Teresa Grant

by Imperial Scandal

  “For what it’s worth, Cordelia’s been every bit as distressed these past days as you seem to be.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” Violet bit her lip. “Of course I’m pleased Colonel Davenport is recovering.” She stared into her tea for a moment. “Do you think he and Cordelia will actually patch things up?”

  “I don’t know. But they each clearly still have strong feelings when it comes to the other.”

  Violet hunched her shoulders, gaze on her tea. “Do you think one can ever get to the point where one forgets the horrid things a person has done?”

  Suzanne took a sip from her own teacup and swallowed, hard. “Not forgets, perhaps, but finds one isn’t sorry to remember.”

  “Forgiveness.” Violet drew out the word, as though it was a foreign concept she couldn’t quite comprehend.

  “It’s amazing what people can manage to forgive.” Assuming they knew enough to even attempt to try.

  Violet wiped at a trace of tea on the side of her cup. “I said some beastly things to Johnny when he got engaged to Julia. I can be horrid when I’m in a temper, and I was in a dreadful one. I think I wanted to provoke him into being angry back, so I’d have an excuse to hate him. Instead he just looked at me with this puzzled expression and said he’d never meant to hurt me. I saw something die in his eyes then. It was one thing when he chose Julia over me. This was worse. Like I wasn’t the person he’d thought me to be.” She cupped both hands round her teacup and took a quick swallow. “I don’t think Johnny hates me anymore, but I don’t know that he’ll ever forgive me for that.”

  Suzanne choked back an hysterical laugh. “I very much doubt anything you said could be unforgivable, Miss Chase.”

  “You don’t know. Not that it matters if he’s all right. I swear I won’t mind. That is, I’ll try my best not to let it show.” She tugged at the ribbons on her hat and jerked it from her head. “When Johnny chose Julia I thought if he ever loved me in the future it wouldn’t matter to me. How wrong I was.”

  Suzanne knew that Malcolm wouldn’t have married her if he hadn’t thought she’d been left orphaned and penniless by the war. Which he wouldn’t have thought if she hadn’t lied to him in the course of a mission. And yet for nearly a year now, she’d known, with a bone-deep certainty, that she loved him. And since last autumn in Vienna, she’d known he loved her. Or at least the woman he thought she was.

  “Miss Chase—” Suzanne hesitated, a dozen possible platitudes trembling on her lips. “Try not to be too hard on yourself.”

  Violet gave a lopsided smile. “That sounds so ridiculously sensible.”

  “Mother’s logic.”

  A rap sounded on the door. “Forgive me, madame,” Brigitte said. “But there’s a gentleman asking for you. Captain Ashton.”

  Violet gasped and nearly dropped her teacup. A moment later, John Ashton stepped over the threshold and gave a formal bow. “Mrs. Rannoch. Forgive the interruption. I’ve only just got leave. I saw Robbie in the hall. I wanted to thank you for your kindness—”

  He broke off as his gaze fell on Violet, who had pushed herself to her feet.

  “Johnny—” Violet stretched out a hand, then let it fall to her side. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “Unlike so many poor devils. Violet, I’m so sorry. That is—”

  She gave a quick nod. “We know Tony was killed. Cordelia sent word.”

  “He took a bayonet thrust that should have killed me.”

  Violet’s eyes widened. “I don’t—”

  “Nor do I. But I’ll be forever grateful to him.”

  Suzanne moved to the door. “I should check on the children. Do have some tea, Captain Ashton. Miss Chase, I know I can rely upon you to look after him.”

  Ashton and Violet emerged from the study twenty minutes later, not touching but with a certain intimacy in the way Ashton held the door and Violet walked beside him, almost brushing his shoulder. Ashton knelt beside Robbie again while Violet hung back, gaze fixed on the two of them. “Tony sent Johnny back to me,” she murmured to Suzanne. “That is, he sent him back. I don’t understand—”

  “Nor do I,” Suzanne said. “I’d simply be grateful for what you can salvage from the wreckage.”

  When Ashton joined them, Suzanne offered to take him up to see Cordelia and Harry. But she hesitated at the base of the stairs, her hand on the newel post. “Captain Ashton. Did your wife ever say anything to you about Amelia Beckwith?”

  “Amy?” It wasn’t Ashton who responded, it was Violet. “What on earth does she have to do with any of this?”

  “I’m not sure,” Suzanne said. “But she and Lady Julia were confidantes.”

  “Yes, of course,” Violet said. “We were all friends. But it was years ago.” She moved toward the stairs then paused, fingering a fold of her muslin skirt. “It seems beastly now, but I was quite jealous of Amy. I think Julia was as well.”

  “Jealous?” Suzanne said.

  “She kept claiming she knew what love was, while we were still stumbling about in the dark. She got all mysterious about it.” Violet frowned. “And then at a party at Carfax House—it must have been just a fortnight or so before she died—she told me she’d thought she’d understood love, but it was so much more complicated than she’d ever guessed. That real love wasn’t a fairy tale with a prince, it was finding a man one couldn’t live without. After she died I wondered who on earth she’d been talking about. I asked Julia about it once, but she just went all quiet and changed the subject.”

  “I remember Amelia, of course,” Ashton said. “Julia was most distressed when she died. But I don’t recall Julia mentioning Amy in recent years. That is—”

  “What?” Suzanne asked.

  Ashton frowned at the molding on the wall opposite. “She did mention Amelia once. It was just after we came to Brussels. We’d come home from the Marquise d’Assche’s. The first time we’d seen you and Rannoch in Brussels. Julia was taking a candle to go upstairs. She looked at me over the candle flame, and she said it was odd, she scarcely knew Malcolm Rannoch, yet he and she were the only two people Amy had confided in. She went upstairs before I could ask more.” He cast a glance at Violet, then looked back at Suzanne. “I didn’t realize Rannoch had known Amy that well.”

  “Nor did I,” Suzanne said.

  Suzanne met Malcolm in the hall on his return to the house half an hour later. “Darling. Amelia Beckwith. I think I know—”

  He nodded. “So do I. I need you to come with me. I can’t take Davenport in his condition.”

  “No,” Suzanne agreed. “But we need to take Cordelia.”

  George Chase looked from Malcolm to Suzanne to Cordelia across the confines of the sitting room in his house in Brussels. In the early evening light spilling through the windows, Suzanne could see the pulse beating in his forehead. His eyes had a hurt, bewildered look one would swear was genuine. “I told you, Billy—”

  “Billy swears he and Miss Beckwith weren’t lovers in the physical sense,” Malcolm said.

  “And you believe him?”

  “In this case, yes.”

  George spun away and strode across the room, boot heels thudding against the Aubusson carpet. “The more fool you.”

  “You called me bienne aimée,” Cordelia said. Her voice was as raw as an oozing wound.

  “Of course I did.” George turned to look at her, gaze open and desperate. Despite everything she knew and suspected, for an instant Suzanne almost felt sorry for him. “I meant it.”

  “You’d never called me that before. And you only did it in your sleep. When you were tossing with troubled dreams.” Cordelia drew a hard breath. “I don’t think you were talking to me at all.”

  “That’s absurd—”

  “She threatened everything you’d built for yourself.” Cordelia stared at her former lover as though she scarcely recognized him. “Annabel, your secure fortune, your position in society, your military career—”

  “For God
’s sake, Cordy, no.” He lurched across the room and seized her shoulders. “It wasn’t Annabel at all. I’d seen you. At your parents’ house, before you and Davenport left for the Lake District. I knew I had to have you back. I couldn’t let anything stand in the way.”

  Cordelia jerked out of his hold and took a stumbling step backward, eyes dark with revulsion. “Oh, my God.”

  “Cordy—”

  Cordelia spun away and threw up into a Chinese vase on the table by the door. Suzanne put her arms round her friend’s shoulders. Cordelia shuddered, as though her body could scarcely contain the horror of the realization.

  “Billy was with his parents and then at a house party,” Malcolm said, voice cool and controlled . “Amy was probably anxious, afraid he’d throw her over. You were there to comfort her. You were probably at Carfax Court a great deal to confer with Carfax. Amy told Violet real love wasn’t a fairy-tale prince, it was finding a man one couldn’t live without. Billy was the fairy-tale prince. You were the man she couldn’t live without. And then she told you she was pregnant.”

  “And you—” Cordelia pulled away from Suzanne and spun round to face George. For a moment she simply stood there, holding him with her gaze. Something turned to ashes in the air between them. Not just an old love, but bonds that stretched back to childhood. “You killed her because she threatened the perfect life you’d built for yourself.”

  “No.” The word seemed to be ripped from George Chase’s throat. He stumbled toward Cordelia and stopped a hand’s breadth away. “I told Amy we’d have to keep it secret, that there was no way out of my marriage to Annabel. Amy was distraught. When I tried to comfort her, she jerked away. She slipped. There’d been frost the night before. The ground was slippery. I reached for her, but she fell into the lake.”

  “And you didn’t try to rescue her.” Cordelia’s voice was flat as hammered metal.

  “I couldn’t—”

  “Don’t, George.” Cordelia gripped her elbows. Her gaze was sick with self-disgust.

  “Amy had confided in Julia that she was pregnant,” Malcolm said in the same calm voice. “I think in Brussels these past weeks Julia somehow realized you must have been the father. Did Julia threaten to reveal what she knew when she wanted out of the spy business?”

  George drew a breath but bit back whatever he had been about to say.

  “But Julia was wrong about one thing,” Malcolm said. “I wasn’t the other person Amy had confided in about her predicament.”

  Fear and surprise flickered in George’s gaze. “I never—”

  “You told your brother I knew about Truxhillo.”

  “I thought—”

  “You couldn’t have thought anything of the sort.” Malcolm took a step toward the other man. “Because I didn’t know about it. But you wanted to get rid of me.”

  George stared at him, face set in hard lines. “You can’t possibly know that.”

  “It makes sense of the facts. Julia told her husband I was the only other person Amy had confided in. But I wasn’t.”

  George squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t play games, Rannoch. Julia said Amy had told David’s best friend.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Malcolm said.

  Suzanne sucked in her breath. “Simon.”

  “Of course. That’s how Amy would have thought of him.” Malcolm looked at George. “And based on that you decided to have your brother get me out of the way. So you told Tony I knew about Truxhillo. And when Tony tried to embroil Julia in his efforts to get rid of me, you told Julia to play along. That you’d make sure I wasn’t actually killed. But Julia decided she wanted out. So you decided to get rid of both of us.”

  George returned Malcolm’s gaze, his own as well defended as an infantry square. Beneath his desperation was a hardened agent. And a killer. “You can’t possibly prove any of that.”

  “Not in a court of law perhaps.”

  Cordelia was still staring fixedly at her former lover. “I don’t know why I never saw how weak you are,” she said in a low voice. “You always took the easy way out. Marrying Annabel. Letting me convince you to go back to her. I don’t know whether or not I could have survived in genteel poverty. But I’m quite sure you couldn’t.”

  George’s gaze jerked back to Cordelia. Something broke in the depths of his eyes. Suzanne had seen that look in the eyes of the wounded when they realized they were dying. “Cordy, I know I’ve lost—”

  “I don’t know if this makes things easier for you, George.” Cordelia folded her arms in front of her. Her voice was harsh, the voice of one stripped of her last illusions. “God knows I don’t want to make things easier for you. But for what it’s worth, you lost me long since. I’m in love with my husband.”

  David pushed himself to his feet, spun away, and slammed his fist down on a mahogany table, sending two books thudding to the floor. “I’d like to kill him.”

  “But you won’t.” Malcolm got to his feet and went to his friend’s side. “I know how you feel, David. Believe me. I felt much the same when we learned the truth about Tatiana Kirsanova’s death last autumn. But I didn’t act on those feelings, and you won’t, either.”

  “Because I’m better than that?” David’s mouth twisted.

  “Yes. And because there’s no point in compounding the tragedy by ruining your life and bringing scandal on your family.”

  David drew a breath of frustration. “My family—”

  “And because you wouldn’t do that to Simon.”

  David cast a quick glance at his lover. Simon looked steadily back at him.

  Cordelia pushed herself to her feet. They were in Harry’s bedchamber, gathered round his bed. Suzanne remained seated beside the bed and watched Harry and Simon, their gazes trained on Cordelia and David.

  “I wanted to kill him myself,” Cordelia said, touching David’s arm. “You have no idea how badly. But it would have served little purpose. And we’ll never know for a certainty if George set up the ambush that killed Julia or if it was Tony manipulated by George.”

  “And that matters?” David demanded.

  “I’m afraid if Johnny thought George was responsible for Julia’s death he wouldn’t be able to refrain from violence. He’d ruin his life. And any chance he and Violet have of salvaging something from the tragedy.”

  David swallowed. His hands were curled into fists, but his shoulders were a fraction less tense. “So you want Ashton to blame Miss Chase’s other brother?”

  Cordelia moved back to the bed. “Tony died saving Johnny. That will make it easier for all of them to live with.”

  Harry twined his fingers round her hand.

  David strode back to the bed and stood beside Simon. “I can’t bear the thought of him getting away with it.”

  “He won’t.” Harry exchanged a look with Malcolm. “We’ll make sure Wellington knows. And your father.”

  David shook his head, his jaw set. “There’s not enough proof to bring him to justice.”

  “But his career will be over,” Malcolm said. “You know how your father works. When Chase shows his face in England, he’ll find himself quietly blackballed in society.”

  David’s mouth curled. “So being thrown out of White’s constitutes punishment?”

  “For a man who values his position as much as George does,” Cordelia said.

  “Chase will be assigned to a backwater with no chance of advancement or sent into danger,” Harry said. “Or both.”

  Malcolm put a hand on David’s shoulder. “It may not be your idea of justice, David. Or mine. But between them your father and Wellington will see to it Chase’s life isn’t worth living.”

  51

  Tuesday, 20 June

  Cordelia dropped into a leather armchair in the study beside Suzanne and reached for the teapot. “I’m not sure what happened to the man I married. He seems to have vanished. There’s a damnably optimistic stranger lying in my bed upstairs.”

  Suzanne watched as Cordelia poured a cup
of tea with fierce concentration. “What’s Harry saying?”

  “A lot of nonsense about the past not mattering. And that he wants me despite everything.” Cordelia set down the teapot, spattering drops of tea on the tabletop.

  “War can change people.”

  “In Harry’s case it seems to have driven him mad.” Cordelia grabbed the milk jug. “The idea that we could ever forget—”

  “Perhaps you’ll find you don’t mind remembering.” Suzanne thought back to her own wedding day. The close air in the embassy sitting room that served as a chapel, Malcolm’s hand shaking slightly as he slid the ring onto her finger, her own hand trembling as she signed the marriage lines. Despite her torn feelings about why she had entered into her marriage, it was not an unhappy memory.

  “Nothing can change the fact that our marriage was badly begun.” Cordelia stirred her tea, clattering the spoon against the eggshell porcelain. “I took dreadful advantage of Harry. I married him for his money.”

  “A number of people marry for love and fall out of it. I don’t see why the reverse can’t be possible.”

  Cordelia drew a sharp breath. “And if Livia ever learns that George might be—”

  “Her father?” Suzanne’s fingers tightened round her teacup. Difficult to believe their confrontation with George Chase had been only yesterday. “Given what you’ve already been through, I think you and Harry will be able to handle that.”

  Cordelia flung down the spoon. “I don’t—”

  “Deserve him?” Suzanne bit back a bitter laugh. “Dearest, haven’t you learned that no one gets what they deserve? Which is a very good thing for some of us.”

  Cordelia reached for her teacup. “Yes, but—”

  The door from the passage was flung open. Rachel pushed through, then slammed the door shut behind her and leaned against the panels. “Henri’s gone mad.”

  Cordelia set down her teacup. “Him too?”

  “What’s he done?” Suzanne asked.