by Teresa Grant
“Thankfully, Mrs. Gordon, I know what it is to be an outsider.”
“If—”
“I trust you haven’t been telling my betrothed dire tales about life among the English ton, Mrs. Gordon.” Malcolm appeared beside them.
“She’s simply been telling me how charming your family is, and how I’m fortunate to join them.” Suzanne took a step closer to her fiancé.
“Thank you for the kind words, Mrs. Gordon, but I think it’s quite plain the shoe is on the other foot.” Malcolm put out his arm. Suzanne curved her hand round it.
Mrs. Gordon sniffed. “You always were tolerant, Malcolm Rannoch. Perhaps to a fault.”
“How often did Mrs. Gordon try to put her daughters in your way?” Suzanne murmured as Mrs. Gordon moved off.
“I wouldn’t know. I did my best to turn a blind eye.” Suzanne looked up and scanned his face. “I didn’t realize quite how prominent your family is.”
“Mrs. Gordon exaggerates.”
“I don’t think so. I can see I’m cast as the foreign adventuress who snagged one of British society’s most eligible bachelors.”
“Suzanne—” Malcolm turned toward her. “British society is shockingly insular, particularly the expatriates.” He lifted a hand, hesitated, then touched his fingers to her cheek. “Don’t listen to women like her.”
The touch of his fingers brought an unexpected wash of warmth. “I know better than to listen to gossip. But it’s only going to get worse when the baby’s born.”
His mouth tightened. “They’ll only think I took advantage of you.”
“Or that I entrapped you.”
He bit back a curse. “We can face down gossip. And we’ll protect the child from it.”
For an instant, an image of the two of them with a child, a shadowy vision of a toddler with dark hair clinging to both their hands, flashed into her mind. Treacherous to think that way. By then she would most likely no longer be living with him. And very likely he’d be greatly relieved to have his life to himself again.
“Miss Saint-Vallier.” Lord Wellington’s incisive tones carried across the room as he approached them. “Good of you to take Rannoch off our hands.”
“I don’t think he’ll precisely be off your hands, my lord.” Suzanne extended her hand to the commander dedicated to driving the French out of Spain. “He warned me he’s likely to disappear on mysterious errands he can’t talk about at a moment’s notice.”
“And you understood, which is precisely what makes you perfect for him.” Wellington lifted her hand to his lips. “Take good care of her, Rannoch.”
“I intend to,” Malcolm said.
Suzanne cast a glance up at him, startled at the seriousness in his tone. He gave a quick, defensive smile.
Wellington’s gaze shot between them. He inclined his head and went off to speak to Stuart, but before she or Malcolm could say anything the Honorable Thomas Belmont, one of Malcolm’s fellow attachés, approached them. “Here’s the happy couple.” He lifted his champagne glass in a toast that contained a generous dash of irony. “You’re obviously an enchantress, Miss Saint-Vallier. If I could tell you the number of times I’ve heard Rannoch swear off marriage—”
“Hardly surprising he changed his mind with Miss Saint-Vallier as an incentive.” Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Wellington’s military secretary, gave Suzanne a smile that offered support without making unwelcome comment or asking intrusive questions. “You’re a lucky man, Rannoch.”
“I know it.” Malcolm managed a smile, but Suzanne could see the ribbing grate on his nerves like nails on a schoolroom slate.
The least she could do was try to make it easier for him. “I’m the one who’s fortunate,” she said, slipping her hand through the crook of his arm again.
“You’re both fortunate to have found each other,” Fitzroy said.
Belmont rolled his eyes. “I need another drink. I seem to have stumbled into the last chapter of a lending library novel.”
“I couldn’t be happier, my dear.” This was Malcolm’s cousin, Geoffrey Blackwell, a military doctor. Compact, dark-haired, and intense, he was determinedly unromantic and unmarried himself at close to fifty, but his smile was direct and his keen gaze friendly.
“Thank you, Dr. Blackwell. I’m glad someone from Malcolm’s family could be here, especially as his brother can’t get back for the wedding.” Malcolm’s brother, Edgar, was a cavalry officer. “I know it must have come as a surprise.”
“Wartime weddings often do.” Blackwell’s gaze darted from her to Malcolm. Not with disapproval, but with a hint of concern. Well, it was an impulsive marriage, and Malcolm didn’t appear the sort to do impulsive things. No wonder his friends and family were surprised. She wondered if, as a doctor, Blackwell could read signs of her condition. Even if people didn’t suspect now, they were bound to talk when her child was born six months after the wedding. “You’re neither of you strangers to risk,” Blackwell continued. “It’s a dangerous way to live. But it can have its rewards.”
A host of emotions flickered through Malcolm’s eyes and were reflected back in Blackwell’s. A silent conversation she could only begin to decipher.
“Welcome to the family,” Blackwell said.
“Don’t frighten her off,” Malcolm murmured.
Blackwell grinned. “Miss Saint-Vallier looks to be made of sterner stuff than that.”
“I like him,” Suzanne said when Blackwell had moved off.
“Yes, Geoff ’s one of the more agreeable members of my family.” Malcolm glanced at the clock on the overmantel. “Almost time for us to disappear into the garden.”
“And give everyone more cause to gossip.” Suzanne gave her fiancé a bright smile. “What a pity we’ll miss it.”
The cloaked figure stopped a dozen paces from Malcolm in the shadows of the garden. He was of average height. Any other details were concealed by the voluminous folds of the cloak. “You aren’t Linford.” He spoke English like a native. An educated voice with faint traces of the north country. Vaguely familiar, but Malcolm couldn’t precisely place it.
“No, I’m acting as his agent.” Malcolm stepped forward in the moonlight, a sign of trust.
Wariness shot through the cloaked figure’s posture. “That wasn’t the agreement.”
“I have what you asked for. Are you saying you won’t take it from any hand but Linford’s?”
The cloaked figure hesitated, as if poised for flight. “You’ve brought it?”
“As you see.” Malcolm held up the notebook. Carefully aged with a judicious application of water and coffee. “Have you done the same?”
The figure drew a paper from beneath the folds of his cloak.
“At this distance I can’t judge if it’s authentic,” Malcolm pointed out.
“Nor can I.”
“Then we appear to be at point-non-plus.”
The figure hesitated again. Malcolm couldn’t see the other man’s expression, but he read calculation in his posture. “Walk closer,” the other man said. “Into the torchlight. Open the book. You can keep hold of it, but I need to see the pages.”
Malcolm walked forward, the gravel crunching under his evening shoes, to stand in the light of a flambeau. He opened the book, with the ease of one who did not doubt its authenticity. The cloaked man stepped forward. He moved with the ease of a young man. Malcolm tightened his grip on the book as the man approached. The man had enough wit to stand with his face in shadow. “Turn to the third page,” he said.
Malcolm did so, with a faint sigh of frustration, betokening a man who saw no need for all these precautions. He sensed more than saw the cloaked man scan the page.
“I knew it. You thought you could cheat me?” The cloaked man spun away and ran down the garden path.
Malcolm watched him disappear, hoping the lack of obvious pursuit would slow his pace. Suzanne was concealed in the shadows by the garden gate. Malcolm didn’t see her fall into pursuit. But then if she was as skilled as
she’d said, he wouldn’t.
He wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time since their discussion on the window seat this afternoon, if he was the worst kind of fool to be embroiling her in this. She was after all not yet twenty and not a trained agent. But there was something about her that made him forget that, that made him trust her implicitly. And he suspected taking on risks and responsibilities was perhaps the best way to heal the scars of her past.
He melted into the shadows and moved onto the grass where the gravel wouldn’t crunch under his shoes.
Nothing stirred in the lamplit shadows as he stepped out the garden gate into the street. A crystal bead sparkled on the ground, alerting him to the direction Suzanne had taken following the cloaked man. He gave a faint smile as he pocketed it. The crystal beads had been their compromise. Suzanne had said she could simply follow the blackmailer and then return to the embassy to report to Malcolm. He had countered that they had no notion how far she’d have to go and where. At least this way he’d only be a few minutes behind.
The trail of beads led him down broad streets lined with spacious houses similar to the embassy, a courtyard in front, the stables on the ground level, the entresol above where dependants and poor relations often lodged, the main floor where the family lived, the servants’ quarters at the top of the house. Lisbon bore the scars of war, but this part of the city was comparatively untouched. Less than ten minutes’ walk from the embassy, a thrush call alerted him to Suzanne’s presence. He scanned the street and saw her in the shadows of the mouth of an alley.
He glanced up and down the quiet street and slipped across to her side. “Well?” He looked down at her in the moonlight. The exhilaration of the mission shot through him. And perhaps something more.
Her eyes were bright with an answering exhilaration. But they also held surprise. “The man disappeared into the house directly across.” She jerked her head toward a pale blue stucco house with wrought-iron balconies, smaller than the embassy but still handsome. Good God. Wasn’t that—“I was there Thursday night,” Suzanne said, confirming his suspicions. “So were you. It’s been hired by Captain Haddon.”
When would he learn to expect the unexpected? Malcolm let out a low whistle. “So Linford’s best friend is blackmailing him.”
“For a record of his amorous conquests.”
“Most of which presumably Linford has bragged to him about.” Malcolm pictured the two men, laughing together over glasses of brandy in a cloud of cigar smoke. “Unless Haddon suspects there’s a woman listed in the book whom Linford wouldn’t have told him about.”
“You think Linford had an affair with Mrs. Haddon?” Suzanne asked.
Malcolm recalled his exchange with Haddon at the embassy only a short time before. “I talked to Haddon earlier this evening. He mentioned unfaithful wives, as it happens. I didn’t have the sense he was talking about his own. But in light of this—”
“It’s quite a betrayal. Not so much Charlotte Haddon’s infidelity, but Linford betraying his friend.”
“Yes, I’d have thought Linford would keep his hands off his best friend’s wife, but I was probably doing Linford too much credit. Haddon’s the sort whose lack of fidelity wouldn’t make him at all a complacent husband.”
“In which case instead of a duel between a British officer and a Spaniard, two of Wellington’s officers could be dueling.”
“Not quite as disruptive but nearly as bad. And I wouldn’t wish discovery on Charlotte Haddon. She’s been through enough as it is.”
“Do you think the cloaked man was Captain Haddon himself ?”
Malcolm sifted through remembered details of the man in the garden. “It might have been. The height was right. And there was a touch of the north country in his voice, which Haddon also has. Of course it was also possible Haddon employed an agent for the rendezvous.” Malcolm looked down into his betrothed’s bright, intent gaze. For the past several minutes he’d been speaking to her as a fellow agent, not his fiancée. And his qualms and concerns about their betrothal had vanished in the face of the shared task. “I haven’t thanked you. I couldn’t have done this alone.”
“You have no idea what it means to be able to do something. Not to sit on the sidelines.”
“On the contrary. I know better than you think.” It was what he had done himself after his mother’s death, going off to the Peninsula and losing himself in his work.
He saw questions flicker through her gaze, but instead of voicing them she said, “You’ll talk to Linford?”
“He’s off to Villa Franca with a dispatch. He’ll be back Monday.”
“So you can talk to him at our wedding.”
In three days’ time. Dear God in heaven. “Quite.”
5
The air in the embassy sitting room was close and heavy, thick with the heat of the fire in the grate. The English were accused of keeping their rooms drafty, but with the windows shut tight against the cold the thick heat and puffs of smoke choked the air. Outside the windows the sky was gray and drops of rain spattered against the glass. The looped-back curtains were red velvet, the furniture solid English oak. One noticed such details as one waited for the company to assemble, moments before taking one’s wedding vows.
“You make a very lovely bride, my dear.” Sir Charles Stuart, who was to give her away, came up beside her.
“You always know just what to say, sir.” Suzanne had chosen a gown of rose-colored sarcenet edged with white lace at neck and sleeves, part of the new wardrobe Malcolm had purchased for her when he brought her to Lisbon, to augment the few things she had been carrying in her supposed flight from the French. He had been remarkably patient waiting at the modiste’s, though he had seemed as out of place there as he was in this marriage. Suzanne had draped a white lace mantilla over her head and shoulders. The color of purity and innocence. An irony lost on this company. The pearl comb in her hair had in fact been her mother’s. Suzanne had hesitated to wear it, as though it would be somehow dignifying the wedding as more than it was, but at the last minute she had grabbed it and stuck it into her hair, aware of a shrewd look from Blanca.
“It’s a great pity your parents aren’t here to see this day,” Stuart murmured, his voice unwontedly serious. “I’m sure they would be very proud.”
Their images flashed into her mind, breaking through the wall she usually kept up against her memories. Maman, bending over the crib in a cloud of dark ringlets and spicy scent. At her dressing table mirror surrounded by candlelight. Viewed onstage from the wings. Waxy pale as she lay on her deathbed after the birth of Suzanne’s little sister. Frozen in death when they put her in her coffin. Papa, his face alight with laughter from below when he tossed her in the air. Features stamped with the grief at Maman’s graveside. Bending over a book with Suzanne on his lap. His concise voice giving her stage directions as Jessica or Juliet. Sprawled on a tiled floor, his head shattered by a bullet.
If they could see her now, would they even recognize the woman she’d become?
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s comforting to think so.” Though in truth she knew neither of her parents would approve of this marriage. But then neither of them could have conceived of this world she had entered into.
“I have no doubt of it.” Stuart’s smile was affectionate. For all his womanizing reputation, he was a kind man and remarkably thoughtful. The antithesis of Edward Linford.
She had to think of the present and future, not the past. That way lay madness. Why should the absence of her parents matter at a marriage that didn’t mean anything in any case? Yet part of the success of carrying off a role, as an agent as well as an actor, was finding the core of oneself in the part and incorporating details of one’s own life.
Malcolm was across the room speaking with the chaplain. He wore a light blue coat, biscuit-colored breeches, silver-buckled shoes. A typical English gentleman. He came from a world that represented everything she was fighting against. She should hang on to that.
> His gaze met hers and his mouth lifted in a smile. She returned the smile. How absurd, with all the lies between them, to feel that they shared a secret the others in the room could not know.
Lord Wellington walked up and clapped Malcolm on the shoulder. For an instant, she glimpsed the raw tension in Malcolm’s face. A band clamped round her chest. Dear God, what she was doing to him—
Malcolm and Wellington crossed to join her and Stuart.
“Mrs. Gordon’s been saying it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding,” Wellington said. “Lot of superstitious nonsense. Glad you don’t pay heed to it.”
Malcolm took her hand. “No second thoughts?” he asked in a lowered voice.
“None.” That much was true. She’d made her decision for better or worse. “But I’d understand if you’re having them.”
“No.” The single word was more heartfelt reassurance than the most fulsome declaration.
They took their places before the polished oak table that stood in for an altar. Geoffrey Blackwell stood up with Malcolm, a brisk, reassuring, unromantic presence. Malcolm’s fellow attachés, Thomas Belmont and Fitzwilliam Vaughn, were present along with Fitzroy Somerset and a handful of other diplomatic and military personnel. Enough to give the feel of a wedding rather than a business transaction. William and Charlotte Haddon sat side by side without so much as the flounce of her muslin skirt brushing his Hessian boots. Haddon’s gaze kept straying to one of his fellow officers’ wives whose gown was cut low and worn without a tippet. Charlotte Haddon stared straight ahead, her gaze restless, her mouth discontented, her hands locked together in her lap. Portrait of a happy couple a few years after the wedding.
In the row behind, Isabella Flores toyed with the end of the mantilla she wore in place of a shawl. The marques, a tall man with gray-streaked brown hair, sat beside her but was turned away to speak to the gentleman on his other side. Edward Linford lounged in a chair at the back. Blanca and Addison sat at the back as well. Suzanne had seen some raised brows at their presence, but Malcolm has insisted, perhaps so she’d have an ally, perhaps because he thought of Addison as one of his few true friends.