The Mayfair Affair (26 page)

Raoul went surprisingly pale when Malcolm and Suzanne recounted their interview with Laura. They were back in Berkeley Square, preparing to meet the blackmailer. Raoul had come in by way of the library window after reconnoitering to make sure he wasn't followed. "I knew she was hiding something," Raoul said, "but not— Trenchard's worse than I credited. Speaking as one whose behavior is uncomfortably similar to his own."

Malcolm regarded O'Roarke across the coffee service on the library table. "You're a lot of things, O'Roarke, but you're no Trenchard."

In the firelight, Suzanne saw something jump in Raoul's eyes, but he merely said. "Your ability to see the good in people is remarkable, Malcolm."

"Simple observation. You could have tried to blackmail Suzanne into continuing to work for you. You didn't."

"Some things are beyond the pale, even for me."

"My point precisely. And somehow I don't think you'd have had me killed."

Raoul's coffee cup tilted in his fingers. "Difficult to believe Trenchard could have done that to his own son. Of course, this also strengthens Miss Dudley's motive."

"Except that Trenchard was the only person who could tell her where her daughter is." Suzanne tossed down a swallow of coffee. It singed her throat. "We're rapidly acquiring a long list of suspects." She told him about Mary Trenchard and Gui Laclos, and Malcolm described his talk with James and the revelations about Lily Duval and her son.

"Trenchard seems remarkably consistent in his willingness to use his children as pawns," Raoul said.

"He makes Alistair Rannoch look almost paternal." Malcolm swallowed the last of his coffee. "We have a number of people to talk to tomorrow."

After they got through tonight's mission. Suzanne set down her cup. She could still taste the bitter heat of the coffee. "I'm going up to look in on the children before we leave."

Malcolm looked at her, but didn't comment except to say, "I'll come with you."

It was a ritual from the time she'd slipped out of their rooms in Lisbon in the middle of the night to retrieve papers from the British embassy when Colin was six weeks old. She always looked in on the children before she went on a mission. She never let herself think that it might be the last time she'd see them. She simply knelt beside their beds, committing to memory their faces in the tin-shaded nightlight, the milky, lavender-soapy scent of their skin, the softness of their hair beneath her fingers.

It will change your life, the British officers' wives had told her when she was pregnant with Colin, patting her hand with looks she had found unbelievably smug. She had nodded in her role as a young diplomat's bride, laughing inwardly. For, she had felt, with the blind conviction of nineteen, she had seen things in her short life these gently bred women would never dream of. They could have no advice to offer her. Not until she left Colin that first time (on a mission far less dangerous than dozens in her past), and felt the clutch of a cold terror she had never known, had she begun to understand. It was one thing to tell oneself one's own life didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. The mathematics were very different with children in the equation.

She didn't let herself linger any longer tonight, despite, or because of, the fact that her instinct was to do so. She smoothed Colin's quilt, tucked his stuffed bear into the crook of his arm, touched her fingers to Jessica's hair.

Every scrap of time she had with them was precious, she told herself, as she got to her feet. It was more than Laura had had.

Cordelia paused in the dressing room doorway as her husband unfastened his shirt cuffs. Tenderness washed over her in an unexpected wave. "Gui's in love with Mary Trenchard."

He looked up quickly, fingers frozen on a mother-of-pearl button. "Poor devil. And—?"

"He's the father of her baby." Cordelia had told Harry about Mary Trenchard's revelations before they left for the opera. "Apparently she ended it and tried to send him away. I hope she was trying to protect him. He insisted on rushing off to her."

"Of course. He'll want to ask her to marry him."

Cordelia moved into the dressing room and dropped down on the sofa. "Trenchard will legally be the father but there will be gossip, even if they wait until she's out of mourning."

"Gossip can be faced down." Harry pulled his shirt over his head and reached for his dressing gown. "As we both know. And having Carfax on their side will help."

Cordelia drew her feet up onto the sofa. "So will having love in the equation."

"Is there love in the equation?"

"I think so. That is, I know so, now, at least on Gui's side. I think they have a decent chance of it lasting."

Harry crossed to her side, but didn't take her hands or put his arm round her as she hoped he would. Instead he stood looking down at her with that look he sometimes got when they discussed her past. The scholar examining data, aware of his own biases but determined not to let them intrude. "Regrets?"

His gaze was appraising, but amazingly his voice was warm with sympathy. "How could I have regrets?" She pushed herself to her feet. "Don't you think I want Gui to be as happy as we are?"

"There are so many suppositions in that question I don't know where to start."

She put her arms round his neck and threaded her fingers behind his head. Just because he was determined to be neutral, didn't mean she had to. "You're right. I shouldn't assume that you're happy. But I know how happy you make me. And I thought you knew how little my former lovers mean to me."

He didn't pull away, but neither did he lean in to her. "Laclos isn't just one of your former lovers."

"And you're right. I care for him. I think I always will. I care for enough to want him to be as happy as I am."

He smiled, but his gaze, opaque in the candlelight, continued to shift over her face. She could feel his breath on her skin, even but rough.

"What?" she asked.

"I know what we have, Cordy. I know how rare and precious it is. But I also know that you'd never have looked twice at me if I hadn't rushed blindly into marriage because you dazzled me out of my senses, and I was determined to possess you without having the least appreciation of who you were."

Guilt was a funny thing. His own always made hers sharper. "You didn't force me into marriage, Harry."

"No. But I proposed at a time when you desperately needed to be married to someone. If I hadn't, if you'd still been free when you met Laclos—"

"I might have fallen in love with him?" Cordelia said, with disbelief.

"Is that so unlikely?"

"Not entirely. He's one of the few men other than you—and George, though we won't speak of that—whom I can imagine loving. But—" Cordelia stared into her husband's intent gaze, forcing herself not to twist the facts to suit her thesis. "Realizing that I might have loved Gui, that in an alternate life I might even have been happy with him, doesn't mean I wish that alternate life had come to pass."

His smile was unexpectedly sweet and told her just how serious his concerns had been. "You always know what to say, Cordy."

She reached up and kissed him. "I said it because it's true."

His arms settled round her. "You realize, of course, that this makes them both suspects."

Her pretty fairy tale shattered before her eyes. "I know. And no matter how sure I am neither of them could have killed Trenchard, I know I can't really be sure at all. But—"

"It's more than that," Harry said. "Even if they're both as innocent as you think, there's nothing like suspicion to destroy trust."

Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. "I still think you should take the carriage."

"Do use your head, darling." Suzanne did up the clasp on her cloak. They were back in the library where Raoul had remained, nursing a cup of coffee while they looked in on the children. "The blackmailer thinks all this is secret from you. How would I order the carriage without you and half the rest of the household knowing? Not to mention having to count on Randall keeping quiet after he drove me. I wouldn't be so foolish. I'd simply slip from the house through a side door and walk the very short distance to the park. As I'm going to do."

"As you've done in the past."

Suzanne met her husband's gaze. "Yes."

Malcolm's mouth hardened while she saw imaginings about those past occasions shoot through his gaze. "I still don't like it. It's dark, we can't protect you—"

"You and Raoul are perfectly capable of following me in the pre-dawn light, Malcolm. Besides," she added, perhaps unwisely, "in the past I wouldn't have had protection at all."

"That hardly reassures me. If—"

"Don't argue with her, Malcolm." Raoul set down his coffee. "You won't get anywhere. Besides, she's right."

Malcolm picked up his own coffee cup and set it down untasted. "I don't trust this man."

"Well, neither do I," Suzanne said. "But he won't do me a mischief. He needs me."

"You're worried yourself."

"Rubbish."

"You looked in on Colin and Jessica."

Her children's sleeping faces flashed into her mind. "I always check on them before the most routine mission."

"I saw your face, Suzette."

"You saw me being sentimental."

"I saw you being as close as you get to afraid."

"A momentary aberration."

Malcolm swung away from her and turned to Raoul. "O'Roarke—"

Raoul was shrugging on his greatcoat. "This may sound odd coming from me, but I won't let you down. Either of you."

"I don't doubt that. But there are no guarantees."

"Of course not," Raoul said. "We all run risks. It's who we are."

Malcolm was being more protective than usual. Probably, Suzanne realized, because of the added threat of her being exposed. A threat he couldn't do anything about and avoided alluding to. A threat that could upend their world.

Five minutes later, she gave Malcolm a quick kiss and slipped out into the garden and through the gate to the mews, where even the horses were quiet at this hour. Shadows slid over the cobblestones and only the faintest glow turned the sky from indigo to charcoal. The business of a spy was often best accomplished in daylight, in crowds—in the press of a ball or a theatre lobby, in the bustle of a café. But the stillness of pre-dawn had its own uses. Shadows could offer as much comfort as they did danger.

A mouse scurried through a pile of fallen leaves at the corner of Charles Street. A crossing sweeper was at work at the corner of Queen Street. Otherwise, she had the world to herself. At Curzon Street, Malcolm fell in step behind her, at the corner of South Audley Street, Raoul. Both were so skilled she doubted even she would have been aware of them had she not known to listen for the signs. Her senses quickened, keyed to the faintest stirring, a shift in the damp air that blew past her cheek. Damn it, she was enjoying this. For all the risk to her marriage, her safety, her children. Such was the depths of her madness. But then, she'd always known she wasn't quite sane.

At the edge of the park, tree branches showed against the lightening sky. Dark blurs showed beneath them. Those without roofs over their head, many of them soldiers returned from the war less than whole, often slept in the park. Desperate men could be dangerous, but most would still be asleep. She walked forwards, her gait purposeful.