Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “They have retreated,” Aline said. “It must be more than ten miles.”

  “No help for it.” Davenport dipped his spoon into his soup. “The Prussians are at Wavre, and Wellington needs to keep the armies close.”

  “He was right when he looked at the map in the Duke of Richmond’s study,” Malcolm said. “Mont-Saint-Jean is just south of Waterloo. It looks as though that’s where the fighting will be.”

  “There definitely will be a battle tomorrow?” Suzanne asked.

  Her husband’s mouth tightened. “Without question.”

  “At least the ground will be better at Waterloo,” Davenport said. “The corn at Quatre Bras was high as a man’s head. The infantry could scarcely see the French till they were on top of them, and it was the devil’s own work for the cavalry. Thank God Rebecque and Perponcher had moved Perponcher’s troops the night before, or I don’t think we’d have got out of it.”

  “Did Slender Billy take his command?” Suzanne asked. “I didn’t even think to ask last night.”

  Malcolm grimaced. “I think Billy was in a temper over Picton taking orders directly from Wellington and cutting him out of the line of command. Picton had Halkett’s brigade deployed in square to support his own division and the Brunswickers. Billy ordered them instead to form line for more firepower. When Halkett protested that that would leave them dangerously exposed to cavalry, Billy said there was no French cavalry for miles.”

  “Was it very bad?” Suzanne asked.

  Malcolm snatched up his wineglass and took a long swallow. “The French cavalry hiding in the folds of ground opposite must have had scouts watching for us to make just such a mistake. They came thundering down on Halkett’s brigade.” His fingers tightened round the stem of his glass. “The Sixty-ninth lost its colors and God knows how many men lost their lives.”

  “Not your fault.” Suzanne touched his hand.

  “No, of course not. I’m not even a soldier, thank God.”

  Davenport gave a short laugh. “But you’re blaming yourself.”

  “Billy needs guidance.”

  “You aren’t the one who placed him in command,” Davenport said.

  Malcolm grimaced. “The wonders of royalty.”

  “Enough to make one yearn for the Bonapartists,” Simon murmured.

  Suzanne kept her gaze fixed on the bloodred wine in her glass.

  “Grant reached Quatre Bras in the middle of the day yesterday,” Davenport said. “It turns out he did send word to Wellington about Bonaparte’s attack coming through Charleroi. Early on the fifteenth. But General Dörnberg intercepted the message and sent it back saying he didn’t believe a word of it. That in fact it convinced him to the contrary. That Bonaparte’s attack would come from the west.”

  David stared at him across the table. “Good God.”

  “One could almost believe Dörnberg’s been a French agent all these years,” Malcolm said. “But I think the truth is he’s just woefully incompetent.”

  Suzanne considered this for a moment. Dörnberg, once a colonel in Jerome Bonaparte’s army, had deserted and joined the British two years ago. Quite clever if he’d been a double agent all this time, waiting for the right moment to wreak havoc on the British. Just the sort of thing Raoul might have planned. Could Dörnberg’s witlessness these past two years all be part of an elaborate pose?

  Cordelia took a sip of wine. “One wonders how Dörnberg ever got to be a general.”

  “If he were the only incompetent man ever to rise to general, the army would be very fortunate,” Davenport said.

  No, Suzanne decided. On the whole it was probably too much to think that Dörnberg had been maintaining a pose.

  “Some French lancers got into Genappe during our retreat today and Uxbridge sent Life Guards to engage them.” Davenport looked at Cordelia. “Ashton was among their number. He came through it unscathed, though the lot of them got caked in mud.”

  Cordelia smiled, relief evident in her face. “I daresay they got some joshing for caring about a bit of mud on their uniforms.”

  Davenport gave a genuine grin. “It was a splendid opportunity for the Peninsular veterans to laugh at Hyde Park soldiers.”

  Malcolm pushed back his chair. “We should be off. We have to stop by Davenport’s lodgings and get him a proper uniform. With your permission, Suzette, we’ll raid the kitchen. Rations are in short supply.”

  Suzanne found her husband a quarter hour later throwing things into a knapsack in their bedchamber. “You’re planning to be gone for some days.”

  “Only trying to be prepared for every eventuality.” He gave her a quick smile. “You’re pale as parchment. Have you managed to sleep?”

  “Enough.” She moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Darling, in the midst of all this I have news. About the investigation.” She told him about her talk with Jane Chase.

  Malcolm froze in the midst of putting a shirt into the knapsack. “Good God.”

  “It gives Jane Chase all the more reason to have been furious with Lady Julia. Though I find it hard to imagine her arranging the ambush.”

  Malcolm stuffed the shirt into the knapsack. “You could.”

  “An excellent point.” She smiled, though she was not entirely joking, and she knew he hadn’t been, either. “We shouldn’t underestimate her.”

  He crossed to the chest of drawers and picked up his shaving kit. “I have information as well. According to Canning, George and Tony Chase slipped out of Stuart’s ball together. George claims they only went as far as the mews to have a confrontation about Lady Julia. Just as he claims not to be a double agent.”

  Suzanne swallowed, her talk with Raoul sharp in her mind. “Malcolm—”

  “And I learned the identity of Amelia Beckwith’s lover.”

  She drew in her breath. “Who?”

  Malcolm threw the shaving kit into the knapsack. “Slender Billy.”

  Her hand closed hard on the bedpost. “Dear God. Of course. Billy was in England all those years. He stayed at Carfax Court?”

  “Numerous times. I was often there as well. But I was—”

  “Hiding out in the library. Where else would you be?”

  “Until I met you.” He gave her a brief, warming smile. “George Chase says he saw Billy and Amy slip off together more than once. And that Julia is the one who told him about the affair.”

  “It was an affair? That is, they were—”

  “George seemed to think so. And Amelia told Simon she was pregnant.”

  Suzanne leaned forward, still reeling from this news. “Do you seriously think Billy—”

  “Would be capable of murder?” Malcolm frowned into the knapsack. “I think anyone’s probably capable of murder if pushed in the right way. It’s hard for me to imagine Billy killing a girl he loved, but if he lost his temper—”

  “If Lady Julia knew about the affair, and then something made her think Billy could have had something to do with Miss Beckwith’s death—-”

  “Billy would have had a motive to get rid of Lady Julia.” Malcolm tugged the knapsack closed, yanking on the strings. “But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We still have Tony Chase slipping out of the ball and returning with blood on his coat. Not to mention whatever George Chase was doing. But I need to talk to Billy. Meanwhile I don’t want David to know a word of this. I sympathize with Simon’s fears. The last thing I want to see is my best friend challenging the Crown Prince of the Netherlands to a duel.”

  “You’re going to talk to Billy when you go back tonight?”

  Malcolm shook his head. “I daren’t risk upsetting him before the battle. It will have to wait. I still need to find Tony. I suspect he may be with the French.”

  Suzanne pushed herself to her feet and fixed her husband with a hard stare. “You’re going to pursue Tony Chase behind French lines in the middle of a battle.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone behind French lines.”

  “Not
in circumstances like these. If you’re caught—” A spy would receive none of the consideration of a prisoner of war. He’d be either tortured or shot on sight.

  “Then it’s a good thing I have no intention of being caught.”

  She caught him by the lapels of his coat, the nightmare she’d lived with for two and a half years sharp before her eyes. That Malcolm would die at French hands.

  “Sweetheart.” He looked down at her with a smile that tore at her heart. “Such a lack of faith in my abilities.”

  She tightened her grip. “This isn’t a game, Malcolm.”

  “My darling, of course it’s a game. It always has been. With life-and-death stakes.”

  Only she could know how very true his words were. She kissed him, as though she were exacting a promise.

  Cordelia saw Harry cast a glance upstairs. She touched his arm. “Do you want to see her?”

  His gaze jerked to her face. “I don’t want to wake her.”

  “It won’t be dreadful if you do.” She took his hand and drew him to the stairs. They were on the half landing before she realized this was the first time she’d held his hand in four years.

  Livia was curled on her side in the bed in Cordelia’s room, her arm wrapped tight round her stuffed cat Portia. Harry stopped just inside the door and stood staring at her in the glow of the tin-shaded night-light. Her chest rose rhythmically beneath the blankets. He took a cautious step forward.

  Livia stirred. “Mummy?” She rolled onto her back and blinked up at Harry. From the look on Harry’s face, Cordelia was sure Livia had given him one of her smiles. “Daddy. Is the war over?”

  “Not yet, I’m afraid.” Harry walked up to the bed. “I was able to come back to Brussels for a few hours. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “I’m glad.” Livia sat up, making the covers slither and the bed creak. “You didn’t say good-bye when you left the first time.”

  “No, I couldn’t.” Harry sat down on the edge of the bed. He seemed to be moving with great care, as though he was afraid to put a foot wrong. “I had to leave right away, you see.”

  Livia pushed herself up against the pillows. “I hate wars.”

  “So do I.”

  “There are lots of hurt men downstairs. Mummy and Aunt Suzanne and the others are taking care of them.”

  “Your mother’s being very brave. So are you.”

  Livia wrinkled her nose, the way she did when she was puzzling something out. “What else could we do?”

  “That’s what I mean, sweetheart.”

  Livia considered this a moment longer, then stretched up her arms to him. Harry leaned forward, his arms encircling her, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. A lump rose in Cordelia’s throat. The next thing she knew, her cheeks were damp.

  “You’re good at this,” she said to Harry outside in the passage.

  He gave her a crooked grin, but his eyes were veiled. Whatever he felt, he wasn’t ready to share it with her. “Liar.”

  “You know what to say so naturally. It’s taken me years.”

  She could hear voices in the hall downstairs, Malcolm’s and David’s and then Suzanne’s. This was her last moment alone with her husband. She gripped his arms. “I suppose it’s pointless to tell you to take care of yourself.”

  “On the contrary. I always do. I trust you’ll do the same.”

  “Self-preservation has always been one of my chief talents. Should worse come to worst, I doubt the French would be any harder to deal with than the London scandalmongers.”

  He gave the ghost of a smile, then stooped his head and brushed his mouth over hers. The fevered farewells of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball were a thing of the past. Somehow they seemed wrong here, with death below and waiting outside Brussels.

  He stepped back with a quick, almost embarrassed smile. She echoed the smile, equally awkward. They returned downstairs without further speech.

  The Rannochs, too, seemed to have already said their good-byes. Malcolm hugged Aline, clasped David and Simon by the hand, swung up onto his horse, and bent to give Suzanne a brief kiss. Harry merely turned to give Cordelia a last smile. She lifted her hand in farewell.

  Then she stood still and watched him ride off, imprinting on her mind what might be her last glimpse of her husband.

  43

  Cordelia managed to put on her nightdress, splash her face with water, and clean her teeth. Then she tossed and turned for what felt like hours but proved to have been barely one hour when she finally gave it up, swung her feet to the floor, and looked at the clock on the mantel. Livia was breathing deeply, her face burrowed into Portia’s fur. Cordelia smoothed the covers over her daughter, pulled on her dressing gown, and slipped into the passage.

  She could see light from the hall below. As she made her way down the stairs, she heard a faint murmur and a fretful moan, of the sort Livia made when she was feverish. A lamp and two branches of candles burned in the hall, casting a warm glow on the black and white tiles and the sheets and blankets thrown over the wounded. Suzanne Rannoch knelt beside one of the pallets, smoothing the hair of a young Belgian private.

  Cordelia knelt opposite her but said nothing until the private had drifted into sleep. Suzanne sat back on her heels and wiped a hand across her face. “Thank goodness he can sleep. It’s quite eluded me.”

  “Me too.” Cordelia glanced round the hall and saw that a sheet was pulled over the face of one of the men.

  “Robbins, the ensign from the Ninety-fifth. He died about half an hour ago,” Suzanne said in a calm voice. “It seemed unfeeling somehow to put him out in the street.”

  Cordelia found she was shaking. Suzanne touched her arm. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll make tea.”

  There was something surreal about the prosaic sight of the black iron range, the comforting glow of the coals, Suzanne filling the kettle with water and spooning tea out of a blue enamel tin. Like her nurse years ago, in a faraway world where she and Julia and Tony and George and Violet and Johnny had sat grouped round the table, exhausted from a day’s adventure but safe and secure in the warmth of home.

  The whistling of the kettle cut through her reverie. “You’d think I could hate the French,” she said. “But who’s fighting whom almost seems irrelevant.”

  An odd sort of tension shot through Suzanne’s back. “So I’ve found.” She splashed boiling water over the tea leaves, letting loose a cloud of fragrant steam.

  “If the hall were full of wounded French I suspect I’d be doing precisely the same.”

  Suzanne plopped the lid back on the teapot. “Once they’re wounded, one does what one can.” She set the teapot on the table, filled a bowl with sugar from another tin and a jug with milk from a cooler in the adjoining scullery.

  “You’re very at home in the kitchen,” Cordelia said.

  Suzanne smiled as she set out cups and saucers. “We lived in cramped lodgings when I first married Malcolm, with only Blanca and Addison to help us. And there are times when I’ve made tea over a campfire in the open air.”

  “We started out with a full complement of everything when we returned from our wedding journey.” Cordelia glanced down at her hands and the gold of her wedding band, remembering how odd it had first felt to wear it. The wedding journey itself, looking at Roman ruins in the north of England, had been pleasanter than she anticipated. Tramping about looking for potsherds had been surprising fun and had given them something to talk about. The conversations over dinner had grown a bit strained, but the nights, while not without their awkwardness, had been unexpectedly compelling. Almost disturbingly so. And then they’d returned to London and stepped into the cold formality of the house in Hill Street, the staff of eight drawn up to greet them, awaiting her orders. “But I felt rather as if we were playing at being married.”

  Suzanne dropped into a chair opposite her. “The first few months I felt as though I was”—she hesitated—“playing a part.” She picked up the teapot and filled the cups. “I think
Malcolm found it dreadfully hard to remember there was someone to wonder if he was coming home to dinner or to worry if he suddenly went off on a mission.”

  Cordelia curled her hands round her teacup. Despite the warmth of the night, she was chilled. “Saying good-bye to Harry tonight, I felt—”

  “What?” Suzanne asked.

  “Like a wife.”

  “Not a bad way to feel.”

  Cordelia lifted the cup to her lips and blew on the steam. “I think it may be the first time I’ve felt like a wife in the five years of my marriage.”

  “It’s odd what can bring the feeling home.” Suzanne splashed milk into her tea and stirred it with precise strokes. “I think the first time I felt like a wife was sitting by a camp bed where Malcolm lay wounded. We’d been married three months. It occurred to me that I could lose him. A sense of loss cut right through me, though I wasn’t sure precisely what it was I had.”

  Cordelia forced down a sip of tea. It scalded her throat. “I may never see Harry again.”

  “I may never see Malcolm again. Though it’s hardly the first time that’s been true of either of them.”

  “When Harry was in the Peninsula I was braced for news of his death with every battle. What it would mean to be a widow. What it would be like to know there was no chance he’d ever forgive me. Not that I ever thought he’d forgive me in any case.”

  “People can surprise you.”

  Cordelia shook her head. “It’s one thing to make promises at a time like this. It’s another to live with them. And I’m not the easiest person to live with in any case.”

  “I don’t imagine Colonel Davenport is, either.”

  “No.” Cordelia turned her cup between her hands. “Though in some ways—He always let me go my own way. And he was never dull.”

  “And Major Chase?”

  Cordelia choked on a sip of tea. “Of course I don’t want anything to happen to George. But what was between us is over.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Cordelia stared into her cooling tea, forcing honesty on herself. “As much as one ever fully gets over a first love.”