by Teresa Grant
HISTORICAL NOTE
Tensions between Ultra Royalists and defeated Bonapartists still simmered in Paris in December 1816. Louis XVIII had dissolved the Chamber of Deputies in September. A chamber dominated by moderate Royalists was subsequently elected (with some electoral manipulation). Though the election of a more moderate government in the autumn had lessened the reprisals, Paris was far from a comfortable city.
No one knows precisely the state of the relationship between Talleyrand and his nephew’s wife, Dorothée, or when and how that relationship developed, but after she left her lover Count Clam-Martinitz and returned to Paris and Talleyrand’s home in 1816 she stayed with Talleyrand for the rest of his life.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Whether you are new to the world of Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch or have read the other books chronicling their adventures, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into a very special moment in their lives. Like many contemporary couples, Malcolm and Suzanne juggle the demands of parenting and the demands of their careers. A juggling act I can certainly understand as the mother of a little girl who is nineteen months old as I write this (typing on my phone while she plays at the play park). Only in Malcolm and Suzanne’s case, the demands of their careers involve being Intelligence Agents. Those tensions are particularly apparent in this story surrounding the birth of their daughter, but they have been part of the series and of Malcolm’s and Suzanne’s lives from the start.
It’s not a huge spoiler to say that Suzanne was pregnant with their son, Colin, in His Spanish Bride. Even in the early weeks of Suzanne’s pregnancy, Colin played a key role in the events of that story and in Malcolm and Suzanne marrying. They will continue to juggle being parents and spies when they move their growing young family to Britain. Of course Malcolm thinks he is leaving the intelligence service and Suzanne thinks she left spying after Waterloo, but as Talleyrand and Harry warn Malcolm, one can never really retire from the intelligence game. The repercussions of the Napoleonic Wars ripple through the Britain in which Suzanne and Malcolm and their children take up residence. The accumulated debt of years of war burdens the country. Soldiers returned from fighting abroad, many of them less than whole, flood the labor market. New factories draw people to cities but also destroy livelihoods and lead to the machine breaking by Luddites. The Tory government is quick to try to quash any dissent, which they see as one step towards revolution.
The next book in the series, The Berkeley Square Affair, begins with a mystery that is seemingly literary—a manuscript that may be a lost version of Hamlet. But when Malcolm and Suzanne’s friend, the playwright Simon Tanner, is attacked bringing the manuscript to them at their Berkeley Square house, the Rannochs realize the play is more than a literary gem. In fact, it may conceal the name of a Bonapartist spy.
In Britain, Malcolm is once again surrounded by the family he fled when he joined the diplomatic corps and became an Intelligence Agent to escape the ghosts of his past. His aunt, Lady Frances Dacre-Hammond (the sister of his late mother, Lady Arabella, who has been referenced often in the series), and his grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon (a reclusive Shakespearean scholar), play important roles in the book. It was fun for me as an author to explore them as characters and to explore Malcolm in the context of his family.
Another character who has hung over the series from afar makes an actual appearance for the first time in The Berkeley Square Affair—Lord Carfax, Malcolm’s spymaster and the unofficial head of British intelligence. Carfax came to Malcolm’s aid when Malcolm needed to leave Britain. Malcolm knows he is in the earl’s debt. He has respect and perhaps even affection for Carfax, but he doesn’t trust him. Carfax is also the father of Malcolm’s friend David. David is Simon Tanner’s lover, though Carfax wants his son to marry and produce an heir, adding to the tensions. Suzanne’s former spymaster, Raoul O’Roarke, is also in London and though he is actually trying not to pull Suzanne back into the world of espionage, of course things don’t work out that way. . . .
The Berkeley Square Affair continues the story of Suzanne’s friend and fellow agent, the actress Manon Caret, whom Suzanne and Raoul helped escape Paris ahead of Fouché’s agents in The Paris Affair. And recurring characters in the series once again play a prominent role, notably Simon and David and Harry and Cordelia. One of the things I love about writing a series is chronicling the lives and interactions of a whole world of characters. Including watching their children grow. Because of course the juggling act of being parents and spies continues....
Happy Reading!
Tracy
Photo © Raphael Coffey Photography http://www.raphaelcoffey.com
Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch’s adventures
in espionage and investigation continue
in Teresa Grant’s new historical mystery
THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR
A Kensington trade paperback and e-book
on sale April 2014!
Prologue
London
November 1817
The lamplight shone against the cobblestones, washing over the grime, adding a glow of warmth. Creating an illusion of beauty on a street that in the merciless light of day would show the scars and stains of countless carriage wheels, horse hooves, shoes, pattens, and boots. Much as stage lights could transform bare boards and canvas flats into a garden in Illyria or a castle in Denmark.
Simon Tanner turned up the collar of his greatcoat as a gust of wind, sharp with the bite of late November, cut down the street, followed by a hail of raindrops. His hand went to his chest. Beneath his greatcoat, beneath the coat he wore under it, he could feel the solidity of the package he carried, carefully wrapped in oilskin. Were it not for that tangible reminder, it would be difficult to believe it was real.
He’d hardly had a settled life. He’d grown up in Paris during the fervor of the French Revolution and the madness of the Reign of Terror. Here in England, his plays had more than once been closed by the Government Censor. He’d flirted with arrest for Radical activities. He and his lover risked arrest or worse by the very nature of their relationship. But Simon had never thought to touch something of this calibre.
He held little sacred. But the package he carried brought out something in him as close to reverence as was possible for one who prided himself on his acerbic approach to life.
The scattered raindrops had turned into a steady downpour, slapping the cobblestones in front of him, dripping off the brim of his beaver hat and the wool of his greatcoat. He quickened his footsteps. For a number of reasons, he would feel better when he had reached Malcolm and Suzanne’s house in Berkeley Square. When he wasn’t alone with this discovery and the attendant questions it raised.
He started at a sound, then smiled ruefully as the creak was followed by the slosh of a chamber pot being dumped on the cobblestones—mercifully a dozen feet behind him. He was acting like a character in one of his plays. He might be on his way to see Malcolm Rannoch, retired (or not so retired) Intelligence Agent, but this was hardly an affair of espionage. In fact, the package Simon valued so highly would probably not be considered so important by others.
He turned down Little Ormond Street. He was on the outskirts of Mayfair now. Even in the rain-washed lamplight the cobblestones were cleaner, the pavements wider and neatly swept free of leaves and debris. The clean, bright glow of wax tapers glinted behind the curtains instead of the murky yellow light of tallow candles. Someone in the next street over called good night to a departing dinner guest. Carriage wheels rattled. Simon turned down the mews to cut over to South Audley Street and then Berkeley Square. Another creak made him pause, then smile at his own fancifulness. David would laugh at him when he returned home and shared his illusions of adventure.
He walked through the shadows of the mews, past whickering horses and the smells of dung and saddle soap and oiled leather. The rain-soaked cobblestones were slick beneath his shoes. A dog barked. A carriage clattered down South Audley Street at the end of the mews. It wa
s probably just the need to share his discovery that made him so eager to reach Malcolm and Suzanne. If—
The shadows broke in front of him. Three men blocked the way, wavering blurs through the curtain of rain.
“Hand it over,” a rough voice said. “Quiet like, and this can be easy.”
Lessons from stage combat and boyhood fencing danced through Simon’s head. He pulled his purse from his greatcoat pocket and threw it on the cobblestones. He doubted that would end things, but it was worth a try.
One man started forwards. The man who had spoken gave a sharp shake of his head. “That isn’t what we want and you know it.”
Acting could be a great source of defense. Simon fell back on the role of the amiable fool. “Dear me,” he said, “I can’t imagine what else I have that you could want.”
The man groaned. “Going to make this hard, are you?”
Simon rushed them. He had no particular illusions that it would work. But he thought he had a shot.
Until he felt the knife cut through his greatcoat.
1
Malcolm Rannoch glanced up from his book and tilted his head back against the bronze velvet of the Queen Anne chair. “There was a time when I thought we’d never have a quiet night at home.”
Suzanne Rannoch regarded her husband over the downy head of their almost one-year-old daughter, Jessica, who was flopped in her arms, industriously nursing. “There was a time when I thought we’d never have a quiet night.”
His gray eyes glinted in the candlelight. “Sweetheart, are you complaining of boredom?”
“You mean do I miss outwitting foreign agents, getting summoned by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh at all hours, sitting up into the morning decoding documents, dodging sniper fire, and taking the occasional knife to my ribs?”
Malcolm picked up the whisky glass on the table beside him. “Something like that.”
Suzanne glanced round the library. Warm oak paneling, shimmering damask upholstery, gilded book spines. Velvet curtains covering leaded-glass windows that looked out on the leafy expanse of Berkeley Square. She had never thought to live in such luxury. Or such security. “Do you miss it?” she asked.
“Sometimes.” Malcolm took a sip of whisky. One of the things she loved about him was his uncompromising honesty. “But there are compensations. Like not worrying about my family.”
The family she had once never thought to have. Jessica tucked warmly in her arms. Their four-year-old son, Colin, asleep upstairs in the nursery. Berowne, the cat Malcolm had found in Paris as a scrawny kitten, now sleek and well fed, curled up on Malcolm’s lap. All the reasons she had to preserve her improbable life here in Britain.
Jessica stirred and stretched, her arms reaching over her head, her legs kicking the fluted arm of the sofa on which Suzanne sat. Suzanne smoothed her daughter’s sparse hair. Jessica still had the high, hairless forehead of an Elizabethan lady, but she had enough hair now that Suzanne could ruffle it with her finger. The candlelight glinted off a bright gold that might one day darken to Malcolm’s leafy umber, mixed with strands of Suzanne’s own walnut brown. A year ago, when Jessica was born, they had lived in Paris. Malcolm had been a diplomat, not a Member of Parliament. A diplomat and an Intelligence Agent. A spy, though he didn’t like to use the word. From Spain, where he and Suzanne had met in the midst of the Peninsular War, to the Congress of Vienna, to Brussels before Waterloo and Paris after, they had shared adventures and intrigue and often been one step ahead of danger. Sometimes not even that. They both had scars inside and out to prove it. Those exploits seemed a world away from this house in Mayfair and their life among London’s beau monde, where Malcolm was an M.P. and she was . . . a political hostess? She still wasn’t sure how to define herself.
“Unfair,” she said, putting a touch of raillery in her voice. She tried never to let him see her qualms about the way their life had changed, because she knew it worried him, and she owed him so much already. “You’ve played the trump card. How can I say anything weighs in the scales beside the children’s safety?”
“But I owned to missing the excitement as well.” Malcolm rubbed Berowne’s silver gray ears. “Though I don’t miss being at Carfax’s beck and call.”
Suzanne pictured Lord Carfax’s sharp-boned face and the piercing gaze he could shoot over the frame of his spectacles. “Lord Carfax is a spymaster. He never—”
“—really lets his agents go. Quite. With another man one might call it kindness that he hasn’t demanded my services yet. With Carfax it makes me wonder what he’s up to.” Malcolm stroked the cat’s head while his gaze moved from the glass-fronted bookcase that held his first editions to the lamplight spilling onto the library table, softening and illuminating the chestnut-veined Carrara marble. “I never thought this house would seem so like a home. You’ve worked wonders.”
The house, a small jewel set on this exclusive square, had been Malcolm’s father’s until his death last summer. It was filled with memories of Malcolm’s childhood that Suzanne still did not fully understand. Malcolm, she knew, had had mixed feelings about living here. He’d been inclined to sell the house at first. When they walked through it, still filled with Alistair Rannoch’s furniture and art treasures, she’d seen the memories cluster behind Malcolm’s eyes, more painful than sweet. But he’d looked out at the railed square garden overhung by leafy plane trees, a rare bit of greenery in the city. Perfect for the children, he’d said. How could they not raise Colin and Jessica here given the chance? So Suzanne had set about ordering new paper and paint, choosing new upholstery and wall hangings, sketching new moldings, and conferring with the builders about which walls they could knock down.
“It was good to have a project,” she said. In truth, it had saved her sanity as she adjusted to life among the British beau monde—Malcolm’s world, where she would always be an outsider—and struggled to come to terms with everything she had given up.
The smile he flashed her was filled with understanding. “It will get easier. Living here in London. Finding a scope for your talents.”
She nodded. Malcolm understood so much and could read her so well. But there were things he couldn’t understand. Such as just how much she was missing from her old life or the reasons that even in the heart of Mayfair she would never truly feel safe. For her husband, the man she had married out of necessity and come to love so much it frightened her, didn’t know she had been a Bonapartist agent when they met. That she had married him to spy for the French. That she had gone on doing so for the first three years of their marriage. That even now, more than two years after she had made the choice to leave off spying, she felt the tug of divided loyalties. That she lived with the constant fear of discovery, like the nagging pain of a headache that never went away or the gnawing ache of a half-healed wound.
For every day of their marriage she lied to her husband. And the best she could hope for was that she could preserve the lie for the rest of their lives.
“I don’t have any regrets,” she said. Like so much of what she said to her husband, it was a half truth. She didn’t regret for a moment her marriage, her children, the life they were building here in Britain. But when she thought back over the past five years, regrets clustered thick and fast.
Berowne rolled onto his back on Malcolm’s lap. Malcolm rubbed the cat’s stomach. “I’d say we were tempting fate, save that I don’t believe in fate. But our life has a way of not staying settled for long.”
“It’s different now.”
“To a degree. Much as I like to claim I’m my own master, once an agent, always an agent.”
That ought to have been funny. Save that it tore at her throat. She stroked Jessica’s tiny hand. Jessica’s fingers curled round her own, the way they had when she was a squirming newborn. Suzanne tried to savor moments such as this. To commit to memory the boneless weight of the child in her arms, the tug of the small mouth at her breast, the soft translucence of Jessica’s skin, and the web of veins sho
wing at the temple. The glint in Malcolm’s eyes, the angle of his head, the way his long fingers moved over the cat’s fur. The rumble of Berowne’s purr and the sight of his head lolling off Malcolm’s knee. To store the memories up against whatever the future might hold. No matter what Suzanne missed from her old life, no matter the fears she lived with, five years ago she could never have thought she’d find such contentment simply sitting in lamplit quiet, with the patter of the rain on the windows, her baby at her breast, and the steady warmth of her husband’s smile. That counted for a lot. Perhaps she should—
A thud on the window glass cut through the candle-warmed air. Malcolm dropped his book. Suzanne nearly dropped Jessica. Malcolm sprang to his feet, disrupting Berowne, and put himself between Suzanne and Jessica and the window. Suzanne tightened her arms round Jessica. Old defensive instincts sprang to life, like hairs responding to a shock of electricity. The Berkeley Square house, still so new, had perhaps never felt so much like home as now, when it was threatened.
Berowne hissed and arched his back. The window scraped against the sash. Malcolm snatched up a silver candlestick. Jessica released Suzanne’s breast and let out a squawk.
“It’s all right.” A slurred, strained voice came from the window. “It’s me.”
Malcolm exchanged a look with Suzanne. “Simon?”
They both ran to the window. Malcolm pushed the sash up the rest of the way and extended a hand to haul Simon Tanner, muddy and dripping rainwater, over the sill.
Simon had lost his hat and his greatcoat was soaked and caked with mud round the bottom. His straight dark hair was plastered to his forehead. And—
“You’re bleeding,” Suzanne said.
“Scratches.” Simon pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and grinned at her with his habitual nonchalance. “Sorry for the dramatic entrance. I may not have your skills at espionage, but it seemed safer not to use the front door. Not that I think they were actually trying to kill me, but they didn’t seem too concerned about collateral damage.”