Malcolm paused, knowing he couldn’t control what Harry would read in the pause. “Think I can manage this on my own, old man. But I appreciate the offer.”
“Malcolm.” Archibald Davenport looked up from his game of whist. “You look as though you’ve come to seek me out.”
“If I could have a moment when you’re done with your game, sir.”
“No need for that.” Davenport tossed down his cards on the green baize. “You’ve saved me from dipping even deeper.” He pushed back his chair. “Gentlemen. Duty calls.”
His friends responded with wry grimaces and some good-natured quips. Davenport returned the quips, reached for his walking stick, and jerked his head towards a door to the adjoining antechamber.
“I’m happy to talk to you, Malcolm, though I must say I quite liked it when you sent your charming wife to speak with me.”
“I don’t think Suzette would think much of the idea that I sent her anywhere.” Malcolm pulled the door to. “But given the information I’ve just discovered, I thought it was best if I had a conversation with you myself.”
“What information?” Davenport lowered himself into an armchair covered in a pale green damask that matched the wall hangings.
Malcolm leaned against the closed door and studied the other man in the light of the brace of candles. Perhaps it was a trick of the flickering light that gave Davenport’s face a harder cast. “That you were my mother’s lover.”
Davenport went still for a fraction of a second. “Who told you that?”
“Dewhurst.”
“That sounds like Dewhurst. He has no care for a lady’s reputation.”
“I agree. Though in this case, I think he was right to tell me. Given the implications about what it may have meant for your relationship with Alistair Rannoch.”
“My dear boy.” Davenport settled back in the chair. “Far be it from me to cast aspersions on anyone’s parents. But surely you don’t believe your father had any illusions about your mother’s fidelity.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean he was sanguine about it.” Malcolm swallowed, aware of a tightness in his chest. “When did the affair take place?”
Davenport met his gaze, his own surprisingly gentle. “A decade after you were born. The spring and summer of ’98.”
Malcolm released his breath. He hadn’t really thought it. He was fairly sure he knew who his biological father was. Still—
“She was a damned fine woman,” Davenport said. “I think she meant more to me than I did to her, though in truth the affair didn’t last long. You’re old enough to know people can take these things lightly without it casting aspersions on those involved.”
“So you were lovers at the time the Dunboyne information disappeared?”
“The affair ended shortly after.”
“Alistair and Harleton fought a duel over a lady that night.”
“A lady with whom they were both involved. I don’t know her name. It wasn’t your mother. By the time I knew her, Arabella claimed Alistair had no interest in whom she took to her bed.”
“Did Alistair know about your affair?”
“I’m not sure. To own the truth, I preferred to give as little thought to Alistair as possible. And given the way he treated Arabella, it was hardly any of his business.”
“Alistair never confronted you about it?”
Davenport crossed his legs and regarded the diamond buckle on his shoe. “My dear boy, are you asking if I killed your father?”
Malcolm advanced into the room and dropped into a chair, gaze trained on Davenport. “You think Alistair was murdered?”
“I didn’t until you began asking questions about him and Harleton and the Dunboyne business. Then his and Harleton’s deaths began to look a bit too coincidental. But even if Alistair had confronted me for cuckolding him—which he did not—my affair with Arabella would have given Alistair a motive to get rid of me, not the other way round.”
“Unless you resented him for his treatment of Arabella.”
“Resented him? I bloody well wanted to plant him a facer much of the time. In fact, now I think of it killing him wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.” Davenport smoothed a frilled cuff over his fingers. “Pity it never occurred to me.”
CHAPTER 13
Malcolm stepped from the anteroom in which he had spoken with Archibald Davenport, his mother’s face hanging in his memory, sharp as a pen-and-ink drawing. Even when she looked right at one, there had always been something elusive in her gaze. A familiar figure caught his eye across the passage, just moving off from a discussion with Lord John Russell. Malcolm went still. How damnably ironic. And yet though Raoul O’Roarke might not precisely be the person Malcolm was in the mood to face at present, O’Roarke’s perspective on the United Irish Uprising was just what Malcolm needed. This was no time to start letting personal feelings interfere with the investigation.
O’Roarke turned, caught Malcolm’s eye, then moved forwards after a hesitation that was so fractional Malcolm couldn’t be sure he hadn’t imagined it. “Rannoch. Your young friend Russell’s just been talking about you with hero worship in his eyes.”
Malcolm felt the wry twist in his own smile. “Johnny Russell is going to make a brilliant politician. But he’s still young enough to believe change is only a few well-strategized votes away.”
“He’s not so very much younger than you.” There was nothing patronizing in O’Roarke’s tone. He’d never talked down, even when Malcolm was a boy of six grappling with concepts he could barely understand.
“But he wasn’t in the Peninsula. Or at Waterloo or in Paris afterwards.”
“True. And he never was an Intelligence Agent.”
“That too.”
O’Roarke met Malcolm’s gaze for a moment. Working with the guerrilleros in Spain, he’d more or less been an Intelligence Agent himself. “But perhaps young Russell has the right of it. Perhaps one has to believe change is only a well-strategized vote round the corner in order to keep going.”
“Is that what you did in Ireland?” Malcolm asked.
O’Roarke’s gaze slid to the side. Malcolm caught a flash of the look he’d seen in the other man’s eyes since boyhood when they discussed Ireland. A mixture of regret, anger, and something else that might have been longing. “I was hardly naïve at the time of the United Irish Uprising. I’d lived through the Revolution and faced the guillotine. But I don’t think I’d have survived those months if I hadn’t believed we had a real shot at winning.”
Malcolm scanned O’Roarke’s face. He’d always been direct with Malcolm. Malcolm owed him the same. “Carfax has me looking into something that’s raised questions about the leaked information about Dunboyne.”
O’Roarke’s eyes widened, then narrowed. “My God. I should have known we hadn’t heard the last of that.”
“It was a disastrous blunder that cost the lives of British soldiers.”
“And that almost certainly saved my own.”
Malcolm studied his childhood friend. He wasn’t used to thinking of O’Roarke as being on the opposite side. “I didn’t realize you were there.”
“I’d been in Wexford overseeing a guerrilla operation. I got to Dunboyne just a few days before the British attack.”
“The United Irishmen had already been warned of it?”
O’Roarke hesitated a moment. “No. I received the warning the day after I arrived in Dunboyne.”
Malcolm’s gaze locked on O’Roarke’s own. His childhood mentor and friend, the man who had helped them save Paul St. Gilles, had become an opponent. “Even if you knew whom the leak came from, I don’t suppose you’d tell me.”
O’Roarke’s mouth lifted in a faint smile. “I don’t suppose I would. But as it happens I don’t know.”
It was what Malcolm would have expected O’Roarke to say.
There was even a chance the other man was telling the truth.
Malcolm closed the door of the night nursery on the sleepi
ng Colin. “Apparently Jennifer Mansfield—or rather, Geneviève Manet—was a British agent along with Smytheton and Dewhurst.”
Suzanne looked up from settling Jessica at her breast. Her feet ached in their satin slippers from hours on the dance floor and the tenderness in her breasts told her it was time to nurse. But more than that, her mind ached from the strain of the evening. “Smytheton’s personality is the perfect cover for an agent.”
“Quite.” Malcolm shrugged out of his coat. While he undressed, he relayed Dewhurst’s account of Smytheton’s work as an agent, Geneviève’s involvement, their escape to England, and the suspicion that had fallen on both of them.
Suzanne shifted her arm beneath Jessica’s kicking legs. “Carfax held a lot back.”
“Not unusual for Carfax.” Malcolm wrapped his burgundy silk dressing gown round him.
“So we go to the Tavistock tomorrow? Simon mentioned there’s a rehearsal in the afternoon, and I don’t think Sir Horace has missed one yet.”
Malcolm nodded. “I’ll call on Aunt Frances in the morning. Or as early in the day as I can count on her being out of bed. I want to ask her if she has any idea where Alistair might have been when he claimed to have been at Glenister’s. As well as about the duel. And . . .” He hesitated a moment. “Folly to be squeamish about it. Apparently Archibald Davenport was my mother’s lover at the time of the Dunboyne leak.”
“Good God.” Suzanne scanned her husband’s face. “That is, I don’t suppose it’s surprising given the circles they moved in, but—”
“It’s one more connection among the players. Almost too coincidental. And yet it doesn’t give Davenport a motive to have leaked the Dunboyne information. And though Davenport clearly didn’t think much of Alistair and went so far as to say it wouldn’t have been a bad idea to have killed him, it doesn’t make a lot of sense that he actually did. Especially so long after the affair.”
Jessica was wriggling, gaze caught by the light of the tapers on the dressing table. Suzanne coaxed the baby’s mouth back to her breast. “Apparently Caro Lamb has been attending rehearsals. Cordy and I talked to her tonight.”
Malcolm dropped down on the edge of the bed. “About her father?”
“Not surprisingly, she doesn’t know anything about the Elsinore League. But Harleton was her mother’s lover for a time.”
Malcolm let out a whistle. “Not necessarily surprising, either. But again almost too coincidental. Quite a web of connections.”
“The web gets even thicker. Caro once overheard her father and your father quarreling.” While Jessica squirmed in her lap, Suzanne repeated Lady Caroline’s account of the exchange she’d overheard between Bessborough and Alistair Rannoch.
Malcolm listened in frowning silence. “My father was blackmailing Bessborough? Good God. This gets more and more byzantine.”
“Do you remember anything about your father and Bessborough?” Suzanne asked.
Malcolm frowned in an effort of memory. “I remember the Bessboroughs at house parties at Dunmykel. At receptions here on the rare occasions I was in London. My parents were on the fringe of the Devonshire House set, for all Alistair’s politics were resolutely Tory. But I have no particular memories of my father and Bessborough.” He paused for a moment. “This fits with my father being a French agent and blackmailing Bessborough into stealing secrets for him.”
“But Bessborough wasn’t in the government. He’s a Whig, and not even at the center of Whig politics.”
Malcolm pushed himself to his feet and dug his fingers into his hair. “He’s connected to powerful people. Lady Bessborough may have been the Prince of Wales’s mistress. If Bessborough took the Dunboyne information, it’s even possible Alistair blackmailed him into doing so. Though when I think of Bessborough’s position on Ireland—Perhaps—” He shook his head. “We need more data.”
Jessica released Suzanne’s breast, sat up in her lap, and set loose a string of babble. “Do you want to talk to him?” Suzanne asked, jiggling the baby.
He turned and shot her a smile. “Yes, but Bessborough will let his guard down much better with a pretty woman. Even more so with two. You and Cordelia should talk to him.” He frowned at the Boucher oil over the dressing table. “Dewhurst confirmed that members of the League were smuggling works of art out of the Continent. But it’s difficult to see how that would have been enough for Father to blackmail his friends over. God knows Britain’s great houses are filled with appropriated art treasures.”
“Unless something happened in the course of acquiring one of the treasures,” Suzanne said.
“It’s a possibility.” Malcolm dug a hand into his hair in the way he did when he was puzzling something over. “I talked to O’Roarke. About the Dunboyne leak.”
Suzanne drew a breath and forced herself to release it slowly. She should have realized Malcolm would approach Raoul. “Did he know anything?”
“Yes, apparently he was at Dunboyne at the time. He says he might well have been killed if the rebels hadn’t been warned.” Malcolm’s mouth twisted in a rueful smile. “One tries to keep the personal out of it, but I confess the thought of O’Roarke all but losing his life can’t but color my view of the situation.”
“The important thing is that you’re aware your view is colored.” She swallowed, hoping she wasn’t being too deliberate. “Did you ask him about the leak?”
“He admits he was the one who received the information. And claims he doesn’t know the source. But then I’d expect him to protect his source.” Malcolm shook his head. “It’s odd being on opposite sides. I’m used to thinking of him as an ally.”
Suzanne’s throat knotted with what might have been a laugh or a sob.
“Dewhurst had heard of the Raven,” Malcolm added.
Jessica stretched out a hand for the silver gilt candlesticks. Suzanne pulled her back. Amazing her own hands weren’t trembling. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. “What did Dewhurst say about the Raven?” she asked in a steady voice.
“He’d heard a mention from a source who was one of Fouché’s people. Supposedly the Raven was a French agent under long-term deep cover in the Peninsula. And even Fouché didn’t know the agent’s real identity, at least at that point. But according to Dewhurst, his source was quite clear that the Raven only went back to 1810 or so. So I’m damned if I see how it connects to the rest.”
Jessica let out a squawk and arched her back. “I know, but you’re tired,” Suzanne said, coaxing her back to nurse. “Perhaps the Raven had worked with your father and Lord Harleton and had information that could hurt them,” she said, because some response seemed to be required.
“Though neither of them had direct connections to the Peninsula or to the army. Yet their paths must have crossed somehow.” He frowned. “Dewhurst said the Raven wasn’t someone recruited by the French but someone placed in deep cover. Difficult to do that with a soldier or a diplomat.”
“You’ve created convincing backstories.” Suzanne rocked Jessica against her. “You made Rachel Garnier look like a baron’s daughter. And Talleyrand set Tatiana up as a Russian princess.”
Malcolm nodded, his gaze thoughtful. “Easier perhaps for a woman, who is likely to be in a less official capacity.” He moved to sit beside Suzanne on the dressing table bench and touched Jessica’s hair. “I wonder if the Raven could be someone’s wife.”
CHAPTER 14
Rupert, Viscount Caruthers, walked beside a shaggy chestnut pony, steadying the small boy seated atop the pony’s back, while Bertrand Laclos carefully led the pony along the path that wound along the bank of the Serpentine through Hyde Park.
“Stephen!” Colin called from his perch on Malcolm’s shoulders.
Stephen looked round and waved. Rupert gave a wave as well, as did Bertrand.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Malcolm lifted Colin from his shoulders and set him on the ground.
“Always glad to see you.” Rupert grinned, in a way that recalled the undergraduate
Malcolm had known at Oxford. He swung Stephen down from the saddle so he could run over to Colin.
Bertrand looped the pony’s reins round his wrist and moved towards Malcolm. He wore the English gentleman’s casual dress of buckskin breeches, Hessian boots, and an olive drab coat, but beyond that he looked at home here in Hyde Park. In a way that had seemed impossible when he first resurfaced in France. In a way that he hadn’t even seemed at home as an émigré at Eton and Oxford. Heartening to know some things could turn out for the best.
“Was just reading the transcript of your speech on Habeas Corpus over morning coffee,” Bertrand said. “Impressive.”
“Probably futile.”
“On the contrary. Someone has to make the argument or we’re truly lost.” Bertrand crouched down beside the boys. “Why don’t we take Lancelot for a walk and find a place to sail your boat.”
Colin and Stephen responded with cries of approbation. Bertrand gathered up the reins and cast a crooked grin at Malcolm and Rupert. “Looks as though you’ve got work to discuss. Glad to be out of that business.”
“As am I, technically,” Rupert said, watching his lover move off. “But as you warned me when I sold out of the army, one can never really leave off the intelligence game.” He turned back to Malcolm. “I’m glad I decided to stand for Parliament.”
“As am I. We could use more like you.”
“I don’t have your way with words, but by God it’s good to have something to do with myself. God knows I don’t miss the army, but I need an occupation. And it’s not as though Father’s going to let me help with the running of the estates.” Rupert drew a breath. “Losing your own father. That can’t have been easy.”
The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) Page 16