Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  Georgiana cast an anxious glance at Suzanne. “Does it—”

  “It could mean anything,” Suzanne said. “And very likely it means nothing as far as Julia Ashton is concerned.” She looked at Sarah. “But thank you for telling me. Any information about last night is helpful.”

  Lady Sarah gave a quick nod. “Violet Chase isn’t—We’ve never been great friends, as I said. But I can’t imagine—”

  “I can’t imagine Julia Ashton being dead,” Georgiana said. “But she is.”

  Lady Sarah shuddered and then smiled as she caught sight of General Maitland. Suzanne had noticed Sarah spending more and more time in Maitland’s company of late. Sarah’s mother, the Duchess of Richmond, seemed unaware of the development, which was probably just as well. Suzanne suspected the duchess had her eye on titled husbands for her daughters.

  “Violet Chase was practically betrothed to John Ashton,” Georgiana said, as her sister went off on General Maitland’s arm. “She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t disliked Lady Julia excessively. You don’t think—”

  “It’s too early to think anything at all,” Suzanne said.

  Despite the crowd, Malcolm could feel the gazes upon him and the Prince of Orange, but at least the alcove afforded a modicum of privacy.

  “I didn’t tell anyone,” Billy said in a fierce whisper. “You do believe me, don’t you?”

  “I have the utmost faith in you, sir,” Malcolm said in a measured voice.

  “You think I’m lying. You think I told someone about Julia.” Billy stared at Malcolm, as woebegone as a schoolboy accused of cheating at cricket.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I can see it in your face. For God’s sake, Malcolm, do you think I would talk at the expense of a lady’s reputation? Especially after Wellington told me not to?”

  “You were naturally distressed last night. You didn’t confide in anyone—a friend, your valet—”

  “I’m not a boy anymore, Malcolm.” Billy straightened his thin shoulders. “I’m a commander myself. I know how serious this is. Especially when we could be on the march at any moment.” He cast a glance over Malcolm’s face. “Do you think it’s true? That Bonaparte’s finally on the move?”

  “Wellington believes so. But he’s waiting for further intelligence.”

  For a moment, the reality of the coming battle shot through Billy’s young gaze. “And now of all times—The story about Julia and me is all over Brussels. The things I’ve had said to me—All deserved of course.” He swallowed. “Should I offer Ashton satisfaction?”

  “No,” Malcolm said, in the tone he’d used when the fourteen-year-old Billy had wanted to visit a gaming hell. “Sir, I know how Lady Julia’s death distressed you—”

  Billy ran a hand over his hair. “The devil of it is, if I’d actually gone to the rendezvous I was going to end it.”

  “What?” Malcolm stared at the prince. “Last night—”

  “I was shocked by her death.” Billy shifted his weight from one foot to another. “It seemed no time to disparage her memory.”

  “You’d learned something about her?” Malcolm watched the prince closely. Had Billy known about Julia’s affair with Tony Chase?

  Billy swallowed, looked away, then met Malcolm’s gaze. “The night before Stuart’s ball—Julia and I—We were together. We—Well, the point is, I woke up to find her going through the pockets of my coat.”

  20

  “You’ve discovered something.” Aline Blackwell looked from Malcolm to Suzanne as they entered their box. “I learned to read that look on both your faces in Vienna.”

  Suzanne didn’t risk a glance at her husband. The taut grip of his hand on her elbow as they’d climbed the stairs had told her he’d discovered something. She suspected that, being Malcolm, he knew she’d discovered something as well.

  “I know better than to argue with you, Allie,” Malcolm said, pulling out Suzanne’s chair for her.

  “But I don’t suppose there’s the least chance you’ll tell us any of it.” Aline turned to look at her cousin, elbow on the back of her chair, chin in her hand. “I was rather helpful in Vienna as I recall.”

  “You were invaluable. We’ll be sure to come to you with any unbreakable codes.”

  Aline gave a mock sigh, grinned at him, then turned to her husband. “You don’t seem the least bit curious, Geoff.”

  Geoffrey Blackwell looked up from a perusal of the programme (unlike many of those in the theatre, he had a genuine passion for music). “My dear, by the time you’ve reached my age, you learn life is quite complicated enough without embroiling oneself in the complications of others.”

  But despite his words, Suzanne caught the appraising gaze Geoffrey ran over Malcolm and then her. It held more than curiosity. It held concern. Geoff knew better than most the strain they’d both been under in Vienna.

  Suzanne sank into the chair beside Aline that Malcolm had pulled out for her, lifted her opera glasses, and scanned the house. It was no more than everyone else was doing. The Chases were in a box to the right. Violet, her shoulders swathed in a cloud of orange blossom tulle, her chestnut curls threaded with ivory roses, was laughing up at two riflemen, her cheeks flushed bright. Jane Chase, decorous in primrose-colored crêpe, was engaged in conversation with a third rifleman who apparently hadn’t been able to get Violet’s attention. Jane’s gaze held a trace of ironic amusement, but her hands were locked tight on the beaded reticule in her lap.

  As Suzanne watched, a man in the uniform of a captain in the 95th came through the curtains at the back of the box. The light from the candle sconces glinted off his smooth, pale gold hair, and the smile he flashed was quick and engaging, though his gaze held a hint of strain. Captain Anthony Chase.

  Another man followed Captain Chase. Taller, with hair that was more brown than gold, familiar from last night at Stuart’s ball. Major George Chase. The man for whom Cordelia Davenport had left her husband.

  A woman slipped into the box beside Major Chase. Fair-haired, small-boned. The wife Major Chase had returned to despite his and Cordelia Davenport’s grand passion.

  A stir rippled through the theatre. Suzanne turned her opera glasses. Cordelia Davenport and Caroline Lamb had taken their seats at the railing of a box to the left. A crowd of gentlemen in uniform clustered behind them, including Lady Caroline’s brother Frederick Ponsonby. Cordelia wore black gauze over white satin. Her rouge stood out against her pale skin. She scanned the theatre with a tense, anxious gaze. Lady Caroline looked at her in concern. The gentlemen behind them seemed quite forgot.

  A louder murmur ran through the crowd as the Prince of Orange stepped into his box. The prince held his head high, though through her glasses Suzanne caught a telltale flush on his cheeks. Georgy and Sarah’s brother Lord March, a handsome, serious-faced young man, sat on one side of him. On the other was Baron Jean de Constant Rebecque, who had been the prince’s tutor at Oxford and was now his chief of staff. Malcolm, Suzanne knew, had a great deal of respect for Rebecque, whom he described as a kindly man with a keen understanding, an excellent stabilizing influence on Billy.

  “Poor young devil,” Geoffrey murmured. As a military doctor, he knew the prince from the Peninsula.

  Aline shot a sharp look at her husband. “I thought you weren’t paying attention to the rumors.”

  “Not being deaf, I could hardly avoid them completely. Billy never impressed me as having an overabundance of wit, but I didn’t think he was quite such a fool. Though all the rumors are almost comforting.”

  “Comforting?” Aline asked.

  “That we still have leisure for gossip. These rumors are likely to seem positively quaint when we face what lies ahead. Ah, at last. The musicians are finally tuning up.”

  Malcolm leaned against the wall beside the door of the grand salon, where the operagoers crowded during the interval. Several waiters circulated among the crowd with trays of champagne. He knew Suzanne had her eye out for the waiter
with the fading pox scars on his face. He could best help by turning a blind eye and waiting for her to slip the paper into his hand.

  “Malcolm.”

  Malcolm turned round to find Fitzroy Somerset standing beside him. A line showed between Fitzroy’s brows, a rare sign of unease. In the Peninsula Malcolm had seen his friend look less alarmed on the eve of battle. Of course, they were more or less on the eve of battle now.

  “How’s Harriet?” Malcolm asked.

  “Well.” A smile briefly dispelled the frown. “She decided to stay at home tonight with the baby. In truth I came partly because I was hoping for a word with you.”

  Malcolm scanned his friend’s face. “Something’s happened since I saw you at Headquarters?”

  “I wanted to tell you in private. And oddly this seems more private than Headquarters.”

  “Crowds often are. You’re learning an intelligence agent’s tricks.”

  Fitzroy turned slightly, his back to the crowd. “Speaking of intelligence agents, the duke’s asked you to look into last night’s events?”

  “Is that a statement or a question?”

  “I’m no spy, but I’m not blind. Or deaf.”

  “Quite the opposite. You know something about last night’s events?” Something Fitzroy hadn’t wanted to repeat at Headquarters, which was damned odd.

  Fitzroy grimaced, cast a glance over his shoulder, looked back at Malcolm. “Was Julia Ashton’s death an accident?”

  Malcolm kept his gaze steady on his friend’s face. “It’s beginning to look as though it may have been more complicated.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Fitzroy’s fair brows drew together again. “I hate to tell tales—”

  Malcolm touched his friend’s arm. He considered Fitzroy a rare example of a British gentleman in that he took the gentleman’s code with the utmost seriousness. “We’re on the brink of war, and Lady Julia’s death seems to be caught up in that. If you know anything that could possibly shed light on what happened—”

  “Quite.” Fitzroy’s mouth tightened. “Look, Malcolm, do I have your word you won’t repeat this unless you find it necessary in your investigation?”

  “Do you really have to ask that?”

  Fitzroy gave an unexpected grin. “Just trying to salve my conscience, I suppose.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Last night, fairly early in the evening—it was before supper, at any rate—I walked out into the garden for some air. Well, truth be told, I was avoiding being buttonholed by Mr. Creevey with more anxious questions about Bonaparte. I wandered down one of the gravel walks. As I passed a hedge I ... caught sight of a couple who’d taken refuge behind the hedge.”

  Malcolm’s gaze skimmed over Fitzroy’s face. “Lady Julia?”

  “No. Her husband.”

  “Well. That is a surprise.”

  “Damn you, Malcolm, are you so cold-blooded about everything?”

  “On the contrary. I’d have sworn Ashton was madly in love with his wife. Did you recognize the lady?”

  “Yes.” Fitzroy swallowed. “It was Violet Chase.”

  Malcolm drew in his breath. “Interesting. Were they embracing or just talking?”

  “She was in his arms, but—Malcolm, I’ve known Violet since she was a child. She’s a bit of a madcap, but I’d swear she wouldn’t—”

  “I have no desire to cast aspersions on Miss Chase’s virtue. I understand she and Ashton were once practically betrothed.”

  “Yes. There was some—unpleasantness—when it ended. But I was sure Ashton—”

  “Was devoted to his wife. But people said the same about Lady Julia’s feelings for him, and you must have heard today’s rumors about her and Slender Billy.”

  “I own I was shocked. But this doesn’t mean—”

  “That Ashton and Miss Chase were lovers?” Malcolm sifted the possibilities in his mind. “Not necessarily. But it does mean that Ashton didn’t tell us the whole truth last night.”

  The trick to spotting an individual in a throng all dressed alike, Suzanne had learned, was to focus in on details. Look at faces rather than powdered wigs and blue brocade coats, and the pox-scarred face of the man Rivaux had described was quite unmistakable. He was carrying a tray of champagne glasses. A cloth was spread over the tray, and peeping out from beneath it Suzanne saw a corner of cream-colored paper.

  She cast a glance at Davenport, who was standing beside her in the grand salon. He coughed loudly. “Can’t we get some champagne over here?”

  While the footman’s head was turned, Suzanne took a glass of champagne, palmed the paper, and slid another in its place. The work of a few seconds.

  She moved across the room to Malcolm, who was standing by the door in conversation with Fitzroy Somerset and Lord March.

  “It doesn’t make a lot of sense for Bonaparte to attack through the Sambre and Meuse valleys,” Fitzroy was saying. “The French have already destroyed the roads through there. It’s not so much that the reports we’re getting may be false as that these French attacks could well be a feint.”

  “With the real attack coming from the west,” March said. “To cut us off from the sea and our supply lines.”

  “Quite.”

  “So there is going to be an attack?” Suzanne asked. “Don’t worry, I’m not the sort to panic.” Or at least she had the panic well under control.

  “It looks that way,” Fitzroy said. “But it’s looked that way before.”

  For a moment, the remembered smell of blood washed over her. She looked at Fitzroy and March, so elegant and insouciant in their white net pantaloons, fringed sashes, and beautifully cut coats. Champagne turned bitter in her mouth.

  “What have you done with Slender Billy?” she asked, slipping her arm through Malcolm’s and sliding the note into his palm.

  “Rebecque persuaded him to have champagne in his box.” March grimaced. “Devil of a night.”

  “The talk will die down,” Fitzroy said in the tone Suzanne had heard him use during innumerable hair-raising crises in the Peninsula.

  “Provided nothing worse surfaces,” March said.

  “Do you have reason to think it will?” Malcolm asked, voice deceptively conversational.

  “Just general apprehension. And a knowledge of Billy.”

  “He can’t say more if there isn’t more to reveal,” Fitzroy pointed out.

  “Thanks, Fitzroy, that’s very comforting.” March dug his shoulder into the wall behind him. “You should have heard the dressing-down I got from Wellington. I think in his mind part of my duties is to keep Slender Billy out of unfortunate entanglements. Which I would have done, if I’d known.”

  “Were you with Billy much of the night last night?” Malcolm asked.

  “Enough to know that he couldn’t have slipped off and fought a duel whatever the gossips are saying.” March took a sip of champagne. “The odd thing is, you know who I did see slipping through a side door?”

  “Who?” Malcolm asked, in the same conversational tone.

  “Alexander Gordon. I asked him where he’d been, and he just gave me some roundabout story about smoking a cigarillo in the garden, which could have been true save that the way Gordon told it, it was plainly a farrago of nonsense. I didn’t realize Gordon had a—” March broke off, flushing.

  “A mistress in Brussels,” Suzanne finished for him. “Surely you know me well enough not to think I’d be shocked, Lord March? For Gordon’s sake, I do hope she’s amusing.”

  “Gossip is a fascinating thing.” Raoul O’Roarke stopped beside them before the embarrassed March could answer. “The Prince of Orange’s indiscretion and Lady Julia’s death have quite eclipsed the latest rumors that the French are on the march. I just heard someone giving even odds on whether fighting would break out first between the Allies and the French or the British troops and the Dutch-Belgians.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any advice from the days when you tried to hold together five different guerrillero fac
tions in the Peninsula, do you, O’Roarke?” Fitzroy asked.

  Raoul gave an ironic grin. “Mostly I’m grateful not to be in the thick of it anymore. But as I recall, distraction is a great key.”

  “Speaking of which, the Ashton scandal’s going to hang over my mother’s ball tomorrow night,” March said. “Mother wondered if it would be in better taste to call it off, but Wellington had a word with her.”

  “Sensible,” Raoul said. “Canceling at the last minute would fuel rumors and panic. Not to mention emboldening the Bonapartists in Brussels.”

  “And hopefully the dancing will distract our troops and the Dutch-Belgians from quarreling.” Malcolm took a sip from Suzanne’s champagne glass. “If you’ll excuse me, I must speak to Stuart.”

  Malcolm slipped out of the salon. Suzanne asked how Fitzroy’s wife was getting on with her new baby daughter. A murmur from the crowd caught their attention. Fitzroy let out a low whistle. “One can’t but sympathize, but it would have been so much easier if she’d remained in London.”

  Cordelia Davenport and Caroline Lamb had come into the salon. Half the crowd appeared to be looking at them, the other half at Harry Davenport, flicking a bit of lint from his lapel, and at George Chase, who was standing with three of his fellow cavalry officers.

  “Poor Davenport,” Lord March muttered. “Sharp tongue, but not a bad fellow. He certainly didn’t deserve this.”

  Suzanne nodded. She had noticed something else that turned her blood colder than her expertly iced champagne. A sandy-haired man she recognized as Captain Dumont had come into the room and was making his way toward the waiter with the pox scars. No sign of Malcolm. No way to exchange the dummy note for the original.

  “Evening, Chase.” Davenport took a step toward George Chase. His voice rang out, slightly slurred. “A bit awkward, but I suppose there’s a certain drama in our meeting at the opera.”