by Tracy Grant
Isobel gave a dry smile. "She wasn't Lady St. Ives yet. Her parents were friends of my parents. They were at that same house party where I first met Oliver, and I watched Sylvie and him fall madly in love across the dinner table. For years he had eyes for no one else."
Suzanne drew a breath, trying to picture Oliver and Sylvie St. Ives together. She and Sylvie had never been particular friends. Suzanne's instinct was to avoid someone whose background was so close to her own cover story (and who therefore might be able to see through her), but she saw the other woman at a score of entertainments. Surely she must have seen Sylvie and Oliver speak, dance, sit beside each other. How could she have been so blind as not to notice anything?
"The love affair was in the past by the time you met either of them," Isobel said. "And you wouldn't have been looking for signs. You assumed Oliver and I were happy. Which we were, in a way. "
"Dearest—" Suzanne stretched out a hand.
Isobel didn't pull away but neither did she return the clasp of Suzanne's hand. "It was after Sylvie had married St. Ives and I'd been out a few seasons that Oliver began to pay more attention to me. One night he started making love to me in the Carfax House conservatory." For a moment, the wonder and horror of those moments shone in Isobel's face, as though the flesh had been stripped from her bones to reveal the hard reality beneath. "I told him to stop. That I quite liked the idea of marrying him, and I was perfectly prepared to do so. So long as he promised never to pretend to love me again."
Suzanne stared at her friend. One of her first British friends. Who, unlike Cordy and Simon and Laura, she'd thought wholly secure in her marriage and position in the world. "Malcolm never pretended to love me."
"But he does." Isobel's smile was somehow strained but real. "Odd how life works out. I think Malcolm was worried when he heard Oliver and I were betrothed. His letter of felicitations said everything that was kind, but I could read between the lines. And I know you enough now I can own to worrying when I first heard Malcolm, who'd always sworn off marriage, was going to marry a girl we'd never met."
"I can well understand that. And I can well understand I've been blind to much of what was before me. Bel, I'm so sorry—"
Isobel touched her arm and gave a dry smile. Again, Suzanne was put in mind of Carfax more than she ever had been in her acquaintance with Bel. "It's all right, dearest. It's hardly the tragedy it would be if you learned Malcolm had been unfaithful. I went into the marriage expecting Oliver to stray. I gave him permission that night I agreed to be his wife. So long as he never embarrassed me. And for the most part he hasn't. Gossip like tonight stings a bit. Probably more than it should. But I shall be quite all right."
"Dearest—"
Isobel gave a quick, self-deprecating laugh. "It's not the first time I've heard mention of this particular woman. I actually made the mistake of inquiring into her name. Foolish. Much easier to ignore it if I didn't know. I found myself dwelling on things. Like if Malcolm knew her in the Peninsula."
"What made you think that?"
"Because of her name. With that and her coloring, she seems quite obviously Spanish."
Over her concern for her friend, Suzanne felt the scent of a puzzle piece about to lock into place. "What was her name?"
"Maria Monreal."
"You appear to have been enjoying yourself." Malcolm stopped beside Raoul on the edge of the dance floor.
Raoul surveyed his son, a distinct memory in his mind of Malcolm buried in a book in the library during social occasions in his undergraduate days. "I could say the same."
Malcolm gave an unexpected grin. "I don't cut and run as much at entertainments as I once did. Which is part Mel's influence and part the demands of investigating."
"I confess to feeling the impulse to cut and run at a ball more than once in the past. But at times they prove surprisingly diverting. The Lydgates are excellent hosts."
"I confess I've quite come to like dancing with Mel." Malcolm paused for a moment. "You looked very at home on the dance floor yourself."
The feel of Laura in his arms on the dance floor flooded his memory. Odd how dancing with a woman could be so intimate even when one had shared greater intimacies. "I haven't entirely forgot how." He didn't let his gaze linger on Laura but he'd been aware all evening of where she was. She'd danced twice with Cuthbertson, then with Bertrand and then Harry. Now she was standing with Cordelia and Aline Blackwell. As he watched, Cuthbertson brought the three ladies champagne.
"I can't imagine you forgetting a skill at anything, O'Roarke."
"My dear Malcolm. At my age, one is keenly aware one's abilities aren't what they used to be."
"Doing it much too brown, sir." Malcolm's gaze moved over the ballroom. "By the way, I saw Wellington a bit ago. He noticed you at the ball. Said to invite you to his dinner tomorrow."
The anniversary of Waterloo, though Malcolm was tactfully avoiding putting into words the reference to the day that had wrecked so many of Raoul's dreams. "Very good of him," Raoul said.
"He says he appreciates everything you did on the Peninsula," Malcolm said in a steady voice.
Raoul managed a dry smile. "An able man, the duke. It's rather a relief to know that there are things he doesn't see."
"I didn't want to speak for you," Malcolm said, "but we can easily make your excuses. Though it will be an excellent opportunity to gather information."
Raoul raised his brows.
Malcolm gave a smile, faint but real. "Yes, I know. God help me, I can't believe I'm saying that to you, but I am. Besides, we've talked Laura into going. I'm sure she'd welcome your company."
Raoul watched Laura clink her glass against Cuthbertson's. "She might enjoy herself more if she was free to talk to her old friends."
Malcolm was leaning casually against the paneling, but Raoul knew his son's gaze was taking in the same scene. "I don't believe it for a moment. But if that were the case, you can't tell me you don't know how to read a situation and make yourself scarce. You could always take refuge in the library. Wellington has an excellent one."
Raoul flung back his head and laughed despite himself. "Then how can I refuse?" he said.
Malcolm had been speaking with Raoul, but now William Lamb and Rupert had joined them. Suzanne hesitated. The news she had to deliver was better shared in the privacy of their bedchamber. But given that they were in Oliver's house and in the midst of an investigation that the revelations might directly impact, time was of the essence. She joined the men, discussed the forthcoming general election for a few minutes, then asked if they minded terribly if she stole her husband away. Of course, they didn't. Malcolm gave her his arm with a smile and said nothing until she had led him into an anteroom adjoining the smaller drawing room. Then he turned to her with raised brows.
"What do you have to tell me that you thought I couldn't handle hearing in public?"
"Not that. But—" She turned to face him, conscious of a chill, though the brace of candles warmed the air. It must be stepping out of the heat of the crowded drawing room.
"Darling?" Malcolm crossed to her side in two steps and gripped her shoulders. "What is it? You look as though you've seen a ghost."
"Of course not." Unless it was the ghost of her belief in a happy marriage? "I'm just a bit surprised. And sad, I suppose. Dearest—" How to break his faith in two of his closest friends? Malcolm's faith in so many people had been shaken lately. "Bel just told me that Oliver has a mistress."
She waited for surprise to suffuse her husband's face and instead saw a grimace of acknowledgment. "Damnation. How long has she known?"
"Malcolm—" Suzanne took a step back. "Don't tell me you knew—"
"For a certainty? Of course not." Malcolm dug a hand through his hair. "Oliver would hardly confide such a thing in me given how close I've always been to Bel. She was my friend before he was."
"But you aren't surprised." Suzanne continued to stare at her husband. These days she was particularly aware of how realit
y—one's perception of reality—could shift in an instant, cutting the ground of comfortable certainty away like a sheet of ice.
"That Oliver has a mistress? The possibility has occurred to me, though I'd have hoped not. That Bel knew? Bel's an astute woman. If Oliver has a mistress, it's likely she'd guess. That their marriage is less than idyllic? Most people's are."
He smiled faintly as he said that last, as though to rob it of the sting, and that smile cut straight through to her heart. "Neither of us has—"
"No." He smiled again, straight into her eyes. "But we're certainly not strangers to deception and betrayal."
"You mean I've betrayed and deceived you."
"And I you on occasion, if on a smaller scale. It comes with the territory of being a spy."
She folded her arms over her chest, hugging her gauze shawl round her, as though the fragile fabric could protect her from reality. "Cordy admits she married Harry because she was desperate to escape. Rupert offered for Gaby because Bertrand was gone and he thought he needed a wife. You and I—"
"You married me to spy for the French. I married you because you needed protection. And because I was half in love with you and that gave me an excuse. But you're right. It was hardly a moonlight and roses beginning. Neither was Bel's and Oliver's."
"You weren't here when they became betrothed."
"No. But I'd seen them before I left."
"Bel said she could tell you were worried from your letter of felicitations."
He gave a wry grimace. "I tried to hide it. I hoped they could make it work. But I'd seen how Oliver felt about Sylvie."
"You never told me. That Oliver had been in love with Lady St. Ives." She couldn't remember Oliver and Sylvie together, but she could remember Malcolm introducing her to Sylvie St. Ives at a reception at Carfax House on their first visit to Britain. He'd seemed to think Suzanne would like meeting someone with a similar background, which might have been true if their backgrounds had indeed been similar.
"It was in the past by the time you met both Oliver and Sylvie," Malcolm said. "But one doesn't get over that sort of love quickly."
The questions about Malcolm's own romantic history that she had struggled with while talking to Cordy that morning came flooding back, but of course she couldn't voice them. "So you thought their marriage was doomed from the start because Oliver was in love with Sylvie?"
"Marriages can work without love. But it's difficult when the love is on one side."
Suzanne frowned. "Because Oliver—"
"Because Bel had obviously been head over heels in love with Oliver for years."
Suzanne saw her friend coolly recounting Oliver's infidelities and the bargain they'd made. And that moment of naked pain in her face when Marianne Fairchild first mentioned Oliver's mistress. "Bel didn't say that. But it makes sense." She studied Malcolm, remembering countless evenings with Bel and Oliver, countless outings with the children. "You never said any of this to me."
"What was there to say? I didn't know anything for a certainty."
"You let me think—"
"You saw them the way you wanted to, sweetheart." He put a hand against her cheek. "Because of the person you are. You believe in happiness."
"That's ridiculous, Malcolm."
"Is it? You were mad enough to believe we could be happy. You were right."
And perhaps to fuel that belief, she'd needed to believe that others could be. And so her skills at reading people had quite deserted her. "I didn't ask you in here just to discuss our friends, Malcolm. Bel confided in me because she was overset when Marianne Fairchild mentioned seeing Oliver with a beautiful dark-haired woman. Bel said she'd seen Oliver with the woman before. She's even inquired about the woman's name. It's Maria Monreal."
This time she saw shock run through Malcolm, though he scarcely moved a muscle. "Christ. And I thought Eustace was snatching at straws when he told me about Oliver's visit to the warehouse."
"He might have been. But two weeks after that visit, people broke into the Whateley & Company warehouse. And two nights after that, Maria broke into the Craven house."
Malcolm frowned at a pair of blue-and-white Chinese vases on the console table. "What the hell is Oliver up to?"
Chapter 27
"Malcolm. Haven't seen you all evening."
David's voice stopped Malcolm as he circled the drawing room looking for Oliver, head still pounding from Suzanne's revelations. He stopped, about to ask if David had seen Oliver, when he got a good look into his friend's eyes. "What's happened?"
David passed a hand over his face. "God, is it that obvious?"
"To someone who knows just how you look in a crisis."
David gave a lopsided grin. "I wouldn't call it a crisis. Not like someone breaking into the house with the children in it. Or your investigation. This can—"
Malcolm dug a shoulder into the gilded wall. "Talk."
"I took the children to see Father and Mother and Lucinda today. It went pretty well. Father didn't ring a peal over Teddy, and the children were more at ease than they sometimes are. Though Mother looked a bit pained when Jamie smeared jam tart all over the drawing room carpet. We weren't allowed in the drawing room very much as children, except for half an hour in the afternoon. It makes—"
"David," Malcolm said.
"Father called me into his study. We had a talk about Teddy. Fairly rational for Father. I was feeling quite in charity with him. Then he decided to tell me it was time I married."
"Damn it," Malcolm said.
David shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "It was nothing he hadn't said before."
"But something was different."
David shrugged, gaze focused on a potted palm across the room. "In tone at least. He was more blunt. He actually mentioned Simon directly." David blanched with the horror of one obliged to discuss his romantic life with his parent. "He was so obliging as to suggest he wouldn't object to my continuing my relationship with Simon so long as I produced an heir. And a spare, presumably."
"There are women who probably wouldn't object to such an arrangement."
"Would you?" David turned to face him with sudden intensity. "If you couldn't be married to Suzanne for some reason, would you marry another woman simply to—" He couldn't quite seem to put it into words.
"No," Malcolm said without hesitation. "But I've never felt the obligation to produce an heir."
David's eyes darkened. "As if I would. Or could. As if Simon would ever go along with—I told Father it was impossible. That I never would. I actually for a moment thought, 'Well, at least that's done. Awkward as it was, we can't have this conversation again.'"
"Until?"
The gaze David lifted to him held not anger but worry. "Father said it wasn't over. Of course I know he won't let it go, but I can't but worry about what he may try to get what he wants."
Malcolm shared those worries, but there was no point in dwelling on them with David. "You've always found ways to stand up to your father. And you aren't without friends."
David's answering smile was the smile of their boyhood. "For which I'm inestimably grateful." He scanned Malcolm's face. "You look serious yourself. Are you in the midst of investigating?"
"Only asking a few questions. Have you seen Oliver?"
"Not for the past half hour or so. He and Bel are always running about when they're entertaining." David frowned. "You need to talk to Oliver about the investigation?"
"Possibly. He called on Eustace at the warehouse not long before the break-in." All of which was true, it just didn't explain everything they knew about Oliver's possible connection to the events. And yet—David might have helpful information. "Have you ever heard of a woman named Maria Monreal?"
David shook his head. "No. Is she connected to the investigation?"
"Apparently, though we aren't sure how." Strictly speaking that was true, and Malcolm wasn't yet ready to tell David they knew who had broken into the Brook Street house. "I've just lea
rned Oliver may be acquainted with her."
"He's never mentioned her to me." David stared at Malcolm. "Are you telling me Oliver has a mistress who's involved in the break-in?"
It was blunt speaking for David. As little as they talked about their own personal lives, they were even less likely to discuss those of their friends. "You think Oliver has a mistress?" Malcolm asked.
David drew a sharp breath. "I don't—I don't have any reason to believe so."
"But you wouldn't be surprised?"
David met Malcolm's gaze with an honesty that went back more than half their lives. Difficult to pretend with people who'd known one since childhood. And their knowledge of Oliver went back a decade. "I envy what Bel and Oliver have sometimes. But it's not what you and Suzanne have."
Malcolm bit back a dry laugh. That was certainly true in ways David couldn't begin to understand, if perhaps also in the way he meant.
"I want Bel to be happy." David said in a measured voice. "I had concerns when they married. I didn't hide them from you. But I believe Oliver is a man of honor." David drew a harsh breath. "If he's hurt Bel—"
Malcolm touched his friend's arm. "Whatever's going on, I think Bel is well aware of it."
David's mouth tightened. "Bel doesn't deserve—"
"No," Malcolm agreed.
David glanced away again. "I tried to talk to her once. Before they married. I told her how much I loved them both and that I only wanted her to be happy. All Bel would say is that she knew what she was doing and they were happy."
"Malcolm." Lucinda Mallinson stopped Malcolm as he continued his pursuit of Oliver. "You look as though you're looking for someone. Cousin Eustace?"
"Oliver, actually." Malcolm smiled at David's youngest sister. With the deaths of her sister and two of her brothers-in-law, she had been through far more than most seventeen-year-olds, but she was still refreshingly open and cheerful, especially for a daughter of Lord Carfax.