by Tracy Grant
"Just wounded pride because he got a jump on me."
Harry looked down at the dead man now spilling blood onto the grimy cobblestones. "Rather proving the point about needing a team versed in fighting tonight. But why the devil—"
"Explanations at home," Mélanie said.
Julien looked down at the dead man, brows drawn, eyes glassy.
"We can’t move him," Malcolm said. "Or alert anyone."
"No. I know that." Julien seemed to shake himself. "Let’s get home."
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CHAPTER TWO
It was far from the first time Mélanie Rannoch had returned to her husband's beautiful Berkeley Square house—their beautiful Berkeley Square house, as Malcolm would be quick to say—with a rag tag group of allies. On more than one occasion they’d encountered the watch on their return. In fact it was so familiar, she had her story ready tonight. On other occasions she or Malcolm or another of the group had been wounded. Tonight, they avoided the watch and none of them was seriously hurt, so they trudged up the steps to the fanlight and ionic portico merely wet and bedraggled.
She opened the door and ushered their friends into the entry hall just as Laura O’Roarke and Cordelia Davenport, Harry’s wife, came running out of the library. "Thank goodness" Cordy said. "We were starting to worry." Then she went still, her gaze going from one of them to the other. Laura, who was just behind her, did the same.
Malcolm had a bruise beginning to form on his temple. Harry was caked with mud. Kitty’s dress was torn. They were all dripping water onto the black and white marble checkerboard of the floor. But it was less their appearance that caused the reaction than what their faces betrayed, Mélanie suspected.
"No one’s hurt?" Laura asked.
"Just wounded pride," Julien said.
"Come into the library and get warm," Laura said. "I’ll make coffee and Cordy can pour whisky."
Mélanie set her damp cloak in front of the fire and went to the kitchen to help Laura with the coffee. It was late enough they had sent all the servants to bed, and they had all during their exile in Italy two years ago got accustomed to doing basic tasks on their own. Or reaccustomed in Mélanie’s own case. She had certainly not grown up an aristocrat. Laura flashed a smile at her but said, "I won’t ask questions until you can tell Cordy too. I promise."
Cordelia had supplied everyone with whisky by the time they brought the coffee to the library. Malcolm and Harry had scrubbed their faces. Julien had changed into a shirt and breeches and pulled off his blonde ringlets, though he still had traces of rouge and eye blacking. "I forgot how constricting a corset is," he said, going to take the coffee tray from Mélanie.
"Why do think I avoid one myself whenever possible?" Mélanie asked.
They settled round the fire to face the results of a mission that had seemed, as missions go, relatively simple. Gisèle, Malcolm’s sister, who was undercover with the Elsinore League, a mysterious group dedicated to advancing their own interests, had reported that a League agent was buying papers from a contact at the Chat Gris. They had gone to the Chat Gris with the aim of intercepting the sale.
"And it all went quite according to plan," Kitty said, accepting a cup of coffee from Laura. "Well, as according to plan as these things ever do. The drug in his gin took effect right on schedule. I didn’t even have to prevaricate. Or go particularly far. And unlike when we tried to take the papers off George Dalton in June, I found the papers right away. He didn’t have dummy copies. He was still out cold when I got out the window. The others were all there."
"After staging a quite nice little fight," Harry said. "Malcolm still has an excellent right hook. Only then in the alley we encountered a real fight.’
"The League?" Cordelia asked.
"I don’t see how they could have known we had the papers that quickly." Malcolm was frowning into his whisky glass. He set it down and reached for his coffee cup. "Even if their agent went upstairs the moment Kitty dropped out the window and realized the papers were gone, there’s no way he—or she—could have alerted the men who attacked us."
"I was thinking the same thing," Kitty said. "It looks as though someone else knew the papers were being exchanged tonight. And was trying to intercept them."
"Just like your ball," Cordelia said.
"Just like nearly everything involving the king and queen," Mélanie said. The former prince regent, now George IV since his father’s death at the end of January, though he had not yet been crowned, was determined to divorce his long-estranged wife Caroline. The divorce trial was to take place in the House of Lords. The Tories, as the party in power, were firmly aligned with the king. The Whigs were backing the queen, at least in part because they hoped the defeat of the bill would cause a rift between the Tories and the king and loosen the Tories’ grip on power. The queen’s lawyers, Henry Brougham and Thomas Denman, were aligned with the Radicals, like Malcolm and Julien. The jockeying for power and debates over the witnesses and evidence—much of it involving salacious details such as information about bedsheets—had been the talk of London for months. And the trial was just starting.
"What is in the papers?" Laura asked.
Kitty drew the packet of papers from the bodice of her gown and spread them on the sofa table. Chairs creaked and clothes rustled as everyone gathered round.
"Who’s the Contessa Montalto?" Cordelia asked.
"I don’t know." Malcolm looked at Julien.
"I haven’t heard of her," Julien said. "Though I haven’t spent that much time in Italy. Not much more than the rest of you. And I haven’t heard her talked of in connection with the queen’s trial."
"Nor have I," Malcolm said. "We should ask Nerezza and Sofia. But it’s straining coincidence to think there isn’t some connection to the trial."
"It’s hard, on the surface, to see why this would be so significant," Mélanie said. "I wonder—"
She broke off as the sound of the front doorbell reverberated through the house. She took a quick glance that mantle clock, though she knew it was long past midnight. If Raoul, Laura’s husband and Malcolm’s father, had returned early from his trip, he’d have used his key.
Malcolm pushed himself away from the table. "I’ll see who it is. At least we’re all more or less presentable." He glanced at his discarded, padded shoulder coat, shook his head, and went out into the hall in his shirtsleeves. Kitty snatched up the papers and tucked them back into her bodice. Harry and Julien got to their feet. Just in case it was an attack. In general their enemies didn’t ring the doorbell. But stranger things had happened.
Voices sounded in the hall, then a few moments later Malcolm returned to the library accompanied by Jeremy Roth. Roth, a Bow Street runner, had worked with them on number of cases and was now a good friend and a frequent guest in their home. But he wasn’t in the habit of calling in the middle of the night. At least not for social reasons.
"I’m sorry to call so late." Roth took off his damp greatcoat and laid it on the marble library table where it wouldn’t make a water mark.
"You know we don’t retire early, Jeremy." Mélanie poured a cup of coffee, black as she knew he took it, and carried it over to him. "And we’re entertaining friends as you can see." She didn’t add explicitly that they’d been on a mission, but Roth would surely guess it. She was still wearing her spangled sarcenet gown and paste diamonds and Kitty was also still in her costume. Julien was back in a shirt and breeches but still had rouge and eye blacking on. Harry's hair was still darkened. Malcolm's high shirt points still flopped about his neck.
"I know," Malcolm said, moving back to the fire. "We’ve either been rehearsing a play or on a mission. Without going into details, let me say Mel is still the only one of us employed at the Tavistock."
Roth gave a faint smile, but his eyes were serious. "I was called to St. Giles this evening. To a tavern called the Chat Gris. Have you heard of it?"
"We don’t generally frequent taverns in St. Giles," Malcolm said. "Except on miss
ions."
"Yes, I know." Roth’s gaze swept the room. "A man was found knifed to death in the alley beside the Chat Gris. People remembered a fight in the tavern earlier in the evening involving two men fighting over a woman and another woman who seems to have been a friend." His gaze swept the room again, obviously taking in details without lingering on any of them. "But the dead man doesn’t sound like either of the men who were described. A dandy in a padded coat and a man with side whiskers and a spotted neckcloth." His gaze settled on Malcolm’s coat, thrown over the back of one of the Queen Anne chairs, and then on the spotted neckcloth now hanging loose round Harry’s throat.
"All right," Malcolm said, "we were there. The fight was a set up to cause distraction. We fled into the alley where we were attacked. One of the attackers killed the dead man."
Roth nodded. "To be honest I couldn’t connect you with the description I got. Well, not until I saw how you were dressed. I came because I can always use your help in an investigation. Do you know why you were attacked?"
"Most likely to get the papers I’d retrieved," Kitty said. "That was the reason for the distraction. I had just dropped down from an upstairs window when we were attacked."
"You were upstairs at the Chat Gris?" Roth said.
"Retrieving the papers from another guest at the tavern," Kitty said, as coolly as though she’d been talking about meeting someone to view paintings at Somerset House rather than essentially being in a brothel.
"Was he in the room when you left?" Roth’s voice was even, not shocked but intent.
"Sound asleep. Or more accurately drugged."
"Do you know his name?"
"James Blayney. At least that’s the name we were given."
Roth nodded, gaze still intent. "Sandy hair, mid-thirties, wearing a claret-colored coat?"
"Yes." Kitty’s brows drew together. "Was he still at the Chat Gris when you got there?"
"In a manner of speaking." Roth hesitated for a moment, as though choosing his words with care. "He’s actually the reason I was called there. In addition to the dead man in the alley, we found a sandy-haired gentleman in a claret-colored coat dead in a room upstairs at the Chat Gris."
Also by Tracy Grant
Traditional Regencies
WIDOW’S GAMBIT
FRIVOLOUS PRETENCE
THE COURTING OF PHILIPPA
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Lescaut Quartet
DARK ANGEL
SHORES OF DESIRE
SHADOWS OF THE HEART
RIGHTFULLY HIS
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The Rannoch Fraser Mysteries
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HIS SPANISH BRIDE
LONDON INTERLUDE
VIENNA WALTZ
IMPERIAL SCANDAL
THE PARIS AFFAIR
THE PARIS PLOT
BENEATH A SILENT MOON
THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR
THE MAYFAIR AFFAIR
INCIDENT IN BERKELEY SQUARE
LONDON GAMBIT
MISSION FOR A QUEEN
GILDED DECEIT
MIDWINTER INTRIGUE
THE DUKE'S GAMBIT
SECRETS OF A LADY
THE MASK OF NIGHT
THE DARLINGTON LETTERS
THE GLENISTER PAPERS
A MIDWINTER’S MASQUERADE
THE TAVISTOCK PLOT
About the Author
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Tracy Grant studied British history at Stanford University and received the Firestone Award for Excellence in Research for her honors thesis on shifting conceptions of honor in late-fifteenth-century England. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her young daughter and three cats. In addition to writing, Tracy works for the Merola Opera Program, a professional training program for opera singers, pianists, and stage directors. Her real life heroine is her daughter Mélanie, who is very cooperative about Mummy's writing time. She is currently at work on her next book chronicling the adventures of Malcolm and Mélanie Suzanne Rannoch. Visit her on the Web at www.tracygrant.org
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Cover photo by Kristen Loken.