THE BERKELEY SQUARE A FFAIR
The Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch Mysteries by Teresa Grant:
Vienna Waltz
Imperial Scandal
His Spanish Bride
The Paris Affair
The Paris Plot
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR
TERESA GRANT
KENSINGTON BOOKS
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
THE BERKELEY SQUARE A FFAIR
Also by
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
EPILOGUE
HISTORICAL NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Copyright Page
For Audrey LaFehr, a wonderful editor
and equally wonderful friend,
with thanks for your support of Malcolm and Suzanne
and of me, and for making me a better writer
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to my longtime editor, Audrey LaFehr, who began work on this book, and to my new editor, Martin Biro, who helped me shape and polish the manuscript. I am very fortunate to have the insights and support of two such wonderful editors. And as always, the input and advice of my agent, Nancy Yost, was invaluable.
Thanks as well to Paula Reedy for shepherding the book through copyedits and galleys with exquisite care and good humor. To Barbara Wild for the careful copy editing. To Pauline Sholtys for the eagle-eyed proofreading. To Kristine Mills and Jon Paul for a fabulous cover that evokes Suzanne and Berkeley Square. To Alexandra Nicolajsen for the superlative social media support. And to Karen Auerbach, Adeola Saul and everyone at Kensington Books, and Sarah Younger, Adrienne Rosado, Natanya Wheeler, and everyone at the Nancy Yost Literary Agency for their support throughout the publication process.
Thank you to all the wonderful booksellers who help readers find Malcolm and Suzanne, and in particular to Book Passage in Corte Madera for their always warm welcome to me and to my daughter, Mélanie. Thank you to the readers who share Suzanne’s and Malcolm’s adventures with me on my Web site and Facebook and Twitter. Thank you to Gregory Paris and jim saliba for creating my Web site and updating it so quickly and with such style. To Raphael Coffey for once again juggling cats and baby to take the best author photos a writer could have. To Robert Sicular for inspiration onstage (including a memorable Hamlet) and inspiring conversations about books and plays, including a discussion of Hamlet’s attitude toward his father. To Jayne Davis for the always erudite grammar advice. To Bonnie Glaser for always asking about my writing; and to Bonnie, Raphael, Lesley Grant, Elaine Hamlin, and Veronica Wolff for nurturing Mélanie so Mummy could get a few more words down. And to the staff at Peet’s Coffee & Tea at The Village in Corte Madera for keeping me supplied with superb lattes and cups of Earl Grey and making Mélanie smile as I wrote this book.
Thank you to Lauren Willig for sharing the delights and dilemmas of writing about Napoleonic spies. I’m so excited that we now share juggling writing and motherhood as well. To Penelope Williamson for support and understanding and hours analyzing plays, including a brilliant Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2010. To Veronica Wolff for wonderful writing dates during which my word count seemed to magically increase. To Catherine Duthie for sharing her thoughts on Malcolm and Suzanne’s world and introducing them to new readers. To Deborah Crombie for supporting Malcolm and Suzanne from the beginning. To Tasha Alexander and Andrew Grant for their wit and wisdom and support, whether in person or via e-mail. To Deanna Raybourn, who never fails to offer encouragement and asks wonderful interview questions. And to my other writer friends near and far for brainstorming, strategizing, and commiserating—Jami Alden, Bella Andre, Isobel Carr, Catherine Coulter, Barbara Freethy, Carol Grace, C. S. Harris, Candice Hern, Anne Mallory, and Monica McCarty.
Finally, thank you to my daughter, Mélanie, for inspiring me and always seeming to understand when Mummy needed just a few more minutes to craft a sentence.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
*indicates real historical figures
The Rannoch Household
Malcolm Rannoch, Member of Parliament and former Intelligence Agent
Suzanne Rannoch, his wife
Colin Rannoch, their son
Jessica Rannoch, their daughter
Blanca Mendoza, Suzanne’s companion
Miles Addison, Malcolm’s valet
Valentin, their footman
Laura Dudley, Colin’s and Jessica’s governess
Malcolm’s Relations
Lady Frances Dacre-Hammond, Malcolm’s aunt
Chloe Dacre-Hammond, her daughter
Aline Blackwell, Lady Frances’s daughter
Dr. Geoffrey Blackwell, Aline’s husband
Claudia Blackwell, their daughter
The Duke of Strathdon, Malcolm’s grandfather
The Davenport Family
Colonel Harry Davenport
Lady Cordelia Davenport, his wife
Livia Davenport, their daughter
Drusilla Davenport, their daughter
Archibald Davenport, Harry’s uncle
At the Tavistock Theatre
Simon Tanner, playwright and part owner of the theatre
David Mallinson, Viscount Worsley, his lover
Manon Caret, actress
Crispin, Lord Harleton, her lover
Roxane, her daughter
Clarisse, Manon’s younger daughter
Berthe, Manon’s dresser
Jennifer Mansfield, actress
Sir Horace Smytheton, her lover and the theatre’s patron
Brandon Ford, actor
The Dewhurst Family
Earl Dewhurst, British diplomat
Rupert, Viscount Caruthers, his son
Gabrielle, Viscountess Caruthers, Rupert’s wife
Stephen, their son
Bertrand Laclos, Rupert’s lover
Others in London
Lord Carfax, British spymaster, David Mallinson’s father Amelia, Lady Carfax, his wife
Raoul O’Roarke, French spymaster
* Lord Bessborough
* Lady Caroline Lamb, his daughter
* William Lamb, Caroline’s husband
* Emily, Countess Cowper, William’s si
ster
General Hugo Cyrus
Colonel Frederick Radley, Suzanne’s former lover
Paul St. Gilles, painter
Juliette Dubretton, writer, his wife
Pierre Dubretton, their son
Marguerite Dubretton, their daughter
Rose Dubretton, their daughter
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, scene ii
PROLOGUE
London
November 1817
The lamplight shone against the cobblestones, washing over the grime, adding a glow of warmth. Creating an illusion of beauty on a street that in the merciless light of day would show the scars and stains of countless carriage wheels, horse hooves, shoes, pattens, and boots. Much as stage lights could transform bare boards and canvas flats into a garden in Illyria or a castle in Denmark.
Simon Tanner turned up the collar of his greatcoat as a gust of wind, sharp with the bite of late November, cut down the street, followed by a hail of raindrops. His hand went to his chest. In his greatcoat pocket, he could feel the solidity of the package he carried, carefully wrapped in oilskin. Were it not for that tangible reminder, it would be difficult to believe it was real.
He’d hardly had a settled life. He’d grown up in Paris during the fervor of the French Revolution and the madness of the Reign of Terror. Here in England, his plays had more than once been closed by the Government Censor. He’d flirted with arrest for Radical activities. He and his lover risked arrest or worse by the very nature of their relationship. But he had never thought to touch something of this calibre.
He held little sacred. But the package he carried brought out something in him as close to reverence as was possible for one who prided himself on his acerbic approach to life.
The scattered raindrops had turned into a steady downpour, slapping the cobblestones in front of him, dripping off the brim of his beaver hat and the wool of his greatcoat. He quickened his footsteps. For a number of reasons, he would feel better when he had reached Malcolm and Suzanne’s house in Berkeley Square. When he wasn’t alone with this discovery and the attendant questions it raised.
He started at a sound, then smiled ruefully as the creak was followed by the slosh of a chamberpot being dumped on the cobblestones—mercifully a dozen feet behind him. He was acting like a character in one of his plays. He might be on his way to see Malcolm Rannoch, retired (or not so retired) Intelligence Agent, but this was hardly an affair of espionage. In fact, the package Simon valued so highly would probably not be considered so important by others.
He turned down Bolton Street. He was on the outskirts of Mayfair now. Even in the rain-washed lamplight the cobblestones were cleaner, the pavements wider and neatly swept free of leaves and debris. The clean, bright glow of wax tapers glinted behind the curtains instead of the murky yellow light of tallow candles. Someone in the next street over called good night to a departing dinner guest. Carriage wheels rattled. Simon turned down the mews to cut over to Hill Street and then Berkeley Square. Another creak made him pause, then smile at his own fancifulness. David would laugh at him when he returned home and shared his illusions of adventure.
He walked through the shadows of the mews, past whickering horses and the smells of dung and saddle soap and oiled leather. The rain-soaked cobblestones were slick beneath his shoes. A dog barked. A carriage clattered down Hill Street at the end of the mews. It was probably just the need to share his discovery that made him so eager to reach Malcolm and Suzanne. If—
The shadows broke in front of him. Three men blocked the way, wavering blurs through the curtain of rain.
“Hand it over,” a rough voice said. “Quiet like, and this can be easy.”
Lessons from stage combat and boyhood fencing danced through Simon’s head. He pulled his purse from his greatcoat pocket and threw it on the cobblestones. He doubted that would end things, but it was worth a try.
One man started forwards. The man who had spoken gave a sharp shake of his head. “That isn’t what we want and you know it.”
Acting could be a great source of defense. Simon fell back on the role of the amiable fool. “Dear me,” he said, “I can’t imagine what else I have that you could want.”
The man groaned. “Going to make this hard, are you?”
Simon rushed them. He had no particular illusions that it would work. But he thought he had a shot.
Until he felt the knife cut through his greatcoat.
CHAPTER 1
Malcolm Rannoch glanced up from his book and tilted his head back against the carved walnut of the Queen Anne chair. “There was a time when I thought we’d never have a quiet night at home.”
Suzanne Rannoch regarded her husband over the downy head of their almost-one-year-old daughter, Jessica, who was flopped in her arms, industriously nursing. “There was a time when I thought we’d never have a quiet night.”
His gray eyes glinted in the candlelight. “Sweetheart, are you complaining of boredom?”
“You mean do I miss outwitting foreign agents, getting summoned by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh at all hours, sitting up into the morning decoding documents, dodging sniper fire, and taking the occasional knife to my ribs?”
Malcolm picked up the whisky glass on the table beside him. “Something like that.”
Suzanne glanced round the library. Warm oak paneling, shimmering damask upholstery, gilded book spines. Velvet curtains covering leaded-glass windows that looked out on the leafy expanse of Berkeley Square. She had never thought to live in such luxury. Or such security. “Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Sometimes.” Malcolm took a sip of whisky. One of the things she loved about him was his uncompromising honesty. “But there are compensations. Like not worrying about my family.”
The family she had once never thought to have. Jessica tucked warmly in her arms. Their four-year-old son, Colin, asleep upstairs in the nursery. Berowne, the cat they had found in Paris as a scrawny kitten, now sleek and well fed, curled up on Malcolm’s lap. All the reasons she had to preserve her improbable life here in Britain.
Jessica stirred and stretched, her arms reaching over her head, her legs kicking the fluted arm of the sofa on which Suzanne sat. Suzanne smoothed her daughter’s sparse hair. Jessica still had the high, hairless forehead of an Elizabethan lady, but she had enough hair now that Suzanne could ruffle it with her finger. The candlelight glinted off a bright gold that might one day darken to Malcolm’s leafy umber, mixed with strands of Suzanne’s own walnut brown. A year ago, when Jessica was born, they had lived in Paris. Malcolm had been a diplomat, not a Member of Parliament. A diplomat and an Intelligence Agent. A spy, though he didn’t like to use the word. From Spain, where he and Suzanne had met in the midst of the Peninsular War, to the Congress of Vienna, to Brussels before Waterloo and Paris after, they had shared adventures and intrigue and often been one step ahead of danger. Sometimes not even that. They both had scars inside and out to prove it. Those exploits seemed a world away from this house in Mayfair and their life among London’s beau monde, where Malcolm was an M.P. and she was—a political hostess? She still wasn’t sure how to define herself.
“Unfair,” she said, putting a touch of raillery in her voice. She tried never to let him see her qualms about the way their life had changed, because she knew it worried him and she owed him so much already. “You’ve played the trump card. How can I say anything weighs in the scales beside the children’s safety?”
“But I owned to missing the excitement as well.” Malcolm rubbed Berowne’s silver gray ears. “Though I don’t miss being at Carfax’s beck and call.”
Suzanne pictured Lord Carfax’s sharp-boned face and the piercing gaze he could shoot over the frame of his spectacles. “Lord Carfax is a spymaster. He never—”
“—really lets his agents g
o. Quite. With another man one might call it kindness that he hasn’t demanded my services yet. With Carfax it makes me wonder what he’s up to.” Malcolm stroked the cat’s head while his gaze moved from the glass-fronted bookcase that held his first editions to the lamplight spilling onto the library table, softening and illuminating the chestnut-veined Carrara marble. “I never thought this house would seem so like a home. You’ve worked wonders.”
The house, a small jewel set on this exclusive square, had been Malcolm’s father’s until his death last summer. It was filled with memories of Malcolm’s childhood that Suzanne still did not fully understand. Malcolm, she knew, had had mixed feelings about living here. He’d been inclined to sell the house at first. When they walked through it, still filled with Alistair Rannoch’s furniture and art treasures, she’d seen the memories cluster behind Malcolm’s eyes, more painful than sweet. But he’d looked out at the railed square garden overhung by leafy plane trees, a rare bit of greenery in the city. Perfect for the children, he’d said. How could they not raise Colin and Jessica here given the chance? So Suzanne had set about ordering new paper and paint, choosing new upholstery and wall hangings, sketching new moldings, and conferring with the builders about which walls they could knock down.
“It was good to have a project,” she said. In truth, it had saved her sanity as she adjusted to life among the British beau monde—Malcolm’s world, where she would always be an outsider—and struggled to come to terms with everything she had given up.
The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) Page 1