The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch)
Page 10
“My dear girl, in this life—”
“We do unconscionable things? Yes, I’ve long since accepted that.” She released the table and sat back in her chair. “But not just to protect ourselves. One has to draw the line somewhere.”
Raoul was silent for a moment. “No one could fault you for putting your children first.”
“But I won’t be much of a mother if I hate myself.”
“You won’t be much of a mother if—” He bit back the words. Even Raoul didn’t want to look into the abyss.
Suzanne forced herself to face it. “If I’m arrested or thrown out by my husband?”
“I don’t think one ever forgives oneself for abandoning a child.”
It was her turn to probe his face, his turn to glance away. She tossed back the last of her wine and reached for her gloves and reticule. “I’m going to need your help.”
“To do?”
She tugged a glove smooth on her left hand, covering her wedding ring. “To find the source of the Dunboyne leak before Malcolm does.”
CHAPTER 8
“Cousin Malcolm.” Chloe Dacre-Hammond ran across her mother’s drawing room in a stir of white muslin and pale blond hair and flung her arms round Malcolm’s waist. She had been born while Malcolm was in the Peninsula, yet for some reason he was a favorite of hers. He could still not quite figure out what he had done to deserve it.
“It’s good to see you, poppet.” Malcolm caught her up and swung her round in a circle.
Close on Chloe’s heels, his cousin Aline’s two-year-old Claudia toddled into him and threw her arms round his knees. Malcolm bent down to scoop her up. “I swear you’ve grown since Thursday, Claudie.”
Chloe grinned. “Babies are always growing. You didn’t bring Colin and Jessica?”
“Not this time. I’m just on my way back from Richmond, and I need to talk to your mother. But Suzette or I will bring them round soon.”
“Careful, Chloe.” Her mother’s amused voice came from the sofa across the room where she was sitting with Aline. “It doesn’t do to let a gentleman realize how eager one is to see him.”
“Don’t be silly, Mama. Malcolm isn’t a gentleman, he’s my cousin.”
Malcolm moved to the matched violet-striped sofas in front of the fireplace, carrying Claudia, Chloe trailing after him. He hugged Aline, who had sprung to her feet, and bent to kiss his aunt’s cheek. Aline’s gaze darted over his face. For someone who lived much of the time in her head with numbers, she could read a great deal in faces. Odd to think that not so very many years ago he’d been thinking of her as the baby.
Chloe glanced between her mother and Malcolm. “Since Malcolm wants to talk to you and didn’t bring Colin and Jessica this must be something Grown-Up. I suppose I have to go up to the nursery now.”
“You can stay and have a cup of cambric tea,” Lady Frances said. “But then, yes, I think Malcolm is here because he has something to discuss with me.”
“I’ll take you both up,” Aline promised her little sister. “I can show you how to graph a puppy’s tail.”
Chloe plopped down on the sofa, mollified. A footman brought in a tea tray and Chloe chattered on about the greyhounds she’d seen in the park that morning, the new dress her mother had taken her to have fitted, and an upcoming expedition to the opera while Malcolm fed Claudia bits of jam tart and successfully kept his teacup out of her small fist. He mentioned to Aline that he had a manuscript to show her, but at present it was more urgent that he speak with his aunt. At last Aline took Claudia from Malcolm and reached for Chloe’s hand. Chloe went without protest, though she gathered up two extra jam tarts.
“I’m not sure which she’s more excited about, the opera or the dogs,” Lady Frances said. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to get a puppy.”
“She’s very happy.” Malcolm retrieved his cup and took a sip of tea. “As a parent, I’d say that’s an accomplishment we all strive for.”
Lady Frances settled back on the sofa, cradling her own cup in one hand. Sometimes she looked so like his mother that his breath caught in his throat. It wasn’t her physical appearance so much—her features were sharper and her hair a deeper gold—but the angle at which she held her head, the negligent way she lifted the teacup, the ironic amusement in the arc of her brows. “Chloe has a happy disposition,” Lady Frances said. “Though I do think I’m managing rather better with her than I did with the older children. I was shockingly selfish in my twenties. And then Dacre-Hammond and I didn’t get on. I don’t know why that should have been a problem—plenty of couples in the beau monde despise each other and manage perfectly well—but realizing he wasn’t the man I’d thought him to be was a sad distraction. Much easier when I accepted that the seemingly dashing soldier I’d married was rather dull and got on with my life.” She tucked a strand of gold hair, which had only seemed to grow brighter through the years, behind her ear. “Aline appears to be making an excellent mother.”
“Yes, it’s hard to believe now she used to say she didn’t want children.”
Lady Frances took a sip of tea. “So did you as I recall. But you were both always excellent with the younger ones, despite having your heads in books. I wonder if it shows some sadly conventional streak in me to be pleased you’re both happily married and enjoying parenthood. It’s not that I think it’s the only possible happy outcome in life, but it can be surprisingly agreeable. Not that I ever managed the happily married part myself.” She regarded Malcolm with a shrewd blue gaze. “What does Carfax or Castlereagh have you investigating now?”
Malcolm returned his cup to the sofa table. “How do you know it’s an investigation?”
“It has to be that or family business. There’s nothing that I know of wrong with Gisèle or Edgar, and I know how you hate talking about the family.”
Malcolm brushed at the jam tart crumbs Claudia had left on his cravat. “I wouldn’t say—”
“About anything that touches on the personal.”
She had looked at him in that same precise way when his mother died. As though she wouldn’t dream of prying, but she could see through any denial he could make and was ready to listen to anything he might say. Though Malcolm doubted even Aunt Frances could be prepared for this.
“Actually it’s a bit of both,” he said.
Lady Frances raised her brows. He saw a flash of concern in her eyes. A concern she would never admit to. “Do, pray, enlighten me,” she said.
Even now he hesitated to put it into words. Which was nonsensical. And others had already verbalized it, notably Carfax. But somehow to put it into words to his mother’s sister—
“It appears Father’s death may not have been an accident,” he said.
Lady Frances’s eggshell porcelain teacup tilted in her fingers, spattering Darjeeling on the lilac-sprigged folds of her skirt. “Dear God.”
“I know you were never much fond of him, either,” Malcolm said. “But I confess I can’t help but feel a desire to learn the truth.”
Lady Frances righted the teacup. The rattle of the china betrayed her shaking fingers. “And it’s mixed up with politics?”
“It appears to be.” Malcolm studied his aunt. She and his father had exchanged barbs for as long as he could remember. But while Lady Frances might have cordially disliked Alistair Rannoch, they had moved in the same circles. He could still remember her shocked face on learning of Alistair’s death. He had actually seen her dash tears from her eyes. “Did Father ever talk to you about Lord Harleton?”
“Harleton?” Lady Frances pressed her handkerchief over the spatters on her skirt. “Good God, was he murdered, too?”
“Very likely.”
Lady Frances set down the sodden handkerchief, got to her feet, and moved to the trolley by the windows, which held a set of decanters. She splashed whisky into two glasses, tossed down one of them herself, and refilled it. “Alistair and Harleton were at Oxford together. They were in a club. They were both founders.”
“A number of people don’t know about this.” Lady Frances crossed back to him and put one of the glasses of whisky into his hand. “Their activities were—are—secret. So is their membership.”
“But you knew.” Malcolm regarded his aunt over the etched crystal.
“Some of the names of the members. And I can guess at their activities.”
“Aunt Frances—” Malcolm looked into his aunt’s uncharacteristically still face. Lines that were usually invisible stood out against her rouge and finely textured skin. “Are you telling me Father founded a hellfire club?”
“I imagine it was something of the sort.” Lady Frances took a sip of whisky. “They used to have house parties at one or other of the members’ shooting boxes. Needless to say, no ladies were invited. Though I suspect some ladies were present.”
“What was it called?”
Her mouth twisted in unexpected amusement. “The Elsinore League.”
Malcolm nearly dropped his whisky. “Father didn’t even like Shakespeare.” He could clearly recall Alistair’s amused gaze and cutting remarks on more than one occasion when he found Malcolm reading the plays. Shakespeare was something Malcolm had shared with his mother, with his scholarly grandfather, with Raoul O’Roarke. With Simon and David and Oliver Lydgate at university. Now with Suzanne, with whom he often traded quotes. Something he anticipated sharing with his children. For some reason the idea that his father had taken any interest in the Bard felt like an invasion of his private sphere.
“Perhaps his aversion to Shakespeare was something he developed later because he didn’t get on with your grandfather. Or perhaps the name wasn’t his idea.”
“Did you ever hear Father say anything about Hamlet?”
“Relating to the club? Not that I can recall.” Lady Frances dropped down on the sofa beside him, with less grace than usual. “Why?”
“Harleton had a manuscript that appears to be an early version of Hamlet in his possession.”
“Good God.” Lady Frances pushed a curl into its pins, as though she could order her thoughts. “Have you sent for your grandfather?”
“I wrote to him at once at Aunt Marjorie’s. Do you know who else was in the Elsinore League along with Alistair and Harleton?”
Lady Frances frowned over her whisky. “Lord Glenister. Theodore Bartlett. Archibald Davenport.”
“What about Sir Horace Smytheton? General Cyrus? Lord Bessborough? Dewhurst?”
“I’m not sure. Bessborough would have been at Oxford before the rest. Why?”
Malcolm took a long drink of whisky. One of the few things he shared a fondness for with Alistair. Again, he hesitated to put it into words. Ridiculous. It was a fact, spoken or unspoken. “It looks as though Alistair and Harleton may have been working for the French.”
He expected Lady Frances to drop her whisky glass, cry out, even faint. Instead, her eyes narrowed.
Malcolm stared across the striped Italian silk of the sofa at his mother’s sister. “Dear God. Don’t tell me you knew.”
“Of course not.” She took a drink of whisky. “The very idea is absurd.”
“But?” Malcolm kept his gaze trained on his aunt’s face.
Lady Frances set down her glass and spread her hands over her lap. “It had been apparent to me for some time that your father wasn’t precisely what he appeared to be on the surface. Your mother and I discussed it.”
“Mama—” Malcolm swallowed an upwelling of equal parts bitterness, regret, and longing. “You discussed that—what? That Alistair had some secret?”
Lady Frances reached for her glass. “Arabella always said she didn’t care to talk much about Alistair. That he wasn’t worth wasting time over. But once—it must have been five or so years after they married, you and Edgar were born but not Gisèle—I asked her where Alistair had gone, and she said he was with a woman. Or on some other business. And she sometimes thought the former was cover for the latter. When I asked her what she meant, she said Alistair was a man of secrets. That it might even make him interesting if he hadn’t entirely lost his ability to fascinate her years ago.”
Even now, after years away from home, Malcolm’s parents were ciphers he doubted he’d ever decode. “Do you think the Elsinore League was connected to this?”
Lady Frances took a sip of whisky and seemed to let it linger on her tongue. “The time I referred to, he was at one of their gatherings. To own the truth, I often wondered if it was some sort of cover.” She studied Malcolm. “Good lord, Malcolm, do you suspect the other men you named of spying for the French? Even Bessborough?”
“We suspect at least one of them of dealing in information.” Malcolm told her about the Dunboyne leak.
Lady Frances listened with a gathering frown between her carefully plucked brows. “Damn Carfax for pawning this off on you.”
“Yes, I know. But I need to learn the truth.”
Valentin took Suzanne’s bonnet and pelisse and informed her that Mr. Rannoch had asked her to join him in his study. Her talk with Raoul still swirling in her brain, Suzanne went down the passage to speak with her husband.
She found Malcolm at his desk, the baize-covered surface strewn with scribbled-over pieces of paper and two pages of the Hamlet manuscript, set beneath a sheet of glass in the light of a brace of candles. The curtains were still open, though the sky outside had darkened to a murky charcoal.
He looked round at her with an easy smile. “I’d lost track of the time.”
“You’ve been longing for concentrated time with the manuscript.” She didn’t dare ask what secrets he might have unearthed. “Are you any closer to determining if it’s genuine?”
“No, but I’d hazard a guess that the main hand that wrote the manuscript belongs to a man, and the second hand is a woman’s.” The fascination of the literary chase had eased the shadows round his eyes, but had not driven them away. “Tempting as it is to imagine Shakespeare writing out these pages with the Dark Lady making notes over his shoulder, I wonder if perhaps Eleanor Harleton’s actor lover copied out an early draft of the play. There’s quite a bit of underlining and some wording changes and notes on motivation in the Laertes scenes, and Crispin said that’s the role he played in the first production.”
“And you think the woman’s hand belongs to Eleanor Harleton?”
“It makes sense. A lot of her notes involve the Laertes scenes as well. They wouldn’t have been looking at this as a classic in the making, but a role that could advance his career.” Malcolm flexed his fingers and stretched his back. “Of course that’s all beside the point of the codes.”
Suzanne drew a breath and willed it to stay even. “You’ve broken the code?” she asked.
“One at least. Crispin and I found a cache of coded papers Harleton had hidden. The code he was using is based on a scene between Hamlet and Laertes that isn’t in the version of Hamlet we all know. It took a bit of time to sort that out, but once I found the scene it was easy enough to decode the papers.”
“And?” There was no reason for her throat to be so dry. Nothing so far suggested Harleton had known anything about her.
“They seem to be from two different men. Most are brief notes containing dates and amounts.”
“Payments from Harleton’s handlers?” Dear God, they could be from Raoul. Would Malcolm recognize his hand?
“Perhaps. I don’t recognize one of the hands, and the notes are so brief I’m not sure I could identify it even if it were someone I knew. But the other hand is Alistair’s.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, because there’s one note from him that’s longer.” Malcolm shifted papers to make room for her to perch on the edge of his desk. “It seems Alistair and Harleton were involved in more than spying together. I stopped in to see Aunt Frances on my way back from Richmond. Apparently Alis
tair and Harleton and some others—including at least some of the suspects in the Dunboyne leak—were part of a hellfire club.”
Suzanne sat on the edge of the desk, as she had so often when helping him with a speech or a diplomatic memorandum. She remembered the first time, a few weeks into their marriage. She’d brought him a cup of coffee, cautious about intruding, and ended up staying far into the night and helping him draft a communiqué. Perhaps that was the moment their marriage had begun to change. “I thought the Hellfire Club ended a century ago.”
“The original one.” Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “It was founded by the Duke of Wharton in the heyday of gentlemen’s clubs. Only this club admitted ladies.”
“No wonder they had a reputation for sacrilege.” She managed a smile that was almost genuine.
Malcolm grinned. “There were rumors they practiced black magic, but from what I’ve heard it was done in the spirit of mockery. Robert Walpole, who was Wharton’s rival in Parliament, used the club against him. Walpole put forwards a bill against ‘impieties’ that was a thinly veiled reference to Wharton’s club. Wharton lost his support in Parliament and the club disbanded. Rumor has it Wharton became a Freemason.” Malcolm reached for the cup of coffee that stood amid the litter of papers. “But a number of other clubs sprang up, most notably one started by Francis Dashwood and Lord Sandwich, though it wasn’t actually called a hellfire club until later. Rather more overtly bawdy than Wharton’s. It was before Aunt Frances’s time, but she says the caves at his estate at West Wycombe were legendary. The members addressed each other as ‘brother’ and the female guests were called ‘nuns.’ ”
“So this club admitted women as members as well?”
“No.” Malcolm caught hold of her right hand and laced his fingers through her own. “I gather the women at their gatherings were more likely to be hired for the evening.”