The Mayfair Affair

by Tracy Grant

  Emily clung to Laura's hand and consented to walk with her, though she leaned closer the closer they got to the other adults. Heartbreaking and understandable that she so feared having happiness snatched away. But Laura could not deny the warmth that curled through her at the realization that she was already a source of comfort.

  Raoul took a step forwards to meet them, as though sensing Emily's fears. His gaze met Laura's briefly, before he crouched down in front of her daughter. "You must be Emily. I'm very pleased to meet you. My name is Raoul."

  "You're a friend of Laura's."

  If Raoul was surprised Laura hadn't told Emily she was her mother, he gave no sign of it. "Yes, and I'm glad to be your friend as well. I've just been arranging things with Miss Simpkins. We need only collect your things and we can be on our way."

  Emily smiled. "I don't have a lot of things." It wasn't a complaint, it was a statement of fact.

  "All the simpler, then," Raoul said.

  For someone with no acknowledged children, he was remarkably good at talking to them. At times like this, Laura was reminded that he had been closer to Malcolm Rannoch growing up than either of them tended to acknowledge.

  Raoul got to her feet and offered his arm to Laura. "Shall we? We can be in Berkeley Square in time for dinner."

  Emily's head flopped against Laura's arm. Her soft breaths stirred the merino of Laura's pelisse sleeve and reverberated through the carriage. She was asleep, Laura realized. They had played backgammon for the first stage of the journey with the Rannochs' traveling set (the carriage was fitted with every convenience), with Emily turning to the window in between games and asking questions about everything she saw, from trees to cows to a farmer's cart to a troop of soldiers. Then quite suddenly she'd gone silent. A few minutes later she slumped against Laura's arm with a trust that took Laura's breath away.

  Don't make too much of it, she told herself. Small children could be exuberant in their affections. Jessica would fling her arms round the legs of new-met acquaintances, and even the more reserved Colin would hug a new friend goodbye when they left the park.

  She looked up to find Raoul watching her in the soft light of the interior lamps. "She hasn't lost the ability to enjoy life," he said. "Or to form bonds. She's already started to form one with you."

  "Children trust easily," Laura said, a reminder to herself not to make too much of it.

  "Unless they lose the ability to trust at all. Thank God Emily hasn't."

  Laura touched her fingers to Emily's hair. Her daughter's hair. "I keep expecting her to miss school."

  "I don't think there was a great deal to miss," Raoul said. "From what Miss Simpkins said, the staff seem to have changed over frequently."

  "Still, it's all she's known. Though I gather she was with a wet nurse until she was a year and a half." Laura's corset suddenly seemed to be biting into her breasts. She had an image of Suzanne nursing Jessica, Jessica's head nestled against her mother's arm. Something Laura would never know with Emily, though she could still remember the way her breasts had ached after the accident, a constant reminder of all she had lost. Wet nurses usually had several children in their charge, a very different experience from the exclusiveness of Jessica's bond with her mother.

  The carriage bounced over a rut in the road, making the lamplight jump over Raoul's face. "Not that I'm questioning your choice," he said. "Not that I've any right to question it. But why didn't you tell her you're her mother?"

  Laura cast a quick look down at Emily, which was silly, because the boneless weight of her body made it clear that she slept. "I didn't want to overwhelm her. She's thought I'm dead her whole life."

  "It will be a shock whenever you tell her."

  "But this way she can adjust into her new life first. She—" Laura broke off as Emily stirred, but Emily merely slid down to lie with her head in Laura's lap. Laura steadied her to keep her from slipping to the carriage floor. "She may not think the best of me when she learns the truth. I think it may be hard for her to forgive me for abandoning her for four years." The words caught in her throat, but it felt good to have spoken them.

  Raoul didn't dismiss her qualms as she expected him to. "It's true," he said. "Children often feel abandoned even when circumstances are beyond their parents' control. But they also have a great capacity for forgiveness. Are you sure part of your hesitation isn't that you can't forgive yourself?"

  "I'm not the sort of to wallow."

  "No, you're a pragmatist. But forgiveness is something very different." He leaned back in his corner of the carriage. "You deserve to be happy, Laura. If nothing else, I'd hope last night helped convince you of that."

  Laura's fingers tightened on the stiff fabric of Emily's gown. He had cracked the ice, broken the veneer, crossed the divide. The thing that had hung between them all day was in the open. But of course they were two adults with complicated pasts. There was no need to make too much of what was hardly a first romantic interlude for either of them. "I don't know that I'd have got through today without last night," she said. "I'll always be grateful."

  Oh, dear. That sounded like she didn't expect it to happen again. Not that she did expect it to. That is, she wasn't fool enough to presume it would.

  He drew a breath, as though sifting through possible words. With a shock of surprise, she realized she wasn't the only uncertain one in the carriage. "We can't go back," he said. His faint, quick smile illumined the vulnerability in his eyes. "Not, for my part, that I would want to. But it doesn't cheapen it if you want to leave it in the past."

  Was he being a gentleman and offering her a way out? Or seeking one himself? She forced herself to meet his gaze. "What do you want?"

  His smile deepened. "I thought that was quite clear last night."

  Heat flooded her cheeks. This was not the time to behave like a schoolgirl. "But we're not talking about last night. We're talking about today."

  She felt the weight of the breath he drew. "I have very little to offer you. I've spent much of the past three years doing my best to mitigate the damage done at Waterloo. But Spain is about to explode. A chance to salvage something from the mess of the Peninsular War."

  "And you'll need to be there."

  "I have an absurd feeling—one might say, delusion—that I can make a difference."

  "False modesty doesn't become you."

  He laughed, and she felt a little of the tension leach from the carriage. "Regardless, I could be gone at any moment. And I can't promise I'll come back."

  "You'll want to see Malcolm and Suzanne and the children."

  "I can't promise I'll survive." It was a flat statement of fact.

  Fear shot through her. She had come to see him as invulnerable. "You've managed very well so far."

  "And I have every intention of doing so again. But there are no certainties."

  "Suzanne may still believe in fairy tales. I stopped believing in them a long time ago. My own life is hardly certain." She tightened her arm round Emily, aware that the sight of her holding her child might be a symbol of everything he'd want to run from.

  But instead, the look he gave her was steady and, if anything, wistful. "You need time to sort things out for you and Emily. Though being a mother doesn't stop you from—"

  "Being a woman. I don't expect obligations or commitments or happily-ever-after. That doesn't stop me from being lonely." Her breath seemed to get stuck in her throat. She was aware of the pressure of his gaze and the memory of his fingers, unlacing her corset, sliding the pins from her hair. I've wanted to see it like this since the moment I met you, he'd said as the loose waves fell over her shoulders. A night of physical comfort should be a simple thing. But somehow she had let him in. She had given him part of her soul to hold in his hand and now he could crumble it to bits between his fingers. Half of her instincts screamed to run, while the other half cried not to slam the door and lock herself away in loneliness.

  "I can't be certain of the future," he said. "That doesn't me
an, for my part, I want to leave what we found in the past. But whatever else happens, I hope you know you may count me a friend."

  Her fingers trembled on Emily's hair. "I don't have many friends."

  "Nor do I."

  Chapter 35

  Roth flung himself down in an armchair in the Berkeley Square library. Whatever else this investigation had done, it had cut through the remaining formality between them. "One of my constables has been questioning the Trenchard House servants. Slow going at first. They know who pays them. But he struck up a friendship with one of the footmen and went drinking with him in a tavern last night. Over a third pint, the footman revealed that he'd seen Lord Tarrington that was—the new duke—conferring in a coffeehouse with a young woman who sounds very much like Lily Duval."

  Malcolm poured Roth a whisky. "That isn't necessarily news. We knew they knew each other, that James kept an eye on her, that she would turn to him when she needed help."

  "Yes. But it's a bit odd they were meeting in a coffeehouse when he was in the habit of going to her house. A break in the pattern. Answers often lie in breaks in the pattern."

  Suzanne got up from playing with Colin and Jessica on the hearthrug. "Did the footman say anything else?"

  "That's the other interesting thing. My constable asked if he thought the girl was Tarrington's chère amie. And the footman said no, it looked more as though they were plotting something."

  Malcolm drew a breath as though to reply, but before he could speak, Valentin showed the Davenport family into the library.

  "Sorry for the invasion." Harry set down Drusilla, who toddled over to Jessica, while Livia released Cordelia's hand and ran to Colin. "But Uncle Archie called with news to pass on. He was concerned about the look of coming to you directly, and the most innocuous way to do this seemed to be a family visit."

  "As if you need an excuse." Suzanne made room for Cordelia beside her on the sofa. "Tell Mrs. Erskine we have three dinner guests, Valentin. As well as the children."

  Valentin nodded without a blink. Five last-minute dinner guests was one of the least disruptive events in the Rannoch household.

  "What did your uncle say?" Malcolm asked, giving whiskies to Harry and Cordelia.

  "He was talking to Elgar. Who is—"

  "A fellow Elsinore League member. It's all right, Roth knows."

  Harry nodded. "Elgar was one of Trenchard's cronies. Uncle Archie was trying to draw him out about Trenchard's gamble for the PM-ship. Elgar was cagey about that. In fact, Uncle Archie thinks he was trying to change the subject. Apparently, Elgar said Trenchard had been much put upon. He complained his son's former trollop was trying to blackmail him. Elgar suggested we look to her instead, the implication was, of wasting time with men like him."

  "Lily Duval?" Roth asked.

  "It seems likely, " Malcolm said, "though God knows Jack at least had other mistresses. We know James was trying to blackmail Trenchard into giving up his play for the prime ministry. We have a report that James and a woman who sounds like Lily Duval appeared to be plotting together. And now it seems Trenchard claimed Lily Duval was blackmailing him."

  "You think she and Tarrington were in this together?" Roth asked. "Would she also have wanted to keep Trenchard from becoming prime minister?"

  "She certainly has no love for him. But she also might have seen any information as a way to keep Trenchard from trying to take her son."

  "James told you he threatened to reveal information about Jack if Trenchard didn't do as he wished," Suzanne said. "Perhaps Miss Duval had more information about Jack. Something we don't know yet."

  "Something James was reticent to share with me." Malcolm nodded. "It takes a lot to betray the family honor. As James said to me himself."

  "Miss Duval said Jack's letters to her were stolen," Suzanne said. "What if they weren't?'

  "Miss Duval was pregnant before Jack went to India and married, wasn't she?" Cordelia said.

  Suzanne nodded. Then she stared at her friend. "Good God, Cordy."

  "It's rather a repeat of our case in Paris," Cordelia said. "But inheritance is one of the strongest motives in our world."

  "It's hard to imagine Jack so lost in love he'd marry a mistress," Malcolm said. "But God knows stranger things have happened."

  Harry turned his glass in his hand. "James doesn't strike me as the sort to stay quiet if he knew he wasn't the rightful heir."

  "No," Suzanne said. "But Miss Duval wouldn't necessarily have told him. Perhaps she thought the truth would mean losing her son. Perhaps she only told James when Trenchard's threats made her think she was about to lose her son in any case."

  "It's a good theory," Malcolm said, "but still only speculation. What we do know is that James and Lily Duval were together just before the murder and neither has an alibi."

  "And yet they didn't alibi each other," Roth said. "They could have, if they were in on it together."

  "Cleverer this way, perhaps," Malcolm said. "It makes them look honest. Suppose they'd lied about when James left Half Moon Street, and then a witness came forwards who saw him at a different time."

  They were still speculating, when Valentin announced dinner and they went up to the dining room for an informal meal with Jessica and Drusilla on laps and Colin and Livia practicing their grown- up manners. Suzanne's favorite kind of meal and delightfully carefree, save for the fact that they were keeping their knowledge of one of the murders they were investigating from Roth, and Harry and Cordelia remained ignorant of her past.

  They were in the midst of the main course when Valentin came back into the room to usher in Raoul, Laura, and a small person with a fine-boned face and vivid titian hair.

  Colin sprang to his feet, closely followed by the other gentlemen, though Suzanne suspected excitement more than good manners prompted her son's behavior. "You must be Emily. Mummy told us you were coming. We're very glad to have you here."

  Emily was clutching Laura's hand, but her fingers seemed to relax a fraction at the greeting.

  "Mrs. Erkskine made her seedcake," Colin added. "It's wizard."

  A grin broke across Emily's face.

  "This is Emily," Laura said, "my friend Jane's daughter."

  Suzanne schooled her face not to betray surprise. It was up to Laura to decide what she told her daughter and when. "We're very pleased to meet you, Emily," Suzanne said, getting to her feet. "Do sit down. You're just in time for dinner."

  Suzanne set down Jessica, who was wriggling. Jessica toddled over to Emily and held out her hands, her general manner of greeting.

  "She likes you," Suzanne said. "You're a big girl; she wants to be like you."

  Jessica flung her arms round Emily. Emily stiffened, but then hugged Jessica back. "She's sweet. We didn't have babies at school."

  Suzanne scooped Jessica up before Laura could wonder which child she should hold.

  Valentin was holding out a chair for Laura. Somehow, a few moments later they were all seated round the polished oak dining table. Emily sat between Laura and Raoul, with whom she also seemed quite comfortable, but regarded Colin and Livia with curiosity and replied to their excited questions. Conversation remained general over dinner, and light, mostly focused on the children. After they had polished off the seedcake, they repaired to the drawing room (without the tiresome British nonsense of the gentlemen leaving first). Colin offered to show Emily his castle and knights, set up on the hearthrug. After a nod from Laura, Emily settled down with the other children, while the adults clustered round the tea tray. Over tea and more whisky, Malcolm and Suzanne caught Laura and Raoul up on the developments since they'd been gone.

  "Interesting." Raoul leaned back in his corner of the sofa. Cordelia sat beside him. Laura was across the room on the settee. Almost, Suzanne thought, as though they deliberately had not sat side by side. "I think I may be able to explain what James Trenchard and Lily Duval could have been blackmailing the duke over. Adolphus Molton is a tiresome man whom I should be well pleased nev
er to see again, but our visit to him was fruitful in more ways than one. As Miss Dudley noticed, before he became a banker in Maidstone, he'd been in India."

  Malcolm leaned forwards. "Go on."

  "He was a merchant. He was a bit vague about what he dealt in, but while Miss Dudley and I went to the orphanage, Addison made some inquiries. Thankfully, the charming Mrs. Molton was a good deal less reticent in speaking to her friends. She was quite pleased to share that her husband had operated his business with the financial backing of the Duke of Trenchard. He'd also been in collaboration with his wife's brother. Mrs. Molton's maiden name was Madison."

  Malcolm's eyes narrowed. "Go on," he said in an even voice.

  "Apparently the good Mr. Molton was very fortunate to obtain a concession to mine diamonds in Upper Tandur. I mentioned this to Miss Dudley on the drive home."

  "They'd have been trading behind the East India Company's back," Laura said, "which, given the influence the Company still has in Parliament, would be reason enough to keep secret. But more important, to obtain such a concession Molton and Madison and their silent partner Trenchard would have needed the approval of the Rajah of Upper Tandur. At that time he was seeking to marry the sister of the Rajah of West Basmat."

  "So the Rajah of West Basmat could have persuaded the Rajah of Upper Tandur to grant the concession," Malcolm said.

  "In exchange for someone who did something for him," Laura said. "Such as assist him in his conflict with East Adilabad by warning him of upcoming British attack."

  Cordelia clunked down her teacup. "Trenchard was behind the massacre of the British troops supporting East Adilabad?"

  "If we're right." Raoul's voice was grim.

  "That would explain Jack's horror." Harry's gaze darkened. "Christ, the men who died in that attack—"

  "Including Hetty Tarrrington's first husband," Malcolm said. "Even Trenchard would have had a hard time talking his way out of this. If we're right."

  "It makes sense of Jack in the last days." Laura cast a glance at her daughter. "He was angry. Apparently he wasn't without a conscience."