London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  Blanca waved a hand. "We're more than a match for hired ruffians. We've faced worse before."

  "You weren't pregnant before." Suzanne looked from her daughter in her arms to her friend, whose stomach was just beginning to grow rounded beneath the folds of muslin nightdress and silk dressing gown.

  "But you were." Blanca dropped down on the dressing table bench, facing Suzanne who sat on the bed. "Twice. You had people throwing rocks at you when you were about to give birth to Jessica." She folded her hands over her stomach and fixed Suzanne with a hard stare. "Is this really about the break-in at the warehouse of Lord Craven and his brother-in-law?"

  "A man was killed."

  "People don't usually make such a fuss over the death of a hired thief."

  "That rather depends on what the thief was hired to take."

  Blanca sat back on the bench, arms folded over her chest, emphasizing the curve of her belly. "You're worried."

  "Of course." Suzanne willed her hands to be steady round Jessica. "This touches on David and Simon and the children. I'd be worried in any case, and they've already been through so much."

  "That's all it is?"

  "Isn't that enough?" She and Blanca had shared so much. But she couldn't trust Blanca with the Phoenix plot. Blanca wouldn't want to keep it from Addison. Suzanne wasn't even sure Blanca would keep it from him. In Blanca's mind they had got past the tangled mess of the past with their men. Whereas Suzanne knew all too well they would never truly be beyond it.

  Blanca continued to watch Suzanne with that sharp-eyed gaze that had detected both her pregnancies, her love for her husband, and her anguish at the spy game almost before she was ready to admit any of them to herself. "I know that look in your eyes. The way you've been picking at your food. You were like this at Waterloo. You're like this whenever you're at the breaking point."

  "It's only six months since my husband learned I was a French spy. It's only three months since one of our closest friends was accused of murder and the sister of another of them killed herself. David and Simon are under unbearable strain, and the business at Whateley & Company is only going to make it worse. Raoul's in Spain running God knows what risks. And Malcolm and I went to a brothel tonight, which, though it may sound petty beside all the rest couldn't help but stir up the past." Suzanne rocked Jessica in her arms. "Isn't all that enough?"

  "Just because I'm having a baby doesn't mean I can't help," Blanca said. "You should be the first to understand that."

  "Perish the thought. I don't know how this investigation will twist and turn, but I imagine there will be plenty for us all to do."

  "Just because I'm married to Miles doesn't mean we can't talk."

  "Of course not, querida. When has my being married to Malcolm ever interfered with our talking?"

  Blanca pushed herself to her feet, but stood for a moment looking down at Suzanne and Jessica. "Secrets are dangerous, Mélanie."

  That, Suzanne knew, was all too true. But they were also the currency of a spy's life.

  "Everything secure." Malcolm closed the bedchamber door. Suzanne was by the cradle, adjusting the covers over the sleeping Jessica. He went still for a moment, taking in the tenderness in the way his wife's fingers smoothed the blanket and stroked Jessica's hair. "Valentin and Michael are taking the first watch, then they'll wake Addison and me. I told Addison he and Blanca need all the sleep they can get before the baby comes."

  Suzanne smiled and moved to her dressing table. "At least they've watched us since Colin was born. Helped us." She dropped down on her dressing table bench and began to apply cream to her heavy face makeup. "They'll be better prepared than we were."

  Malcolm grinned as he shrugged out of his coat. "In some ways, no one could have been less prepared than we were." He'd gone from expecting never to be a parent to realizing he'd be a father within six months. Even then he hadn't really understood what that meant until he watched Colin slide from Suzanne's body and Geoffrey Blackwell put the squirming newborn in his arms.

  "Making it up as we go along. Rather the story of our lives." Suzanne rubbed at the blacking on her eyes. "Laura took the news about the investigation well. Not that I expected otherwise."

  Malcolm tossed the coat onto the green velvet chair. "I don't want to take advantage of her, but she could be an asset in the investigation."

  Suzanne smiled. In the dressing table looking glass, her face was very pale, wiped free of makeup, save for black smudges that made her eyes stand out, the blue-green of a turbulent sea. "I suspect that Laura, like Cordy and Harry, would welcome the challenge. We're none of us made for a settled life."

  "Which is why we're all friends." Malcolm unbuttoned the scarlet waistcoat he only wore when in disguise. "Poor David. He's the only one of us who I think actually relishes peace and quiet." He tossed the waistcoat after the cravat. "Well, perhaps Bel does too. Not sure about Oliver." He frowned, remembering his talk with Oliver at Brooks's that afternoon.

  "Darling?" Suzanne asked. "Do you think Oliver was holding something back when you talked to him today?"

  "I'm not sure." Malcolm dropped the waistcoat on top of the coat and stared at the silver buttons. "His story made perfect sense. But—" He twitched the waistcoat smooth, seeing his friend's face, hearing Oliver's easy tone. A bit too easy? "I may be jumping at shadows. God knows it's easy enough to do so in an investigation."

  "And you're so ruthlessly determined to be fair-minded, I think you're sometimes harder on your friends than on anyone," Suzanne said.

  "A point. There was a time I'd have sworn I knew Oliver and David and Simon better than anyone. But at that time I never dreamed we'd all be involved in a murder investigation." And in the investigation three months ago, he hadn't even been entirely sure of David's innocence.

  Suzanne rubbed at the last of the blacking and got to her feet. "Do you mind? I can't do the laces on my own."

  The spangled, claret-colored gown she'd worn to the Gilded Lily left little to the imagination in front but fastened down the back with dozens of impossibly tiny strings. He'd got reasonably adept at unlacing her gowns in the years since their marriage, though even now his fingers shook when he touched her. Moments like this were often the prelude to a kiss and more. Memories tugged at his senses as he undid the laces. Burying his face in the crook of her neck, her body arcing against him, sweeping her up in his arms. He felt a tremor run through her. At the same time, the smell of the cheap violet scent she'd doused herself in for the visit to the Gilded Lily, so different from the subtle blend of her usual perfume, washed over him, reminding him of what they had seen, what she had told him, and what intimacy had once meant to her. He drew a breath, schooling his body to listen to the dictates of his mind. Tonight of all nights was no time to ask anything of her.

  She jerked beneath his touch, pulling one of the strings from his fingers.

  "Sorry," he said. "Clumsy."

  "No." Her voice was at once husky and taut as a thread pulled to the breaking point. "Malcolm, don't. Don't let what we saw tonight, what I told you tonight, taint things. Don't see that instead of seeing me."

  She spun round in his arms. Her face wiped free of makeup, her dark hair spilling loose over her shoulders, she looked younger than usual, but her eyes, still shadowed by the faintest smudges of black, were the eyes of a woman who had seen things he would never be able to fathom.

  He lifted a hand and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. "I'll always see you, sweetheart. But I can't bear to think—" That what happened when he took her in his arms and carried her to their bed had anything to do with what happened on the stale mattresses at the Gilded Lily. That the solace he took from her had anything to do with what men had once paid her for, what men still bought from women like Sue Kettering.

  "Don't let it." She reached up with both hands and pulled his head down to her own. "We have to reclaim what we have for ourselves. Or the monsters win."

  Surrendering to her kiss was never a challenge.
He slid his fingers into her hair, and when he moved his mouth from her own it was only to brush his lips against her temple, the hollow of her cheek, the corner of her mouth. He scooped her into his arms. She crooked her arm round his neck, and he carried her to their bed to make new memories.

  Chapter 11

  "Good God." Harry Davenport flung his pen down to clatter beside the scribbled-over sheets of paper and haphazardly piled classical texts on his desktop. "You have all the fun when we aren't along."

  "Suzanne predicted you'd say that." Malcolm dropped into a worn velvet armchair beside the desk in his friend's study.

  Harry leaned back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. "How serious is it?"

  "Difficult to say. Usually threats like this are bluster. But as I haven't the least idea who we're dealing with or what someone thinks is so important at Whateley & Company, it's difficult to predict. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's a cheap trick to get us to back off. By someone who thinks we'll be willing to let it go because, after all, the murdered man was only a thief from Seven Dials." He could hear the roughness in his voice as he spoke. "Never mind that his child and the child's mother will miss him as much as those of any aristocrat. Perhaps more so."

  "They should have read some of your speeches before they tried such tactics on you," Harry said.

  "I think we can handle any risk," Malcolm said. "But I'll understand if you and Cordy don't want Livia and Drusilla to play with the children until this is resolved."

  "Damned if I'm going to give way to threats. We can protect the children. Anyway, if anyone is seriously watching you, if the children stopped spending time together, it would be a clear clue something was up."

  Malcolm nodded. It was what he had expected Harry to say. "Do you recognize the description of the soldier Sue says she saw with Coventry?"

  Harry rubbed the shoulder of his bad arm, which hadn't healed properly after a break in the Peninsula. "It could be John Ennis. He was in the 95th but was seconded to military intelligence. He took a bullet to the leg at Waterloo. Walks with a limp. His hair gleams red in the right light."

  "I don't recall ever meeting him."

  "He wasn't in Lisbon much. Devil of a hell-raiser. Gambling. Fraternizing with the local women. Even fought a duel once and nearly got cashiered, but he had a cousin who hushed it up. I could imagine him knowing a man like Ben Coventry seems to have been."

  "Have you seen much of him in London?"

  Harry shook his head. "He isn't in London. He married—a vicar's daughter of all things—and settled in Shropshire. I suspected he'd got some poor girl with child and that he'd be off again as soon as he could contrive a posting anywhere else. But he sold out. Invested his money in a farm. Raises sheep or pigs or something. Can't quite imagine it."

  "He didn't hire Ben Coventry from a farm in Shropshire."

  "That's just it. Alec Drummond said a week or so ago that he ran into Ennis at Tattersalls. Up from the country with the family on a rare visit, apparently. I didn't think much of it, except that it was hard to imagine the John Ennis I knew paying family visits of any sort. But I imagine he's still here. He's likely going to Wellington's Waterloo banquet." The Duke of Wellington was holding a dinner for Waterloo veterans on the anniversary of the battle. "If he's still in town—"

  "Quite."

  A man with reddish glints in his dark hair stood between two trees in Green Park, supervising the energetic wrestling of two small boys who seemed to be competing not so much over who could pin whom to the ground as who could get dirtiest. A young woman in a print dress stood nearby. The man looked up at their approach with a start of surprise and then a quick, easy grin. "Davenport. Good God, it's been a long time." He came forwards, clearly favoring one leg, to shake Harry's hand with no hint of discomfort.

  "Ennis." Harry returned the handclasp. "I don't believe you know Malcolm Rannoch?"

  "Only by reputation." Ennis shook Malcolm's hand. "Your name was legendary on the Peninsula, Rannoch."

  "You mean curses about meddling diplomats?"

  "Hardly." Ennis grinned. "At least not most of the time." He turned to the boys and scooped one up in each arm. "My sons Kit and Tim. Dust your coats off and make your bows, boys. Then, contrive not to kill each other for a few minutes and mind Sally while I talk with my friends."

  The boys, who looked to be about two, complied with this request and darted off to their nurse. Ennis shook his head. "I suppose I had as much energy once. It's difficult to imagine."

  "I often think I'm fortunate to have girls," Harry said. "Not that they lack energy, but mostly it's a bit more focused. Though that may simply be their personalities."

  Ennis turned his gaze from his sons to Harry. "I heard about you and Lady Cordelia. I'm glad."

  "Thank you. Though I expect you think I'm mad."

  "On the contrary. I think Waterloo changed a lot for all of us."

  Harry inclined his head towards the boys. "Fatherhood seems to suit you. How's—it's Anne, isn't it?"

  "You always had a good memory, Davenport. She's well. Though you're undoubtedly having as hard a time imagining me settled into connubial bliss as—"

  "As you had imagining it about me?"

  Ennis grinned. "Perhaps." He folded his hands behind his back. "I don't know why Waterloo should seem so different from all those years in the Peninsula. It's not as though I didn't know battle was hell. But I'd never been through a battle on that scale. I'd never seen so many of my friends die. Friends with wives and children. Girls they planned to marry. I'd never made plans for anything. I'd never thought of the future. And then suddenly we could. All that carnage, but it was over. We'd won."

  It was a touchingly naive assessment of Waterloo. Malcolm choked on the thought of what Suzanne would say, but he could well understand the need to hold on to something in the wake of the battle.

  "I came home on leave," Ennis continued, his gaze going to the boys, now rolling across the green under the gaze of their nurse. "I'd known Anne since we were children. Her father's had the living near my parents' estate since I was in shortcoats. But it was as though I'd never properly looked at her before. My tastes—Well, as Davenport could tell you they ran in a rather different direction. My ideal woman was someone who couldn't be pinned down because she couldn't pin me down." He shook his head.

  "Given my own marriage," Harry said, "I'd be the first to admit people change. Lately, I'd even be inclined to say the change can last."

  "I thought I'd miss it," Ennis said. "Oh, not other women so much—" He gave an abashed grin. "Well, perhaps a bit. But the danger, the excitement. For the first few months a part of me was waiting for the boredom to kick in. But then Anne was with child and the twins were born—" He shook his head. "It's hard now to remember my old life."

  Davenport was watching his colleague with half sympathy, half calculation. "And yet you do see people from your old life."

  "From time to time. When I'm in town, which isn't often. Anne wanted to visit an aunt who's been ailing and I thought we could combine it with the Waterloo dinner."

  "And you saw Ben Coventry."

  Ennis's gaze locked on Harry's. For a moment, Malcolm had no difficulty imagining Ennis in military intelligence.

  "Surely you know he was found dead two days ago," Harry said. "You must have been a bit suspicious about why we wanted to talk to you."

  "Coventry is dead?" Seemingly genuine shock filled Ennis's gaze.

  "Of course," Malcolm said. "The murder of a duke is all over Mayfair before the body goes cold, but the murder of a thief in a warehouse goes almost unreported."

  "Ben was murdered?" Ennis's eyes had gone even wider.

  "Stabbed during a break-in at the warehouse of a shipping concern known as Whateley & Company," Harry said. "But I imagine you know more about that than we do."

  "Why on earth would I know about some trading company and what Ben might be doing there?" Ennis's gaze went to his children again but this time it
seemed less in order to enjoy their antics than to make sure they were safe. "I'd only seen him a handful of times since I sold out. I know he had some connections that might be called unsavory, but he was a good man. A brave man. Saved my life at Bussaco."

  That last carried conviction but Malcolm could read mendacity in his denial of knowing what Coventry had been doing at Whateley & Company, and he knew Harry could read it too.

  "Coventry's mistress saw you leaving his lodgings a week ago," Harry said.

  "That's impossible. I—" Ennis bit back whatever he'd been about to say.

  "Was sure you weren't followed."

  "No. Of course not. I wasn't there."

  "John." Harry stepped in front of Ennis and swung round to face his friend. "You're good at cover-ups. But not good enough to play this game with two seasoned agents. You hired Coventry. We want to find out who killed him and why. You were his friend. You should want to find that out too."

  Ennis drew a harsh breath. His gaze went back to his children. "It was supposed to be simple. Coventry survived Moore's retreat from Coruña and all those years in the Peninsula and Waterloo. Who'd have thought he'd find an enemy he couldn't defeat in a shipping warehouse?"

  "He appears to have been taken by surprise," Malcolm said.

  "Coventry wasn't the sort of man who gets taken by surprise. He almost seemed to think it wasn't enough of a challenge when I told him about it, but he said the blunt would come in handy. There was a woman—I suppose this mistress you mentioned. He wanted to get her out of the situation she was in."

  "There's a child as well," Malcolm said. "A boy. About the same age as your boys."

  "Yes, he mentioned that. The whole thing seemed ridiculously straightforwards. Just go in, grab the papers—"

  "What papers?" Harry asked.

  Ennis shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I don't know what they contained precisely. Just that they were concealed somewhere in the warehouse."