When they stepped into the quiet of their bedchamber Suzanne gave a sigh of relief, as though relinquishing her armor for the first time that evening. She dropped her gauzy shawl and ribboned reticule on the dressing table, unfastened her garnet necklace, and began to peel off her gloves. Malcolm went to a side table that held the whisky he’d brought from Scotland and poured them each a glass.
Suzanne took the glass he gave her, perched on the dressing table bench, and waited for him to speak. Malcolm shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the damask armchair, then dropped down on the chair arm. He tossed back a smoky draught of whisky and stared into the glass for a moment. “I lost a man tonight. A French soldier who was a contact.”
Concern flashed in Suzanne’s eyes. “That’s whom you went to meet?”
“Wellington got a message from him at the ball. His name was La Fleur.” It was the first time he had mentioned La Fleur specifically to his wife. Even with her, his ingrained instinct to hold his contacts close to his chest held true.
“I’m sorry.” Suzanne got up and moved to perch beside him. She slid her arm round him and leaned her head against his chest. “But you must know it wasn’t your fault.”
“Did I say I thought it was?”
“No, but I can tell what you’re thinking. What you think when you lose anyone you feel remotely responsible for.”
He slid his fingers along the nape of her neck and into her hair. “He flung himself over me. Damned fool. If he hadn’t—”
She sat back, catching his hand in her own. “I’ll be forever grateful to him.”
He recognized the look in her eyes. He’d felt the same on more than one hair-raising occasion when she’d nearly been shot, knifed, drowned fording a river. Circumstances that, more often than not, she’d been in because she happened to be his wife.
“So will I,” he said. For a moment the prospect of Suzanne left alone in a foreign country, their son growing up without a father, hung starkly before him. It was an ever-present risk in this life they lived. “But that doesn’t lessen—”
“Guilt is singularly wasteful, Malcolm. I’ve heard you say so yourself on more than one occasion.”
“And you expect me to actually take my own advice?” He took another sip of whisky, but the pungent bite couldn’t wash away the bitter taste of the night’s events. Suzanne’s fingers tightened round his own.
“That wasn’t the whole of what happened tonight,” he said, and went on to tell his wife about Harry Davenport arriving with the warning that the code had been broken, the ambush, finding Julia Ashton’s body.
“Cordelia Davenport’s sister?” Suzanne said.
He nodded. “And Harry Davenport’s sister-in-law.”
Suzanne’s winged brows drew together. “You know Cordelia Davenport arrived in Brussels tonight? That she was at the ball?”
Malcolm nodded. “You spoke with her?”
“She was trying to find her sister. Did she—”
“Davenport told her. And showed her Lady Julia’s body.”
Distress flickered through Suzanne’s gaze. “That can’t have been easy. According to Aline and Georgy Lennox, Cordelia and Harry Davenport haven’t seen each other in four years.”
“That’s more or less the story I got from Davenport.”
Suzanne’s frown deepened.
“What?” Malcolm asked.
“It’s just that Cordelia Davenport seemed more anxious to find her sister than one would expect if it was just a sisterly reunion. Almost as if—”
“She knew Julia was in some sort of trouble?”
“Precisely.” Suzanne fingered the tasseled gold cord that confined her gown at the waist. “When a woman slips away from a ball to visit an empty château, there’s an obvious explanation that springs to mind.”
“And apparently in this case the obvious explanation is the correct one.” Malcolm told her about Julia Ashton’s affair with the Prince of Orange.
Suzanne’s sea-green eyes widened. “Oh, dear God. You know I’ve always been fond of Billy, but he does have the most astonishing knack for blundering in just where he can cause problems.”
“With a vengeance.”
Malcolm told her about the note the prince had received canceling the rendezvous and Davenport’s discovery that the note had been forged.
Suzanne stared into her whisky glass. “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to get Julia Ashton to the château alone.” She looked up at him. “Do you think she was the real target of the ambush?”
“That the shooters’ goal was to kill Julia Ashton and they were just shooting at Davenport and La Fleur and me for cover? I did wonder. Though it’s the devil of a complicated way to try to commit murder. Assuming someone wanted Julia Ashton dead.”
“Did her husband know about the affair?”
“He does now. Unless he’s a very good actor, I’d swear he didn’t know before.” Malcolm grimaced at the memory of John Ashton’s bewildered expression, like a man who had received a blow to the back from which he’d never recover. “Poor bastard. I think he was genuinely in love with her.”
Suzanne looked at him for a moment. “It does happen between husbands and wives.”
He curled his fingers behind her neck and tilted her face up to his. “So I’ve heard tell.”
She pressed a light kiss against his lips, lingering for a moment. Her mouth tasted of champagne and marzipan. The bones of her face felt fragile beneath his fingers. “I need to not go on missions so I can make sure you eat at entertainments,” he said, studying the hollows beneath her cheeks, deeper than they’d been in Vienna.
He caught a flash of something in her eyes, then she gave one of her brilliant smiles. “And to think you’re the one who complains about being fussed over. One would think by now you’d have learned how sturdy I am. Could Captain Ashton have sent the note because he was planning to meet his wife at the château alone and confront her about the affair?”
Malcolm ran his fingers through his wife’s carefully arranged side curls. “Again only if he has the abilities of an actor. Or an agent.”
“Which he isn’t?” Suzanne said, a faint question in her tone.
He tucked a walnut-brown curl behind her ear. “Have you ever heard me mention that he is?”
“No, but you don’t tell me everything. You’re much too good an agent yourself.”
“I try. But unless someone hasn’t let me in on the secret—which is entirely possible—Johnny Ashton isn’t an agent. Besides, if he’d wanted to confront Julia, one would think he’d have tried to catch her with her lover, not on her own.”
Suzanne turned her whisky glass in her hand, watching the crystal catch the candlelight. “Someone else who disapproved of the affair then? Who wanted to warn her off? But even if whoever sent the forged note planned to confront Julia Ashton, they didn’t arrive at the château.”
“Unless they arrived in the midst of the ambush and turned away when they heard the gunfire. Or got there after we left.” Malcolm went to the side table and splashed more whisky into his glass and Suzanne’s. “Relations are tense enough between the British troops and our Dutch-Belgian allies. Wellington’s concerned about the havoc the news of the affair could wreak on morale. Particularly if Ashton made an issue out of it, which I don’t think he will. One could imagine a Dutch-Belgian or British commander trying to warn Julia Ashton off if he knew. In many ways it’s the likeliest scenario.”
Suzanne scanned his face. “But you don’t believe it?”
Malcolm returned the decanter to the table, clunking it down a little harder than necessary. The crystal rattled. “Perhaps I’m so used to looking for plots within plots that my vision’s become warped. But it feels too easy. As though there’s a piece we’re not seeing.” He returned to the chair and slid his arm round his wife’s shoulders. “Can you get Cordelia Davenport to confide in you about her sister?”
Suzanne smiled. “I can try.”
“Good,”
he said, and lowered his mouth to hers.
9
“Cordelia.”
Caro’s voice stopped Cordelia as she climbed the stairs of the house in the Rue de Belle Vue, candle in her hand. Caro stood on the first-floor landing, the light from the open door behind her outlining her disordered ringlets and the white gauze of her gown.
“You didn’t need to wait up,” Cordelia said.
“Stuff.” Caro took her arm. “You can lock up, Georges,” she called to the footman in the hall below, and then dragged Cordelia through the open door of the salon where she had been waiting. She flung her arms round Cordelia and hugged her hard. “Dearest. I’m so sorry.”
Cordelia clung to her friend for a moment. “Don’t, Caro, or I’ll quite fall to pieces.”
Caro pushed her into an armchair, put a glass of brandy in her hand, and perched on the sofa beside her. “I looked in on Livia, and she’s sleeping like an angel, so you needn’t worry.”
It was a reversal of their usual roles. Normally it was Cordelia who held Caro’s hand, smoothed her hair, convinced her to eat or sleep through the ups and downs of her marriage and in particular the volatile days of her affair with Lord Byron.
Cordelia stared at the glass in her hand, seeing Johnny hunched over his brandy in his study. Nausea choked her. She set the glass on the table beside her, aware that her fingers were shaking.
“How was Johnny?” Caro asked.
“Devastated. Angry. And—”
“What?”
Cordelia snatched up the glass and tossed down a sip. “I think there’s something he isn’t telling me.”
Caro picked up her own glass. “You haven’t talked about the other part of the evening.”
“Harry.”
Cordelia tossed down another swallow of brandy. “I knew I’d probably see him in Brussels.”
“But not—”
“Over my sister’s body.”
Caro’s eyes darkened. Before she’d left the ball to call on Johnny, Cordelia had told her friend about Julia’s death and that Harry had taken her to see Julia’s body. Remembering now her clipped words, she thought Caro must have thought her mad.
Cordelia turned her glass in her hand. “Poor Harry. Marrying into our family seems to have led him from one coil to another. We had a beastly quarrel about Livia. He accused me of being unfeeling in bringing her to Brussels. I accused him of not caring about her at all. Not that there’s any reason he should be expected to.”
Caro tucked her feet up under her on the sofa and leaned toward Cordelia. “Cordy, you have every right to be—”
“I don’t have a right to be anything.” Cordelia clunked her glass on the table, so hard, drops of brandy splashed onto the polished mahogany. “When it comes to Harry I long ago forfeited the right to anything.”
Caro’s eyes darkened in her thin face. Marriage was a difficult subject with her. “Harry wasn’t—”
“Harry was a fool. But he didn’t deserve what he got when he married me.” Fragments of memory chased through her mind. The candle doused in their alien bedchamber, awkward touches. Uncomfortable silences across engraved silver and gilt-edged wedding china. Bending over a book in the library, her hair brushing his own, a sudden moment of understanding. His gaze following her across the ballroom. Coming home alone from an entertainment and glancing into the library to see him hunched over his books.
She grabbed the brandy glass and tossed down a swallow that burned her throat. “I knew I’d made a mess of my life. I thought Julia had done better.”
“But you knew—”
“That her marriage wasn’t as perfect as it appeared on the surface? Whose is?”
Caro grimaced and hugged her arms across her chest.
Cordelia’s fingers tightened round the glass. “Perhaps the fools are the ones who actually expect fidelity.”
“Cordy, that’s dreadful. You sound like William. My husband was always much more of a cynic than I am.”
Cordelia smiled at her friend, against the memory of scandals and tantrums and hysterical outbursts. “You’re an incurable romantic, Caro. I often think life would be much easier for you if you weren’t.”
“Just because Harry wasn’t—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Blame my affairs on boredom or lust or the need to provoke. But they aren’t motivated by a search for my one true love.” Except for the beginning, and she wasn’t going to let her mind dwell on her youthful folly now.
Caro wrapped her arms round her knees. “I was in love with William when I married him.”
“I know.” Cordelia reached over and touched her friend’s hand. She had a vivid memory of Caro’s bright face on her wedding day. She’d been trembling when she hugged Cordelia before she climbed in the carriage outside Melbourne House for the wedding journey, but the gaze she had turned on William Lamb had burned with adoration. “You married for much more honest reasons than I did.”
“And Julia?” Caro asked.
Cordelia frowned into her glass. “I told Johnny tonight that I was sure Julia loved him when she married him. But I think that was because I had some mad urge to offer comfort. The truth is I’ve felt I knew Julia less and less in recent years. At first I thought it was the scandal, that she was uncomfortable round me.”
“And so of course you pulled back and spent less time with her to make it less awkward for her.”
“I suppose so. Yes.” Cordelia pushed her fingers into her hair, knocking several hairpins to the floor. “And then suddenly I realized the little sister who used to confide in me was almost a stranger. But it began long before. I remember on their wedding day telling her she was fortunate to have made such a happy match. And she laughed and said we all had to make compromises.”
Caro’s eyes widened. “You think she thought she was compromising in marrying Johnny?”
“I don’t know.” Cordelia saw her sister on her wedding day, fragile and exquisite in figured gauze over white satin, eyes bright, delicate lips curved with ... happiness? Satisfaction? Triumph? “She was certainly determined to secure him. Poor Violet. Julia practically snatched Johnny right out of her arms.”
Caro wrinkled her nose. “Violet’s in Brussels, you know. I saw her chatting quite civilly with Julia at a military review.”
“Julia wrote me that she’d seen Violet. I assume Violet’s seen Johnny in Brussels as well. What was between them was a long time ago.”
Caro gave Cordelia a hard look. “First loves don’t die easily.”
“No.” Memories shot along Cordelia’s nerve endings. “But they can become irrelevant.”
For a moment Caro looked as though she was about to press the matter, but instead she asked, “Do you think Julia left the ball to meet a man?”
“Apparently she was having an affair with the Prince of Orange.”
“Good heavens. That does explain the secrecy.”
Cordelia studied her friend. “You don’t seem particularly shocked.”
“Don’t forget I grew up among the Devonshire House Set. It takes a lot to shock me. Do you think Julia fancied herself in love with the prince?”
Cordelia tried to imagine her elegant sister beside the awkward, impulsive prince. “Impossible to say. But I doubt she’d decided Slender Billy was the love of her life. You saw her these past weeks in Brussels, Caro. Did you notice anything between her and the prince?”
“No. I don’t even remember them dancing together particularly. But then lovers often go to great lengths not to give public clues to their relationship. That is—” Caro flushed. Her affair with Lord Byron had been played out very much on the public stage. In fact, Cordelia had always suspected there was more to it in public than in private.
“We have different reasons for entering into love affairs,” Cordelia said. “Julia was never the sort to want to make a scandal.”
“Everyone called her the perfect wife. Said how devoted she and Captain Ashton were. Which only goes to show—” Caro sat bolt
upright. “Oh God, Cordy, I’m a wretch. I’m supposed to be comforting you, not—”
“No, I need to understand.” Cordelia pushed her fingers into her hair again, dislodging more pins. “I need to understand Julia if I’m to learn who did this to her.”
“But—” Caro stared at her. “You said she was killed because she was caught in an ambush. That Harry and Malcolm Rannoch were meeting with a French contact.”
“That’s what Harry told me.”
“You think Harry was lying?”
Cordelia got to her feet, stalked across the room, and splashed more cognac into her glass. “I think Harry would like to tidy this whole nasty business away with no uncomfortable scandals or questions about the Prince of Orange sleeping with a British officer’s wife.”
“Cordy—” Caro scanned her face. “Do you really want—Is there any purpose to be served by dragging Julia’s name through the mud? We both know what it’s like—There’s Julia’s little boy to think of.”
“I am thinking of Robbie. He deserves to know what happened to his mother. I don’t think we’ve begun to learn the whole of it.”
Harry Davenport was already in the outer office at Headquarters when Malcolm arrived at five minutes to twelve the next morning. Davenport was shaved and neatly attired in his staff officer’s dark blue coat, white pantaloons, and black stock.
“Do you ever sleep, Davenport?” Malcolm inquired, closing the door.
“About as much as you do, I expect. And I didn’t have a family to command any of my attention this morning.”
The words were spoken in neutral tones, as though Davenport were making a statement about the weather or the condition of the roads.
“It’s my son’s birthday as it happens,” Malcolm said. “Once he’d opened his presents, he was insistent on time spent tossing his new ball. Or rather rolling, but I like to think he has the arm of a cricketer.”
Fitzroy Somerset, the only other occupant of the room, looked up from the stack of papers on the desk before him. “Young Colin has a capital arm. He’s going to be splendid on the playing fields of Harrow.”
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