Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “Where you met Lady Caroline Lamb.”

  Cordelia’s mouth twisted. “Next to Caro I used to be considered the stable one. We got up to all sorts of mischief.” She took another sip of wine. “The two Devonshire girls—Little G and Harryo—always looked a bit askance at us. They approved of Julia, who was always much better behaved than I was. As was Violet, though Vi had more of an adventurous streak.” Her mouth curved as happier memories seemed to drift through her mind. “Johnny was ridiculously honorable even as a boy. But he tagged along after us to make sure we didn’t get in too much trouble. He was following Violet round in those days. And he and Tony Chase were friends. Hard to believe—” Her fingers tightened round the stem of her glass.

  “People grow up.”

  “And change.” Cordelia’s mouth twisted. “George Chase and I—We were the oldest in our respective families, the most daring, the ones who organized the amateur theatricals and the secret moonlight picnics by the lake. I decided I was going to marry him when I was twelve, though it was more like realizing something I’d always known than making a conscious decision. When I was sixteen, I looked at him over the Christmas punch bowl and realized that marriage entailed a great deal more than I’d previously considered.”

  “But that didn’t change your mind about whom you wanted to marry?”

  “On the contrary. I was more convinced I wanted George than ever. And George wanted me. I knew that when he kissed me under the mistletoe and then later in the birch coppice when we were delivering Boxing Day gifts. It all seemed so easy and so perfect. We were desperately in love. The way one only is the first time.”

  “So I remember,” Suzanne said, though her own first love had been a good deal more complicated.

  Cordelia pushed her glass away across the table. “George proposed at my come-out ball when I was eighteen and he was just down from Oxford. In my parents’ conservatory. Such a cliché, but that night all I could think was how perfect my life would be. Odd now to remember I was ever such a romantic.”

  “Your parents forbade the match?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “Something stopped you from marrying him.”

  Cordelia rubbed a hand over her eyes. “George went to my father the next day. I thought it was purely a formality. I could scarcely believe it when I saw George stalking out of the house. Then Papa summoned me to his study. He said he couldn’t condemn me to a life of poverty. When I protested that I loved George, and we’d be happy as long as we were together, my father said that I’d learn soon enough that love didn’t outlast privation. It’s odd, Papa never seemed very interested in either Julia or me, but in that moment he was almost tender.”

  The light ironic tone could not quite disguise the pain beneath. “I don’t imagine you took it easily,” Suzanne said.

  “I cried. I railed. I slipped out of the house and tracked George down in a gambling hell. I wanted to go straight to Gretna Green. George persuaded me to wait. With time, surely our parents would come round.” Cordelia hunched her shoulders and pulled her wineglass back toward her. Her gloves pulled taut over her knuckles. “That Christmas, George went to a house party in Hampshire and became betrothed to Annabel Lovell. An heiress with a fortune of sixty thousand pounds.”

  Suzanne saw the knife-cut heartbreak of an eighteen-year-old girl in the cynical gaze of the woman before her. “It must have been unbearable.”

  “It probably saved us both from the rude awakening my father warned me of. I don’t think either George or I was suited to love in a cottage. Though it would have been easier on Harry and on Annabel Lovell if George and I had inflicted ourselves on each other instead of on them. I wouldn’t believe the betrothal was real until I heard it from George himself. When I saw him in London after the holidays, he told me there’d been no alternative. We couldn’t have been happy with nothing to live on, and he had to see to his brother and sister. I called him a coward and worse. We didn’t part well.” She rubbed her arms. “George married Annabel Lovell at St. George’s Hanover Square, then bought a commission. He went off to the Peninsula shortly after his honeymoon. For about six months I was certain I would die.”

  “And then?”

  Cordelia snatched up her glass and took a sip of wine. “I realized I was going to survive, like it or not. I flung myself into the Season. I’d always liked pretty things. It occurred to me life had other sources of pleasure to offer besides love. Which I was still certain I’d never feel again.” She frowned. “Not that I have precisely come to think of it.”

  “A first love is different from the ones that come after.”

  “Assuming any do come after.” Cordelia brushed a speck of lint from the tablecloth. “The next spring at a ball at Devonshire House I met Harry. He was clever, different from the usual boys just down from Oxford who flirted with me and tried to look down my bodice and trod on my toes. And he had a handsome fortune.” She lifted her gaze and met Suzanne’s own, her eyes defiant.

  “Naturally having given up on love, you’d be prudent.”

  “Or cynical. Harry and I were wildly unsuited. He liked to stay home with his books, I liked to go out every night. I couldn’t bear to be still, because I didn’t much like the thoughts I had when I was. All the same, we managed to rub along. Until George came home from the Peninsula on leave.”

  Suzanne recalled the force of the tension between the Davenports in her salon that afternoon. Such tension only came in the wake of emotions that had once run very strong indeed. “That must have been unspeakably difficult.”

  Cordelia’s gaze moved to a pastoral print on the wall, then to the window. “I was arrogant enough to believe I was indifferent to him. Love was a conceit, so how could I fall victim to it? I’d gone from being a romantic fool of eighteen to an arrogant fool of twenty who thought I was beyond love.”

  “And when you saw him—?”

  “It all came back. I held out for a bit. Told myself it was just the tug of memories, that I was tougher than that, that I knew it was a sure path to ruin.” Her hands locked together on the tabletop. “Not because I valued my virtue or because I had any particular loyalty to my husband. I’ve never been a very good person, you see. But I was determined never again to make myself so vulnerable. A determination that barely lasted the length of a brief meeting in the country and a reception at Melbourne House. Caro was with me when George walked into the room. She told me to have a care. Whatever people have said about her and Lord Byron, I was just as much of a fool. If I made less of a scandal, it’s only because my lover wasn’t a poet who was the talk of the ton.”

  Suzanne read the self-disgust in the twist of Lady Cordelia’s mouth and the hollowness of her gaze. “My husband and I were in Vienna before we came to Brussels. Intrigue of all sorts was the order of the day, romantic as well as diplomatic. It wasn’t so much what people did that caused the scandal. It wasn’t even the liaisons that were public knowledge. It was the liaisons that became such public knowledge no one could even pretend to look the other way.”

  “It’s the same in England, though the gossip sets in a bit more quickly.” Cordelia tugged at a loose thread in her puffed sleeve. “Harry seemed to be the last to know. The more flagrantly George and I behaved, the more he buried himself in his books. I almost—”

  “Wanted him to notice?”

  Cordelia gave a harsh laugh. “That would be delightfully simple, wouldn’t it? The straying wife who really just wanted the attention of the husband she loved deeply. If that isn’t a play, it should be. But the truth is I scarcely had a thought for Harry. I scarcely had a thought for anything but George and our grand passion.”

  The last was delivered with all the cynicism of the former romantic. A cynicism Suzanne had never been enough of a romantic herself to feel.

  Lady Cordelia tossed down another swallow of wine. “But apparently Harry really didn’t know. Because when he decided to surprise me at Lady Bessborough’s concert of ancient music and found m
e in George’s arms in an antechamber—” Her fingers tightened round the glass. For a moment Suzanne thought it would shatter. “I’ll never forget the look in his eyes.”

  “Angry or hurt?”

  “Hurt first. As though he’d been punched in the stomach and stabbed in the back at the same time. Then angry. Like a husband who actually cared for his wife. Far more than the wife realized. Or perhaps his pride was simply hurt. I’ve never claimed to understand Harry very well. He was quite cerebral in those days, but he planted George a facer. George struck back and they went crashing into an ormolu table. Sally Jersey walked into the room thirty seconds later with Corisande Ossulton. The story was all over the house within minutes and all over London by morning.”

  “Leaving you no chance to sort things out.”

  “I doubt we could have done so in any case. I went home and told Harry he could divorce me. Harry asked if I intended to marry George. I couldn’t even think that far. Though I was sure I could never bear to be parted from George again. Which I said. Harry simply stared at me with a look like a frozen moor and said that in that case I’d better go to my lover.”

  “Giving you his permission in a way you’d never forget.”

  “I turned and walked from the house. I didn’t even summon a carriage. I went to Caro at Melbourne House and sent George a note. We left for the country the next day. Harry bought himself a commission. He was gone within the week. I didn’t speak to him again until the ball last night.”

  “Appallingly bad circumstances.”

  “I knew I might see him in Brussels. I knew it would be ghastly. The odd thing is if anyone had told me Harry would be kind to me I’d have laughed in their face.”

  “You couldn’t have foreseen—”

  “That my sister would die. Even then, Harry surprised me.” Cordelia jabbed a curl beneath the brim of her bonnet. “George and I stayed in the country for a fortnight. We were going to go off to America together. But then George got word that Annabel was pregnant. Reality set in once again.”

  Suzanne studied Lady Cordelia. She must have been pregnant herself at about the same time, but she made no reference to it. Had she learned she was expecting a child before or after George Chase left her? And did she know who the father was?

  “It’s ancient history,” Cordelia said, reaching for her wineglass. “Or I thought it was. But if Julia and Tony acted out the same folly I did with his brother—” She shuddered. “Julia always seemed immune to such madness. She didn’t even let herself love Johnny. I always thought the reason she was determined not to give way to love was my sad example.”

  “Was there anything between her and Anthony Chase when they were younger?”

  Cordelia shook her head. “I think Julia thought Tony was too young and callow. How she could have thrown her life away—”

  “Cordelia.” Suzanne reached across the table and laid her hand over Cordelia’s own. “You could have been here in Brussels the whole time, offering her sisterly advice every night, and it would have made no difference.”

  Cordelia gave a wintry smile. “You can’t know that.”

  “I know how people behave when they’re in love. Or in lust. Or whatever one chooses to call it.”

  “Julia couldn’t have been all that lost in love. Or even lust. She was bedding the Prince of Orange as well.”

  “At least now we can see why she said her life had got complicated and was out of her control.”

  “But none of this explains why she was afraid.”

  “How would Tony Chase have reacted if he’d known his mistress had another lover?”

  Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Tony never seemed the knight in shining armor Johnny did. But I can’t imagine—”

  “You said it yourself to Violet Chase. Someone was behind your sister’s death.”

  “You’re right.” Cordelia grimaced. “I don’t suppose I make a very good investigator.”

  “I’d say you’re managing amazingly well. It’s more difficult when it’s people one knows.”

  “Have you been in this situation with people you know?”

  “I’ve never faced the fact that someone I grew up with might have killed my sister. But yes, I’ve had to investigate people I was close to.”

  “With your husband.”

  Suzanne took a sip of wine. “When I married Malcolm I married his work. It was that or sit home waiting like Penelope.”

  “You don’t seem to mind.”

  “On the contrary. It was part of the attraction.”

  “You fell in love with an adventurous man.”

  “I married an adventurous man.”

  Cordelia raised her brows.

  Suzanne stared into the bloodred depths of her glass. Her wedding day, a stuffy room in the British embassy in Lisbon. Malcolm repeating his vows with a sincerity that bit her in the throat. Wonder. Fear. Guilt. “You’re the one who said you didn’t believe in love.” She twisted the stem of the glass between her fingers. “Did you expect an argument from me?”

  “You’re an intriguing woman, Mrs. Rannoch.”

  “After today, don’t you think you’d better call me Suzanne?”

  Cordelia smiled. “If—”

  The door of the café opened with a squeak, letting in a warm breeze. Cordelia broke off. Suzanne glanced over her shoulder and found herself looking at the petite, dark-haired person of Blanca Mendoza.

  She refrained from rising from her chair, but her fingers closed on the edge of the table. “Colin?” she asked in as conversational a tone as she could manage.

  “He’s fine.” Blanca stopped in front of the table and dropped a curtsy to Cordelia.

  “Sit down, Blanca. You can talk in front of Lady Cordelia.”

  Blanca drew up a chair from a neighboring table and reached into the straw basket that dangled over her arm. “This message came for Mr. Rannoch. It’s in code, but I recognized the seal. I wasn’t sure where to find him. I asked the Chases’ footman, and when he said you’d left I thought you might be here.”

  Suzanne glanced at the single sheet of paper. The pale blue rose-shaped seal and the slanted handwriting belonged to Rachel Garnier. There were only a few words and Suzanne knew the key to the code. She pulled a pencil from her reticule and quickly sketched out the plaintext.

  Urgent. Come at Once.

  15

  “I never cared for Anthony Chase much,” Harry Davenport muttered as he and Malcolm walked back along the Allée Verte in the glare of the afternoon sun. “I didn’t know why until now.”

  “His grief seemed genuine.”

  “Seemed.” Davenport scowled at a lime tree.

  “How good an actor do you think Tony Chase is?”

  “If he’s that good an actor, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

  “False modesty doesn’t become you, Davenport.”

  Davenport gave a sideways grin. “I never saw Tony as brilliant, but he has an uncanny ability to make women believe he’s in love with them. To make himself believe it. Any man who can do that—”

  A party of officers cantered past on the carriage road, letting up a cloud of dust. “His eyes,” Malcolm said.

  Davenport shot a look at him, his own eyes a white gleam in the shadows of the overhanging trees. “You noticed it, too.”

  “They weren’t as unfocused later in the interview as they at first appeared. And at one point I’d swear he deliberately made his fingers shake.”

  “Vienna didn’t blunt your abilities, Rannoch.”

  “If you noticed it as well, why didn’t you say so from the first?”

  “Because I wanted to see if you noticed it.”

  “Glad I passed the test.”

  “You’re a good sort, Rannoch.”

  From Davenport, Malcolm suspected that was a high compliment. “If Chase had learned about Lady Julia’s affair with the Prince of Orange—”

  “You think he lured to her to the château to confront her? It’s possible. He falls out of
love easily himself, but I doubt he takes kindly to the same behavior in his mistresses. But then who was doing the shooting?”

  They hadn’t had a chance to discuss the logistics of the shooting since Rachel’s revelation that the French hadn’t been behind the ambush, but the implications were obvious and troubling. “For the ambush to have been an attempt to get rid of Lady Julia, someone would have had to know we’d be there,” Malcolm said, “as well as knowing about her rendezvous with the Prince of Orange.”

  “Quite. Who knew you were meeting with La Fleur?”

  “Only La Fleur and Wellington and me as far as I know. And you. Whom did you tell?”

  “Only Colonel Grant. Or rather he told me.”

  Malcolm glanced at a man in a hussar’s uniform who had stopped to speak with a lady in a green and gold barouche. “Do you think Lady Julia would have really run off with Chase?”

  Davenport kicked aside a loose pebble. “I’ve scarcely proved myself the best judge of what a woman will do for love. Though her simultaneous affair with the prince suggests Julia wasn’t as lost in love as Chase claims to have been.” Davenport stared ahead, eyes narrowed against the sunlight slanting through the trees to glare off the paving. “Cordelia could give a better analysis.”

  “You’ll talk to her?”

  “I think your wife should. Cordelia appears to trust her. That’s hardly the case when it comes to me.”

  The barouche clattered down the allée, the hussar and the lady now putting their heads together beneath the shelter of her lace parasol. “Your sister-in-law’s life was undeniably complicated,” Malcolm said. “But we still haven’t discovered any real danger.”

  “You said it yourself. One can never be sure who will turn violent. It never occurred to me I’d find myself planting Anthony Chase’s brother a facer.”