Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “He’s your father,” Raoul said. “He’ll forgive you.”

  “I had to follow the dictates of my conscience. Besides, it could mean a great deal for—”

  “For you and Hortense,” Raoul concluded for him. Flahaut was the longtime lover of Hortense Bonaparte, Josephine’s daughter, Napoleon’s stepdaughter, and the unhappy wife of Napoleon’s younger brother Louis.

  Flahaut drew a rough breath. “Yes.” He studied Raoul for a moment. “How’s Suzanne Lescaut? That is, she’s Suzanne Rannoch now, isn’t she?”

  “As well as can be expected in the circumstances. She’s in Brussels with her husband.”

  “Good God.”

  “Feeling the pull of competing loyalties.”

  “But she’s still—”

  “My agent? Yes. I owe the information I just gave you to her.”

  Flahaut smiled. “Brilliant as ever.”

  “And still loyal. Also very much in love with her husband.”

  Flahaut’s dark brows drew together. “That can’t be easy for you.”

  Raoul swallowed, throat raw. “In some ways I think it was inevitable. She was never mine to hold.”

  Flahaut’s gaze shifted over his face. “That doesn’t make the feelings go away.”

  Memories Raoul did his best to suppress shot unbidden through his mind. Her hair soft between his fingers. The reckless light in her eyes when she returned from a successful mission. The warmth of her body, relaxed in sleep as she never was in waking, curled against his own. “No. It doesn’t.”

  “I haven’t forgot the great service Suzanne did Hortense and me. I never shall forget it. Nor will Hortense.” Flahaut stared at the sentry lights in the distance. “It’s odd, in the midst of everything, how one can form friendships. And how those friendships can matter in the face of all else.”

  “There are times,” said Raoul, committed heart and soul to his cause for above thirty years, “when I think those friendships are the only thing that matters. Go carefully, mon ami.”

  Malcolm pushed open the door of a sitting room in the abbey that served as Lord Uxbridge’s Headquarters at Ninove. The smell of wine filled the air. Several open bottles stood on the floor. One of Uxbridge’s staff was sprawled in a chair, asleep or half-asleep. Two were playing chess by the light of a lamp. George Chase sat hunched over a sheet of writing paper. “I need to speak to you, Chase,” Malcolm said, as a cross fire of surprised gazes shot over him.

  George pushed himself to his feet. “Rannoch. What the devil—”

  “It’s about your brother.”

  Concern and something that might have been fear flashed through George’s eyes. He gave a curt nod and led the way to an adjoining anteroom. “I just got here,” he said, as he lit a brace of candles. “Uxbridge hasn’t arrived yet. I think Wellington gave him orders for us to march to Enghien, but at the moment I’m not sure of anything.” He struck a spark to the last taper. “What are you doing here, Rannoch?”

  “Thought I’d escort Watkins back. We had an unexpected encounter. Took a bit of time to straighten things out, but it seems we were both on the same mission.”

  “What—”

  “Following your brother.”

  “You were following Tony?” George dropped the tinderbox to clatter on the table. “Why?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “Damn it, Rannoch. We’re in the middle of a war.”

  “The start actually. But yes, I’d have thought you’d have other things on your mind.”

  “I needed to get a message to Tony.” George stared at him in the wash of candlelight. Outside the abbey’s leaded glass windows, the sky was lightening to pale charcoal. “Why were you looking for him?”

  “On Wellington’s orders. Do you know why he isn’t with his regiment?”

  “No, but you have to admit it’s chaos out there—”

  There was, regrettably, no time for finesse. “Chase.” Malcolm set his shoulders to the door. Thuds and curses came from outside the abbey where a group of soldiers were trying to right an officer’s carriage that had tumbled into a ditch. “How long have you known your brother is working for the French?”

  The candlelight jumped in George Chase’s eyes. “By God, Rannoch, I could call you out for that.”

  “But somehow I don’t think you will.”

  George’s mouth tightened. “While we’re getting ready to fight and die, you’re indulging some crazy fantasy—”

  “Tony was working for the French. He was running Julia Ashton. If you were working with him, I’ll learn the truth sooner or later. If you weren’t, the sooner we share information the better. It may be your only chance to save your sorry brother.”

  “Damnation.” George’s hands closed behind him on the edge of the table. “How the hell did you work that out?”

  “Piecing together facts. Am I right?”

  George drew a long breath, as though weighing words and options. “Infernally so. Except that Tony wasn’t running Julia. I was.”

  36

  The sound of shattered crystal echoed through the anteroom.

  The soldiers trying to right the coach outside must have dropped one of the officer’s trunks. Malcolm stared at George Chase. Either the man had just admitted to being a French spy, or—“Are you saying Julia was a double?”

  George regarded him with a gaze that seemed to have a keener edge than it had a few moments before. “We’re on the same side, Rannoch. We’re both in intelligence. You know as well as I do agents don’t know each other’s names. Almost no one knew about my work. Julia didn’t until she came to me with her dilemma.”

  “When your brother tried to blackmail her into spying for the French.”

  Pain and anger twisted in George’s eyes. “Damnable to have done that to her. Julia could scarcely believe it. She’d known Tony her whole life.”

  “Did you already know your brother was working for the French?”

  George’s gaze slid to the side. “I—”

  “Suspected?”

  He gave a curt nod. “But didn’t want to believe it. Tony is—Whatever else he is, he’s my brother. Even after Julia came to me there was no proof.”

  “So you persuaded her to be a double?”

  “Actually it was Julia’s idea.” George scraped a hand through his hair. “At first I said it was impossible. Agents need training. She wasn’t fit for it.”

  Malcolm, thinking of his own wife, suppressed a smile. When they married, Suzanne had taken to intelligence work as though she’d been trained for it her whole life.

  George gave a wry smile. “Julia nearly took my head off. She said she was tired of being the perfect wife. That this was her chance to make a difference.”

  It sounded so like Suzanne that Malcolm nearly laughed. At the same time a chill ran through him. So many agents met Julia Ashton’s fate, one way or another.

  George strode across the room and leaned against the wall between two of the windows. The gray dawn light turned his face into something gaunt and stark. “God help me, I agreed. I needed to keep tabs on Tony. I wanted to find out what he was doing, without—”

  “Turning him in for treason.”

  George met Malcolm’s gaze squarely. “Can you blame me?”

  “No. I have a brother myself.” Who would even now be preparing to go into battle. Edgar hadn’t been at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. When had he last seen him? Wellington’s ball for Blücher? No, the cavalry review a few days later. At neither event had they exchanged more than a few words. “Who knew about Julia’s work for you?”

  George hesitated a moment. Outside, wheels spun through dirt and men groaned as they tried to push the carriage from the ditch. “Carfax. I report to him directly.”

  “So do I.” Malcolm grimaced, thinking of the unofficial chief of British intelligence. Carfax was the father of his best friend, David Mallinson, but not an easy man to know. “Not the first time he’s failed to share inform
ation.”

  George moved to a chest in the corner. A bottle stood atop it. He splashed brandy into two glasses and handed one to Malcolm. “It seemed safe enough. Tony wasn’t asking Julia to do anything dangerous.”

  Malcolm’s fingers tightened round his glass. “He asked her to seduce Lord Uxbridge. And then the Prince of Orange.”

  George flinched, his hand halfway to his lips. “I didn’t know. Not at first. She’d entered into the affair with the prince before I realized.”

  “But you didn’t call things off.”

  “No.” George turned his glass in his hand. His mouth twisted with a self-hatred Malcolm knew all too well. “Tell me you’ve never used sex to get information.”

  Malcolm thought of Rachel Garnier. “A point.”

  “But it’s different when it’s someone you know.”

  “Not in theory, as I keep saying.” Malcolm took a sip of brandy. “Did Carfax know?”

  George swallowed. “He knew about Julia working for me as a double with the French. He didn’t know Tony was her contact. He doesn’t know I suspect Tony at all. I told myself I was waiting to gather conclusive proof.”

  “And Lady Julia’s affair with the Prince of Orange?”

  “Carfax insisted Julia go on with the affair. He said anything else would compromise the mission. Besides, he—”

  “Found it useful to have an inside source with the Prince of Orange.”

  George gave a bitter smile. “Does that surprise you?”

  “No. It’s damnably like Carfax.” Malcolm pictured his spymaster, giving him a mocking look over the rim of his spectacles. “Knowing all the other things he hasn’t caviled at, I don’t know why I’d think he’d cavil at that.” He took a sip of brandy. “Was Julia having an affair with your brother?”

  “She said not, and I’m inclined to believe her. I think the affair was Tony’s invention to explain his association with her.”

  “Your sister found a love letter he was writing to her. A code?”

  “I suspect so.”

  “A clever way to disguise it. So Julia got information from Slender Billy and passed it along to you. You sent reports to Carfax and told Lady Julia what it was safe for her to tell your brother.”

  “Yes.” George tossed down a swallow of brandy. “I imagine you and I use the same courier system to report to Carfax.”

  Shouts of victory indicated the soldiers had righted the overturned carriage. “What else did Lady Julia do?” Malcolm asked.

  “There was a group of Belgian Bonapartists she and Tony were working with. The Comte de Vedrin was their leader. They were passing gold and jewels along to Paris. Thanks to Julia we were able to intercept quite a bit of it. Julia surprised me. I didn’t think she’d take to intelligence so well. It was as though she came alive once she started.”

  Malcolm took a measured sip of brandy. “Your brother ordered her to kill me.”

  George went still. Outside, closer than the overturned carriage, a soldier was cleaning his gun. The sound of the ramrod scraping the barrel echoed through the still air. “I didn’t realize you knew,” George said.

  “I may have been shockingly slow to put the pieces together, but I haven’t entirely lost my investigative abilities.”

  George’s jaw tightened. “I didn’t know what to make of it. Why on earth should Tony—”

  “Possibly care about me.”

  George frowned into his brandy glass. “I couldn’t see the connection. Tony wouldn’t tell Julia why. Do you know?”

  “Apparently it was something to do with Truxhillo.”

  “But—”

  “I think Truxhillo may have been set up by the French to prove your brother’s heroism.”

  “Good God.” George stared at him across the anteroom. “You think Tony was working for the French in the Peninsula?”

  “Do you have proof he wasn’t? He’s become an important agent. He reports straight to Paris.”

  George’s fingers tightened round his glass. “So you knew Truxhillo was a setup?”

  “No. That’s what’s odd. If I’m right, something had given Tony the idea that I knew and could expose him. What did Julia do when your brother demanded that she arrange my death?”

  “She was in a panic. She said she hadn’t bargained on this. I told her to pretend to go along with Tony, that we could make sure nothing actually happened to you, but she got more and more worried.”

  “And the night of Stuart’s ball she told Tony she was stopping her work for him. That’s what your sister overheard.”

  “I’m afraid so. Julia had come to me earlier in the evening, very distressed about her work, though she said nothing about stopping. I comforted her. Tony may have seen us. Or her supposed affair with me may have been another invention of his.”

  Malcolm studied George Chase’s face, etched with guilt, yet with the hardness of a seasoned agent who’d learned to live with his choices. “So you weren’t having an affair with Julia.”

  “Good God no. She was Cordelia’s sister.”

  “And that put her off-limits.”

  “Yes.” The single word spoke volumes about how George Chase still felt about Cordelia Davenport.

  “So you don’t think your brother knew Julia was working with you?”

  George stared at him, gaze wracked by demons that would never rest. “Dear God I hope not.”

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  George tossed back the last of his brandy. “No.”

  The sound of a cork popping split the night air. The soldiers must have liberated some of the officer’s champagne. “What happened at the Château de Vere?” Malcolm asked.

  “You were the one who was there, Rannoch.” Questions shot through George’s eyes, the sort of questions that would probably haunt his sleep for the rest of his life. “Do you think Tony set up the ambush?”

  “To kill me? Or Julia? Or both of us? I think it’s possible.”

  George looked him full in the face and nodded, a soldier owning up to dereliction of duty. “I should have told you the whole after Julia died. I told myself I should wait for orders from Carfax about revealing Julia’s work for us. That you could handle anything Tony tried. But the truth is I was stalling for time. Because I still couldn’t bring myself—”

  “To turn in your brother.”

  George nodded. “I kept thinking if I could keep Tony from doing mischief through the battle, once things were decided—”

  “Tony’s tried to kill me twice in the last two days.”

  Shock flared in George’s eyes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think—”

  “Fatal mistake to underestimate one’s younger sibling.”

  A muscle tensed in George’s jaw. “I deserve anything you may do to me.”

  “Anything I might do to you wouldn’t solve our present problems. Your traitor brother, who may be responsible for Julia Ashton’s death, is running loose on the eve of battle.”

  Livia Davenport held tight to her mother’s hand and stared round the entrance hall in the Rue Ducale. Colin raced forward over the black and white marble tiles, came to a skidding halt, and bowed as Suzanne had taught him. “Welcome.”

  Livia grinned, then let go her mother’s hand and curtsied with equal formality. “It’s like having a brother. Brothers.” She glanced over her shoulder at her cousin Robbie, held in his nurse’s arms. Robbie wriggled to get down and ran over to the other children.

  “Robbie, this is Master Colin Rannoch,” Cordelia said. “And his mama, Mrs. Rannoch.”

  “Is your papa a soldier, too?” Robbie asked Colin.

  Colin shook his head. “But he went away last night.”

  “My papa’s a soldier,” Livia said.

  Robbie swung his gaze to her. “You don’t have a papa.”

  “Yes, I do. I met him yesterday.”

  Robbie frowned, puzzling this out, then turned back to Colin. “I don’t have a mama now.”

  “Where is she?” Co
lin asked.

  “She’s dead,” Robbie said with a matter-of-factness that tore at Suzanne’s chest.

  Colin cast an anxious glance at Suzanne.

  “I know you must miss her dreadfully, Master Ashton,” Suzanne said. “We’re very glad you can be here with us. Let’s go up and see your rooms, shall we?”

  When the children were settled in the nursery with Livia’s and Robbie’s nurses, examining Colin’s toys, Suzanne took Cordelia down to the salon where she’d had coffee sent in.

  “It’s good to see them playing.” Cordelia rubbed her arms. “I keep waiting for it to hit Robbie that Julia’s gone. Then I’m afraid it has and he didn’t see her enough for it to matter as it should.”

  “Your sister was—”

  “Restless. She thought she knew what she wanted when we were girls. But once she had it, it didn’t make her happy. Then she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Sometimes I’m afraid having Robbie was like ticking off one more item on a list of things she was supposed to do. Whereas for me—” Cordelia shook her head. “Motherhood was a distinct surprise.”

  “It was for me as well,” Suzanne said, and then bit her tongue, her instinct to confide warring with every dictate of a trained agent.

  Cordelia looked at her for a moment, the supposedly perfect wife who presumably would have been eager to give her husband children. Suzanne couldn’t be sure what Cordelia saw, but she had a dismaying fear that her carefully constructed defenses had slipped.

  But instead of asking questions, Cordelia glanced out the window into the garden. “Livia’s been talking about Harry ever since yesterday.”

  “That’s good surely.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help worrying she’s met him only to—”

  “Cordelia.” Suzanne went to the other woman’s side, biting back the obvious platitudes. “Even if she never sees him again, it’s better for her to have the one good memory.”

  Cordelia nodded. The gaze she lifted to Suzanne held unimagined horrors. “I can’t bear the thought that last night was the last time I’ll see him. So commonplace. I’m sure women all over the city are saying that this morning.”