The Mayfair Affair

by Tracy Grant

  "No. That is, nothing's led me to believe he does."

  "Then—" Her mouth curled. "Of course. Mary."

  "You didn't realize she knew?"

  "Can you imagine I could have faced my sister, knowing—"

  "Sometimes one has no choice."

  Louisa pushed herself to her feet. "You must think me depraved."

  "Louisa— You know the world I grew up in. I understand some marriages are dead long before either party strays."

  "But this was with my sister's husband." Louisa turned to the window, gripping her elbows. "We're a fine pair, aren't we, Mary and I. The odd thing is, our parents have one of the true love matches in Mayfair, and neither of us even attempted to emulate them. I knew Trenchard strayed, just as Craven did. But I never thought I would myself. I wasn't one of those women."

  "What started it?"

  "Malcolm." She spun round, the light at her back. "You can't expect me to tell you—"

  "I think you need to, Louisa."

  "I see." Her gaze locked on his. "You aren't my friend. You're an investigator."

  "I'm both."

  "My dear Malcolm. You can't be both."

  He leaned forwards. "You're going to have to talk to someone about this, Louisa. I think you'd prefer to talk to me."

  She folded her arms over her chest and gripped her elbows. "Does Roth know?"

  "Not yet."

  "But you'll tell him if I don't talk? That's blackmail, Malcolm."

  Which could be said of much of what an agent did, not to mention an investigator. "If I know the story, I'll do my best to keep your confidence, Louisa."

  "But you can't promise even that."

  "No."

  She drew a harsh breath. "What did Mary tell you?"

  He owed Louisa honesty. At the same time, instincts said to confide just enough to draw her out. "She seemed to think it began at a house party. At Christmas."

  "Yes." Louisa's fingers tightened on the shiny lilac fabric of her skirt. "Christmas revels at Beauvalet. The family usually gathered at Carfax Court, but Mary wanted to host that year. I've wondered sometimes if that didn't make it worse. Watching Mary rule her domain, take precedence, live the life she'd aspired to."

  "Your sister's marriage was hardly idyllic, either."

  "No, but Mary had what she wanted. What she always wanted. What we were bred up to want. And, as usual, I came in a bit behind." Louisa pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "At first, I just wanted to see if I could get his attention. Trenchard's. I knew Craven was pursuing one of the maids, and I was so tired of playing the wife and sister who faded into the background. It seemed a harmless bit of fun to liven up the holiday tedium. No one was more surprised than I was when Trenchard responded." She looked up at Malcolm. "I think Mary probably exaggerated my overtures."

  "I don't think Mary would exonerate her husband."

  Louisa grimaced. "At first, I thought it would be a harmless flirtation. I think I half wanted to see if Craven and Mary would even notice. And then—" She swallowed. In her own way she was as tough as Mary, but these were not easy matters to speak of with her upbringing. "Trenchard indicated he was interested in more." She gave an embarrassed laugh. "At first I was sure I couldn't have heard him aright. Then I was appalled. Then I thought—" Her brows drew together, as though even now she was trying to make sense of her actions. "Why not?" She gave a desperate laugh. "A shocking reason for a love affair, isn't it?"

  "Believe me, I've heard worse."

  "You're so splendidly moral, Malcolm. Like David. The two of you never transgress."

  "My dear girl. That you think so only means we succeeded in keeping the brotherly mask in place."

  She looked down at her hands. "It was dangerous. I know that."

  "Danger can be seductive."

  Her gaze flew to his face. "You talk as though you knew."

  "In the intelligence game there's more than one kind of seduction."

  She met his gaze and slowly nodded. "I wouldn't say I was in love with him. How odd. At one time I'd have said love could be the only possible excuse for a love affair. But he fascinated me. He made me feel special. One of the most powerful men in the country. And he singled out me. Not that I have any illusions that I meant more to him than the rest of his mistresses. I don't know the details, but I understand there were a number of them."

  "How long did it last?"

  "A few months. By the time the season was in full swing I could tell he'd lost interest. Sneaking about had its piquancy at first, but after a time it started to feel sordid. He was gentleman enough to let me end it, but I could tell he was relieved. And I— I felt as though I'd woken from a spell, like in one of my children's fairy tales."

  "Did Craven know?"

  "No."

  "You're sure?"

  "You think I could not realize if my husband knew I'd been unfaithful?"

  "That would depend upon your husband's reaction." For a moment Malcolm felt the cold black metal of a lamppost beneath his hand. His stomach tightened with the gut punch of his wife's betrayal.

  "Craven doesn't rate me particularly high. But he's not a complacent husband like Peter Cowper. If he'd known I was unfaithful he'd have reacted."

  Malcolm looked at the drawn face of his best friend's sister. "Does this change your answer about the quarrel Mary says she overheard between Trenchard and Craven?"

  "No! That is—" Louisa's eyes widened. "Oh, dear God."

  "It doesn't necessarily prove anything. It gives Craven a motive to have killed Trenchard but doesn't explain who killed Craven."

  Louisa gave a jerky nod. "Mary must hate me."

  Malcolm hesitated, a dozen answers going through his head. "Mary's hurt. Which she wouldn't be, if she didn't care for you."

  Louisa nodded again, more slowly. "The sisters in novels always seem so close. Even when Marianne's yammering on about her lost love or Elinor's keeping secrets, you never doubt that they care for each other. I never thought Mary noticed me much one way or the other. Why should she have, after all?"

  Malcolm's own brother flashed into his mind. How could he not? Not that he and Edgar hadn't been close, once. "I think you underrate both Mary and yourself."

  Louisa shook her head. "You always want to see the best in people, Malcolm." She regarded him for a moment. "You must despise me."

  "My dear girl. I'll own I'm surprised by recent revelations. But I'm the last to cast blame."

  "Isn't that your job?"

  "No. It's my job to try to learn the truth of what happened."

  Louisa held his gaze. "And, despite everything, I really do want to know."

  Malcolm nodded. He got to his feet, and when she rose to see him to the door, he touched her arm again. He knew more about her than at any point in their twenty-some-year acquaintance. And he had never felt more awkward in her presence.

  But at the door, he turned back. "Louisa? How did Craven come to be assigned to work with Trenchard? Did he request it?"

  "Oh, no," Louisa said. "He wouldn't have been able to make it happen, in any case. It was Father who arranged it."

  Malcolm slammed shut the door of Carfax's study. "Damn it, sir, how much else are you hiding?"

  Carfax looked up from his newspaper. "I wasn't aware that I was hiding anything."

  "You had Craven spying on Trenchard."

  Carfax set the newspaper on the table beside his chair. "Who told you that?"

  "No one. I know the way you work."

  "You're inclined to credit me with being entirely too devious, Malcolm."

  "Sir." Malcolm strode to the other matched Sheraton armchair and gripped its oak back. "What's the point of having me investigate at all if you won't be honest with me?"

  Carfax smoothed the newspaper. "You seem to do very well ferreting things out on your own. I'm hardly necessary at all."

  "You underrate yourself, sir," Malcolm said in a tight voice. "Do you really want me blundering about your family?"

&nbs
p; "You don't blunder, Malcolm. But you have a point. The situation in India was delicate seven years ago. The East India Company were running amok as usual, but they had too much support in Parliament to rein them in completely. And we relied on saltpeter from India for the war again Napoleon."

  "You didn't trust Trenchard."

  "I knew he was an Elsinore League member." Carfax said it as though it was explanation enough, which, in a way, perhaps it was.

  "So you set your other son-in-law to spy on him."

  "I wanted someone assigned to the mission whom I knew I could count on for honest reports. Craven was ambitious, and unlike Trenchard he needed my support to achieve his ambitions."

  "Did Trenchard know?"

  Carfax tilted his head back and regarded Malcolm over his spectacles. "My dear boy. What do you take me for?"

  "I think it's more a question of what I take Trenchard for."

  "A point. Trenchard had no inkling, to my knowledge. And my knowledge is, needless to say, extensive."

  "Did Craven give you any useful intelligence?"

  "His reports were thorough. As it happened, Trenchard managed things capably enough, though in the end it was a damned mess anyway."

  "The East Adilabad/West Basmat dispute?"

  Carfax grimaced. "The Rajah of West Basmat surprised our troops, who were supporting the Rajah of East Adilabad. It was a private contest between the two men, but we threw our support behind East Adilabad because the East India Company were trying to negotiate a treaty with the rajah."

  "Reggie Hallam and Archie Grandison were both killed." They had been at Harrow with Malcolm and David.

  Carfax nodded. "As was Teddy Caruthers."

  "Hetty Tarrington's first husband?"

  "Quite. Incompetence, though I can't blame it on Trenchard or Craven." Carfax looked as though he almost wished he could. He liked explanations.

  "Was Craven still gathering intelligence for you?"

  Carfax picked up a penknife from the table. "Here and there."

  "Here and where?"

  "Undersecretary to the Board of Control is a dull job—which made Craven well suited for it—but useful information crossed his desk from time to time. Of course I wanted to take advantage of it."

  "And Craven was your creature."

  "Craven was in my debt."

  "Aren't we all," Malcolm muttered under his breath.

  "I heard that, Malcolm. You know how intelligence works."

  Malcolm released the chairback and walked round to the front of the chair. "Did you have Craven spying on me?"

  "If I wanted reports on you, I wouldn't have turned to Craven."

  Malcolm dropped into the chair. This same pair of Sheraton armchairs had been in the study when Carfax first called him and David in here as boys to give them a look at his extensive collection of maps. Malcolm leaned forwards and regarded his spymaster. Father to Mary, Louisa, David, Bel, Georgiana, and Lucinda. "Tell me something, sir. Even as a callow, obtuse young man, it was plain to me that you loved Lady Carfax, and she you. Didn't you want that happiness for your children?"

  For an instant, he saw his shot hit home in the hard depths of Carfax's eyes. "You assume it is a happiness."

  "I think it is for you and Lady Carfax."

  "But there are no guarantees, in any sort of marriage. I don't believe your own marriage precisely began as a love match."

  Malcolm wasn't sure if Carfax meant that as praise or censure of his and Suzanne's marriage, and wasn't sure he wanted to find out. "All the same—"

  "The alternative hasn't worked out so very well?" Carfax wiped his handkerchief over the blade of the penknife. "Mary was set on what she wanted in a husband. There isn't exactly a wealth of ducal coronets. She's fortunate she found one. No lecture from me on the joys of connubial bliss would have changed her mind."

  "And you liked being close to Trenchard."

  "That was a side benefit."

  "And Louisa?"

  Carfax aligned the penknife at a precise angle on the newspaper. "To own the truth, I'd have preferred it if Amelia's ridiculous schemes had come to fruition and Louisa had married you. Not that I ever had much hope of it. Or that I think it would have turned out so very well. I suspect you'd have been bored."

  "Perhaps you underestimate Louisa."

  "My dear Malcolm, I've known you since you were eight. I think there are very few women you would have allowed yourself to fall in love with. I don't believe my daughter was one of them. Suzanne has a rare ability to slip under your guard."

  Malcolm swallowed. He was keenly aware of Carfax's seeming omniscience in intelligence matters, but he wasn't used to his mentor showing the same abilities when it came to the intricacies of human relationships. "And David?" he asked. It was, he later acknowledged, an attempt to divert the conversation from himself, perhaps unwisely. He generally avoided any discussion of David's matrimonial future with Carfax.

  Carfax's gaze hardened against intrusion. "David will do what is expected of him. I have no doubt of it."

  And yet for once, Malcolm suspected that Carfax, who was in general supremely confident, was attempting to reassure himself.

  Malcolm braced his hands on the chair. It was the investigation that mattered now. "Was Craven working on anything for you that might have got him killed?"

  "The last intelligence I got from Craven was convoluted details about a tea shipment that didn't even seem important enough for me to try to make sense of it."

  "Suppose Trenchard and Craven had had a falling out."

  "Why would they have done?"

  "Supposition." Malcolm wasn't going to betray Louisa's affair to her father unless he absolutely had to. "I'm trying to find a way to connect the two murders. What if, instead of the same person killing both of them, Craven killed Trenchard. We know the Elsinore League are tightly knit. Might they have killed Craven in revenge?"

  "I should very much like to know why you think Trenchard and Craven might have fallen out," Carfax said. "But if Craven killed Trenchard—yes, it's entirely possible the Elsinore League sought revenge."

  Frederick Hampson hesitated on the threshold. His gaze took in every detail of his daughter's face. Suzanne, standing behind Hampson with Raoul, was suddenly and acutely aware that he was seeing the baby he had once held in his arms, the toddler taking her first steps, the little girl he had taught to ride a pony, the young woman he had given away at her wedding.

  He stepped forwards as though to embrace Laura, and then checked himself, showing keener instincts and more sharply attuned sensibilities than Suzanne would have expected. "Jane. Or should I call you Laura?"

  "I answer to both." Laura was on her feet as well, with the table between her and her father. "Though in truth, it's so long since I've been called Jane that it seems like another person. It is another person."

  Hampson's mouth twisted. To Suzanne it appeared he was trying to control tears. "Odd. When I look at you I still see my daughter."

  "Papa—" Laura hesitated, swallowed, drew a breath. "I made my own choices. Bad choices. It isn't your responsibility to deal with the consequences."

  "Dear God, Jane." The sob Hampson was trying to control broke through in his voice. "It isn't a question of responsibilities. I love you."

  For a moment, the articulate Laura seemed to be robbed of speech. Suzanne swallowed and heard a hitch in Raoul's breath.

  "If I didn't make that clear enough—and I fear I didn't—that's my fault," Hampson said. "A sin for which I'll never forgive myself. That you couldn't come to me—"

  "Because I wanted to protect you. And Sarah and the children. They're the ones who need you now."

  "It's not a question of one child supplanting another, Jane. You must know that. One never stops being a parent."

  Laura turned her head away.

  Hampson took a quick step forwards. "I wasn't thinking—"

  "I gave her up," Laura said. She forced her gaze back to her father. "It was my choice."
/>   "It sounds as though there was precious little choice about it. I could kill—"

  "Don't," Laura said. "I could as well, though, as it happens, I didn't."

  "My dear girl—" Hampson's face crumpled. Laura moved towards him, as though against her better instincts. An embrace at last, though it was the daughter comforting the father. Hampson's hands clenched on the gray fabric of his daughter's gown. Suzanne realized her cheeks were damp. Raoul seemed rooted to the ground.

  "I'm sorry," Laura said. "I've been a terrible disappointment."

  "On the contrary." Hampson drew back and held his daughter with his gaze. "I couldn't be sorrier for what happened, and I'll never forgive myself for failing you. But I don't think I've ever been more proud of you than I am now, seeing the woman you've become."

  Laura's mouth twisted. "Then you don't know me, Papa."

  Chapter 26

  "I'm not naive enough to believe in tidy endings," Suzanne said, "but Laura—Jane—reached out to her father more than I'd hoped. I only hope she can find a way to forgive herself."

  "Can you?" Malcolm asked.

  Suzanne turned to her husband. They were in a hackney on their way to see Jack's mistress, Lily Duval. "I don't in the least—"

  "You blame yourself every day, sweetheart. You've been doing it every day of our marriage, I just didn't realize it until two months ago."

  Suzanne reached for the strap as they rounded a corner. "That's not true. There are days together where I don't think about it at all. I'm rather horrifyingly good at duplicity."

  "My point exactly."

  "That I'm good at it?"

  "That you called it horrifying."

  Her fingers closed hard on the edge of the seat. To brace herself, because they had just pulled up in Half Moon Street.

  Malcolm handed her down from the carriage without further comment. The house Trenchard had rented for his son's mistress and her child was small by Mayfair standards, though more commodious than the lodgings of most Londoners. A red-haired young woman of about twenty in a dark print dress and ruffled apron answered the door. Suzanne more than half expected Lily Duval to refuse to see them (in fact, she and Malcolm had been strategizing what to do in case of refusal), but the young woman said her mistress was in the parlor. She proceeded to conduct them to this room without taking in their cards first.