Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have more information.” She jerked her hand away from his and took a quick swallow of brandy. It stung her throat. All her senses came flooding back. “She was there for a rendezvous, wasn’t she?”

  “Cordelia—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, why else would a woman slip off in the midst of a ball and go to a lonely château? After all, I’m an expert in such matters. Don’t tell me you were avoiding the nasty truth to spare my sensibilities, that would be too rich.” She looked down into his face, closed now as a book in an unknown tongue. “It’s because of whom the rendezvous was with, isn’t it? Someone you think it’s too sensitive for me to know about.”

  His gaze remained steady, but she could tell from the quick flash in his eyes that she’d guessed correctly. She could still read Harry well, for all she’d never properly understood him.

  “Damn you.” She pushed herself to her feet, scraping the chair against the floorboards. “My sister’s dead and you’re covering it up like a good little soldier.”

  He got to his feet as well. “It would seem that way to you, I suppose. Though I doubt any of my commanding officers would agree that I’ve ever been anything remotely approaching a good little soldier.”

  He had retreated behind that caustic mask that had always driven her to distraction. One could never air anything with Harry in a proper fight. “Seem? Don’t play your word games with me, Harry. We’re talking about my baby sister. Or are you just as glad to have one less Brooke in the world?”

  “I was smiling all the way back to Brussels. For God’s sake, Cordelia.” He didn’t raise his voice, but the words stopped her like a slap to the face. “Julia was—” Memories cracked open the reserve in his eyes. “Julia welcomed me to the family. She was always kind to me.”

  “A great deal kinder than I was.” The anger drained out of her, leaving a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “A pity for you it wasn’t me who died.”

  Something jerked in his eyes that might have been anger. “Hardly. That would have entailed entirely too many complications.”

  She shot a sharp look at him.

  “I’ve never wished you harm, Cordy.” He swallowed. Harry had always been frighteningly honest. “At least not—”

  “After the first few weeks?” she asked, the ashes of memory bitter on her tongue.

  His mouth twisted. “It’s odd how angry one can be over commonplace trivialities.”

  Cordelia swallowed the last of her brandy and clunked the glass down on the nearest table. “None of this changes the facts. My sister’s dead, and you’re under orders to cover it up for fear of embarrassing the army.”

  “Quite. With Boney about to march, avoiding embarrassment is obviously Wellington’s top priority.”

  “So he’s taking no interest in the matter at all?”

  Harry leaned his hand on a chairback. “Wellington’s asked Malcolm Rannoch to look into it. From what I’ve seen of Rannoch, he won’t rest until he uncovers the truth.”

  “And when he does uncover it?” She closed her fingers on her elbows, nails digging into the silk of her gloves. “Just who will be told this elusive truth?”

  He met her gaze without flinching. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “What you can.”

  “You know I can’t promise you more, Cordelia.”

  “I suppose if nothing else we’ve learned not to make false promises to each other.” She glanced into the empty depths of her brandy glass. “Does Johnny know?”

  “Wellington told him himself.”

  “And Johnny’s agreed to hold his tongue. Duty first, stiff upper lip, ‘lov’d I not honor more,’ and all that. Does he know Julia had a lover?”

  Harry’s gaze darkened. “He does now.”

  “Poor Johnny. So perhaps love isn’t entering into it so very much.”

  “No, I’d say Ashton’s grief for Julia’s loss overwhelmed all else. He reacted much better than I did in similar circumstances,” Harry added, as though he were speaking of someone quite disconnected to him.

  “Well, if I’d died, you’d have had more incentive to be noble.”

  His gaze moved over her face, sharp and probing. “Did you know, Cordy?”

  “Know what?”

  “That Julia had a lover.”

  “We don’t confide in each other as much as we used to. I’m a bit too scandalous for Julia to be seen too much with me, though I have to say Johnny’s always been very kind—Oh God.” She closed her arms across her chest as nausea welled up in her throat. “Where is she?” she asked, when she could force out the words.

  He hesitated, though he did not pretend to misunderstand her. “We brought her back to Lisbon in a cart. It’s in Stuart’s stable at present.”

  “I want to see her.”

  He gave a curt nod. “I’ll take you.”

  She’d been prepared for argument, but then whatever else he’d been as a husband, Harry had never been overprotective. He moved to a French window that led to the terrace and held it open for her. She swept past him.

  A breeze rippled across the garden, fresh with the incongruous scent of roses and lilies. Wrong somehow that the world could still smell so fragrant in the face of such horror.

  Harry didn’t attempt to take her arm, but he led her across the garden, walking close but not so close that his arm brushed against her own or her skirts fell over his boots. He stopped before a gate in the back wall. “Cordelia—” he said, his hand on the latch.

  “I’ve seen a dead body before,” she told him. “I was with my father when he died.”

  “But you haven’t seen someone who died by violent means. It’s—”

  “Quite horrific, I daresay, and there’s no way to prepare one for it.” She pulled the folds of her net scarf tighter about her. “So we’d better just get on with it.”

  He nodded and held open the gate. She stepped through, met by the smell of manure and leather and saddle soap. A lantern at one end of the mews drew her eye to the dark outlines of what must be the cart. She hesitated, sickeningly grateful when Harry stepped up beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. “La Fleur, the French agent, is in the cart as well,” he told her. “It’s all right,” he called to the groom who stood beside the cart. “This is the lady’s sister.”

  The lantern cast a discordantly warm glow on the rough wood slats of the cart. Cordelia took a determined step forward. She caught a whiff of blood. The lobster patties and champagne from supper rose up in her throat.

  Within the cart lay two dark bundles. Two bodies, wrapped in coarse brown blankets. Harry moved to her side and pulled down a corner of one of the blankets with fingers that were surprisingly gentle.

  Her sister’s eyes stared up at her. Or rather what had been her eyes, for it was all too clear that the life had fled. The brilliant blue that scores of ardent young gentlemen had likened to cornflowers or sapphires had frozen and faded to a watery gray. Her side curls were shorter than when Cordelia had last seen her in London. Her mouth, carefully painted with lip rouge, was parted slightly, not in pain but perhaps in surprise. Beneath the lip rouge, it had a bluish cast. Her skin, always so smooth and glowing, had a waxen quality, like a creature at Madame Tussaud’s.

  For the first time, Cordelia understood properly that Julia was gone. A cry stuck in her throat, too raw to be given voice.

  Blood congealed round a gaping wound at the base of Julia’s throat. The bullet must have struck an artery.

  “It would have been very quick,” Harry said at Cordelia’s shoulder. “She wouldn’t have felt anything.”

  She nodded. Her fingers dug into the side of the cart. She was afraid if she let go she’d collapse on the cobblestones. She drew a breath and brushed her free hand against Julia’s cheek. She tried to lean over, but the cart was too deep. She put a foot on one of the spokes of the wheel and pulled herself up. Without speaking, Harry gripped her waist and steadied her as
she bent over Julia’s body.

  The smell of blood washed over her again, but this time she did not recoil. She bent down and touched her lips to her sister’s brow. Cold, no blood flowing beneath the skin. The final confirmation of what a part of her mind still refused to accept.

  When she straightened up, Harry lifted her down and kept his hands on her waist to steady her. She looked up into his face. The lamplight lent his skin unexpected warmth. “Thank you.”

  His eyes glinted with something she could not name. “I did little enough.”

  “No. It was a great deal.” She stepped out of his hold. Harry had got her through the past quarter hour, and she would be forever grateful for that. One more debt to add to the balance of what she owed him.

  But for what lay ahead he would not be an ally and might quite possibly be her enemy. Because she was going to learn what had happened to Julia and see her avenged.

  The consequences to the Allied army be damned.

  7

  “Im sorry,my dear.” Stuart materialized out of the crowd at Suzanne’s side. “Unexpected complications. Any damage here?”

  “A few people commented on you and Wellington having disappeared, and then Georgy Lennox noticed that you had fetched the Prince of Orange. No sooner had I calmed her down than Mr. Creevey noticed it as well. Rumors started that Bonaparte was on the march. For a moment I thought we were on the verge of a full-scale panic, but then I said that you’d mentioned you had some particularly fine new port you wanted to share with Wellington and the prince. That seemed to quiet things down.”

  “Clever girl.” Stuart squeezed her arm. “I knew you could be relied upon. Sounds as though I should circulate though. If you hear any comments on Slender Billy having gone home, you might mention that he drank one too many glasses of that port. Malcolm should be back with you in a bit. He’s having a chat with one of the footmen.”

  “Sir—”

  Stuart turned back to look at her.

  “Is Malcolm injured?” Suzanne asked.

  “Didn’t he assure you he wasn’t?”

  “Of course. But he would, wouldn’t he?”

  Stuart grinned. “Just so. Take my word for it, Suzanne, on this occasion you’ll have him home in one piece. Though it looks to be a long night for all of us.”

  Harry Davenport walked Cordelia back to the house. It seemed the least he could do, though he could not imagine she took any comfort in his presence. He didn’t try to take her arm or otherwise touch her. Nor did he speak, for which he sensed she was grateful. She walked with deliberate steps, her head held high. Cordelia had always had courage, he’d give her that.

  He held open the gate to the garden. They proceeded down the gravel paths and up the terrace steps to the French window that opened onto the salon in which they had spoken a quarter hour since. He wondered if it felt as much an eternity to her as it did to him.

  He held the French window open for her, then pulled it to behind them and nodded at the door to the ballroom. “I’d best not go in. There’s no way to explain the state I’m in. I can arrange for a carriage—”

  “Thank you.” Cordelia’s voice was level though it trembled a bit. “I need to find Caro.”

  “Caro?”

  “Caroline Lamb. I’m staying with her.”

  Of course. Caro Lamb was a childhood friend of Cordelia’s. Harry had never been quite sure what to say to the quixotic Lady Caroline, though he’d got on well with her husband, William. Which perhaps was not a good omen, given what had become of William and Caro’s marriage.

  Cordelia put up a hand to her cheek. “Is there—Do I have blood on my face?”

  He took a step closer so he could see her better in the candlelight. “No. Just a smudge on your jaw. To the left.” He started to wipe it away for her, as he would once have done unthinkingly, but his own hands were so filthy he’d do more damage. And despite the way she had clung to him in shock, he couldn’t imagine she’d want him touching her.

  Cordelia opened the steel clasp on the reticule that hung from her wrist and took out a silver-backed mirror. He studied her as she wiped the smudge from her jaw, pushed loose strands of hair back into their pins, rubbed at the blacking that had smeared below her eyes. To his shame, he could still trace the bones of her face from memory. But her skin was stretched more tautly over those bones, and there were fine lines he didn’t remember about her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. The eyes themselves still held the wounds of this night’s revelations. And perhaps other scars as well.

  He had thought a ridiculous number of times—in a camp bed, hidden in prickly bracken, wading through icy streams, bored at a regimental ball—of what he’d say to her if he saw her again. How she’d look, how he’d respond, what he would and wouldn’t admit. Julia’s death rendered that all completely trivial.

  Cordelia returned the mirror to her reticule and snapped the clasp shut. “More or less in order. At least able to go back onstage.”

  He shifted his position, resting his bad arm on a chairback.

  “You are hurt,” Cordelia said, her gaze going to his arm.

  “No. Not tonight.” He’d been unaware he was favoring it. “Bad break at Salamanca. Didn’t set properly.” And was a constant, gnawing pain. Like other things. “Bit of a nuisance.”

  Cordelia watched him with a frowning gaze he couldn’t interpret. He’d got used to reading people. He forgot she’d always been a cipher. He started to reach out a hand to her, then let it fall. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in Brussels. If you need—”

  “Thank you. I’ll be fine.”

  He gave a twisted smile. “I’ll do my best to stay out of your way.”

  “That’s not what I meant. But I’m rather good at looking after myself.”

  Her life was elsewhere, she might as well have said. Which was true. As was his. And yet—He might never see her again. A battle loomed in the not-so-distant future, and like any battle it could well prove to be his last.

  Perhaps that was what drove him to speak, when every instinct of rationality called for silence. “Cordy.”

  She was already reaching for the door handle. She turned over her shoulder to look at him.

  A few brief lines in one or two letters. Unthinking words from an acquaintance who didn’t know the true state of his marriage. How many times had he told himself it didn’t matter? Which it didn’t. Shouldn’t. “How is ... the child?”

  Her fingers tightened round the door handle. “Surely you know her name, Harry.”

  “How’s Livia?” The name felt odd on his lips. Had he ever voiced it before? Most people were careful not to speak to him of her.

  “She’s fine. She’s at Caro’s with her nurse.”

  Harry stared at his wife. “I always underestimate the risks you’ll run. You’ve brought her to Brussels?”

  “Where else would she be? I’m her mother.”

  He took two steps toward her and seized her wrist. “This isn’t a game, Cordelia, whatever the holidaymakers thronging to Brussels may think. It was dangerous enough two months ago, but now we could be at war at any moment. If you choose to play dice with your own safety that’s your affair, but to drag the child into it—”

  She jerked away from his grip. “What right—”

  “A father’s. At least in name.”

  She smoothed the links of her diamond bracelet, twisted by his grip. “You’ve never set eyes on her or written to her. You’ve scarcely even asked after her. How dare you—”

  “How dare I what?”

  “Presume I don’t have her interests at heart.” She snapped a link back into place. “Presume to know me at all.”

  A harsh laugh broke from his lips. “You’re right. That was always my error.” He stared for a moment into the eyes that had caught him across a ballroom all those years ago. “Can you honestly tell me you wanted me to ask after her? To try to see her? To be anything approaching a father? To come anywhere near either of you?”
>
  “I—” She swallowed. “I didn’t ask you to leave.”

  “It would have been a bit crowded if I’d remained.”

  The tension drained from her shoulders. She closed her eyes for a moment. “You did more for Livia than anyone could have expected,” she said, in a tone that reminded him of a rifleman after an exchange of fire. “But that doesn’t—”

  “Give me the right to interfere?”

  “Harry—” She put out her hand, then snatched it back. “I warned you I’d make you a damnable wife. You didn’t believe me.”

  “No.” For a moment it was five years ago and he was stripped as raw as he’d been when he met her. “Even through my haze of infatuation I believed you. It was just that having you on any terms seemed infinitely preferable to not having you at all.”

  Harry went into the adjoining salon, where he knew Malcolm Rannoch had been interrogating the footmen. He found Rannoch alone, frowning at the notebook in his hand.

  “Any luck?” Harry asked.

  “The note was left on a footman’s tray among the champagne glasses. Just about any of the guests could have put it there.”

  “So someone wanted to confront Julia at the château alone. Someone who knew about her rendezvous with the prince.”

  “So it would seem.” Rannoch looked up at him. “Did you talk to your—To Lady Cordelia?”

  Harry nodded. “And took her to see her sister’s body. She insisted on it.”

  Rannoch didn’t express the surprise or horror he expected. “Many people shy away from looking at the dead, but it makes it easier to accept the loss, I think. In the long run. Did Lady Cordelia know about her sister’s affair?”

  “She claimed not to.”

  “But—?”

  Harry dropped into a chair. “She knows more than she’s admitting. I’ve never been very good at reading Cordelia, but I could tell that much.”

  Stuart poked his head round the door. “I’ve got evening clothes laid out for you in a room upstairs.”

  “Thank you.” Harry glanced down at his stained coat. “But there’s no need for me to go into the ballroom. I expect I’ll be leaving Brussels by dawn—”