Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  Fitzroy’s fair brows drew together. After all, he’d been there when March told Malcolm about Gordon slipping away from Stuart’s ball.

  “Just a tedious bit of investigation,” Malcolm said. “Nothing lasting.” At least, he profoundly hoped that was the case. Suzanne’s comment that Gordon was the sort of man Wellington might have employed to deal with Julia Ashton lingered uncomfortably in his memory.

  Concern drew at Canning’s good-natured face. For all he had gone through in the Peninsular War, Malcolm doubted it had ever occurred to Canning that his friends could be on anything but the side of truth and honor. “I just hate to see you not friends. Not given what we may be facing tomorrow.”

  “So do I.” Malcolm looked from Canning to Fitzroy. “You haven’t seen George Chase by any chance, have you?”

  “He’s probably with Uxbridge,” Fitzroy said. “The cavalry’s got orders to cover the retreat.”

  Canning regarded Malcolm for a moment. “Is this to do with Julia Ashton’s death?”

  “What makes you think that?” Malcolm asked.

  “You have that look you get when the game’s afoot.” Canning leaned forward in the saddle again. “Does George Chase have anything to do with Julia Ashton? Besides the fact that he was her sister’s lover?”

  “Do you have reason to think he does?” Malcolm asked, his pulse quickening.

  “No. But if you do—” Canning fingered his reins. “I went out into the garden at Stuart’s ball. Not long before all that fuss about Wellington and Stuart and Slender Billy leaving the ballroom. I saw Chase and his brother coming in through the garden gate.”

  Fitzroy, quick to see the implications, drew a sharp breath.

  Malcolm stared into Canning’s open, cheerful face. “You saw George and Anthony Chase coming through the garden gate together at Stuart’s ball?”

  “Yes, I told you—”

  “Why in God’s name didn’t you say something sooner?”

  “I didn’t think anything of it. All sorts of people must have been in and out of the house that night. But if there’s any chance George Chase has anything to do with Lady Julia’s death—”

  “Quite,” Malcolm said.

  A tearful Georgiana Lennox greeted Suzanne, Cordelia, and Aline at the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s. “The Duke of Brunswick has been killed. I said good-bye to him at Mama’s ball only the night before last. And—” She bit her lip and put her hands over her eyes. “Lord Hay.”

  “Oh, Georgy.” Suzanne hugged her friend. The bright-eyed young ensign had been a favorite waltzing partner of Georgiana’s. Suzanne had wondered if in time he’d become something more.

  Georgiana hiccoughed. “I keep seeing him that night. After we found out the troops were to march. He wanted me to dance, and I was cross because he was so excited to be going off to war. I can’t believe that was the last time I’ll ever speak to him.” She dashed a hand across her eyes.

  “No time for tears, Georgy.” Cordelia put her hands on the younger girl’s shoulders. “The streets will be full of wounded before long. We have work to do.”

  Georgiana swallowed and gave a quick nod. Cordelia squeezed her shoulders.

  “Mrs. Rannoch.”

  Suzanne turned round at the anxious voice to see Violet Chase hurrying toward them.

  “I wondered if you’d heard—” Violet stopped, fingering a fold of her blue-sprigged skirt. “I thought perhaps your husband had come back to Brussels last night.”

  “Malcolm said most of the British cavalry weren’t involved in the fighting yesterday,” Suzanne said. “So George should have been out of danger. As should Captain Ashton. I’m afraid we don’t know about Tony.”

  Violet drew a gasping breath. “Thank you.”

  Georgiana looked after Violet as she returned to Jane, who was sitting bolt upright on a settee. “When we heard about the Highlanders being cut to pieces yesterday poor Mrs. Chase went quite pale. Which I thought odd, as her husband’s in the 95th and Major Chase is on Lord Uxbridge’s staff. I suppose they must have friends among the Highlanders.”

  Suzanne looked at Jane Chase, scraping lint with methodical fingers and numb eyes. Lady Frances Webster’s comments the previous day—God, had it only been a day?—about Jane Chase’s apparent quarrel with Julia echoed through her mind. With a host of new implications.

  They left the comtesse’s, armed with scissors and lint and flasks of water and brandy, and nearly tripped over wounded soldiers as they stepped from the house. The sun beat down on the cobblestones, loosing the smell of blood and dirt from crusted uniforms. The wounded lay everywhere. Some had walked the more than twenty miles from Quatre Bras and dropped where they stood. Others had been brought into the city in carts and wagons. Suzanne had nursed the wounded in the Peninsula. Geoffrey Blackwell had taught her to dig out bullets and stitch wounds and more times than she cared to remember she’d closed the eyes of the dead. But never had she seen casualties on this scale.

  Cordelia, who would have no such past history, worked beside her with brisk determination, as did Aline. The morning’s panic was gone from the streets. Bruxellois and British expatriates worked side by side, as though present need had pushed their fears to the background.

  In the chaos, it was an easy matter for Suzanne to slip off and make her way to Madame Longé’s. Wounded men lay on the floor of the dressmaker’s, and Madame Longé and her assistants were cutting bolts of pristine muslin into bandages. Their sympathies might be Bonapartist, but that did not stop them from doing what they could for the wounded. Lucille, the seamstress who was Suzanne’s chief contact, scrambled to her feet and hurried to Suzanne’s side.

  Suzanne put a message for Raoul into Lucille’s hand. “I don’t know when he’ll be back in Brussels.” Or if, but that was something she wouldn’t let herself think about. “But I know he’ll check here. This is important.”

  Lucille nodded. “I’ll make sure he gets it, madame.”

  “Thank you.” Suzanne squeezed Lucille’s hand and returned to the street where she and Cordelia and Aline were working, armed with a pile of fresh bandages.

  Early in the afternoon—at least she guessed it was so, though she’d rather lost track of time—she returned to the Comtesse de Ribaucourt’s for more water and saw a familiar figure outside the door. Rachel Garnier’s hair was drawn back in a simple knot and she wore a gray muslin round gown, but her face was unmistakable.

  “Madame Rannoch,” she said, coming toward Suzanne. “Are you going inside? Could you see if they have any lint to spare? I’ve quite run out.”

  “Of course. Come in with me. You can sit for a moment.”

  Rachel shook her head. “I hardly think I’d be well received.”

  They might be at war, but the divide between a prostitute and a lady of fashion was greater than that between the British and the French. Suzanne bit back an hysterical laugh at the thought of what the comtesse would think should she know of Suzanne’s own past. She had been an outsider when she married Malcolm, an émigrée war bride who had snagged a wealthy husband. Slowly she was coming to be accepted in Malcolm’s world. But they would shun her in an instant if they had the least idea of her true origins. And there were times when she thought it wasn’t her work for the French that would be the most shocking to Malcolm’s friends.

  She went inside and returned quickly, flasks of water replenished and more rolls of lint gathered up for Rachel. Rachel smiled in gratitude. “Is Monsieur Rannoch still with the army?”

  Suzanne nodded. “He returned to Brussels last night, but he’s gone back.” She scanned Rachel’s tense face. “Have you had news of Lieutenant Rivaux?”

  Rachel shook her head and made a show of tucking the lint beneath her arm. “There’s no reason for anyone to let me know. I don’t have any right to be concerned.”

  “Concern isn’t a matter of rights.”

  Rachel gave a faint smile. “Concern isn’t supposed to be something I have time for. But yes, I am. Terr
ibly.”

  Over Rachel’s shoulder Suzanne saw another familiar figure coming down the street. Jane Chase.

  “Mrs. Rannoch.” Jane’s face was drained of color and her cambric morning dress was caked with dirt about the hem and splashed with blood, but then that was true of Suzanne and Rachel and everyone else tending the wounded.

  Suzanne introduced Rachel. Jane shook hands with no appearance of shock. Either she didn’t know who Rachel was or she was more unconventional than Suzanne had at first supposed.

  “I came in search of more brandy,” Jane said.

  “I’ll go in with you,” Suzanne offered.

  Jane faltered climbing the steps to the door. Suzanne took her arm and steered her past the footman into the front salon. “Sit down for a moment.” She pressed Jane into a chair. “You look ready to drop.”

  It was true, though her reasons for asking Jane to sit were hardly disinterested. But then what did she ever do that was wholly disinterested?

  Suzanne poured a cup of the tea the comtesse had set out and put it into Jane’s hand. “In truth I’ve been wanting to speak with you.”

  Jane took an automatic sip and looked at Suzanne with confused eyes.

  “Lady Frances Webster heard you quarreling with Julia Ashton at Stuart’s ball.”

  Jane’s eyes narrowed. She wasn’t quite as ready to drop as she appeared. “I passed Julia in the passage outside one of the salons, but we merely exchanged greetings. Lady Frances must have been mistaken.”

  “And then today Georgy Lennox said you went quite pale at the news about the Highlanders.”

  Jane’s fingers tightened round the teacup. “The news was dreadful. So many of the soldiers who danced for us at the duchess’s ball are dead.”

  “It’s horrible. But Georgy didn’t mention anyone else going pale. Are you close to anyone in the regiment?”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “Because when I put the two things together, the oddest thought occurred to me.” Suzanne looked into Jane Chase’s hazel eyes. “Mrs. Chase, do you have a lover among the Highlanders?”

  40

  The cup tumbled from Jane Chase’s fingers, spattering tea over her already-stained skirt and shattering into shards of rose and gold porcelain on the carpet. Jane stared down at the wreckage as though looking into hell, then raised her gaze to Suzanne’s face. “How in God’s name do you do it?”

  “Putting puzzle pieces together. And then shifting the puzzle to look at it in a different way.”

  Jane put her hands over her face.

  “I must say after what your husband put you through, I’m rather relieved at the thought you had a lover,” Suzanne said.

  Jane gave a harsh laugh. “I never meant—I had mad revenge thoughts when I first realized Tony had strayed, but they soon faded. I thought I was better than he was. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “Not in the least, considering I suspect you cared for your lover more than Captain Chase cared for any of his.”

  “Then I met Will. Captain William Flemming. At a review last month. Violet was overcome by the heat, and he offered to fetch us lemonade.” She drew a strained breath, though for a moment remembered happiness flashed in her eyes. “He looked at me as though I was a woman. More than that. He looked at me as though I was a person, which is an even rarer thing.”

  “Infinitely,” Suzanne said, thinking of Malcolm.

  Jane’s fingers twisted in the folds of her skirt. “It was completely mad, yet in Brussels these past few weeks one didn’t think of the future. Despite everything hanging over us, I think I was the happiest I’ve been in years.” She stared down at the broken cup. “If it wasn’t for Will perhaps I’d have taken the children back to England.”

  “It does no good to refine upon the past. Or to blame yourself.”

  “And yet despite it all—” Jane hugged her arms round herself. “I thought Tony couldn’t hurt me more, but the affair with Julia Ashton did hurt. And when I said good-bye to him at the duchess’s ball—Mrs. Rannoch, does it sound utterly mad to love two men at once in entirely different ways?”

  Suzanne remembered her wash of panic at the thought of Raoul going off to battle. “No. Merely hellishly uncomfortable.”

  Jane stared at her hands. “I don’t think Tony knew. Knows. I don’t think it ever even occurred to him it was possible.”

  “Men can be so damnably obtuse.” Or in Malcolm’s case hearteningly naïve in his faith in humanity, not to mention in his wife. “But Lady Julia learned of it.”

  “I’m still not sure how. Will and I wrote to each other occasionally, but we were careful.” Jane drew a shuddering breath. “At Stuart’s ball, I danced with Will—Tony didn’t even notice of course—and I was overcome by how utterly impossible our liaison was. Julia found me in tears. She told me she’d ended things with Tony and that she’d have thought I had the wit to know things weren’t always what they appeared. I mumbled something. Then Julia took me by the shoulders and said—” Jane’s eyes went dark not with guilt but with anger.

  “What?” Suzanne asked in a gentle voice.

  “She said I was a fool to think it could possibly be worth it to throw away my husband and children for an idle fancy.”

  “That must have been galling.”

  “For a moment I was struck dumb.” Jane pushed herself to her feet. “When I was able to speak, I said how dared she of all people offer me advice and especially advice of that sort. Julia said it was precisely because of her own mistakes that she understood what I was risking. She seemed so serious that for a moment I actually found myself nodding my head. Then the full, horrid absurdity struck me. And so I struck her.”

  “I can understand the impulse.”

  “I shouldn’t have let myself sink to that level. But in that moment—” Jane shook her head, mouth drawn into a taut line. “All my anger at everything that’s happened since my marriage was focused on Julia.”

  Jane spun away, suppressed violence in the snap of her skirts and the taut line of her shoulders. Before Suzanne could respond, the front door opened and Sarah and Georgiana Lennox’s voices sounded in the hall. Jane hurried to join them, and Suzanne knew she had pushed her as far as she could for now. Suzanne spoke briefly with the Lennox sisters, who were pale and drawn at what they had seen but determined. They were the daughters and sisters of soldiers.

  A few minutes later they all left the house armed with fresh supplies and separated to return to where they’d been working. Jane Chase had recovered her equanimity remarkably well. Suzanne struggled to rearrange the puzzle pieces in light of this new information. The depth of Jane’s anger at Julia was plain, and however blatant Tony Chase’s philandering, a woman stood to lose far more than her husband if her love affair was discovered. But it was difficult to imagine Jane having the resources and the time to arrange the ambush. Although—

  “Madame Rannoch.” It was Lucille, hurrying down the street toward her. “I was hoping I could find you. I thought you’d want to know. Your friend stopped by the shop. She said she’ll be at home this afternoon.”

  Suzanne drew a breath of relief, while at the same time tension shot through her. Raoul was alive. And what she had to discuss with him could shake her world to the core.

  Cordelia snipped off a length of linen and knotted her bandage. “There. I’m afraid I’ve mangled it horribly. Thank you for being so forbearing.”

  “On the contrary, ma’am.” The Highland sergeant was pale and a sheen of sweat showed on his forehead, but he spoke in a cheerful voice. “I’ve known more than one surgeon with hands that were less steady.”

  “You’re very kind.” Cordelia pulled a flask of water from her pocket. “Were many of your comrades killed?”

  His eyes, a pale, clear blue, darkened at the memories. “Only five of us were left standing.”

  Cordelia shivered as she uncorked the flask. “I saw some of your comrades dance at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.” She slid her arm beneath
his shoulders and lifted him to take a sip of water. “It seems horrid now that we all stood about applauding entertainment right before you marched off to battle.” Betraying tears sprang to her eyes as she eased him back down on the cobblestones. She adjusted the folded coat that formed a makeshift pillow.

  “Is your husband in the army, ma’am?”

  She nodded, eyes on the frayed wool of the coat.

  “He’s a lucky man to have you to come back to.”

  Cordelia choked, torn between a laugh and a sob. She could only hope that having her in Brussels didn’t make Harry less eager to return.

  Today was entirely beyond her experience. In her childhood, even minor scrapes and bruises had been tended to by the nursery maids. The closest she’d come to actually dealing with an injury was when Julia had fallen and banged her knee. Cordelia had run ahead to alert their nurse while George carried Julia back to the house. Since Livia’s birth, Cordelia had learned to cope with scraped knees and runny noses and the occasional cut finger. But nothing like this. When they’d first stepped into the street from the comtesse’s, she’d nearly doubled over and been sick on the cobblestones.

  Suzanne Rannoch’s fingers had closed round her wrist in an iron grip that was somehow reassuring. Suzanne was so amazingly calm. Snipping bandages, bathing wounds and packing them with lint, even stitching cuts and digging out bullets with no laudanum to keep the men from screaming. Cordelia couldn’t hope for a quarter of Suzanne’s sangfroid, but she could at least copy some of it. And somehow, though the smells and cries were still there, they had become part of her accepted reality. It was not that the horror had lessened, simply that it was difficult to imagine anything else. There was something almost commonplace about going through the motions of bathing wounds, cleaning out bits of cloth and debris from torn flesh, snipping bandages, wiping foreheads, offering sips of water, judging which wounds she could treat herself and when it was necessary to summon one of the Belgian doctors moving tirelessly among the wounded.