Malcolm's mouth tightened. "There's very little I'm confident Carfax wouldn't do. But he's always drawn a line round his family. On the other hand, he's shown himself willing to cross over almost every line imaginable."

  "You know him well," Raoul said.

  "I've worked for him. Neither of you can say that. Despite my best efforts, Carfax would probably claim I still work for him."

  "Does Carfax know you're involved in the investigation?" Raoul asked.

  "You mean there's something you don't know about tonight's events? I'm relieved to hear it." Malcolm took a sip of whisky. "Actually, Carfax asked me to look into Trenchard's death. Insisted on it."

  Raoul's brows rose. "Interesting."

  "Of course," Malcolm continued, "as David pointed out, Carfax would have known I'd investigate anyway, with Laura involved. This could have been a way of keeping an eye on me." He drew a breath. Suzanne reached for his hand.

  "Trenchard threatened to write to him," Raoul said. "He'd have had no reason to if Carfax already knew about Suzanne."

  "Trenchard might not have known." Malcolm's arm tightened round her shoulders.

  Raoul met his gaze. "With Carfax one can never be sure of anything."

  Malcolm inclined his head, then turned his gaze to Suzanne. "When did you last go through my dispatch box?"

  Bitterness welled up on her tongue, but she kept her gaze on his. There was a time when she could have picked the lock on Malcolm's dispatch box in her sleep. "Not since just after Waterloo."

  He inclined his head, the way he would to a diplomat from a hostile country. "You'll find some new documents there. Travel papers for all of us—you, me, Colin, Jessica, Addison, and Blanca. And Laura, as it happens. Aliases we can use, if necessary. Contact information for a smuggler who can get us to the Continent. A draft on a bank in Switzerland to which I transferred money last month."

  Suzanne stared at her husband. "When did you do all this?"

  "Very shortly after I learned my wife was a former Bonapartist spy. It seemed prudent to have an escape plan."

  Numbness shot through her. "You didn't tell me."

  "I planned to eventually. At the time you were too wracked with guilt. I didn't want to make it worse."

  Her spine stiffened. "I told you, I'm not in the least—"

  "You were dangerously close to wallowing, mo chridh." He touched his fingers to her cheek. "And I was only preparing for an eventuality. Which now seems somewhat more probable. I'd hope we could leave the country together if it comes to it, but should the situation unravel precipitously, take the children and go to the villa in Italy. I'll meet you there if we aren't able to travel together."

  She stared into his eyes, seeing a future she had not let herself contemplate. She had always thought if she ever had to flee Britain, their marriage would have unraveled to the point where Malcolm would have no desire to go with her. Instead, here he was calmly talking about giving up the home he loved, the political career he was building, contact with his family and friends. She swallowed, tasting the ashes of what they had lost. "You don't want to leave—"

  "Dunmykel? The House of Commons? No. But if it comes to them versus my wife, it's no contest."

  She could scarcely imagine a stronger declaration of love. It slashed through her corset laces like a knife cutting her to the bone. "I never wanted—"

  "I know. You weren't thinking about these issues at all. It's collateral damage." His arm still round her shoulders, he reached for her hand and carried it to his lips. Then he turned back to Raoul, who had been observing them in silence. "I can count on you to assist Suzanne should it prove necessary?"

  "Of course."

  Suzanne straightened her shoulders. "I don't need—"

  "You don't have the benefit of being a duke's grandson. But if it makes you feel better, you can ask O'Roarke to assist me should it prove necessary."

  "It's prudent," Raoul said. "Very likely it won't come to that, but one needs an escape plan. It's no more than we did in the Peninsula."

  But that had been a more day-to-day existence somehow. A less settled life, so escape had seemed not so much a question of turning one's back on all one knew. She managed a smile, feeling the weight of the risk they would live with for the rest of their lives. Assuming they managed not to get caught. "Do you know what was in this folder Trenchard wanted me to retrieve from Carfax?" she asked.

  "Not without looking at it." Malcolm squeezed her fingers and reached for his whisky glass. "It seems even without Trenchard we're going to have to retrieve the folder."

  Suzanne stared at her husband. The British agent she had spied on for two and a half years. "Malcolm, are you telling me to break into Carfax's study?"

  "No, I'll do it. I have a better idea of where to look and I can explain more easily if I'm caught."

  "Darling—"

  "Besides, I'm not quite ready to loose a former Bonapartist agent on the chief of British Intelligence."

  "It's not that. But are you sure—"

  "We can't very well ask Carfax for the folder in the circumstances, and we need to get a look at it to see why Trenchard wanted it. If Lady Carfax doesn't cancel her musicale this evening, I'll slip down then. You can keep an eye on Carfax in the drawing room."

  "I can do that," Raoul said. When Malcolm looked at him in surprise, he added, "I received an invitation. A thank-you for my supposed service in the Peninsula. Or a way of keeping an eye on a dangerous Radical, or perhaps a bit of both. In any case, if you'll trust me to keep Carfax occupied, Suzanne can go with you and keep watch while you search the study. It's a safer mission for two."

  For a moment Suzanne thought Malcolm would protest that he didn't want either of them remotely involved in searching Carfax's study, but instead he inclined his head. "Thank you."

  Two words Suzanne had thought might never again pass between the two men. The air in the room seemed suddenly still, fragile glass laid over the tangled abyss between the three of them. "We should look at Laura's room," she said.

  Malcolm nodded and cast a glance at Raoul. "You might as well come with us, O'Roarke. You're already in the middle of this."

  "You're sure?" Raoul asked.

  Malcolm regarded his father. "As sure as I am of anything with you. I much prefer it to you scaling the walls of our house and breaking in."

  Suzanne hesitated before the white-painted door to the room between the night and day nurseries that had been Laura's since they moved into the Berkeley Square house. "It feels like an invasion. The servants have so little privacy." Even now, after six years married to a duke's grandson, she was sometimes brought up short by the idiotic masquerade of master and servant.

  "I know," Malcolm said, though she knew he would never know it quite the way she did. "But Laura rather abrogated that when she refused to explain what she was doing in Trenchard's study. Besides, her life is at stake." He turned the brass handle of the door.

  The room smelled of lavender-scented soap. Laura never wore perfume, at least not in her role as governess. The walls were a pale gray with a hint of blue. Suzanne had asked Laura to choose a color when they were redoing the house. Laura had first demurred that it really didn't matter and that Suzanne should choose, as it was her house. When pressed, she had at last selected th
is paint. Seemingly as neutral and demure as her clothing and demeanor. But when the light of the brace of candles Malcolm carried fell on the walls, they glowed with unexpected vibrancy.

  Malcolm set the candelabrum down and lit a lamp. The room was scrupulously tidy and almost entirely bare of personal items. A low bookshelf held the books Suzanne and Malcolm had given Laura on various occasions through the years—a set of Shakespeare; copies of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility; Ludlow, because Laura had once mentioned an interest in seventeenth-century history. The cedarwood jewel box on the dressing table beside the looking glass had also been a gift from them.

  "I'll take the desk," Malcolm said. "Suzette, why don't you look through her clothes? O'Roarke, search for hiding places."

  The jewel box proved to contain a single strand of pearls, which Suzanne had seen Laura wear on Christmas and other special occasions, a lapis lazuli brooch they had given her, and a cameo pendant Suzanne had never seen her wear. Suzanne held the cameo to the lamplight. "J.H." was engraved on the gold filigree frame. Laura's mother's name, perhaps? The fine-featured profile had a bit of a resemblance to Laura, though the hair seemed more contemporary than what one would expect of her mother. The dressing table drawer contained gray and black gloves, handkerchiefs, hairpins, a steel-framed reticule.

  The clothing in the white-painted wardrobe was equally innocuous. Serviceable gowns of kerseymere and merino, two pelisses, a dark blue spencer with black braid that was the most fashionable item, plaited straw hats. The clothing of a governess. Yet it seemed oddly impersonal, as though it belonged to the role and not the person. Suzanne moved to the books but found no sign of anything sewn into the binding or tucked between the pages, save a pastel drawing tucked into Pride and Prejudice. The work of a very young child, but someone older than Jessica. Colin's? Or a memento of one of Laura's former charges?

  "Nothing in the writing desk," Malcolm said. "No indication she ever wrote letters." He glanced at Suzanne. "Where did she go on her days off?"

  "I have no idea." Suzanne tucked the drawing back into the book. "She never volunteered any information, and I never asked. Trying again to let her keep what privacy she could."

  "She never mentioned family?" Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. "Damn it, you're right. I should have paid more attention."

  "She told me her family were all gone." Raoul turned from examining the molding.

  Suzanne stared at her former spymaster and felt Malcolm do the same.

  "Last December," Raoul said. "In the midst of the Hamlet investigation. I came to see the two of you and found Miss Dudley in the square with the children. We talked for a bit."

  Malcolm regarded Raoul for a moment. "In a brief encounter you learned more about Laura than I did in over a year."

  Raoul gave a faint smile. "As I said, I like Miss Dudley. But I confess I also had an ulterior motive. She intrigued me. She always struck me as more than a governess."

  "Why?" Suzanne asked.

  "Her performance as a governess was flawless. Perhaps a shade too flawless. She had the knack of blending into the background. But she noticed everything."

  "That could have indicated a budding novelist," Malcolm said.

  "It could. But remember I had reasons to be wary where all of you were concerned. Reasons you at least did not yet know of."

  "But I knew," Suzanne said. "I should have seen it."

  "You were more concerned with Miss Dudley's impact on your children. Which seems to have been nothing but positive, from everything I've observed."

  Suzanne drew a sharp breath, picturing her children asleep in their beds and the questions the morning would almost certainly bring. "It won't be positive if they lose her."

  "She said she'd had nothing to come back to in England," Raoul said. "But from her hesitation, I'd say she had mixed feelings about returning to her homeland." He turned back to the molding and ran his fingers along it. A few minutes later a piece of the molding fell away in his hand and a packet of papers tied with buff-colored ribbon fell to the floor. "Everyone has secrets." Raoul said, stooping to pick them up. "But somehow with Miss Dudley I assume these are more than just love letters."

  He carried the papers over to the dressing table and set them in the light of the candles. Suzanne moved to stand beside him, aware of an unexpected dread coiling in her chest. Malcolm joined them and undid the first of the papers.

  10 February. Lord Worsley and Mr. Tanner came to dine along with the Davenports. They were discussing the possibility of a bill mitigating the penalties against the northern machine breakers. They were still talking about it when I brought the children into the drawing room. Mr. Rannoch and Lord Worsley seemed to disagree about tactics.

  11 February. Mrs. Rannoch went to a china warehouse today with Lady Cordelia and the children. Mr. Rannoch is speaking in the House. They've gone to a reception at the Austrian embassy this evening. All I overheard was a comment on the Esterhazys' chef having a heavy hand with the cream.

  It continued in the same vein. Dates and notes on where they had gone, whom they had had to dine, what they had discussed. Malcolm lifted his gaze to Suzanne. She felt the same realization shoot through both of them. Trust was a fragile thing, as they both knew well. And so easily broken.

  Malcolm said it first. "It seems Laura was spying on us."

  Chapter 7

  Malcolm turned to Raoul. "Your instincts were right, O'Roarke."

  Raoul's mouth twisted as he looked down at the paper in his hand. "On the contrary. I'd decided Miss Dudley could be trusted."

  Suzanne stared at the paper and saw the face of the woman she'd trusted with her children. "I engaged her. I brought it into our home. Of all the idiotic—"

  "It's amazing how the cleverest agent can be deceived," Malcolm said.

  Suzanne met her husband's gaze. "Dearest—"

  "Don't be so hard on yourself, Suzette. At least you weren't sleeping with her." He looked at Raoul. "Was she your—"

  "You think I'd set a spy in your household?"

  "I can imagine more surprising things."

  Raoul's mouth lifted. "At the risk of ruining my reputation, I do have some scruples."

  Suzanne folded her arms over her chest. "Trenchard was an Elsinore League member, Trenchard knew about me. And hated Raoul."

  "It does seem likely." Raoul grimaced. "Odd. I'm less disappointed that Miss Dudley is a spy than with whom she was working for. Assuming it's Trenchard."

  "It would explain why she won't talk to us," Suzanne said.

  Raoul touched her arm. "Don't torture yourself until you know more, querida."

  They examined the rest of the room but it yielded no further clues. "I have some contacts I can use to make inquiries about the Elsinore League," Raoul said. "Discreetly," he added at a look from Malcolm. "I presume you'll both be busy talking to Miss Dudley. I'll see you at the Carfax musicale. If you need to reach me before, you can leave word at Mivart's."

  Malcolm nodded, but when Raoul reached the door, he said, "O'Roarke."

  "Yes?" Raoul turned back, gripping the door handle.

  "If they know about Suzette, they probably know about you. Have a care."

  A rare, unironic smile crossed Raoul's face. "I always do, Malcolm. But thank you."

  Suzanne dropped down on her dressing table bench, hugging her arms across her chest. "I'm sorry."

  Malcolm studied his wife. He felt oddly as he had when she'd first stumbled out of the trees in the Cantabrian Mountains, smeared with blood and dirt, eyes bright with determination. "It isn't your fault, Suzette."

  "I didn't say it was." Her voice was steady, but she was hugging herself as though she had a chill.

  "No, but I can tell what you're thinking."

  "Damn it, Malcolm, do you have to read me so well?"

  "Making up for all the things I missed." He dropped down on the bench beside her. "You said it yourself. This was always a risk."

  Her gaze shot to Jessica a
sleep in her cradle and then to the closed door that led to the night nursery. "We're all at risk, thanks to me."

  "We all wouldn't be here if it weren't for you." He reached for he hand. He wondered sometimes if he would find it harder to forgive her if he we weren't so worried that she wouldn't be able to forgive herself.

  Her fingers tightened round his own, though her hand was cold. "And now Raoul's involved."

  "Given the circumstances, I think it's just as well. Annoying as he can be, I can't deny he's helpful."

  She looked at him, her gaze unexpectedly fragile. "It can't but—"

  "Raise issues? Given everything, we'd be fools to imagine we could avoid him for a month together."

  "Malcolm—"

  He folded her hand between both his own. "I'm doing my best, Suzette. We'd be mad to pretend any of this is going to be easy. But we're managing to make it work. We both know there really isn't any alternative. O'Roarke is so tangled up in both our lives, we're going to have to manage to make it work with him. And even if we avoid him, I don't think either of us could really manage not to think about him."

  "I'm sorry." She drew back a fraction of an inch. "I'm sure I'm the last person you want to talk to about this. I just wish you had someone to talk to."

  He bit back a laugh, trying to imagine confiding in anyone about Raoul O'Roarke. Even David, with whom he had shared secrets from boyhood. Or Harry Davenport, his companion at Waterloo, who had made his own bitter confidences to Malcolm about his past and marriage. "The truth is, I don't know what I think or feel myself when it comes to O'Roarke. If I did know—I don't know that I'd tell you."

  Suzanne inclined her head. The fragile moment was gone. Hard reality had settled in her eyes. "This is going to be a test, isn't it? Of how well we can manage to go on with the truth in the open."

  "We've been managing to go on for three months."

  "But we haven't had an investigation. We haven't been thrown into the world of Carfax and Raoul and the Elsinore League. I always knew we'd have to eventually, but I was hoping it wouldn't be so soon. It's one thing to trust each other planning dinners and writing speeches and taking the children to the park. It's another looking into secrets of people close to us."