Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (18 page)
“Mine did me the favor of dying when I was eight. Carriage accident. I’d just gone up to Eton.”
It was Malcolm’s turn to look sideways at Davenport. “That must have been—”
“Simpler perhaps, all things considered. The uncle I spent holidays with mostly left me to my own devices.” Davenport kept his gaze fixed ahead. “If you knew about your mother’s affairs even as a boy, she can’t have been overly discreet.”
“No. Nor was my father. They had an understanding of sorts. If you can say that of two people who cordially disliked each other. I think my mother enjoyed defying convention.”
“Which one could say of Cordelia,” Davenport said without a trace of emotion. “But not Julia. She indulged in reckless behavior, but she was still careful of her reputation.”
“But she was troubled and her moods shifted, judging by her letters to her sister,” Malcolm said. “My mother would swing between frenetic excitement and bouts of depression. According to Geoffrey Blackwell, she may have had an illness of the brain.”
Davenport didn’t dismiss the idea, as Malcolm more than half-expected, but instead considered it for several paces. “If that was true of Julia, it’s something that came on suddenly. Or—No, I suppose I can’t claim to have ever known her well enough to be sure. But whatever was going on with her, Wellington’s right. We have to consider the possibility that there were other men. Do you think Uxbridge was telling the truth?”
“He had no reason to come to us with the story.”
“Unless he decided it was better to come to us with his version of the truth before we discovered it in other ways.”
“You think he was Lady Julia’s lover?”
“I think it’s a possibility we can’t ignore. As we have to consider Tony Chase’s suggestion about the Prince of Orange.”
Malcolm nodded. “Any man involved with Julia might have been angered if he’d learned he wasn’t her only lover. Or might have decided she was a liability. Or both.”
“And it looks as though we may well be at war before we discover the answer. Damnable timing. I find I’m distinctly averse to the thought of dying without learning the truth.”
19
“
T
o think I thought Julia Ashton a bit insipid.” Suzanne fastened the second of her diamond earrings. She had dismissed Blanca once her hair was dressed so she and Malcolm could talk while they got ready for the opera. “She seems more and more interesting with each revelation. And sadder.”
T
o think I thought Julia Ashton a bit insipid.” Suzanne fastened the second of her diamond earrings. She had dismissed Blanca once her hair was dressed so she and Malcolm could talk while they got ready for the opera. “She seems more and more interesting with each revelation. And sadder.”
Malcolm grimaced as he did up the buttons on his cream silk waistcoat. “The perfect wife who was actually a mass of discontent.”
Suzanne turned round on the dressing table bench to look at her husband. The ghosts in his gray eyes were all too familiar. “Darling, she’s not—”
“My mother.” He fastened the last button and tugged his waistcoat smooth. “No, she most definitely isn’t. Mama liked to flaunt her indiscretions in society’s face. Lady Julia managed to maintain her decorous veneer.”
Suzanne drew on one of her long ivory gloves, smoothing the fingers with care. “I can understand her attraction to men in positions of power. And I can understand her thinking she’d found true love with Anthony Chase, though it speaks poorly to her judgment of men. But the two at the same time don’t make sense.”
“No.” Malcolm shrugged into the black superfine evening coat Addison had left draped over a chairback.
Suzanne picked up the second glove. “Do you think Anthony Chase is lying about the affair?”
“There was something odd about him this afternoon when Davenport and I spoke with him. But we have Violet Chase’s account of finding his letter to Lady Julia and of the interview in which she says Lady Julia admitted to the affair.”
“And Jane Chase claims to have known about it, too.” Suzanne pulled on her second glove. “So unless a number of people are lying for no apparent reason the affair happened. But perhaps it wasn’t quite the breathless idyll Captain Chase described.”
“At least on Lady Julia’s side. Chase’s anger when he confronted Davenport and me this evening seemed genuine enough.”
“Genuine enough to kill over?”
Malcolm frowned at the buttons on his coat as he did them up. “Who can say what sends anyone over the edge? But Chase has a temper, and I think he’s lying about something. Which would fit if he already knew Julia had another lover and he killed her because of it. Or if he’s the Silver Hawk and realized Lady Julia had begun to suspect him. Of course one could say the fact that I can see through him argues against his being the Silver Hawk.”
Suzanne got to her feet and picked up her silver net scarf. “You’re rather exceptional at seeing through people, darling.”
“Fair to middling. God knows I’ve been wrong in the past.”
“As have we all.” She managed to keep her voice tranquil, but the words stuck in her throat. She forced herself to turn to the mirror and focus on adjusting the pearl clasp on her belt. The champagne crêpe of her round robe hung loose on her body. She was going to have to get Blanca to take her gowns in or Malcolm would start asking more questions.
Malcolm twitched his shirt cuffs smooth beneath his coat. “Lady Julia was playing a damnably dangerous game.”
“Danger can be addictive.” She took a step toward him, her mind filled with past sins and future terrors. “As we both know.”
Their gazes met and held for a moment. A smile curved Malcolm’s mouth. “I keep telling myself that one day we’ll have a nice settled life filled with ordinary trivialities.”
She closed the distance between them and put her lips to his. “Careful what you wish for, dearest. If we had a nice settled life, I’m afraid we’d both go mad.”
He returned her kiss with surprising urgency, then drew back, his eyes gone serious. “Wellington had news of his own. It looks as though the French have finally crossed the frontier.”
Fear coursed unbidden through her. “Not another false alarm?”
“I think not. Wellington seemed very sure of the intelligence. He’s waiting to see where the attack will come from.”
“How long?” she asked, keeping her voice level. After all, she had known for months that this day would come.
“A few days at most, I should think.” His fingers tightened over her own. “Sweetheart, if you want to go to Antwerp—”
She jerked her hands from his clasp. “Don’t you dare suggest I run away.”
“I’m not. But your hands are like ice.”
She hugged her arms over her chest. “War is about to break out. I’m worried about our friends. I’m worried about my husband.”
“I’m not going to be anywhere near the fighting.”
“Liar.” Screams echoed in her ears. Blood glistened on the cobblestones before her eyes. “I’ve already gone through one war with you, don’t forget.”
His gaze moved over her face. “I can’t, Suzette.”
“Can’t what?”
“Promise to stay here in Brussels with you.”
She swallowed. She’d made her choices a long time ago. She would have to live with them. “I wouldn’t ask that of you. Any more than you’d ask it of me.”
“Well then.” He touched her arm. “This is nothing we haven’t been through before.”
For a moment she was sitting beside a camp bed where her wounded husband lay a few months into their oddly begun marriage, holding Malcolm’s hand and staring at his ashen face, wondering if she’d ever have the chance to speak to him again. But even then ...“It was different,” she said, her voice rough. “We weren’t—We didn’t—We mean more to each other now. We have more to lose.”
He drew her to him. “We’ll have to make sure we don’t lose it then,” he said into her hair.
She resisted for a moment, then drew a shuddering breath and let her head fall into the familiar hollow of his shoulder. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his coat as though she could hold on to him, hold on to what was between them. But the problem with his words, as with most comforting words, was that they were more easily spoken than put into practice.
“Suzanne.” Georgiana Lennox darted through the crowd in the entry hall of the opera house and seized Suzanne’s arm. Her elder sister, Lady Sarah, was not far behind her. “Are the rumors true?”
“Which rumors?” Suzanne looked between the Lennox sisters. Malcolm had stopped to speak with Baron Müffling as the crowd eddied and pressed about them. “If you’re hearing Bonaparte is on the march again—”
“Not Bonaparte. We’ve heard he’s on the march so many times it’s difficult to take it seriously.” Georgiana cast a glance round the entry hall, crowded with silks, satins, ostrich feathers, gleaming uniforms. Orange-sellers moved through the crowd with baskets over their arms. She lowered her voice, though Suzanne doubted anyone could hear over the buzz of conversation beneath the fretted ceiling. “Julia Ashton.”
“Georgy—” Sarah Lennox said.
“What about Julia Ashton?” Suzanne asked.
“People are saying she was killed last night when she tried to stop a duel between her husband and the Prince of Orange.”
Suzanne bit back both a laugh and a curse. “Georgy, you were at the ball last night. You noticed the minute the Prince of Orange left the ballroom with Wellington and Stuart. Could he possibly have been absent anything close to long enough to have fought a duel?”
“I told you it was all an outrageous hum, Georgy.” Lady Sarah shook her head.
Georgiana was regarding Suzanne with sharp eyes. “You said the Prince of Orange didn’t fight a duel with John Ashton. You didn’t say Julia Ashton wasn’t the prince’s mistress.”
There were times when lies served no purpose. “No,” Suzanne said. “I didn’t.”
Lady Sarah grimaced. “Oh, dear. I’d never have thought it. She and Captain Ashton always seemed so devoted.”
The smell of oranges wafted through the hall. Suzanne found herself staring fixedly at a gentleman peeling an orange for the white-gowned lady at his side. The lady was smiling as though she didn’t have eyes for anyone else in the world. Her husband? Or her lover? “One never really knows what goes on inside a marriage.”
Georgiana frowned. “But if Lady Julia wasn’t away from the ball because of a duel or because she was meeting the prince—”
“No one knows precisely what happened.” Suzanne heard a loud, excited voice behind her. Without looking round, she knew the Prince of Orange had run up to Malcolm.
Georgiana cast a quick glance behind her, then darted a keen gaze over Suzanne’s face. “You and Malcolm are investigating, aren’t you?”
It was a pity a duke’s daughter couldn’t have trained as a spy, Georgiana would have made a good one. “Georgy—”
“For heaven’s sake, Suzanne, you’re not the sort to have false modesty.”
“No.” Suzanne nodded at Alexander Gordon and Colonel Canning, who had just come through the doors from the street. “But I do know the importance of discretion.”
“It doesn’t matter, we know perfectly well what you’re doing. And the point is you need information. Do tell her, Sarah.”
Lady Sarah frowned, tugging on the blond lace on her bodice. “Georgy, we don’t know—”
“That’s just the point.
We
don’t know what it means, but Suzanne might.”
We
don’t know what it means, but Suzanne might.”
“It’s—”
“It’s not gossip, it’s evidence. Or it might be. You can trust Suzanne to be discreet.” Georgiana seized her sister’s hand. “If we slip between those two Dutch-Belgian officers, we can stand in the alcove by the base of the stairs.”
Lady Sarah continued to frown but permitted her sister to pull her to the side. Suzanne exchanged a glance with Malcolm, who was steering the Prince of Orange in the opposite direction, and then followed the Lennox sisters.
“Lady Sarah?” she said. “If there is anything you think is important—”
Sarah fingered the ivory sticks of her fan. “I daresay it means nothing. But when I heard about Julia, and I remembered that they knew each other—”
“Who?” Suzanne asked.
“It was at the ball last night. A bit before supper. I left the dance floor only to find I’d torn a flounce, so I went into the ladies’ retiring room to pin it up. I found her there, trying to sponge her skirt.”
“Lady Julia?”
“No.” Sarah hesitated a moment. “Violet Chase.”
Suzanne forced her mind not to jump to conclusions. “It was a warm evening. A number of people went out into the garden. If she got mud on her skirt—”
“It was more than that. She looked as though she’d been crying. Miss Chase and I have never been on particularly familiar terms, but I asked her what was the matter. She said it was nothing. When I insisted that she was obviously in distress and asked if I could help, she said she’d gone into the garden with a gentleman, and he’d gone beyond the line of what was pleasing. But—” Lady Sarah frowned. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I’m quite sure she was lying.”
Georgiana cast an anxious glance at Suzanne. “Does it—”
“It could mean anything,” Suzanne said. “And very likely it means nothing as far as Julia Ashton is concerned.” She looked at Sarah. “But thank you for telling me. Any information about last night is helpful.”
Lady Sarah gave a quick nod. “Violet Chase isn’t—We’ve never been great friends, as I said. But I can’t imagine—”
“I can’t imagine Julia Ashton being dead,” Georgiana said. “But she is.”
Lady Sarah shuddered and then smiled as she caught sight of General Maitland. Suzanne had noticed Sarah spending more and more time in Maitland’s company of late. Sarah’s mother, the Duchess of Richmond, seemed unaware of the development, which was probably just as well. Suzanne suspected the duchess had her eye on titled husbands for her daughters.
“Violet Chase was practically betrothed to John Ashton,” Georgiana said, as her sister went off on General Maitland’s arm. “She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t disliked Lady Julia excessively. You don’t think—”
“It’s too early to think anything at all,” Suzanne said.
Despite the crowd, Malcolm could feel the gazes upon him and the Prince of Orange, but at least the alcove afforded a modicum of privacy.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” Billy said in a fierce whisper. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
“I have the utmost faith in you, sir,” Malcolm said in a measured voice.
“You think I’m lying. You think I told someone about Julia.” Billy stared at Malcolm, as woebegone as a schoolboy accused of cheating at cricket.
“I didn’t say that.”
“I can see it in your face. For God’s sake, Malcolm, do you think I would talk at the expense of a lady’s reputation? Especially after Wellington told me not to?”
“You were naturally distressed last night. You didn’t confide in anyone—a friend, your valet—”
“I’m not a boy anymore, Malcolm.” Billy straightened his thin shoulders. “I’m a commander myself. I know how serious this is. Especially when we could be on the march at any moment.” He cast a glance over Malcolm’s face. “Do you think it’s true? That Bonaparte’s finally on the move?”
“Wellington believes so. But he’s waiting for further intelligence.”
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