The Berkeley Square Affair (Malcolm & Suzanne Rannoch) (34 page)

Somewhere, at some point, in the midst of the pretense, in the midst of living within the shell of a persona, she’d become someone entirely different. No, not entirely. But different enough she wasn’t sure who that person was herself. So how could she possibly explain to Malcolm?

She’d given him a first edition of Ludlow’s memoirs for their first Christmas. And a watch for their second. Engraved with a quote from
Romeo and Juliet: My bounty is as boundless as the sea, /My love as deep. /The more I give to thee, the more I have / For both are infinite.
Overly romantic perhaps. But it had seemed to fit the woman she was pretending to be. And it had summed up feelings she hadn’t been able to put into words. Not then.

And now she had lost the chance that he would ever believe them.

CHAPTER 28

Harry and Cordelia were already seated in the Rannoch box at the Tavistock when Malcolm, Suzanne, and Strathdon arrived. Suzanne felt the keenness of the Davenports’ gazes beneath their welcoming smiles. Could they tell something was wrong or was it just her overactive imagination? God knew both Harry and Cordy were sharp-eyed observers.

Harry got up to pull out a chair for Suzanne at the rail beside Cordelia. “You look lovely,” he said.

That settled it. Suzanne sank into the chair, flashed Harry a smile, then kept her gaze on her skirt as she settled the folds, a web of black net over champagne satin. Harry definitely knew something was wrong. Compliments were not at all in his usual line.

“All this talk about the
Hamlet
manuscript has given me an appetite for the theatre,” Cordelia said, voice just a shade too bright.

“Indeed.” Strathdon dropped into a chair beside Harry.

“You actually deign to attend plays written in this century, Duke?” Cordelia asked with a smile.

Strathdon returned the smile. He might have his head in his books most of the time, but he was not above noticing a pretty woman. “I’ve known Simon Tanner since he was an undergraduate. Always was clever. And he has a gift for language. Acknowledges Shakespeare as an inspiration as well. Good to remember the theatre is a living, breathing thing and not remain mired in the sixteenth century.”

“Much as I like
Hamlet,
I’m rather glad tonight is a comedy.” Harry dropped back into his chair. “Much-needed leavening if we can manage to laugh.”

“And you have a chance to look at Manon Caret,” Cordelia said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her husband returned, straight-faced but a gleam in his eyes.

“It’s all right, dearest. I don’t mind your looking.”

God. Harry and Cordy could actually joke about infidelity.
It seemed impossible to imagine being at that point. Suzanne heard Malcolm settle himself in the chair beside Harry.

“Ah, to be young,” Strathdon said.

“My grandfather may claim to be immune,” Malcolm said, “but he got Suzanne to arrange a private interview with Mademoiselle Caret after the performance.”

They had got through dinner by leaving the talk primarily to Strathdon. Fortunately, the manuscript and his and Aline’s discovery provided plentiful food for conversation. How much, if anything, Strathdon sensed had been difficult to tell. He was the sort who might choose to ignore personal undercurrents even if perfectly well aware of them. The easy facility of his commentary on the Tavistock versus Drury Lane and favorite
Hamlet
productions at both perhaps indicated that he knew something was required to fill the void. Or perhaps simply indicated that
Hamlet
was on his mind.

Suzanne lifted her opera glasses and turned her gaze to the other boxes. Looking and being looked at. The way of the world in the beau monde. Caroline and William Lamb had just come into a box across the theatre. Lady Caroline was leaning eagerly over the rail to speak to someone in the next box, the lilac ribbons on her filmy gown fluttering in her enthusiasm. William stood at the back of the box speaking with Lord John Russell. The distance between the Lambs was palpable, far greater than a few feet of velvet and gilding. Was that how she and Malcolm would now appear in public? Or did they have sufficient skills to carry off what was probably the greatest masquerade of both their careers?

The curtain rang up. The theatre was as close as she had to a childhood home. Usually, whatever crisis they were in, she could capture at least a small bit of that magic when the lights dimmed. Tonight the words swept over her and the actors were a blur. It was
The Invalid Marriage,
one of her favorite of Simon’s comedies, but perhaps not the play for her to focus on tonight. Difficult to see the humor in anyone’s marital difficulties. She managed to keep her gaze fixed on the stage, to laugh and clap at the appropriate moments. She was vaguely aware that Manon was giving a particularly exhilarating performance. Sometimes a crisis could bring out the best in an actor.

The curtain came down on the first act. The stir of getting up and moving into the salon at least provided distraction. Malcolm moved off, in search of Crispin, she knew. Strathdon was detained by Lord Holland. Harry went to procure champagne. Suzanne both welcomed and dreaded being alone with Cordelia, but Simon stopped beside them before either was forced to speak.

“Dearest Simon.” Cordelia leaned forwards to kiss him. “It’s a splendid play.”

“You’re too kind, Cordy. Nothing like listening to Shakespeare all day to make a writer face his own inadequacies.”

“I was actually thinking that hearing
Hamlet
recently makes me realize how wonderfully you use language.”

“Shameless flattery, my dear, but I’ll take it.”

“Your insights into marriage amaze me.” Suzanne realized something was required of her. “Of course, to all intents and purposes, you’ve been married longer than any of us.”

“I worry about Daniela and Trevelyn every time I see the play,” Cordelia said.

Simon flashed a smile at her. “Then I’ve done something right. Normally with this sort of comedy audiences are comfortably assured of the happy ending. After all, that is what fiction is. At least this sort of fiction.”

“Your characters transcend the genre,” Suzanne said.

“There’s a lot to be said for a hard-won happy ending.” Simon’s gaze lingered on her face for just a trifle longer than one would have expected in the normal course of interaction. Then he excused himself and moved off, with the slightest press of Suzanne’s hand. That show of comfort was ridiculously warming; at the same time it set off alarm bells in her head. Simon always did see too much.

Cordelia regarded her for a long moment after Simon left. “You needn’t talk about it. God knows I won’t tease you. But I know you well enough I can’t help but notice something’s amiss.”

Suzanne swallowed. For a moment, the desire to unburden herself to Cordelia was almost overmastering. Her skills at dissimulation must be slipping. Of course, she had remarkably sharp-eyed friends. Out-and-out lies would only leave Cordelia wondering and speculating. And would somehow cheapen their friendship. “I should have known you’d realize. Malcolm and I—Something’s come up from the past.”

“Frederick Radley? I couldn’t but be concerned when he turned up at Emily Cowper’s.”

Suzanne adjusted the steel strap of her reticule over her wrist. “Not precisely. That is, Malcolm already knew about Radley. At least part of the story. But more recently he’s come to realize I’m not the woman he thought I was.”

Cordelia spun round, her back to the salon. “Rubbish, Suzie. I don’t know what your past holds, but no one seeing you and Malcolm together could think he doesn’t know the woman you are.”

Suzanne looked into her friend’s bright blue gaze. Cordelia had the remarkable knack of being wholly herself for better or worse. “Perhaps what you see isn’t the real me, either.”

Cordelia shook her head. “I used to think Harry didn’t see the real me. He himself would admit he didn’t when he proposed to me. Even after Waterloo, when we were living together again, I thought, ‘He’ll realize I’m still the woman I used to be and leave.’ Then I realized I wasn’t that woman anymore.” She tucked a ringlet into her pearl bandeau. “Harry’s the first to admit he had a completely false image of me when he offered for me. He fell for my face, though one would expect better of Harry, and conjured all sorts of impossible virtues or attributes behind it.”

“I think perhaps he saw the vitality behind it.”

“Perhaps. Or the loneliness. But he didn’t understand me, any more than I understood this broody scholar wrapped up in his books.” Cordelia wrinkled her nose. “But then the truth is I don’t suppose one can ever really know another person inside and out. It’s a bit like trying to piece together a picture of the past from odds and ends in the historical record. One can only approach it by approximation. Harry’s and my approximation of each other is rather better now. And I say yours and Malcolm’s of each other is as close as one can come.”

“That assumes you know us.”

Cordelia’s gaze was shrewd as it flickered over Suzanne’s face. “As well as I know anyone.”

Suzanne smoothed the folds of her shawl, moss green and black silk and cashmere from Turkey. A gift from Malcolm her birthday before last. The urge to confide washed over her again. Was it going to be like this from now on? The secrets she had kept buried for so long now seemed to constantly well up in her throat. “I don’t think it’s unusual for men to idealize the women they love, even if they see themselves as hardheaded pragmatists. I’m quite sure Malcolm idealizes me.”
Or rather used to do so.

“Perhaps. But not as much as Harry. He isn’t as much of a romantic.” Cordelia’s gaze drifted round the salon to settle on her husband in the crowd round the bar. “That was one of my mistakes about Harry. It took me years to realize only a desperate romantic can become as bitter and cynical as he did. But I finally realized whoever I am, I’m more than the person Harry sees. Just as you can’t define yourself by what Malcolm sees.”

For years Suzanne had defined herself as a French agent. Now that that was gone—

Cordelia touched Suzanne’s arm. “Don’t torture yourself, Suzette. Whatever you think you’ve done, it can’t be nearly the mess I made of my life.”

Suzanne’s fingers closed instinctively over her friend’s own. “I think most women would envy what you have now.”

Cordelia gave a wry smile. “I’ve made such a mockery of fidelity I can’t really expect it or offer it. But I don’t think the fact of betrayal makes fidelity impossible.” She fingered the ebony sticks of her fan. “I’m not saying I’m certain I can live up to it. I’m not saying I’m certain Harry can—though I’m more confident of him than of myself. But I do believe in trying. And I’m rather more confident in myself than I was.” She unfurled the fan and waved it with what might have been defiance. “But then I’ve always been something of a gambler. My father was an inveterate one after all.”

“In this case I’d say the odds favor you rather than the house.”

“I hope so.” Cordelia ran a finger over the painted silk of the fan. “It’s odd when I think about Julia.”

“Odd how?”

“First we learned she betrayed her marriage vows. Which one wouldn’t think would have shocked me, but I always liked Johnny. Then we thought she was a French spy. Yet in the end we learned she wasn’t spying for the French at all, she was working for England. For our side. She wasn’t a traitor, but in the course of her work she betrayed her marriage vows. One type of betrayal instead of another.”

Whereas Suzanne had betrayed her own husband politically but not in bed. She could not have failed to note the difference during their investigation into Julia Ashton’s murder. “Are you weighing them in the scales?”

“I can’t help but wonder if the fact that she slept with other men in pursuit of a higher purpose makes her infidelity any easier for Johnny to bear. Or if he’d find it easier if she betrayed Britain rather than him. Of course I can’t ask him any of it. And I certainly wouldn’t want to now that he and Violet seem to be getting on so well. But it makes one wonder.”

“Which loyalty is strongest?”

Cordelia nodded at Henry Brougham. “And which betrayal is worst.”

Suzanne looked at her friend. Cordelia looked back at her. She could find no clue that Cordy suspected. And yet—

“I don’t suppose there is an easy answer,” Cordelia said. “One can’t rank betrayals like officers or the line of succession. There are simply different sorts and each carries its own particular sting. A sting which endures.”

Despite everything, Suzanne’s impulse was to comfort her friend. “Cordy—”

“It gets easier,” Cordelia said. “But I don’t expect it will ever really go away. After all, I long ago learned life isn’t about fairy-tale happy endings that tie things up in a neat bow. There’s always an ‘after.’ ” She adjusted her fan, as though to shield them. “Of course much of the time I don’t think about such things at all. I’m too busy making sure the girls get to the park and ordering dinner and supervising lessons and scribbling notes on a monograph. The minutiae of day-today life. I often think focusing on that is the secret to surviving. And what knits a couple together.”

For five years, focusing on those details had preserved Suzanne’s sanity. And helped her forge a bond with Malcolm without really realizing it. She should have simply nodded her head at Cordelia’s words, but instead she found herself saying, “Those ties can’t stand up to everything.”

“Suzie. If there’s anything Harry or I can do—”

Malcolm was waving to her. Both a welcome distraction and an unwelcome interruption. “Thank you, Cordy. I need to go talk to Crispin. Investigations don’t stop for anything.”

 

Malcolm leaned his shoulders against the paneling in the sitting room to which he, Suzanne, and Crispin had removed. He had just finished recounting his grandfather and Aline’s theory that Hamlet’s letter to Ophelia in the manuscript had been written by someone else and offered clues to a person or place. “Does it mean anything to you?” he asked Crispin.

Crispin had been frowning, but at this he nodded. “Perhaps. Eleanor Harleton. The sixteenth-century Lady Harleton, the one with the actor lover. Her husband was caught up in the Essex revolt. He was in the Tower and eventually went to the block and was attainted. The estates were confiscated—his nephew who inherited got them back under James the First. But a famous set of emeralds that had been in the family since the Wars of the Roses disappeared and was never recovered. There were always rumors that Eleanor hid them.”

“You think that’s what this is a code to?” Suzanne asked. “Eleanor Harleton and her actor lover concealed the emeralds somewhere? It fits with Malcolm’s theory that Francis Woolright copied out this version of the manuscript and Eleanor made notes on it.”