by Tracy Grant
"That's one possibility."
James stared at Malcolm with glazed eyes. James had arrived at Trenchard House an hour since, apparently, and still had the look of one adjusting to the shocking change in circumstances. "You think he was killed by someone in the house?"
"We have to consider the possibility."
"God in heaven— " James swallowed. "No, I know you have to ask questions. We're fortunate to have you asking them instead of some Bow Street runner we don't know."
"Jeremy Roth is very good at his job."
"It's still a stranger prying into our lives." James's fingers closed on the beveled edge of the desk. "Mary and the girls have been through enough."
"Not all men would get on with their stepmother so well."
James took a turn about the room as though he wished he were pacing his country property. "It was a surprise, of course, Father remarrying. Not that it should have been, I suppose— but one doesn't think of one's father— In any case, Mary seemed to make him happy. As much as the word could be ascribed to my father. It was certainly nice to have a woman's touch about the house again. And of course I'm fond of Bobby and the girls."
"Your father never mentioned Miss Dudley?" Malcolm asked.
"Never." For a moment it seemed James might say more, but he remained silent.
"Do you think she could have been his mistress?"
"I—"
"Your stepmother has already admitted to knowing he had mistresses."
"Damn it, one doesn't like to think of one's father— Yes, of course I knew he had mistresses, but I tried to know as little as possible about them. Still, wouldn't have thought a governess was precisely in his style."
"Did you ever hear him talk about someone called Emily?"
James spun round and took a quick step towards Malcolm. "You know who Emily is?"
"Only that your father murmured her name as he was dying. Who is she?"
"I'm trying to find out. My father left her five thousand pounds a year."
Malcolm stared at the new Duke of Trenchard. "Your father left five thousand pounds a year to someone you've never heard of?"
"My father and I were hardly confidants. You should understand that, Rannoch. I'd never heard of this Emily—Emily Saunders, apparently—until I went through his desk this morning. It appears to be a codicil to his will written very recently."
"And you thought—"
"I wasn't sure what to think. Though the obvious assumption was that it was a mistress. Or possibly—"
"Yes?"
James swallowed. "As I said, my father and I were hardly confidants. I knew he had mistresses. I didn't care to know more. He and Mary seemed to rub along well enough. But if he left a legacy to someone, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a child."
Malcolm scanned James's face. "Did you have reason to think your father had an illegitimate child?"
"Other than the fact that he had mistresses? No."
"You said he altered his will. Five thousand pounds a year is a large sum even for a wealthy man like your father. Where did the money come from?"
James hesitated. "From Mary's share."
Odder and odder. The marriage of a Mallinson and a Fitzwalter was in the nature of a diplomatic alliance, and changing the terms of the will like violating a treaty. "Does she know?"
"I haven't asked her, if that's what you mean." James turned away, picked up his coffee cup again as though weighing a choice. "Malcolm— It's more than just the legacy to this Emily. Except for the parts of the marriage settlement he couldn't change, Father cut Mary out of his will entirely."
A dozen possibilities, each worse than the last, raced through Malcolm's head. "Your father cut his wife out of his will?"
"To the extent that he could. She'll still be well provided for. Carfax saw to it that her marriage portion is settled so it goes to her and then to her children. But she'd have received considerably more before he made these changes. He—" James hesitated.
"What?" Malcolm asked.
"He even specified that she wasn't to have the use of the dower house, which is nonsense. Of course she and my brother and sisters will be welcome there and in our other houses. I'd hardly turn out my own family."
Malcolm saw Mary's contained face the night before. "Do you have any idea why your father made these changes?"
"None."
Malcolm met James's gaze. For all his agreeable demeanor, he could appear surprisingly unyielding. "But?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You had no clue that anything had changed between your father and stepmother."
James tossed down another swallow of coffee. "We aren't— we're scarcely the sort of family that lives in each other's pockets, Malcolm. You of all people should understand that."
"Fair enough. But you and your father were on better terms than Alistair and I were." A father and son (titular son) could scarcely be on worse terms than he and Alistair.
"Perhaps. We saw Father and Mary relatively often, but not on intimate terms. Hetty and I rarely dined at Trenchard House without at least ten others present. We may have given the illusion of family solidarity, but we could go a whole evening without exchanging more than a dozen words. I talked to him more at White's or the House about politics than about personal matters. God knows he never showed much interest in his grandchildren. Oh, he's happy enough to have heirs, but he didn't seem to want to actually spend time with them. Any more than he did with Jack and me. Or his younger children." James scraped a hand over his hair and drew a sharp breath. "I'm sorry. He's dead. I still can't quite comprehend that. I should—"
Malcolm put a hand on James's shoulder. "You're coming to terms with your father's death as best you can. There's nothing you should or shouldn't be doing."
James gave a twisted smile. "I still can't quite believe he's gone. I keep expecting him to stride through the door and ask what I'm doing going through his things." His gaze swept the room, the oak paneling, the dark green leather, the Trenchard arms carved over the fire, the litter of papers on the tooled-leather blotter.
"I take it your father didn't spend a lot of time preparing you to be duke?"
"He went over the details of the estates with me. After Jack died." James swallowed. The rasp of his breath told volumes about his relationship with his late brother.
"It can't have been easy to suddenly be the heir." Malcolm keenly remembered the almost physical weight he'd seen descend on David's shoulders when his uncle died and his father became Earl Carfax.
"I quite liked the idea of spending my life in the House of Commons. Father had always paid less attention to me, which was something of a blessing. Suddenly I was his heir and that threw us together. He made sure I understood the estates, as I said, and turned over the management of some of the smaller ones to me. Showed me the details of the entail at the time of my marriage settlement. But it wasn't as though we had frequent discussions about it all after that unless something changed."
"But he didn't tell you about the change involving your stepmother's inheritance."
James glanced down at the desktop. "No."
"You say you didn't spend time alone with them, but even in public one observes a lot about a couple. Had you seen anything change between your father and Mary?"
"It's not as though they were a demonstrative couple. They had their own spheres and they seemed happy enough in them. When they were together, they treated each other politely. They had entertaining down to an art. I'd call theirs a compatible marriage."
"Even recently?"
James frowned. "The last time we dined with them. Last Tuesday. It wasn't anything either of them said. I don't recall them speaking to each other at all, which wasn't unusual. But Father scarcely even looked at Mary. Except for once, when I caught his gaze on her, down the length of the table. I'm not fanciful, but it was a look that could have cut glass."
Malcolm watched him for a moment. "Do you think he was ever violent with her?"
&
nbsp; "My father? With Mary?" James spoke with the shock of one for whom striking a woman was anathema.
"It happens. In all circles. It isn't judged a crime."
"I know, but— Why are you asking this?"
"David says she had a bruise a fortnight ago."
"I know, she walked into a door. Had the devil of a time covering it up with powder."
"You believed that?"
"Yes, of course—" James stared at him. "You think she was lying?"
"She wouldn't be the first woman to lie in those circumstances."
"I know, but—" James shook his head. "I don't know why I'm defending my father. It's not as though I had any particular illusions about his morals. But a gentleman doesn't—"
"Gentlemen tend to have widely differing interpretations of what it means to be a gentleman."
James stared at him. "Have you asked Mary about this?"
"No, but David did. She denied it."
"Oh, my God."
"She was likely to deny it."
"No, but if David knows— did he tell Carfax?"
"Yes."
James grimaced. "One of the few men I know more chilling than my father." He hesitated. "I can't claim to know Mary well, either. I was in my teens by the time she married Father. She hardly reached out to me nor I to her. But I like her."
"It's not always easy to see another woman take one's mother's place."
"My mother's place had been empty for some years. And it was a cold place, at that. " James's fingers tightened on the desktop. "Not exactly a good example of wedded bliss."
"You seem to have succeeded in spite of it," Malcolm said.
"One manages," James said, in a neutral tone that spoke volumes and raised myriad questions.
"But something must have made your father write Mary out of his will. Any idea what?"
"No," said James.
This time Malcolm was quite sure he was lying.
Chapter 10
"Mrs. Rannoch. Lady Cordelia." Henrietta Fitzwalter, Lady Tarrington—the Duchess of Trenchard now, Suzanne realized—came forwards as the footman announced Suzanne and Cordelia. "James isn't here. He's gone to Trenchard House."
The new Duchess of Trenchard was a slight woman with a thin, fine-boned face that might have possessed a sort of elfin prettiness were it not drawn into lines of concern. Her dark hair was pulled back into a simple knot, and she wore a gown of gray-and-white-striped sarcenet with a simple strand of pearls round her throat and a black fichu as an added sign of mourning.
"Malcolm has gone to Trenchard House to see your husband," Suzanne said. "We came here to see you. Lady Tarr—Duchess, I'm so very sorry."
"Thank you. You're very kind. But you didn't come here to express your condolences, did you? Or not just to express you condolences. You came to question me." She lifted her chin. Iron flashed beneath the delicate exterior.
"Duchess—" Suzanne said.
"Mary told us. That you and your husband were looking into Trenchard's death. That we should be grateful you were doing so rather than Bow Street."
"Actually, Malcolm and I are assisting Bow Street."
"But you're the one who's here, aren't you? You and Lady Cordelia." The duchess gestured towards the pale blue settee and matching armchairs that flanked the fireplace. "Do sit down. We might as well be civil."
"I know what it's like to lose a family member to violence," Cordelia said, settling the skirts of her sapphire velvet pelisse.
"I'll own to being in shock." The duchess poured tea with every bit the command her stepmother-in-law had shown pouring coffee the night before. "We haven't even told the children yet. Well, we can't even begin to tell Eddy, he's only one. And Fitz is just two and a half. I don't know how we'll explain—"
"I've found the truth is generally best," Suzanne said. "Even when you think they're too young to understand, it's less frightening than their imaginings."
"I hadn't thought of it that way, but— Thank you." The duchess put a cup of tea in Suzanne's hand. "I'm waiting for James to return so we can talk to them together. It still seems unreal."
"That will change," Cordelia said. "For better or worse."
The duchess swallowed and put her hand to her throat, tugging at her pearls. "I suppose that's inevitable. It's kind of you to share your experience. I know few people with a relative who died by violence. But, while of course I respected and esteemed my father-in-law, we weren't as close as you must have been to your sister." She gave Cordelia a cup of tea. "Trenchard wasn't the sort of man one was close to."
Cordelia accepted the cup with the sort of smile that invites confidences. "I don't envy you marrying the heir to a dukedom."
The new duchess's smile was tight with strain. "I'd known James since we were children. My father's estate adjoins Beauvalet—the Trenchards' principal country seat. He's two years older than I and Jack was four years older, but after they went to school I didn't see as much of them." She tugged her fichu smooth. "I was married before, you know. Teddy was a soldier. He shipped off to India just a few months after we married. I wanted to go with him, but I was expecting a baby. A baby I lost two months after he sailed."
"I'm so sorry," Suzanne said. "It must have been particularly hard with your husband gone."
Remembered grief shot through the duchess's eyes. "I missed Teddy dreadfully, but I was relieved because India seemed safer than the Peninsula. But he was killed before the year was out. And then less than three years later we got the news that Jack had died in India as well."
"Jack's death must have been a great shock to the family," Suzanne said, zeroing in on what she sensed was an important piece of the puzzle of the past.
"It was horrible. I still remember when I first heard the news. I could scarcely believe it—quite like now. I was home with my sisters. James and I weren't married yet." Hetty gave a quick, harsh laugh that broke the taut air. "If it wasn't for that, I doubt we ever would have been." She took a sip of tea. "James was always kind, even to a mousy girl with a distressing tendency to turn tongue tied. Jack could be kind as well, but in a sort of careless way. I was always rather surprised if he gave any sign he even knew I existed."
"There's no sense pretending we aren't aware of the scandals he was caught up in," Cordelia said. "Though I recall the charm. It's an all too common type. It must have been very hard for your husband."
"They weren't particularly close. They were too different for that. But I think in a way that made it harder for James."
"When one loses someone one doesn't know well, one is left with endless questions," Suzanne said. Never more true than with Malcolm and his supposed father, Alistair Rannoch.
"James was out fishing with my brother when we got the news. I saw him when he learned his brother had died. His face drained of color. Of all emotion, really. He strode from the room. I ran after him like a fool and tried to get him to talk. Of course that was the last thing he wanted. He was too kind to snap my head off, as I'm sure he wanted to do."
"You were trying to help," Cordelia said.
"Trying." The duchess took a sip of tea and grimaced as though at the bitterness. "I could see him begin to change that day. He'd always been more serious than Jack, but he'd been able to pursue his own life. He had his own rooms in London, he was making a name for himself in Parliament. I look at my boys sometimes and think how much more choice a younger son has in how he lives his life. Suddenly James was the heir. I could practically see it settle on his shoulders, like ducal robes."
"Malcolm says much the same about David Mallinson when his father became Earl Carfax," Suzanne said.
The duchess nodded. "David is the sort who takes his responsibilities seriously. So does James. He started spending more time with his father, learning about the responsibilities that would be his. Before that, I wouldn't precisely say he and Trenchard were estranged, but they went their separate ways. And then James decided he should take a wife, and I happened to be there. I think perhaps the fact
that I was a widow made me seem safer. Less likely to have romantic expectations." She stirred her tea in rhythmic strokes, the silver spoon gleaming between her fingers. "James will be a wonderful duke, but I've often selfishly thought our life would be much more agreeable were he still a younger son. But the truth is if he hadn't become the heir, I doubt we'd be married at all."
"Women are conditioned to look for a husband," Cordelia said. "It's drummed into us, or at least most of us. With men, I think it's often more a question of deciding it's time and looking round at the girl standing next to them."
"So true." The duchess gave a quick smile. "I'd been fond of James since childhood. I'd—oh, I know it sounds foolish, but I'd loved him in a sort of mad, schoolgirlish way. He was so kind with the younger children, so patient. And he looked like a prince in a fairy tale." Memories drifted through her eyes. "I thought life couldn't get any better when he danced with me at my coming-out ball. But even then I had no expectations. When I met Teddy I knew I could have a good life with him. After he was killed, I didn't think I'd marry again. I was shocked the day James offered for me. It was like a dream, save that it was soon after his brother died, and James warned me that being the future Duchess of Trenchard wouldn't be an easy life."
"Malcolm warned me of the difficulties of being a diplomat's wife when he offered for me," Suzanne said. Malcolm, in fact, had warned her about his own emotional failings, the bad example set by his parents, his fear that he wouldn't be very good at marriage. Which wasn't precisely true. Though God knows intimacy didn't come easily to either of them.
The duchess took a sip of tea. "James is fond of me, but he decided he should have a wife, and I was there."
"Timing aside, your husband doesn't appear the sort of man who would offer for a woman he didn't want to marry," Cordelia said.
The duchess gave another, tight smile. "As I said, he's fond of me. We're happier than most couples in Mayfair. James is a good man. We have a very agreeable life."
It was said with a smile. Everything Suzanne had seen of the new Duke and Duchess of Trenchard indicated an agreeable, settled existence. Yet, beneath the duchess's smile and level voice was the stab of desperation. The desperation that could lurk behind chintz window curtains and under silver tea sets. The desperation of unrequited love. A similar language in a ducal mansion or a mud-floored hut.
