Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  Suzanne’s eyes darkened with unvoiced memories. “That’s the devil of it, isn’t it?”

  “Malcolm. Davenport.” Fitzroy Somerset, as usual, was bent over a pile of paperwork by the light of a single, guttering candle in the inn at Waterloo that served as Wellington’s temporary Headquarters. “Have you brought food?”

  “And wine.” Malcolm pulled a bottle out from under his sodden greatcoat and set it on the gateleg table. Davenport did likewise. “Where’s the duke?”

  “Asleep. I hope. I’m to call him between two and three so he can write letters. He’s been waiting all evening for news from Blücher.”

  “Still nothing?” Davenport asked.

  Fitzroy shook his head. “But Müffling continues to insist Blücher can and will support us tomorrow. So much depends on it.” A rare frown creased Fitzroy’s face.

  “Have a glass of wine.” Malcolm, having extracted the cork from one of the bottles, splashed wine into a glass and held it out to Fitzroy. “For once you almost look worried. Which is enough to send your friends into a panic.”

  Fitzroy grinned and accepted the glass.

  Malcolm stripped off his greatcoat. “I sent your message on to Harriet in Antwerp. Suzette had seen the Duchess of Richmond, who had word that Harriet’s well, as is the baby.”

  Fitzroy smiled. “Thanks.” He took a sip of wine. “The duke’s marked out a position at Mont-Saint-Jean. He would have preferred the ground on the opposite ridge at La Belle Alliance, but De Lancey thought it too extended. The emperor’s taken up the ground at La Belle Alliance. Boney had his batteries fire off some shots to try to smoke out our position, and some of our lads had the bad sense to fire back and give themselves away.”

  “And so the duke’s in a temper?” Davenport picked up a glass of wine.

  “He was. He’s calmed down a bit. Or he’s so busy he’s forgot he was angry.”

  “You back, Malcolm?” Canning strolled into the room, yawning. “Still don’t have the wit to see when you’re well out of it?”

  Malcolm took a sip of wine. “Can’t stand the thought of you lot having all the fun.”

  “Ha. You don’t believe that for a moment. I’ve heard you talk about war. Pour me a glass of that wine, will you? The beds are too damned hard for sleeping.”

  Alexander Gordon followed Canning into the room. “Is that wine? Always said you were a good man, Malcolm. For a diplomat.” He spoke in a cheerful voice. Their quarrel over why he had left Stuart’s ball might never have been. He moved to the table and accepted a glass of wine from Malcolm. “Lord, will the rain never let up? This is going to be the slowest battle ever, with all of us slogging through the mud.”

  Fitzroy looked up from his paperwork. “There’s still time for it to dry out.”

  Gordon dropped into a chair with his glass of wine. “You’re a damned optimist, Somerset.”

  “If by that you mean I’m not given to exaggerated flights of fancy, I’ll concede the point.” Fitzroy held a lump of red sealing wax over his candle.

  “You wrote to Harriet that we and the Prussians had repulsed the French.”

  Fitzroy dripped the melting wax onto his folded letter. “The French didn’t overrun us.”

  “What would you call our retreat today?” Gordon asked. “Advancing backward?”

  Fitzroy pressed a seal into the wax. “When you’re married, Gordon, you’ll understand.”

  “Malcolm is married.” Canning looked up from his wine to come to Gordon’s defense. “You wouldn’t catch him telling such a farrago to Suzanne.”

  Gordon snorted. “Suzanne wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Suzanne’s lived through battles before,” Fitzroy said. “Though she always had nerves of steel as I recall,” he added, looking at Malcolm. “Even when you first brought her to Lisbon.”

  “She’d already been through a great deal,” Malcolm said. Even more, he had learned last autumn in Vienna, than he had at first supposed.

  Gordon stretched his feet out toward the fire. “I miss Spain. Battle seemed friendlier in Spain.”

  “By the way,” Canning said, “I saw Harry Smith earlier. With Lambert’s brigade from Ghent and not long before that from America.”

  “Is Juana with him?” Malcolm asked. Juana Smith, like Suzanne, was a Spanish war bride.

  “Yes, though he’s sending her to Brussels in the morning.”

  Davenport, who had been leaning against the wall, moved toward Fitzroy. “Could I beg a sheet of writing paper?”

  “Certainly. Ink as well.”

  Davenport took the paper and ink and retired to a chair in the corner by the fireplace.

  The door opened again, letting in a gust of wind, a hail of raindrops, and Geoffrey Blackwell. “Damnable weather. It’s all I can do to keep my instruments clean.”

  “Sit down by the fire.” Canning got up to offer Blackwell his chair.

  “No, no.” Blackwell waved a hand. “I may have nearly thirty years on you, Canning, but I’m not quite decrepit. Besides, have to get back to my patients. I have a good half dozen who’ll pull through if we can stave off wound fever. Only came to see if Malcolm was back.”

  “Allie’s holding up well,” Malcolm said.

  Blackwell met his gaze and colored slightly. “Thank you.”

  “David and Simon are in Brussels. They and Suzanne and Allie and Cordelia have the house full of wounded soldiers. You trained Suzette and Allie well.”

  Blackwell gave a crisp nod. “Glad to hear it. God knows there must be need enough of nursing in Brussels.”

  Davenport crossed to Malcolm and held out a folded piece of paper. “Would you mind keeping this and giving it to Cordelia? In the event I don’t return.”

  Malcolm met his gaze for a moment. Davenport’s expression was as armored as ever, but his blue eyes looked as though they could be smashed with a word. “Of course,” Malcolm said, and tucked the letter into his pocket.

  “Thank you.” Davenport was silent for a moment. “It’s a damnable thing to find, on the eve of what’s probably going to be the worst battle in which one’s ever participated, that on the whole one would prefer not to die.”

  “I can think of another Harry who couldn’t sleep before a battle against the French. He came through well enough.”

  Davenport grinned. “ ’Fraid I’m not up to a St. Crispin’s Day speech.”

  “I don’t think it’s much Wellington’s style, either.”

  By the fireplace, Gordon let out a laugh.

  “You’re impossible,” Canning said. “I don’t know why your friends put up with you.”

  “My fellow staff officers don’t have any choice.”

  “You have friends outside the staff. In fact, it’s disgusting how many friends you have.”

  “Most of them don’t have any choice, either. Campbell and Flemming grew up with me—”

  “Will Flemming?” Malcolm asked.

  For a moment Gordon went still. Then he gave a deliberate smile, a trifle too broad. “Yes, he and Jack Campbell and I grew up on neighboring estates. Those are the friends one can never get rid of, don’t you know.”

  “Quite.” Malcolm stared at Gordon. Between them Gordon and Canning had given him a new piece of the puzzle. He reached for his greatcoat—still damp, but at least it would keep the rain off the rest of his clothes—and moved to the door.

  “Where are you off to?” Davenport asked.

  “To have a talk with George Chase.”

  Lord Uxbridge and his staff were quartered in a whitewashed cottage on Waterloo’s single street. Malcolm wouldn’t go so far as to wake George Chase the night before a battle, but he rather suspected Uxbridge’s staff, like Wellington’s, would find sleep eluded them. Sure enough, he entered a parlor choked with tobacco smoke and the smell of wet wool to find a group of Uxbridge’s officers lounging on chairs and the floor, sharing cigarillos and red wine by the flickering firelight.

  He was greeted with jokes about civilians
who didn’t know when they were well out of it, pleas for the latest news from Brussels, and an offer of wine. He laughed off the jokes, answered the questions as best he could, and declined the wine. “Actually, I was hoping for a word with you, Chase.”

  George Chase met his gaze without flinching, his face pale even in the red-orange glow of the fire. “Of course.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Shall we go outside?”

  To the accompaniment of much ribbing about fools who couldn’t stay out of the rain, Malcolm and George went out beneath the overhang of the roof. Rain dripped relentlessly from the roof and splashed against the cobblestones. The glow of candles and fires showed in the windows of the houses and thatched cottages where fortunate generals and their staffs were quartered. Few were sleeping tonight.

  George dug his shoulder into the wall. “Uxbridge called on Wellington and asked him what the plans for tomorrow were. Said he thought he ought to know as second in command. Apparently Wellington told him Bonaparte had not confided his plans in him and as Wellington’s plans depend on Boney’s, he couldn’t possibly tell Uxbridge what they were. Added some nonsense about them both doing their duty.” George scanned Malcolm’s face. “But I don’t think you asked me out here to discuss battle strategy. Have you found Tony?”

  “No. But I think I’m beginning to piece the picture together.” Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. “When you and Tony left Stuart’s ball did you meet Alexander Gordon and Will Flemming?”

  George stared at him. “How the hell do you do it?”

  “Your brother fought a duel with Will Flemming the night of Stuart’s ball.”

  George glanced to the side, then swung his gaze back to Malcolm. “They were—Damn it, Rannoch, I’ll kill you if you reveal this, but Flemming had formed a liaison with my sister-in-law.”

  “Hardly shocking given the way your brother carried on.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Not the same? No, that’s true. Your sister-in-law had license to break her vows by your brother’s betrayal. Your brother had no such excuse.”

  “Rannoch, will you stop it with your damned Radical—”

  “I don’t see what’s so radical about—”

  “So says the man with the perfect marriage and the wife who will never stray.”

  Malcolm leaned back, resting his hands against the rough whitewashed wall. “Gordon was Flemming’s second, I presume. Were you your brother’s?”

  “Obviously.”

  “You were the second in a duel—a violation of the law and Wellington’s orders—for your brother, whom you knew to be a French spy?”

  George cast a quick glance about at the word “spy.” “This had nothing to do with that. It was an affair of honor. My brother asked me to act for him. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Refuse?”

  “I couldn’t let Tony know I was on to him. Besides—”

  “You thought this sort of honor went deeper than betraying one’s country?”

  “It’s not the same—One doesn’t refuse when a friend asks such a thing of one. Let alone a brother.”

  “I think I’d refuse if Edgar asked me to be his second,” Malcolm said, though in point of fact he had fought one duel himself, much as he abhorred the practice. One duel in which he had not been the challenger.

  “Spare me your damned moralizing. You’re a gentleman. You know how these things work. Or you should.”

  “Regrettably.”

  “Well then.” A crack of lightning illumined George’s face. His well-cut features looked unusually hard.

  “Why fight the duel during the ball?” Malcolm asked over the answering roar of thunder. “As the second, you must have arranged it.”

  “Wellington and most of the senior staff would be at the ball and out of the way. Gordon and I reasoned it was as safe a time as any. If we could slip out and return quietly, no one would know we’d been gone.”

  “You were counting on your brother not actually killing Flemming?”

  “I’d been impressing upon him that honor could be satisfied simply by the meeting itself. I prayed I’d been successful.”

  “Where did you go?”

  George drew a breath. Nearby a horse whinnied. “The park. Empty at that hour. We had a surgeon present of course.”

  “And then?”

  “Tony had a restless glitter in his eye. I was terrified of what he might do. It’s not just possessiveness. I think he does love Jane. In his way.”

  “ ‘Love’ is perhaps the most bastardized word in the English language. Go on.”

  “Tony shot wide. Deliberately, I suspect. I think Flemming was trying to shoot wide as well, but his hand was shaking badly—he’d been drinking. He ended up winging Tony.”

  “Hence the blood on your brother’s coat.”

  “Quite.” George drew a weary sigh. The rough, methodical scrape of a sword being sharpened against stone sounded from inside the house. “The surgeon patched him up, and we all went back to the ball. Flemming and Gordon and the surgeon can vouch for Tony’s and my whereabouts.”

  “Our investigation into Lady Julia’s death would have been speeded along considerably if you’d told me this to begin with.”

  “For God’s sake, Rannoch, I couldn’t have told you my brother had been fighting a duel over his wife’s infidelity. You must see that.”

  “You’re protecting your traitor brother from being accused of dueling?”

  “I’m protecting my sister-in-law’s reputation, you damned idiot.”

  “I’ll do everything I can to keep Mrs. Chase out of this.”

  George looked at him for a moment and gave a curt nod. “Thank you.”

  Alexander Gordon met Malcolm’s gaze when he stepped back into the parlor in Wellington’s Headquarters.

  “You’re an idiot, Gordon,” Malcolm said.

  Gordon’s face relaxed into a grin. “Oh, well. That’s not exactly a new revelation.”

  Fitzroy lifted a paper from the table at which he was working. “A lieutenant in the Fifty-second delivered this for you a quarter hour since, Malcolm. Said he had it from a villager.”

  Malcolm took the paper and recognized the handwriting of one of his best sources within the French army, a cook in a regiment of lancers.

  “Important?” Canning asked.

  “Probably. It’s in code.” And had no doubt passed through so many hands that it would be impossible to trace it back to its source. Malcolm took the paper over to the corner where Davenport had left the ink and paper he’d used earlier and decoded the brief message.

  He looked up to find Davenport watching him.

  Malcolm folded the letter and the plaintext and tucked the papers into his cuff. “It appears I know where to find Anthony Chase.”

  44

  Sunday, 18 June

  “What the hell—”

  “I wouldn’t advise you to move, Chase. You have a sensitive part of your anatomy exposed.” Malcolm had surprised Anthony Chase when Chase stumbled into the trees near where he’d bivouacked to relieve himself. Malcolm had one arm clamped round Chase’s shoulders and a pistol held to his head.

  “Rannoch? What the devil are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same.”

  Tony was silent for a moment. A pre-dawn glow spilled through the overhanging branches. A breeze rustled through the trees, but there was no sound of humans within earshot. “I would think that would be obvious to a man in your profession. I’m on a mission.”

  “For which army?”

  Tony was silent, but Malcolm felt the tension that ran through him.

  “I know,” Malcolm said. “Your brother knows.”

  “How the devil—”

  “Lady Julia was betraying you with your brother.”

  “Julia wasn’t my mistress.”

  “Apparently she wasn’t your brother’s, either. But she was spying on you for him.”

  Tangible shock ran through Tony’s body. “She�
��No. It’s not possible.”

  “She was the perfect agent because people underestimated her. Including you. She never was your creature. She was George’s from the beginning.”

  “You can’t prove—”

  “Give it up, Chase.” Malcolm kept the pistol steady against Tony’s temple. “You’re working for the French. Your brother knew. Lady Julia knew. Now I know as well.”

  “And you came here to drag me back to face justice?” Tony’s harsh laugh echoed through the trees. “I’ll be most interested to see how you attempt to carry that off.”

  “I have no such delusions. I can’t stop you from fighting for the French. And I’m not much interested in doing so. One soldier won’t turn the tide of battle. But I can warn you that if you attempt to come back to the Allies as an agent provocateur, you’ll be arrested for treason.”

  “Point taken.”

  Malcolm studied the back of Tony’s head. The matted blond hair, the arrogant angle at which he carried himself even now. “If you’d learned Julia was a double I imagine it would have made you exceedingly angry.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “So you say.”

  “You think I’m that good an actor?”

  “Possibly. I’m still not decided about quite what you are, Chase. What gave you the idea that I knew about Truxhillo?”

  “George told me,” Tony said without hesitation. “Didn’t realize what a favor he was doing me.”

  Malcolm frowned, going over his conversations with George Chase.

  “And so of course I did want you dead,” Tony continued. “But as it happens I couldn’t have ridden to the château and shot at all of you. I was otherwise engaged.”

  “Fighting a duel with your wife’s lover.”

  Tony jerked against his hold. “How the devil—”

  “Your brother told me.”

  “Damn George.”

  “But that wouldn’t have prevented you from arranging for someone else to ambush us at the château and kill Lady Julia.”

  “I didn’t—”