Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “Spoken by a man who’s never had cause to doubt his wife,” Davenport murmured.

  Tony stared up at Malcolm, eyes glazed with confusion. “You said someone sent a forged letter to the prince. So this person wanted Julia to be at the château alone? Why?”

  “Possibly to confront her or to convince her to break off her affair with the prince.” Malcolm studied Tony. The light from a brace of candles on the desk fell full on his face. The confusion in those wide blue eyes appeared as genuine as if it bore a sterling hallmark. “Or—”

  “To kill her?” Anger shot through Tony’s posture. “Is that what all this was about? Someone lured Julia to her death?”

  “You have reason to think someone might have wished to do so?” Davenport moved toward Tony’s chair.

  “What? No. Julia didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  “She had a husband and two lovers.” Davenport leaned against the desk. “Unless you’re all remarkably compliant, that could create all sorts of enemies.”

  “You think Ashton killed her? Because he learned about us? By God—”

  “Do you think your wife knew?” Malcolm asked.

  Tony sprang to his feet, knocking his chair over. “How dare you insult Jane.”

  “I rather think it’s you who did that,” Davenport observed. “Rannoch just asked if your wife could have known you were betraying her.”

  “I know her. She’s my wife. I’d have realized—”

  “I know my wife,” Malcolm said. “At least I think I do, as well as one can know anyone. I’ve trusted her with my life on more than one occasion. But I’d never claim to be privy to her every thought.”

  Tony spun away and stared at the papers that littered the desk. “Don’t you think I haven’t been tormented by the thought of what Jane will think when she finds out? She trusts me. She always has. And I know bloody well that I don’t deserve it. I’d have noticed if there’d been any change in her. She’s too honest for deception.”

  “She’s better at it than you think,” Davenport said. “She told Mrs. Rannoch and Cordelia she’d known about you and Julia almost from the first.”

  “She—” Tony whirled on Malcolm. “How dare you question my wife?”

  “It’s an investigation, Chase,” Malcolm said. “Into why the woman you claim to have loved lost her life. Your sister knew as well.”

  “Violet—” Tony’s face drained of color. “Oh God, that damned letter.”

  “Apparently.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Tony demanded. “That Jane sent that note to the Prince of Orange so she could confront Julia at the château? That she had something to do with her death—I could call you out for such a suggestion.”

  “Don’t,” Davenport said. “I doubt he’d agree to meet you, and Wellington will have our hides if you do anything to get yourself cashiered from the army. He’s short of soldiers as it is.”

  Tony straightened his shoulders. “Are you so sure you can trust the prince?”

  “We aren’t sure we can trust anyone,” Malcolm said.

  “Well then. You claim I’d have been jealous if I’d known Julia had another lover. What if Slender Billy knew? I doubt he’d take kindly to it, either. Suppose he forged that note from Julia to give himself an alibi.”

  Davenport stared straight ahead as he and Malcolm left Headquarters, his gaze narrowed against the glare of the setting sun against the cobblestones. “It’s all right,” he said, without looking round. “I’m not going to waste time defending the honor of the sister of the woman to whom I happen to be married. But you have to admit it’s odd.”

  “It keeps getting odder and odder.” Malcolm kept pace beside Davenport, his own gaze fixed ahead. Two young officers strolled down the street ahead of them, arm in arm with Brussels girls wearing white lace mantillas. “Lady Julia made overtures to Lord Uxbridge. Not long after that she began a liaison with the Prince of Orange. While at the same time conducting an affair with Anthony Chase, who claims they were desperately in love and she was going to run off with him.”

  “A love affair that seems less and less probable. At least on Julia’s side.”

  The officers and the girls in the mantillas stepped into a café down the street. Malcolm glanced at Davenport, then returned his gaze to the street ahead. “My mother flitted from one lover to another. She wasn’t a very happy woman.” Arabella Rannoch’s restless blue eyes and discontented mouth flickered in his memory, as sharp and vivid as the Brussels street before him. “Though she’d have claimed she took them all lightly, I think she kept hoping the right man would make sense of her life.”

  Davenport turned to look at him for a moment. “That can’t have been easy for you.”

  The events of the past autumn and the new things he had learned about his mother bit Malcolm in the throat. “No. Nor for my brother and sister.”

  “Your brother’s a light dragoon, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. He’s stationed near Ninove, so I haven’t seen much of him in Brussels.” Though in truth that was only half the story. Malcolm and Edgar weren’t the friends they once had been, for reasons Malcolm didn’t entirely understand, though the estrangement was rooted in their mother’s death. “One’s relationships with one’s parents are always complicated.”

  “Mine did me the favor of dying when I was eight. Carriage accident. I’d just gone up to Eton.”

  It was Malcolm’s turn to look sideways at Davenport. “That must have been—”

  “Simpler perhaps, all things considered. The uncle I spent holidays with mostly left me to my own devices.” Davenport kept his gaze fixed ahead. “If you knew about your mother’s affairs even as a boy, she can’t have been overly discreet.”

  “No. Nor was my father. They had an understanding of sorts. If you can say that of two people who cordially disliked each other. I think my mother enjoyed defying convention.”

  “Which one could say of Cordelia,” Davenport said without a trace of emotion. “But not Julia. She indulged in reckless behavior, but she was still careful of her reputation.”

  “But she was troubled and her moods shifted, judging by her letters to her sister,” Malcolm said. “My mother would swing between frenetic excitement and bouts of depression. According to Geoffrey Blackwell, she may have had an illness of the brain.”

  Davenport didn’t dismiss the idea, as Malcolm more than half-expected, but instead considered it for several paces. “If that was true of Julia, it’s something that came on suddenly. Or—No, I suppose I can’t claim to have ever known her well enough to be sure. But whatever was going on with her, Wellington’s right. We have to consider the possibility that there were other men. Do you think Uxbridge was telling the truth?”

  “He had no reason to come to us with the story.”

  “Unless he decided it was better to come to us with his version of the truth before we discovered it in other ways.”

  “You think he was Lady Julia’s lover?”

  “I think it’s a possibility we can’t ignore. As we have to consider Tony Chase’s suggestion about the Prince of Orange.”

  Malcolm nodded. “Any man involved with Julia might have been angered if he’d learned he wasn’t her only lover. Or might have decided she was a liability. Or both.”

  “And it looks as though we may well be at war before we discover the answer. Damnable timing. I find I’m distinctly averse to the thought of dying without learning the truth.”

  19

  “To think I thought Julia Ashton a bit insipid.” Suzanne fastened the second of her diamond earrings. She had dismissed Blanca once her hair was dressed so she and Malcolm could talk while they got ready for the opera. “She seems more and more interesting with each revelation. And sadder.”

  Malcolm grimaced as he did up the buttons on his cream silk waistcoat. “The perfect wife who was actually a mass of discontent.”

  Suzanne turned round on the dressing table bench to look at her husband. The ghosts in
his gray eyes were all too familiar. “Darling, she’s not—”

  “My mother.” He fastened the last button and tugged his waistcoat smooth. “No, she most definitely isn’t. Mama liked to flaunt her indiscretions in society’s face. Lady Julia managed to maintain her decorous veneer.”

  Suzanne drew on one of her long ivory gloves, smoothing the fingers with care. “I can understand her attraction to men in positions of power. And I can understand her thinking she’d found true love with Anthony Chase, though it speaks poorly to her judgment of men. But the two at the same time don’t make sense.”

  “No.” Malcolm shrugged into the black superfine evening coat Addison had left draped over a chairback.

  Suzanne picked up the second glove. “Do you think Anthony Chase is lying about the affair?”

  “There was something odd about him this afternoon when Davenport and I spoke with him. But we have Violet Chase’s account of finding his letter to Lady Julia and of the interview in which she says Lady Julia admitted to the affair.”

  “And Jane Chase claims to have known about it, too.” Suzanne pulled on her second glove. “So unless a number of people are lying for no apparent reason the affair happened. But perhaps it wasn’t quite the breathless idyll Captain Chase described.”

  “At least on Lady Julia’s side. Chase’s anger when he confronted Davenport and me this evening seemed genuine enough.”

  “Genuine enough to kill over?”

  Malcolm frowned at the buttons on his coat as he did them up. “Who can say what sends anyone over the edge? But Chase has a temper, and I think he’s lying about something. Which would fit if he already knew Julia had another lover and he killed her because of it. Or if he’s the Silver Hawk and realized Lady Julia had begun to suspect him. Of course one could say the fact that I can see through him argues against his being the Silver Hawk.”

  Suzanne got to her feet and picked up her silver net scarf. “You’re rather exceptional at seeing through people, darling.”

  “Fair to middling. God knows I’ve been wrong in the past.”

  “As have we all.” She managed to keep her voice tranquil, but the words stuck in her throat. She forced herself to turn to the mirror and focus on adjusting the pearl clasp on her belt. The champagne crêpe of her round robe hung loose on her body. She was going to have to get Blanca to take her gowns in or Malcolm would start asking more questions.

  Malcolm twitched his shirt cuffs smooth beneath his coat. “Lady Julia was playing a damnably dangerous game.”

  “Danger can be addictive.” She took a step toward him, her mind filled with past sins and future terrors. “As we both know.”

  Their gazes met and held for a moment. A smile curved Malcolm’s mouth. “I keep telling myself that one day we’ll have a nice settled life filled with ordinary trivialities.”

  She closed the distance between them and put her lips to his. “Careful what you wish for, dearest. If we had a nice settled life, I’m afraid we’d both go mad.”

  He returned her kiss with surprising urgency, then drew back, his eyes gone serious. “Wellington had news of his own. It looks as though the French have finally crossed the frontier.”

  Fear coursed unbidden through her. “Not another false alarm?”

  “I think not. Wellington seemed very sure of the intelligence. He’s waiting to see where the attack will come from.”

  “How long?” she asked, keeping her voice level. After all, she had known for months that this day would come.

  “A few days at most, I should think.” His fingers tightened over her own. “Sweetheart, if you want to go to Antwerp—”

  She jerked her hands from his clasp. “Don’t you dare suggest I run away.”

  “I’m not. But your hands are like ice.”

  She hugged her arms over her chest. “War is about to break out. I’m worried about our friends. I’m worried about my husband.”

  “I’m not going to be anywhere near the fighting.”

  “Liar.” Screams echoed in her ears. Blood glistened on the cobblestones before her eyes. “I’ve already gone through one war with you, don’t forget.”

  His gaze moved over her face. “I can’t, Suzette.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Promise to stay here in Brussels with you.”

  She swallowed. She’d made her choices a long time ago. She would have to live with them. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Any more than you’d ask it of me.”

  “Well then.” He touched her arm. “This is nothing we haven’t been through before.”

  For a moment she was sitting beside a camp bed where her wounded husband lay a few months into their oddly begun marriage, holding Malcolm’s hand and staring at his ashen face, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to speak to him again. But even then ...“It was different,” she said, her voice rough. “We weren’t—We didn’t—We mean more to each other now. We have more to lose.”

  He drew her to him. “We’ll have to make sure we don’t lose it then,” he said into her hair.

  She resisted for a moment, then drew a shuddering breath and let her head fall into the familiar hollow of his shoulder. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his coat as though she could hold on to him, hold on to what was between them. But the problem with his words, as with most comforting words, was that they were more easily spoken than put into practice.

  “Suzanne.” Georgiana Lennox darted through the crowd in the entry hall of the opera house and seized Suzanne’s arm. Her elder sister, Lady Sarah, was not far behind her. “Are the rumors true?”

  “Which rumors?” Suzanne looked between the Lennox sisters. Malcolm had stopped to speak with Baron Müffling as the crowd eddied and pressed about them. “If you’re hearing Bonaparte is on the march again—”

  “Not Bonaparte. We’ve heard he’s on the march so many times it’s difficult to take it seriously.” Georgiana cast a glance round the entry hall, crowded with silks, satins, ostrich feathers, gleaming uniforms. Orange-sellers moved through the crowd with baskets over their arms. She lowered her voice, though Suzanne doubted anyone could hear over the buzz of conversation beneath the fretted ceiling. “Julia Ashton.”

  “Georgy—” Sarah Lennox said.

  “What about Julia Ashton?” Suzanne asked.

  “People are saying she was killed last night when she tried to stop a duel between her husband and the Prince of Orange.”

  Suzanne bit back both a laugh and a curse. “Georgy, you were at the ball last night. You noticed the minute the Prince of Orange left the ballroom with Wellington and Stuart. Could he possibly have been absent anything close to long enough to have fought a duel?”

  “I told you it was all an outrageous hum, Georgy.” Lady Sarah shook her head.

  Georgiana was regarding Suzanne with sharp eyes. “You said the Prince of Orange didn’t fight a duel with John Ashton. You didn’t say Julia Ashton wasn’t the prince’s mistress.”

  There were times when lies served no purpose. “No,” Suzanne said. “I didn’t.”

  Lady Sarah grimaced. “Oh, dear. I’d never have thought it. She and Captain Ashton always seemed so devoted.”

  The smell of oranges wafted through the hall. Suzanne found herself staring fixedly at a gentleman peeling an orange for the white-gowned lady at his side. The lady was smiling as though she didn’t have eyes for anyone else in the world. Her husband? Or her lover? “One never really knows what goes on inside a marriage.”

  Georgiana frowned. “But if Lady Julia wasn’t away from the ball because of a duel or because she was meeting the prince—”

  “No one knows precisely what happened.” Suzanne heard a loud, excited voice behind her. Without looking round, she knew the Prince of Orange had run up to Malcolm.

  Georgiana cast a quick glance behind her, then darted a keen gaze over Suzanne’s face. “You and Malcolm are investigating, aren’t you?”

  It was a pity a duke’s daughter couldn’t have trained as
a spy, Georgiana would have made a good one. “Georgy—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Suzanne, you’re not the sort to have false modesty.”

  “No.” Suzanne nodded at Alexander Gordon and Colonel Canning, who had just come through the doors from the street. “But I do know the importance of discretion.”

  “It doesn’t matter, we know perfectly well what you’re doing. And the point is you need information. Do tell her, Sarah.”

  Lady Sarah frowned, tugging on the blond lace on her bodice. “Georgy, we don’t know—”

  “That’s just the point. We don’t know what it means, but Suzanne might.”

  “It’s—”

  “It’s not gossip, it’s evidence. Or it might be. You can trust Suzanne to be discreet.” Georgiana seized her sister’s hand. “If we slip between those two Dutch-Belgian officers, we can stand in the alcove by the base of the stairs.”

  Lady Sarah continued to frown but permitted her sister to pull her to the side. Suzanne exchanged a glance with Malcolm, who was steering the Prince of Orange in the opposite direction, and then followed the Lennox sisters.

  “Lady Sarah?” she said. “If there is anything you think is important—”

  Sarah fingered the ivory sticks of her fan. “I daresay it means nothing. But when I heard about Julia, and I remembered that they knew each other—”

  “Who?” Suzanne asked.

  “It was at the ball last night. A bit before supper. I left the dance floor only to find I’d torn a flounce, so I went into the ladies’ retiring room to pin it up. I found her there, trying to sponge her skirt.”

  “Lady Julia?”

  “No.” Sarah hesitated a moment. “Violet Chase.”

  Suzanne forced her mind not to jump to conclusions. “It was a warm evening. A number of people went out into the garden. If she got mud on her skirt—”

  “It was more than that. She looked as though she’d been crying. Miss Chase and I have never been on particularly familiar terms, but I asked her what was the matter. She said it was nothing. When I insisted that she was obviously in distress and asked if I could help, she said she’d gone into the garden with a gentleman, and he’d gone beyond the line of what was pleasing. But—” Lady Sarah frowned. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m quite sure she was lying.”