by Tracy Grant
Malcolm's fingers tightened round the stem of his glass. Simon, as usual, was damnably acute. There were many things he'd never commit to paper. Things such as the fierce defiance on Suzanne's face when she and Blanca tumbled out of the trees in the Cantabrian Mountains. The way the breath had stopped in his throat when he looked into her blue-green eyes. The moment he'd seen her hand curved over her stomach and realized the French soldiers who had killed her family had left her with child. The morning he'd woken in the pre-dawn light to the sound of her retching, and the talk they'd had in which he endeavored to outline her options and she told him she was determined to keep the baby. The moment in Lisbon, weeks later, when the ambassador, Sir Charles Stuart, had confronted him about her plight, and he'd realized she needed a husband and that he couldn't bear for that to be anyone but him.
He could say none of that, even to his closest friends. It violated his wife's confidence. And revealed pieces of himself he shared with no one. So instead he took another swallow of port and said, "We were in the midst of a war. Which can simplify choices. Suzanne had been left alone and in need of protection. In the face of that, my qualms about my deficiencies as a husband seemed selfish."
"It doesn't really matter why," David said. "The point is you're happy."
Happy. What an odd word. One didn't think in those terms in the midst of ever-present danger. One thought of the needs of the moment, the next mission, staying alive during the mission. Surviving the numbing paperwork afterwards, the next move in the endless chess game of international diplomacy. When he went to the Peninsula, still numb from his mother's death, happiness had seemed as alien as the moon. Simon and David knew that better than anyone. And yet—a fresh set of images flashed through his mind. Waking up wounded in a camp bed to look on his wife's dazzling smile. The moment the doctor had put Colin in his arm. His son's fingers closing round his own.
"I'm fortunate," he said. "More fortunate than I deserve."
"For God's sake, Malcolm." David leaned forwards. "You always were too hard on yourself."
"Talk about the pot and the kettle." Malcolm reached for the decanter, splashed some more port into his glass, and passed it to Simon. "The two of you chose to be together. Suzanne didn't have much choice but to marry me, given her circumstance."
Simon regarded him for a moment, fingers still on the decanter. Malcolm sensed his friend realized this was the closest to unvarnished truth of anything Malcolm had said in the course of the evening. Being Simon, instead of probing further, he refilled his glass, passed the decanter to David, and said, "She's quite remarkable. And I don't just mean her looks, though she's undeniably a beautiful woman. But there's plainly a great deal more to it."
"There is," Malcolm said. "She has the makings of a brilliant agent herself. She's assisted me on several missions."
David frowned. "Surely the danger—"
"And she doesn't thank anyone for trying to protect her. In fact, she calls any whiff of protectiveness my Hotspur instincts."
Simon laughed. "She sounds like one of my heroines." He took a sip of port. "Fatherhood suits you."
Malcolm felt a smile break across his face. "It's a remarkable thing. Quite terrifying if one lets oneself dwell on the responsibilities."
He saw a shadow flicker across David's face. As the heir to an earldom, David was expected to marry and produce an heir. David was too honest to ask a woman to enter into a sham marriage or to ask Simon to be part of a deception. But he was also keenly conscious of what he owed to his position as the future Earl Carfax.
Simon's gaze flickered briefly to David. Then he took a drink of port. "You know enough to take a large project one moment at a time."
Malcolm grinned. "Similar to writing a play?"
"Or strategizing a mission."
***
The gentlemen joined the ladies sooner than Suzanne expected. She wondered if Malcolm was concerned about leaving her alone for too long or uncomfortable with prolonged confidences with his friends. The smile he gave her as he entered the drawing room was the brilliant, armored sort that revealed little, even to the woman who shared his bed.
A footman brought in a gleaming silver tea tray and Lady Frances poured. Suzanne helped Judith and Gisèle hand round the cups. She had come to quite like tea living in British society though she still preferred coffee in the morning.
As the company settled into a new conversational pattern, Simon dropped down beside her on a gray damask settee set against the wall, a cup of tea in his hand. "Take it from one who spends most of his life observing players. You're doing very well."
"Am I? I was afraid I was striking a hopelessly false note. Always fatal with an audience." The words were no sooner out than she regretted them. One of the few errors she was prone to was to talk too much like a theatre insider. Most people didn't notice it, but Simon might.
But his smile showed no suspicion. "On the contrary. You strike the perfect note between exotic and charming."
"I feel as though I've been thrust into the midst of a game without understanding the rules. And this is just Malcolm's family."
Simon leaned back on the settee, cradling the teacup. "It's an odd world. They can be quite tolerant. They like to see themselves as open and even a bit bohemian. They'll accept eccentrics, at least as long as one remains amusing. But one can never really belong without being born to it."
Suzanne turned to look at him. His gaze was shrewd and saw things she generally kept hidden. It was rare to meet someone who understood so much. Rare and dangerous. But it was a seductive danger. "A difficult world to live in, I would think."
He shrugged. "It's not a world I'd want to belong to. And I've always been an observer."
"Your father was a painter, wasn't he?"
"He grew up in Northumbria. My grandfather was a brewer who did well enough for himself to send my father to Paris for some Continental polish. I don't think he intended for my father to study painting and certainly not for him to fall in love with an artist's model, even less for him to marry her."
Suzanne had never lived in Paris for any sustained length of time, but her father had thought of it as home and so she did as well. "How old were you when you left?"
"Ten. My parents both died of a fever, and I was sent back to Northumbria. To a family I didn't know, who didn't know what to make of me. I spoke French better than English and had my head filled with what my grandfather called 'Jacobin nonsense.'"
Suzanne had been eight when her mother died, a wrenching loss, though at least she still had the comfort of her father and younger sister and of her parents' traveling theatre company until seven years later when her father and sister were killed and her world fell apart. "That must have been dreadfully hard."
He gave a smile that she recognized as well-constructed defenses. "I had a roof over my head—a large roof—and plenty to eat. Most children grow up in far worse circumstances, as both Malcolm and David argue very cogently. But I confess I missed—congenial company."
"A charming way to describe emotional deprivation."
"You place a high value on emotional warmth?"
Suzanne took a sip of tea. The astringent bite took her back to her first weeks in Lisbon as a bride. "I don't know that I always did. Having a child changed me. I think children can come through a great deal if they have secure affection. Or perhaps that's my excuse for dragging my son into danger."
"I doubt you're the sort who makes excuses. And your son is fortunate to have you. And Malcolm." Simon settled back into his corner of the settee. "As for me, I'd never have guessed that the first two kindred spirits I'd meet in England would be a duke's grandson and an earl's son."
"Very broadminded of you."
Simon grinned. "I still remember the first time I visited Carfax Court. Not to mention Dunmykel. Malcolm hasn't taken you there yet, has he?"
"No, though I've seen a watercolor he has." And she knew, more from what he didn't say than from what he said, how much the house on the Scottish coast
meant to her husband. His mother had designed the gardens, though the house was his father's, filled with Alistair Rannoch's art treasures.
"You and David are fortunate to have found each other," Suzanne said, and then wondered if she had gone too far.
The gaze Simon turned to her held unexpected gratitude. "So are you and Malcolm."
"I am," Suzanne said truthfully. "I can't speak for Malcolm."
"My dear girl. Take it from one of his oldest friends, I only have to look at him to know the answer. I can't tell you how happy both David and I were to receive his letter. He swore for years he'd never marry."
"Yes, so he warned me when he offered for me. He said he didn't think he'd be very good at it. Which is nonsense. I can't imagine Malcolm not being good at anything he put his mind to. I've always suspected instead that he was afraid of what he'd be giving up."
"What?"
"Privacy. Marriage is a shocking invasion of privacy, you know."
Simon's brows rose with appreciation. "An interesting way of putting it. Malcolm always kept too much to himself." He looked across the room at his friend, sitting on the sofa with David and Lady Frances. "I'd say he's found compensations."
"I hope so." Suzanne gulped down a sip of tea, wishing it were something stronger. What she had done to Malcolm was intolerable. It couldn't mend matters if he had found compensations in their marriage, but it could perhaps balance the scales a bit. Save of course that the happier he was in their marriage, the deeper her duplicity cut.
"I've never seen him as happy as he looked holding young Colin," Simon said.
"Malcolm is a wonderful father." Suzanne shook off the wave of guilt that had swept over her. Despite the international negotiations that would be taking place in London, this trip had the dangerous feel of a holiday. Being on holiday left one with too much leisure to think. Far easier in the midst of war and intrigue, when one could focus on the tactical needs of the moment. "I don't think coming home has been easy on him."
"Malcolm's relationship with his home and family has always been complicated. Should you need a friend, I hope you know you may call on me."
The smile that broke across her face was without calculation. "A friend is a rare and precious thing."
Especially for an agent.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hubert Mallinson, Earl Carfax, leaned back in his chair at the desk in his study. "You picked an excellent time to come back to London, Malcolm."
Malcolm dropped into the chair facing the desk. He'd first visited this room as a schoolboy. Facing Carfax across that desk couldn't help but take him back to the days when Carfax had been his friend's father, not his spymaster. "I came because Lord Castlereagh requested it. And to introduce my wife and son to my family, sir."
Carfax adjusted the thin wires of his spectacles. "You could take notes for Castlereagh with one hand tied behind your back. And you can hardly be consumed by family concerns in the midst of a war."
"Bonaparte is on Elba."
"And a number of people would like to get him off. When the fighting stops men like you are more important than ever, Malcolm."
Malcolm sat back and crossed his legs. "You mean spies?"
A faint smile curved Carfax's thin mouth. "You're learning. I thought you didn't like the word."
"I don't much. But I've learned to live with a certain amount of self-loathing."
"This is no time for self-indulgence. Between Bonapartist plots, Tsar Alexander's ambitions, Metternich's machinations, and whatever the devil Talleyrand is plotting—I need you, Malcolm."
"Just what is it you need me to do now, sir?"
Carfax folded his thin hands on the gilt-embossed blotter. "I understand you're going to Emily Cowper's this evening. Edouard de Belcourt will be there."
"I presume so." The de Belcourt family were well-connected émigrés who had made their home in England since the Reign of Terror. Thanks to the comte's marriage to a British heiress, they were less impecunious than most émigrés. Edouard was the comte's younger brother.
Carfax leaned back in his chair. "Edouard is a Bonapartist agent."
Malcolm raised his brows, picturing Edouard de Belcourt, usually to be found with a drink in his hand and a pretty girl on his arm. "I didn't realize."
"No reason for you to. You haven't been here."
"How long have you known?"
"Several years. He thinks he's cleverer than he is, which makes him ideally situated to feed information to, and we've been able to intercept some intelligence from him though nothing of too high value. But now he seems to be planning to sell information to the Austrians."
"Ironic. You track him and when he chooses to betray his comrades he turns to the Austrians."
Carfax's mouth tightened. "Quite. But the pertinent fact is that we need to intercept the intelligence before he passes it along."
"What exactly is this information?"
"I don't know." Carfax's brows drew together. He disliked not having facts at his disposal. "But whatever it is, we need it."
"Do you know the name of his contact?"
"Karl von Stoffel, a junior Austrian diplomat. Metternich sent him over in advance a month or so ago. The exchange is set to happen tomorrow night at Emily Cowper's." Carfax folded his hands behind his head. "Given your understanding and de Belcourt's, it shouldn't be difficult. Then you can get back to your notetaking."
***
Colin took careful steps down the book-lined aisle. Suzanne watched him, then took a quick step forwards as he tottered. But he caught hold of the edge of a bookcase and looked round to grin at her in triumph. Suzanne smiled back. Who would have thought Hookham's Lending Library would be an ideal place for her son to practice his steps?
"Mrs. Rannoch."
She started at the familiar voice, but of course there was no reason they couldn't meet publicly in London just as they had in Lisbon. He had roots here. A surprising amount of the business of being a spy could be done in public. "Mr. O'Roarke." She turned and extended an ecru kid-gloved hand. "A pleasant surprise. I didn't realize you were in London." Though in fact he had told her precisely when he expected to arrive when she had told him her and Malcolm's travel plans.
"I arrived last week after paying a visit to Ireland. I think we're all adjusting to travel being so easy again." Raoul O'Roarke, half Spanish, half Irish, had seemingly been a leader of one of the guerrillero bands that had worked with the British to drive the French from Spain. In fact, Raoul, a committed Republican from his days at the University of Paris, had run a Bonapartist network. He had recruited Suzanne when she was fifteen, angry, and hopeless and had given her a purpose that she often thought had saved her life.
Colin had taken two more steps down the book-lined aisle. At the sound of the voices, he turned back to look at the man his mother was talking to. Raoul inclined his head gravely. Colin smiled. He'd met Raoul a few times, both unofficially with his mother and at official functions.
"He's grown," Raoul said. "Last time I saw him he was holding on to the edge of a bench."
"He's getting better at walking every day," Suzanne said, and then stopped because talking about Colin with Raoul could not but be fraught, however they both tried to smooth over the harsh edges of reality.
"You and Malcolm must be very proud," Raoul said, in a voice that was so natural perhaps only she could guess at the effort that underlay it.
Raoul turned slightly, still at a very correct distance from her that no passerby could find exceptionable, but so that his voice was directed precisely to her. When he spoke, his tones were pitched for her ears alone. "I was hoping this time in Britain could be focused on your family."
She tilted her head back, so she could see past the confining brim of her bonnet, and pitched her own voice for his ears. "What's happened?"
"An asset. Edouard de Belcourt. A younger son in an émigré family. Not my best agent by any means. The sort who's dabbling in espionage for the amusement. But he provided useful
information on occasion. Until I realized Carfax was on to him."
"He was arrested?" Suzanne hadn't heard of it, but Malcolm didn't tell her everything.
"No, I started funneling misinformation through him. Mixed with just enough low-level real intelligence that Carfax wouldn't get suspicious. I wasn't sure it would work. Carfax can be damnably acute, but he doesn't seem to have tumbled to it. Only now de Belcourt has got greedy."
"He's selling information to the British?"
"No, to the Austrians."
"What information?"
Raoul's eyes darkened. "He got hold of a list of French agents who've sought refuge in Britain since Bonaparte's downfall."
"Good God." The faces of friends who had escaped Paris when Bonaparte was exiled darted through Suzanne's mind. Raoul, she knew, had spent much of the past months helping find safe havens for his former agents.
"Quite. De Belcourt never should have got close to anything so sensitive, but he knew enough to intercept it. Fortunately I don't think he realizes quite what he's got. It's in code, and I doubt he has the wit to break the code. But others do. We need to get it before the Austrians do. Or before the British or the Russians can try to intercept it."
"Of course. Who's his contact?"
"Karl von Stoffel. An Austrian diplomat. The exchange is supposed to happen tonight at Emily Cowper's."
"Malcolm and I will be in attendance."
"So I thought." Raoul glanced at Colin, who had dropped down on the floor and pulled a book from the shelves and was turning the pages. "You won't attract notice."
"Of course. I'm the obvious person to do it."
His gaze moved over her face, with that keenness which could at once cut uncomfortably close and bring an unexpected welling of comfort. "I'm not insensible of what you're going through meeting Malcolm's family. For you to take this on—"
"Malcolm is working for Castlereagh. I'm here for work. Nothing's changed."
"You're also here because your husband's family are here." Raoul glanced at Colin again. "You have a family of your own now."