Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “It sounded as though he was just about the last person in London to be let in on the secret,” Aline said, as Lady Cordelia tossed off the second glass of champagne and moved onto the dance floor on the arm of a handsome young subaltern. “The story was that he caught them in bed together—”

  “Allie!” Georgiana protested.

  “Well, where else would a husband catch his wife and her lover?” Aline pushed back an ash-brown ringlet that had escaped its pins and fallen over her forehead. “That is, they may not have actually been in a bed, but he found them having criminal conversation, as the courts would say.”

  A few of Harry Davenport’s more sarcastic quips echoed in Suzanne’s memory. A man who seemingly didn’t care for anyone. Which often meant the person in question had once cared very much indeed. “Was there a duel?” she asked.

  Aline frowned. “I don’t think so. But there was a rather ghastly scene at a musicale—or was it a Venetian breakfast?”

  “A concert of ancient music of all things,” Georgiana said. “I think the two men actually came to blows. What was the lover’s name—Charlton? Chalmers?”

  “Chase,” Aline said. She might not have much interest in gossip, but like Malcolm she had a keen memory for detail.

  “That’s right, George Chase. One of the Derbyshire Chases.”

  “Major Chase?” Suzanne asked.

  “Yes.” Georgiana’s eyes widened. “Oh, good God, he’s—”

  “In Brussels as well. And at the ball. Though I don’t see him at present.” Suzanne cast her gaze over the ballroom. “Perhaps Lady Cordelia came to Brussels to see him.”

  “I doubt it. Their affair ended years ago.” Georgiana studied Cordelia Davenport, now waltzing expertly if too closely for propriety in the arms of the subaltern.

  “Lady Cordelia hasn’t lacked for lovers according to the stories one hears,” Aline said. “Of course neither does my mother, but she’s a duke’s daughter and has somehow managed to avoid open scandal. It’s not what one does, it’s the finesse with which one does it, she often says. Though I have to say Mama’s quite egalitarian about whom she receives. The last I saw Cordelia Davenport was at Mama’s in the autumn.” Aline glanced at Suzanne. “Before I went to Vienna to stay with you and Malcolm. Cordelia was with Lord Eglinton then.”

  Georgiana watched as Lady Cordelia left the dance floor with the subaltern only to be besieged by a new crowd of admirers. “I think the last time I saw her must have been at her sister’s.”

  “Her sister?” Suzanne asked. She was aware not just of the throngs of admiring gentlemen but also of the sharp-eyed stares of a number of the ladies present. She felt a flash of kinship with Lady Cordelia. Suzanne knew all too well what it was to be an outsider. One way and another, she had been one all her life. In ways even her husband didn’t know.

  “Lady Julia Ashton,” Georgiana said. “Julia Brooke that was.”

  “Captain Ashton’s wife?” John Ashton was a captain in the Life Guards. Suzanne had met him and his wife a handful of times. She had a vague image of a fair-haired woman, with cameo features and pale blue eyes. Lady Julia lacked Lady Cordelia’s presence, but one could see how they could be sisters.

  “They were the incomparable Brooke sisters when I was in the schoolroom,” Georgiana said. “I remember hanging over the stair rail to get a peek at their ball dresses. No fortune of their own—”

  “Their father had gambled it away,” Aline put in.

  “But they had throngs of suitors.”

  “Some things don’t change,” Aline said, eyeing the crowd round Lady Cordelia.

  “They couldn’t have made more different matches,” Georgiana said. “Julia and Captain Ashton are quite devoted.”

  “Perhaps that’s why Lady Cordelia came to Brussels,” Suzanne said. “To see her sister.”

  “Perhaps.” Georgiana frowned. “The scandal can’t but have made things awkward for Julia. The sisters used to be quite close, but obviously Lady Cordelia’s position in society makes matters more difficult now. Though I must say Cordelia’s always been very kind to me.”

  “I wonder if Julia knows her sister is in Brussels?” Aline said.

  “So do I.” Georgiana cast a glance round the ballroom. “Where is Julia Ashton? I don’t think I’ve seen her since supper.”

  Malcolm stared down at the clouded blue eyes of the woman on the balcony, then turned his gaze to Davenport. “Your sister-in-law? Your brother’s wife?”

  “My wife’s sister.”

  Malcolm had first met Davenport four years ago when the other man had been posted to the Peninsula after buying a commission and Malcolm had been an attaché at the British embassy in Lisbon. Malcolm had dined with Davenport on occasion, had played chess against him, had listened to the advice layered beneath Davenport’s caustic comments, had relied on his wits on one or two missions. He had never heard the other man mention his wife. Malcolm had never asked. But he had heard of Davenport’s marriage from his friend David Mallinson long before they met, and he had heard the inevitable rumors that followed Davenport to the Peninsula. “Of course. You married Cordelia Brooke.”

  “So I did. Though I forget it myself half the time.”

  “So her sister is—”

  Davenport’s gaze moved over the dead woman. His face was expressionless, but his cool eyes had gone dark. “Julia Ashton.”

  “Johnny Ashton’s wife?” That was where he had seen the woman, at a reception a few days before, clinging to Ashton’s arm. “I knew them both a bit as girls. Their family lived not far from my friends the Mallinsons in Derbyshire.” Malcolm had a brief image of two fair-haired girls in white dresses. Cordelia had been wilder, as he recalled. Julia had been the decorous one. “I think your sister-in-law was at Stuart’s ball this evening.” He frowned, conjuring up an image of the salon and ballroom. Suzanne in his arms as they waltzed, the crowd on the dance floor, the other couples swirling. A crowd by the archway to the supper room. A fair-haired woman in a pale blue gown. “She was definitely there. But as to how the devil she got here—”

  Davenport reached out and brushed the glossy ringlets back from Julia’s still forehead. His face was set in its customary harsh lines, but he touched her as though he were running his fingers over something breakable. “The last time I saw her she was scarcely more than a girl. I remember her on the terrace at her father’s Richmond villa, playing with a throng of King Charles puppies.”

  “But you knew she’d married Ashton.” Malcolm made the words not quite a question.

  “I do keep up with the news from home. Academic interest if nothing else.”

  Malcolm cast a sideways glance at Davenport. The Peninsula had been a good place to hide oneself. He’d done much the same, joining the diplomatic corps and turning his back on his fragmented family after his mother’s death. “Ashton came over to Brussels with the Life Guards. You’d have been with Grant at the border.”

  “Of course.” Davenport dropped his hand from his sister-in-law’s face. “I forget Wellington’s so desperate for troops we’re sending over Hyde Park soldiers.”

  Malcolm turned his gaze back to the body and gently lifted Julia Ashton’s head. His fingers met an exit wound at the back of her neck. “The bullet passed clean through,” he said. “See if you can feel anything on the balcony beneath her.”

  Davenport’s fingers closed round something. “Here,” he said in an expressionless voice. “A musket ball.”

  “It went in at an upward angle,” Malcolm said. “She was caught by the snipers firing at us, though in God’s name why they were firing so high—”

  “You’ve done this before,” Davenport said.

  “Unfortunately, one comes upon dead bodies on intelligence missions. And I investigated a murder in Vienna.” Malcolm shut his mind to the memories. The wound had barely begun to heal.

  He glanced at the open French window and the glow of the candle flame within. “I didn’t see the candle when I first arri
ved. Did you?”

  Davenport shook his head.

  “So she must have got here while we were talking with La Fleur. She was in the bedchamber, she heard the shots. She must have run out onto the balcony. But as to why she was here—Would your sister-in-law have known Edouard de Vere? The château belongs to his family.”

  Davenport shook his head. “She might have been on intimate terms with Napoleon Bonaparte for all I know of her life in recent years.”

  Malcolm got to his feet and returned to the bedchamber. By the light of the single taper, he could see two more candles on the dressing table against the wall. He took a flint from his pocket and lit them.

  A four-poster bed, the curtains looped back, a dressing table and wardrobe, the small, round table that held the candle, a wing-back chair near the French windows. A bundle of dark fabric was tossed over the chairback. Malcolm picked it up and shook it out. A lady’s cloak of dark blue velvet lined in white satin. On the chair beneath it lay a reticule, pale blue silk stitched with a multitude of tiny crystal beads that sparkled in the candlelight, suspended from a steel filigree frame. The sort of frivolous, impractical little thing his own eminently practical wife loved.

  He carried the reticule to the dressing table and undid the clasp. Davenport came to stand beside him as he spilled out the contents in the candlelight. A silver perfume flask, a rouge pot, a handkerchief with J.A. and a forget-me-not embroidered in one corner, a small silk purse that proved to contain Belgian currency, an ivory comb, a paper of pins. And at the bottom, a folded piece of hot-pressed notepaper. Malcolm unfolded it and held it beneath the candlelight.

  Château de Vere. 1:30. W.

  The black ink had smeared, as though the writer had been in a hurry and had not taken time to dust it with sand. The handwriting was a swift, angular scrawl that tugged at Malcolm’s memory.

  “So she came here to meet someone.” Davenport’s voice held an edge of anger, barely leashed.

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “The question is who?”

  4

  Suzanne left the dance floor, breathless from an energetic waltz with Lord Fitzroy Somerset. Fitzroy, Wellington’s military secretary, was a kind man and a good dancer, but the swift tempo of the music and his agreeable conversation had not stilled the knot of unease growing ever tighter beneath her corset laces. Ridiculous. Malcolm had gone off on missions throughout their marriage. But somehow the specter of the looming confrontation with Napoleon’s army lent heightened urgency to everything. Her husband had now been gone for over two and a half hours.

  Fitzroy procured glasses of champagne from a passing footman. Instead of moving off, the footman turned to Suzanne. “Madame Rannoch?” he said in Belgian-accented French.

  “Yes.”

  He pressed a paper into her hand, a single sheet torn from a notebook. She unfolded it to see her husband’s quick scrawl.

  The Garden.

  M.

  “Is everything all right?” Fitzroy asked.

  “I need to find Malcolm.” Suzanne took a quick sip of champagne and returned the glass to Fitzroy.

  “So he’s back?” Fitzroy said.

  “You knew he’d gone?”

  “I’ve learned to have an eye for such things. Trouble?”

  “I’m not sure. Cover for me?”

  “Of course.”

  Suzanne slipped through one of the French windows onto the terrace. A welcome breeze greeted her after the heat of the ballroom, bringing the scent of roses and jasmine. Torches flanked the steps down to the garden, casting a molten glow on the gray stone. The rest of the garden was washed by cool moonlight.

  An expert thrush call alerted her to Malcolm’s location, on the side of the terrace to the left. As she rounded the terrace, he detached himself from the dark blur of trees and came toward her. The tension coiled so tight within her eased at the sight of his familiar features, sharp and distinct even in the shadows.

  “You were gone almost long enough for me to worry,” she said, going forward to take his hands. His fingers closed hard and reassuringly solid round her own. Then she caught a proper look at him in the moonlight. His dark hair fell over his forehead in disarray. Smudges showed on his face and some trails of sticky red that could only be blood. His neckcloth was missing and more blood showed on his shirt collar. “Good God, darling—”

  “I’m all right.” His fingers tightened over her own. “The blood isn’t mine. But things didn’t go at all according to plan. We need your help.”

  “We?”

  Another man stepped from the shadows, slightly taller than Malcolm. “Mrs. Rannoch. I’d say it’s lovely to see you again, but under the circumstances perhaps we’d best dispense with the social niceties.”

  “Colonel Davenport.” Suzanne put out her hand automatically. The moonlight accentuated the lean planes of Harry Davenport’s face and the mocking line of his mouth. He, too, had smudges and blood on his face and linen.

  “Can you get Stuart and Wellington into a room that opens off the garden?” Malcolm said. “We need to talk to them without going into the ballroom and making a scene.”

  “Of course.” Suzanne cast another glance at Harry Davenport. The timing was dreadful, but he had to be warned. “Colonel Davenport, I don’t know if you realize that your wife just arrived in Brussels. She’s in the ballroom.”

  Davenport’s eyes widened. For a moment, Suzanne caught a glimpse in their depths of something she could not have put a name to, save that it looked strong enough to break glass. “Thank you, Mrs. Rannoch. But after all these years that really can’t be any concern of mine.”

  Stuart stared at Malcolm and Davenport across a side salon hung with cream silk. “Dead? Julia Ashton can’t be dead. She’s in the ballroom.”

  “She was in the ballroom,” Malcolm said. “She must have left about the same time I did and ridden straight to the Château de Vere. We found her horse in the stables.”

  “What have you done with the body? Bodies.” Wellington was scowling at a pastoral watercolor on the wall opposite.

  “We brought them back to Brussels in a cart we found at the château,” Davenport said. They had hitched Davenport’s horse to the cart and tied Lady Julia’s and La Fleur’s mounts behind. “They’re in the stable with two of your grooms sworn to secrecy. Though sometimes that only makes people more likely to talk.”

  “We searched the château thoroughly,” Malcolm added. “The only signs of her presence we found were her cloak and reticule.”

  Stuart shook his head. “Why in God’s name would she be—”

  “Perhaps this will shed some light on it.” Malcolm held out the note they had found in Lady Julia’s reticule.

  Stuart stared at it. “Oh, Christ. I should have guessed.”

  “A scandal’s all we need just now.” Wellington crossed the room and took the note from Stuart. His sharp-boned face, tanned from years in the saddle, drained of color. “God in heaven.”

  “I know it’s surprising,” Stuart said. “She and Ashton always seemed so devoted, but one never knows—”

  “Not that,” Wellington said, as though a love affair was of little moment. “Whom the damned note is from.”

  Malcolm frowned at the Allied commander. He had known Wellington through the difficult years of the Peninsular War and had rarely seen the general so rattled. Had Julia Ashton been having an affair with a member of Wellington’s staff? It seemed odd even that would so concern the commander.

  Davenport, who had fallen to staring into the fireplace, snapped his head up to look at the duke. “Who?”

  Wellington lifted his gaze from the paper and cast a sharp look from Davenport to Malcolm to Stuart. Malcolm could see him weighing the risks of disclosure. At last he gave a harsh sigh. “Our esteemed ally. The commander of the I corps. His Royal Highness, Prince William of Orange.”

  Suzanne accepted a fresh glass of champagne from a passing footman and took an automatic sip. Malcolm was back, and though his missi
on had clearly proved dangerous, he was unhurt. She should be relieved. Instead she found it harder than ever to keep in place the smiling mask she had perfected as a diplomatic wife.

  Whatever Malcolm and Colonel Davenport were discussing with Wellington and Stuart, it was clearly very serious. But they had been teetering on a knife’s point of danger in Brussels for weeks. For that matter, she had lived with danger for most of her life. There were even stretches of time when her own survival had not been a matter of very great moment to her.

  A waltz came to an end. Couples swept from the dance floor and others hurried to take their place for the écossaise that was forming. She took another quick sip of champagne. The coming confrontation with Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces had scraped at her nerves for months. She knew all too well how high the stakes were, for the future of the Continent and for those she loved. And for her personally. But the tension roiling within her now wasn’t fear, it was frustration. Malcolm was closeted in a salon sharing whatever had happened this evening with Wellington and Stuart, while she was relegated to the sidelines. She had got used to sharing her husband’s adventures.

  Whatever had happened tonight might mean that the confrontation between the Allies and the French was that much nearer. Her blood quickened at the implications. Yet here she was sipping champagne on the edge of the dance floor.

  An iron grip closed round her arm. “What on earth is going on?” Georgiana Lennox demanded.

  “What? Have we run out of champagne?” Suzanne tightened her hold on her own glass before it could topple over from the force of Georgiana’s grip.

  “Don’t be provoking. Wellington and Stuart left the ballroom a quarter hour ago.”

  Suzanne straightened the crumpled folds of Georgiana’s lace scarf. “I daresay Stuart wanted to give Wellington a glass of his good port.”

  “And just now I saw Stuart come back into the ballroom—”

  “Well, then.”