Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “And then?” David stared at his lover, a pulse beating in his jaw.

  “It never occurred to me that anyone had done her harm. But I feared she might have taken her own life.” Simon swallowed, his gaze fixed on David’s face. “I was going to tell you when we were alone that night, and then I realized—what the hell good would it have done?”

  “What good would it have done for me to know the truth about my foster sister’s death?” David’s voice shook with disbelief. “If I’d known what she’d been going through—”

  “That’s just it. It was too late for you to protect her. All knowing her plight would have done is make you torture yourself. You might even have tried to find her lover—”

  “Damned right, I would have,” said David, who rarely swore in the presence of ladies.

  “To what end?”

  “So I could make the bastard pay.”

  “Yes, that’s what I was afraid of. You might even have been mad enough to challenge him to a duel.”

  “I—” David, as opposed in theory to dueling as Malcolm was, opened his mouth to deny this, then went silent.

  “Precisely,” Simon said. “As reform-minded as you are you’re still an English gentleman. Forgive me if I had no desire to see the man I love breaking the law and risking his life.”

  David kept his gaze on Simon. There might have been no one else in the room. David didn’t even seem to notice that Simon had alluded directly to their relationship, something that in the general course of things neither of them did in front of others. “If you’d told me even a few hours sooner—”

  “Don’t you think I haven’t said that to myself every day for the past four and a half years?”

  David drew a harsh breath. “She didn’t give you any clue to who it was?”

  “No.”

  “Damn it, Simon, you can’t think I’d challenge the man to a duel now.”

  “I’m not entirely convinced of it. But as it happens, she truly didn’t tell me.”

  David looked at Cordelia. “Do you think Amelia confided in your sister?”

  “Julia never mentioned anything about it to me. But—” Cordelia looked at Malcolm. “Do you think this is really all coincidence? Lord Carfax became suspicious that Julia’s childhood friend was murdered. And shortly afterwards Julia was killed herself.”

  “Which of your friends was in Derbyshire in the winter of 1810 to 1811?” Malcolm asked.

  Cordelia swallowed. “All of them. George and Tony both were home on leave, and Johnny was there.”

  “Did Amelia seem particularly close to any of them?”

  Cordelia shook her head. “Not that I remember. I was only in Derbyshire for a short time myself. Harry and I went to a house party in the Lake District. Truth to tell, George had just come back to England, and I was trying to avoid him. Much good it did me.”

  Malcolm nodded. “I was at Carfax Court myself briefly that winter, but I can’t say I was aware of any particular sympathy between Amelia and anyone.” He looked at David and Simon. Both shook their heads.

  “I’ve gone over all my memories of that winter time and time again,” Simon said. “If—”

  A rumbling sound interrupted him. Carriages moving over cobblestones. Shouts quickly followed from the street outside. Without so much as exchanging glances, they all ran into the hall and out into the street. People spilled from the houses on either side of the street, some in nightclothes, some clutching glasses of wine or handfuls of cards. Shouts and questions in English and French cut the air. At last Suzanne made out that supposedly an artillery train had just retreated through the city, the British were in retreat, and the French were within a half hour’s march.

  She shook her head, sure it couldn’t be over so simply. Though a part of her hoped against hope that it was.

  “I think the artillery was going to the front,” Malcolm said. “Wellington wouldn’t retreat so easily.”

  Suzanne knew the duke well enough to realize that was all too true.

  Malcolm turned back toward the house while their neighbors continued to argue. Cordelia moved to Suzanne’s side. David and Simon followed, walking a few feet apart, the distance between them palpable.

  “We’ll get no more intelligence tonight,” Malcolm said as they stepped into the hall.

  Cordelia cast a glance at David and Simon, then moved toward the stairs. “I don’t know that I can sleep, but I suppose we should try.”

  They all took candles and climbed the stairs. On the landing, they murmured subdued good nights. David and Simon hadn’t so much as met each other’s gaze. “Cordelia,” Malcolm said softly, when he and Suzanne and Cordelia were alone on the first-floor landing.

  Cordelia looked at him in inquiry over the flame of her candle.

  “George says Julia worked for him, but they weren’t lovers.”

  Cordelia returned Malcolm’s gaze for a long moment and inclined her head. “Thank you. Though oddly, I find that it doesn’t matter very much anymore.”

  “I hope David and Simon talk,” Suzanne said to Malcolm in the privacy of their bedchamber.

  “I doubt they will.” Malcolm set his candle on the chest of drawers. “David’s the sort who shuts down instead of fighting.”

  “There’s a reason you’re such good friends. You’re much alike.” Suzanne used her candle to light the tapers on her dressing table. “Did you know Amelia Beckwith?”

  “A bit. But in those days I was even more inclined to retreat to the library with a book than I am now. I certainly never guessed—” He shrugged out of his coat, the same black evening coat he’d worn to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, and stared at the dusty superfine with drawn brows.

  Suzanne peeled off her gloves and dropped them on the dressing table. “Cordelia’s right. The connection to Julia is suspiciously coincidental.”

  “So it is.” Malcolm tugged at his crumpled cravat. “And if Julia Ashton’s killer is the person who intercepted messages between Carfax and me it narrows the field.”

  Suzanne froze in the midst of removing her pearl earrings. “You think Tony Chase was intercepting your communications with Carfax?”

  “Possibly.” Malcolm began to unbutton his stained ivory brocade waistcoat. “But George Chase is the one who knew Carfax’s courier system.”

  “Tony Chase could have learned about the courier system from his brother somehow.”

  “He could. Or I could have been wrong to believe George’s denials that he’s working for the French as well.”

  Suzanne dropped the second earring in its velvet-lined compartment beside the first, biting back all the objections she couldn’t possibly make. “Damn George for not telling you Tony was trying to kill you.”

  Malcolm shrugged out of his waistcoat, wincing at the pull on the wound in his side. “I’m not feeling particularly charitable toward him myself. But I think I do understand.”

  Suzanne’s fingers froze on the silver filigree clasp of her necklace. “Are you saying you’d protect Edgar, even at the risk of someone else’s life?”

  “No. At least I hope not. But I can understand the impulse. And then there’s—” He broke off, frowning at the shirt cuff he’d been unfastening.

  “Fitz.” Suzanne carefully aligned the pearl necklace against the black velvet in her jewelry box. Fitzwilliam Vaughn, Malcolm’s friend and fellow attaché from Vienna, was now on a mission in India. Talking about him at all was like touching a half-healed wound.

  “Difficult not to make the comparison.” Malcolm tugged the button free. “I need to find Tony Chase. For a whole host of reasons.”

  Suzanne crossed the room to her husband. “I can’t believe you can actually stay the night.”

  Malcolm pulled his shirt over his head with tired fingers. Someone, she was pleased to see, probably Geoffrey Blackwell, had changed his bandages. “I’m scarcely fit for anything else.”

  Her gaze moved over the hollow of his throat, the angle of his shoulders, the lean
lines of muscle picked out by the candlelight. “Not anything?”

  His eyes widened in genuine surprise. “Suzette—”

  “If there ever was a time to take pleasure where we can find it—” She took his face between her hands and covered his mouth with her own. When the pull of competing loyalties threatened to tear her in two, she’d always been able to find solace in his arms. A communication that bridged all differences and drove out treacherous thoughts. Once, when she’d feared Malcolm would never let down the barriers that kept them apart, she’d thought this was the only sort of knowledge she’d ever have of him. Even now it was the easiest way to reach him. And the only way she knew to drive the demons from her mind.

  His arms closed tight round her, but she felt his moment of hesitation, as though he feared to take advantage of her humor. She deepened the kiss and sank her fingers into his hair, leaving no doubt of what she wanted. When his lips moved to her cheek, she heard the edge of desperation in his breath. The desperation of a man who wonders if he’s making love to his wife for the last time. His fingers shook as he lifted her in his arms and moved to the bed. She pulled him down to her and surrendered to welcome oblivion. Later she even slept for a time, curled against his chest, one hand clasping his own, his heartbeat steady beneath her ear.

  A cry jerked her from her sleep. Malcolm was already on his feet, pulling on his dressing gown and pushing up the window. She scrambled into her own dressing gown and ran to his side. She could make out the words now. “Les français sont ici! Les français sont ici!”

  39

  Saturday, 17 June

  Suzanne leaned out the window beside Malcolm. In the street below, a man banged on their door, shouted his message about the French, then ran down the street to do the same at the next house. The street was full of people again, in varying states of déshabille, some milling about, some carrying paintings, chairs, chests, and small tables down to their cellars.

  “ ‘Rumor doth double, like voice and echo, the numbers of the feared.’ ” Malcolm closed the window and gave her a quick kiss.

  They found Cordelia and David in the hall with Valentin and the maids. “Blanca’s in the nursery,” Cordelia said, her arm round Brigitte, one of the maids, a girl of fifteen. “The children seem to have slept through it, thank goodness.”

  Aline came hurrying through the green baize door from the kitchen. “Simon’s making coffee, and he says there’ll be toast and eggs in a quarter hour.”

  “I’ll see what I can learn from Stuart,” Malcolm said.

  He returned from Stuart’s by the time they had finished Simon’s impromptu breakfast. “Some Belgian troops ran from the battlefield apparently,” he said, dropping into a chair at the breakfast table and accepting a cup of coffee from Suzanne. “Their cavalry galloped through the city early this morning and set off a panic. The roads to Antwerp are more clogged than they were yesterday.”

  “Good thing we’re planning to sit tight.” Simon spread marmalade on a piece of toast. He and David had barely made eye contact all morning.

  Malcolm pushed back his chair a short time later. “Stuart will keep you apprised of news.” He hesitated. “Casualties from Quatre Bras are sure to reach the city today.”

  Suzanne nodded. “That will keep us busy.”

  She persuaded him to let her change his bandages before he left and was relieved to see both wounds were healing cleanly. She went out into the street with him and saw him swing himself up onto Perdita. She touched her fingers to the horse’s neck. “Take care of each other.” Perdita nuzzled her hair in response.

  Malcolm bent down from the saddle to give her a quick, hard kiss. It was as though they both feared that this time a more prolonged farewell was tempting fate. Not that either of them believed in fate.

  David left the house shortly after Malcolm saying he was going to see what news he could discover. The ladies were going to walk round to the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s again. Cordelia and Aline went to put on their bonnets. Suzanne lingered downstairs and followed Simon into the study. She found him standing by the windows. The lines of his back showed taut against the glazing. The light from the window glanced off his whitened knuckles.

  “I know it’s still morning, but you look as though you could do with a drink,” she said, moving to the table with the decanters.

  “A drink won’t solve this.” Simon turned round and leaned against the windowsill.

  “No, but it can dull the edges of the pain. Trust me, I know.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk. Do you and Malcolm ever fight?”

  She splashed sherry into two glasses. “It’s not so much what we say as what goes unsaid.”

  He gave a wintry smile. “That sounds like Malcolm.”

  She crossed to him and put one of the glasses in his hand. “It’s amazing what one can get through.”

  He curled his fingers round the etched glass and stared down into the sherry. “I don’t think David will ever forgive me.”

  “One doesn’t forgive precisely. One gets past things.”

  He took a swallow of sherry. “So cynical, Lady?”

  “So realistic, Lord. I’ve been married two and a half years. You’ve been with David longer than that.”

  “And we’ve got past a lot. But this is family. And duty. And honor. Everything that makes David what he is.”

  And Malcolm. Last autumn in Vienna when she confessed about her relationship with Frederick Radley, Malcolm had got past the revelation that she wasn’t the sexual innocent he’d thought her to be when they’d married with surprising ease. What she’d told him was a series of half-truths, but she still hadn’t thought his feelings for her would survive it. “People can surprise you.”

  “So they can. But everyone has their breaking point. David’s a brilliant man, a humanist, an idealist, a reformer. But he’s also an English gentleman to his core.”

  A chill coursed through her. However much Malcolm had surprised her last autumn, she couldn’t expect his feelings for her would survive greater revelations. He loved her, which she’d never thought possible, but his love was predicated on his not knowing the truth of who she was.

  She forced a sip of sherry down her throat. “Mr. Darcy.”

  Simon raised his brows.

  “Do you remember when I first read Pride and Prejudice? You’d sent it to Malcolm in Lisbon. I hadn’t even met you yet, but I wrote to you after I read the book. I said Malcolm reminded me of Mr. Darcy in some ways, and you wrote back that you felt the same about David. That inbred sense of duty and responsibility. Appealing. But damnably difficult to live with.”

  Simon swirled the sherry in his glass. “I always knew David’s family loyalty would come between us. I just didn’t think it would be like this.”

  For a moment, Lord Carfax was such a tangible force in the room he might have been present. Suzanne touched Simon’s arm. “We’re none of us thinking very rationally right now.”

  “I’ve replayed my decisions about Amelia every day for the past four and a half years. If I had to do it again, I’d tell David of her plight immediately. But I still don’t think I’d tell him after she died. Protecting him. Perhaps protecting myself.” He took another swallow of sherry. “No apology is going to wipe away what I did.”

  Suzanne slid her arm round him. “Give it time. You and David have more between you than most couples I know.”

  “But then the more one cares, the more power one has to hurt.” Simon looked down at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Liar. You must be a stone lighter than when I saw you in England last summer. And you were thin then.”

  “It’s the wretched heat.” She drew a breath. “Malcolm is out there looking for a man who’s trying to kill him.” And who was spying for her side.

  Simon put his own arm round her and she leaned against him, grateful beyond measure for simple human warmth.

  “You back, Malcolm?” Colonel Canning, his
dark blue aide-de-camp’s frock coat creased, his collar stained, edged his horse toward Malcolm’s own. “Thought you’d returned to Brussels.”

  “I did.”

  “Crazy devil.” Canning cast a glance round the fields of Quatre Bras. Bloodstains showed against the trampled corn. Bodies sprawled where they had fallen yesterday. A sickening number of kilted Highlanders and cuirassiers in burnished breastplates lay about the walled farm of Quatre Bras at the center of the crossroads. Soldiers who had survived the battle sipped tea from tin cups or cleaned their weapons, waiting for their battalions to be called to march. “Don’t you know when you’re well out of it?”

  “I do. I got a night in a soft bed.”

  “And returned in time to see our retreat.” Canning grimaced as the soldiers whose battalion had just been called fell into place, marching north toward Mont-Saint-Jean, to keep in contact with their Prussian allies.

  “Tactical withdrawal.”

  “That’s the spirit. Hookey would be proud of you.” Canning cast a glance at Wellington, lying on his cloak on the grass not far off, a newspaper spread over his face. “He was laughing over some gossip from the London papers not long ago.”

  “Which goes miles toward keeping up morale.” Fitzroy Somerset pulled up beside them. “You might not think it to look round, but the withdrawal’s actually going quite smoothly.” He cast a glance at the sky where inky black clouds had begun to mass. “And so far the rain’s held off.”

  Malcolm glanced toward Frasnes, where he’d heard Ney had withdrawn for the night. “Have the French given you any trouble?”

  “No, they’ve been strangely silent. Though the more of our men march, the more nervous the remaining ones get. There are that many fewer to face a French attack if it does come.”

  Canning cast a glance at Fitzroy, then leaned toward Malcolm. “I say, Rannoch, what the devil’s happened between you and Gordon? I could tell something was up when you and Davenport spoke to him at Headquarters—God, was it only the day before yesterday? And when I said something about you last night he got an odd look on his face.”