The Mayfair Affair

by Tracy Grant

  He stared into her eyes. The gentleness was gone. "Believe me, my darling, I'm not denying anything. I'm trying to find a way forwards."

  Honesty was what she wanted. She shouldn't flinch from it. "There have to be times you want to scream at me."

  "I've done that, as I recall." He set his glass on the chest of drawers and crossed to her side. This time he was the one who took her face between his hands. "You must have wanted to yell at me any time these past five years. Among other things, for working for a man who had so little to do with what I believed in myself, let alone what you believed in."

  He was offering her a way out, but it was too simple to take it. "You care about him."

  "My feelings for Carfax may not be as complicated as yours for O'Roarke, but they are certainly conflicted." He leaned forwards and brushed his lips across her brow. "My loyalties have changed, as well."

  She looked up at him in inquiry.

  "Because I'm loyal to you."

  Her throat closed. A traitorous pressure built behind her eyes. "You can't, Malcolm. You can't—"

  "Put personal loyalties before other loyalties? I can't help it. It's the way I am."

  She tilted her head back, afraid of what she saw in his eyes. It was a commitment that could destroy both of them. "Dearest—"

  "If that's a burden, sweetheart, it's a burden you need to learn to live with. You owe me that much."

  She shook her head. "How can I argue with that?"

  "Then don't try."

  "In some ways it was simpler—"

  "When we were on opposite sides?"

  "God help me, yes."

  He slid his fingers into her hair and lowered his mouth to hers. "Since when have we preferred things simple?"

  Chapter 15

  James was at the desk in his study when the footman showed Malcolm in. He got up and came forwards to take Malcolm's hand, but his gaze went back to the paper-strewn desk. "I only brought a fraction of Father's files back from Trenchard House yesterday, and I already feel as though I'm drowning."

  "Give yourself a few days. Unless, of course, you don't want to stop and think."

  "Spoken as one who's been here." James passed a hand over his face. "Hetty and I told the boys this morning. Not that we could really explain anything to Eddy, of course, though Hetty held him. Fitz asked if I was going to die next. I told him no, I wasn't in the least bit sick. Fitz said Grandpapa hadn't been either."

  "When Alistair was killed, Colin asked me if I cried. He said he'd cry if I died."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "That Alistair and I hadn't been as good friends as he and I were. As I hoped we always would be."

  James waved a hand towards one of two leather-covered chairs before the desk, then picked up a stack of books and dropped into the other. "I remember when I first saw Fitz lying in Hetty's arms. So tiny. So helpless. So miraculous. It hit me like a blow to the gut."

  "How much you loved him?" Malcolm asked.

  "That, yes. But also the fact that I was a father. And that I hadn't the least idea what being a father meant. My only model was Trenchard, and all he'd done was show me by example everything I didn't want to be for my son."

  "I could say the same for Alistair Rannoch." In many ways, the best example of fatherhood Malcolm had had was Raoul O'Roarke. That should be ironic. But somewhere, beneath all the revelations of the past three months, was the acknowledgement of a bond that went back to before either he or O'Roarke had known Suzanne.

  James glanced down at the signet ring on his left hand, as though it still seemed alien. "One has to invent it all from scratch. Hearing Trenchard's voice issue from my mouth is my deepest nightmare."

  "I don't think you need fear that coming to pass."

  "I hope not. But I can't deny he certainly left his imprint on me one way and another. Every so often I catch a trace of his inflection in my voice. Talk about self-loathing."

  Malcolm studied the newly made duke. "What did you and your father quarrel about two nights before he died?"

  Wariness flashed in James's usually open gaze. "Who overheard us?"

  Malcolm sidestepped the question. No need to get the Trenchard staff in trouble if he could help it. "So you don't deny you quarreled?"

  James gave a wry smile, though his gaze remained hard. "Somehow I think if I denied it that would only increase your suspicions." He leaned a hand on the desktop. "I should have realized you'd find out. I should have decided telling you was the honorable thing to do. But I told myself it would only serve as a distraction."

  "Why don't you let me be the judge of what's a distraction?"

  James glanced across the room at the gilt-framed painting over the mantel. Henrietta, Eddy in her lap, Fitz beside her. Lawrence's work undoubtedly. A similar painting of Suzanne and the children hung in the Berkeley Square house. "I almost didn't enter Parliament, you know, because I knew my doing so would fit right in with Father's plans. I could suddenly quite understand what drove Jack to rebellion. Then I realized that giving up something I wanted, to spite Father, was just another way of letting him control my life."

  "A mature decision."

  "I have flashes of them. I stood for a borough that wasn't in his gift. I was determined to be my own man. Even once I became his heir, I was determined to keep this something that was mine. As long as I stayed my own man, I told myself he couldn't touch me."

  Malcolm watched him. "And then?"

  Anger darkened James's blue eyes. "I was offered an undersecretaryship a fortnight ago. The Board of Trade."

  "My congratulations."

  "Not the most glamorous of postings perhaps, but I'm young for it. I was thrilled. Nothing like feeling one's achieved something on one's own merits."

  "But Trenchard—"

  "Used his influence to get me the posting. More than that. Resorted to blackmail. And of course, by the time I found out, I'd already accepted and couldn't back out." He grimaced. "Now that I'm Duke of Trenchard I'll have to leave the House, but I won't have to give up the posting. Irony of ironies."

  "What did Trenchard say when you confronted him?"

  "That that was the way the game was played, and I should stop being naive. I told him I'd never aspired to play his game. He called me an idealistic fool and said if it weren't for him I'd never amount to anything. He said for all his excesses, Jack had at least understood hard choices." James's fingers curled inwards against the embossed leather of the desktop. "He didn't actually say he wished I had died instead of Jack. But I've been in politics long enough to be able to read subtext."

  "It's difficult to imagine Jack in Parliament."

  "Perhaps if Father had pulled enough strings. We weren't people to him, we were pieces to be manipulated as he saw fit. He treated his family—he treated the world—as something that could be molded to his will."

  Malcolm had once accused Raoul O'Roarke of treating him and Suzanne as pawns, but he had to acknowledge now that it wasn't so simple.

  James unclenched his fingers as though with an effort. "I was angry enough to have killed him. I came closer to striking him than I thought possible. But I didn't go back into the house two nights later and shoot him. Do you believe me?"

  "I'm inclined to."

  James gave a bleak smile. "You're honest, Malcolm. A good quality in an investigator, if perhaps uncomfortable for your friends."

  James glanced round the room—the papers on the desk signed with his father's bold signature, the ducal seal beside the ink pot. "I tried. To build my own career. Hetty and I tried to build a house that's ours. To raise our children out of the Trenchard shadow. Father intruded himself on my career. And now Hetty and I are going to have to live in Trenchard House, raise our children there. Father may be gone, but there's no escaping him."

  "I didn't want to move into the Berkeley Square house," Malcolm said. "I was determined to sell it, until I realized how happy the children would be there. Where else would we have a chance of finding a hou
se that looks out on a square garden? Even then I had qualms. But Suzette redid the house, so that now it seems like ours." His enemy-agent wife, locked into a false persona, had created a home that seemed authentically theirs. That still seemed authentically theirs, for all her lies.

  "But you didn't inherit your father's position along with his house."

  "No. But power doesn't have to be used to beget more power, as Trenchard treated it. This gives you a chance to mold the dukedom into something of your own."

  "We've hardly been allies in Parliament, Rannoch."

  "No. But I respect that you believe in what you're doing."

  James inclined his head, as he might across the House of Commons in acknowledgement of a point scored. "I'm going to see Hawkins, the family solicitor, and ask him about Emily Saunders. You should come with me."

  "You're sure you want me there, Tarr—Trenchard?"

  "You'd best call me James. I can't get used to the Trenchard yet. And yes, I may not have my father's force of will, but I'm not generally in the habit of doing things I don't want to do. You're going to question me about what Hawkins has to say. You're going to question Hawkins. If I don't give you a verbatim report of the interview you'll think I'm lying and wonder why. Easier for both of us if you hear what Hawkins has to say firsthand."

  "Commendable."

  "Besides—"

  "Yes?" Malcolm asked.

  James pushed himself to his feet. "I could use the moral support."

  Mary Trenchard had had a mourning gown made up, a dull black bombazine with jet buttons on the bodice and cuffs. A duchess probably had her dressmaker prepared to produce mourning wear at the drop of a hat. But even the flat fabric couldn't disguise the bloom in the duchess's cheeks. Now the idea had struck her, Suzanne wondered how she could have been so blind.

  Mary accepted Cordelia's condolences with composure. The rawness of the night of the murder was gone. She had some—perhaps more than some—of her father's nerves of steel. All the more impressive now Suzanne knew what she might be hiding.

  "I'd offer you tea," Mary said, "but I find myself in need of something stronger. Would you like a glass of Madeira?"

  "Precisely what is called for," Cordelia said.

  "Have you come to update me on the investigation, Mrs. Rannoch?" Mary asked. "Or to ask me more questions?"

  "A bit of both." Suzanne accepted a crystal glass of Madeira engraved with the Trenchard arms. "Did you know the duke had rewritten his will?"

  The dowager duchess's hand faltered ever so slightly as she set down the decanter. "My husband was scrupulous in attending to his fortune and estates. I imagine he often adjusted his will. He had numerous children and grandchildren and other dependants to account for."

  "These changes involved taking away money that had been set aside for you."

  The duchess sank down on the sofa, back ramrod straight, glass held between her fingers. "I didn't know that. But it was his decision to make."

  "Does it surprise you?"

  "As I told you yesterday, Trenchard and I were strangers in many ways."

  Suzanne surveyed the duchess. The proud angle of her head. The rigidity of her clasped hands, the firm line of her mouth. It would take a shock to break through that iron control. "How long have you known you were pregnant?"

  Mary Trenchard's brows snapped together. "What on earth gave you the idea—"

  "The buttons on your gown strain across your chest. Your color is high and it owes nothing to rouge. You started to take a drink and put your glass down as you felt queasy."

  "Wouldn't you be queasy if your husband had just been murdered?"

  "Very likely. It doesn't explain the other indicators."

  "The impertinence—"

  "Mary," Cordelia said. "You must know enough of my marriage to know I, of all people, would understand."

  "There's nothing to understand." Mary raised her glass to her lips again, then set it down abruptly. "For God's sake, Cordy, don't paint everyone with your brush."

  "Fair enough." Cordelia's shrewd gaze reminded Suzanne of the way her friend looked at Livia and Drusilla when she was worried about them. "It's beastly," Cordelia said. "But I know Suzanne. I'd trust her with my most precious secrets. And she and Malcolm have an infernal knack at ferreting out secrets."

  Mary Trenchard drew in her breath, as though for an instinctive denial. Then the breath seemed to rush from her lungs. Her backboard-straight shoulders slumped beneath the twilled black bombazine of her gown. "I could deny it. I probably should go on denying it. But I know enough of Malcolm and Mrs. Rannoch to know you are all too right. And I'm too tired." She reached for her glass. "Of course if it were merely a grieving widow's pregnancy I'd have nothing to worry about." She set down the glass. "I've known or suspected for a month or more. I've been certain for the past fortnight. Trenchard, unfortunately, could be damnably observant, though in the general run of things I'd have sworn he scarcely looked at me."

  "This is what you quarreled about?" Suzanne asked.

  A spasm of remembered horror crossed Mary's face. "I returned home from Sally Jersey's to find him waiting for me—an unusual occurrence, but I didn't guess what he was going to say until he slammed the library door shut and actually said the words."

  "There was no possibility it could be his?" Cordelia asked in a soft voice.

  "None." The duchess set her glass down with precision. "I was stupid. I should have made sure I had that option in the event of catastrophe, but I was never very good at manipulating Trenchard, and he hadn't shown that sort of interest in me in some time. Ten to one he'd have sensed something was amiss if I'd tried to seduce him. And I couldn't bear one more pretense in a life full of them."

  A few months ago, her own life shrouded in pretense, Suzanne would have sworn the duchess was a stranger to the word. "You'd given him three children," she said. She was well enough versed in the beau monde now to know that once a wife had provided her husband with an heir—and ideally a second son—many husbands were willing to turn a blind eye to her indiscretions.

  "And even after Jack's death, he still had an heir from his first marriage. With James's two sons, and then Bobby, there was little chance another child would fall heir to the title even if it were a boy. According to many versions of the rules of our world, I should have had license to indulge myself. Not that I ever expected to, precisely. I'm not like—"

  "Me," Cordelia said.

  Mary flashed a bleak smile at her. "You were willing to go after what you wanted without caring about the consequences, Cordy. I can admire that, in a way. Though I suppose, in some ways, that's what I did myself when I married Trenchard. I was just wrong about what I wanted."

  Cordelia reached across the tea table to touch Mary's hand. "So was I," she said, obviously thinking of her first love who had later become her lover and had come close to destroying her marriage.

  Mary pressed down the lace ruffle on her sleeve. "As I told Mrs. Rannoch yesterday, I had no illusions that I was in love with Trenchard when I married him. I'd been in love, with the younger son of the curate at Carfax Court. We were foolish enough to become secretly betrothed when I was seventeen. I should probably be grateful to Father for putting an end to it before we could fall out of love, though for close on half a year I thought my life would end." She tugged at a snagged thread. "I don't think David ever knew. He was at Harrow. Louisa knew. Odd to think we were once close enough I confided in her. My other sisters were too young to confide in, though I've sometimes thought Bel suspected. In any case, by the time I made my debut, I'd decided love was a trap for the unwary to fall into. Love and everything that went with it. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I didn't appreciate everything that went with it."

  "That can take a while," Suzanne said. It had in her case, though that was because of the brutal nature of her introduction to physical intimacy.

  "I quite enjoyed the attention of being a reigning beauty. I'm sorry, I daresay that sounds arrogant
, but that's what I was. But by the time I was twenty, it was time I was married, and Trenchard could offer me position, fortune, and title greater than my father's."

  "And the safety of not risking love," Cordelia said. "Oddly enough, that's what I thought when I married Harry."

  The duchess frowned for a moment, in what seemed to be genuine consideration. "You were more fortunate in your choice than I, Cordy, though I wouldn't have said so at first. I enjoyed settling into life as Duchess of Trenchard. I enjoyed my children when they came. Trenchard's affairs piqued my vanity a bit, but didn't seriously disturb me. Whatever one thinks of one's husband, one doesn't like the idea that—"

  "One isn't enough for him," Suzanne said. She'd expected, when she married Malcolm, that he wouldn't necessarily be faithful. She'd have said she was sanguine about it. But even from the first, she knew it would have driven her mad.

  "Precisely. But there were enough other men to admire me to soothe my vanity. And admiration is all I really wanted. Then."

  "What changed things?" Cordelia asked.

  A faint smile curved her mouth. "To say 'meeting the right person' sounds unbelievably trite, doesn't it? I've never been able to bear the idea of being a cliché. And I don't really know that that's what it was. Perhaps it was something in me. I'd mastered my life as a duchess. I'd had children. Perhaps I was looking for distraction. Save that he was much more than that."

  The air in the room tightened, like the pause in a symphony before a shift into a new theme.

  "'He'?" Suzanne asked.

  "Oh no, Mrs. Rannoch." Mary Trenchard locked her gaze with Suzanne's own. "I may be foolish enough to confess on my own account, but I won't betray him. Suffice it to say, many of my blind assumptions about what mattered in life and what I needed went out the window."

  It sounded oddly like how Suzanne might describe falling in love with Malcolm. "Falling in love can do that."

  Mary drew a breath as though to protest, then swallowed. "Yes, I suppose I did fall in love. Am in love with him." Her mouth curved with irony but something like wonder trembled beneath her dry tone.

  "Does he know about the child?" Cordelia asked.