Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (14 page)
Cordelia gave a wintry smile. “You can’t know that.”
“I know how people behave when they’re in love. Or in lust. Or whatever one chooses to call it.”
“Julia couldn’t have been all that lost in love. Or even lust. She was bedding the Prince of Orange as well.”
“At least now we can see why she said her life had got complicated and was out of her control.”
“But none of this explains why she was afraid.”
“How would Tony Chase have reacted if he’d known his mistress had another lover?”
Cordelia’s eyes widened. “Tony never seemed the knight in shining armor Johnny did. But I can’t imagine—”
“You said it yourself to Violet Chase. Someone was behind your sister’s death.”
“You’re right.” Cordelia grimaced. “I don’t suppose I make a very good investigator.”
“I’d say you’re managing amazingly well. It’s more difficult when it’s people one knows.”
“Have you been in this situation with people you know?”
“I’ve never faced the fact that someone I grew up with might have killed my sister. But yes, I’ve had to investigate people I was close to.”
“With your husband.”
Suzanne took a sip of wine. “When I married Malcolm I married his work. It was that or sit home waiting like Penelope.”
“You don’t seem to mind.”
“On the contrary. It was part of the attraction.”
“You fell in love with an adventurous man.”
“I married an adventurous man.”
Cordelia raised her brows.
Suzanne stared into the bloodred depths of her glass. Her wedding day, a stuffy room in the British embassy in Lisbon. Malcolm repeating his vows with a sincerity that bit her in the throat. Wonder. Fear. Guilt. “You’re the one who said you didn’t believe in love.” She twisted the stem of the glass between her fingers. “Did you expect an argument from me?”
“You’re an intriguing woman, Mrs. Rannoch.”
“After today, don’t you think you’d better call me Suzanne?”
Cordelia smiled. “If—”
The door of the café opened with a squeak, letting in a warm breeze. Cordelia broke off. Suzanne glanced over her shoulder and found herself looking at the petite, dark-haired person of Blanca Mendoza.
She refrained from rising from her chair, but her fingers closed on the edge of the table. “Colin?” she asked in as conversational a tone as she could manage.
“He’s fine.” Blanca stopped in front of the table and dropped a curtsy to Cordelia.
“Sit down, Blanca. You can talk in front of Lady Cordelia.”
Blanca drew up a chair from a neighboring table and reached into the straw basket that dangled over her arm. “This message came for Mr. Rannoch. It’s in code, but I recognized the seal. I wasn’t sure where to find him. I asked the Chases’ footman, and when he said you’d left I thought you might be here.”
Suzanne glanced at the single sheet of paper. The pale blue rose-shaped seal and the slanted handwriting belonged to Rachel Garnier. There were only a few words and Suzanne knew the key to the code. She pulled a pencil from her reticule and quickly sketched out the plaintext.
Urgent. Come at Once
.
.
15
“
I
never cared for Anthony Chase much,” Harry Davenport muttered as he and Malcolm walked back along the Allée Verte in the glare of the afternoon sun. “I didn’t know why until now.”
I
never cared for Anthony Chase much,” Harry Davenport muttered as he and Malcolm walked back along the Allée Verte in the glare of the afternoon sun. “I didn’t know why until now.”
“His grief seemed genuine.”
“Seemed.” Davenport scowled at a lime tree.
“How good an actor do you think Tony Chase is?”
“If he’s that good an actor, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
“False modesty doesn’t become you, Davenport.”
Davenport gave a sideways grin. “I never saw Tony as brilliant, but he has an uncanny ability to make women believe he’s in love with them. To make himself believe it. Any man who can do that—”
A party of officers cantered past on the carriage road, letting up a cloud of dust. “His eyes,” Malcolm said.
Davenport shot a look at him, his own eyes a white gleam in the shadows of the overhanging trees. “You noticed it, too.”
“They weren’t as unfocused later in the interview as they at first appeared. And at one point I’d swear he deliberately made his fingers shake.”
“Vienna didn’t blunt your abilities, Rannoch.”
“If you noticed it as well, why didn’t you say so from the first?”
“Because I wanted to see if you noticed it.”
“Glad I passed the test.”
“You’re a good sort, Rannoch.”
From Davenport, Malcolm suspected that was a high compliment. “If Chase had learned about Lady Julia’s affair with the Prince of Orange—”
“You think he lured to her to the château to confront her? It’s possible. He falls out of love easily himself, but I doubt he takes kindly to the same behavior in his mistresses. But then who was doing the shooting?”
They hadn’t had a chance to discuss the logistics of the shooting since Rachel’s revelation that the French hadn’t been behind the ambush, but the implications were obvious and troubling. “For the ambush to have been an attempt to get rid of Lady Julia, someone would have had to know we’d be there,” Malcolm said, “as well as knowing about her rendezvous with the Prince of Orange.”
“Quite. Who knew you were meeting with La Fleur?”
“Only La Fleur and Wellington and me as far as I know. And you. Whom did you tell?”
“Only Colonel Grant. Or rather he told me.”
Malcolm glanced at a man in a hussar’s uniform who had stopped to speak with a lady in a green and gold barouche. “Do you think Lady Julia would have really run off with Chase?”
Davenport kicked aside a loose pebble. “I’ve scarcely proved myself the best judge of what a woman will do for love. Though her simultaneous affair with the prince suggests Julia wasn’t as lost in love as Chase claims to have been.” Davenport stared ahead, eyes narrowed against the sunlight slanting through the trees to glare off the paving. “Cordelia could give a better analysis.”
“You’ll talk to her?”
“I think your wife should. Cordelia appears to trust her. That’s hardly the case when it comes to me.”
The barouche clattered down the allée, the hussar and the lady now putting their heads together beneath the shelter of her lace parasol. “Your sister-in-law’s life was undeniably complicated,” Malcolm said. “But we still haven’t discovered any real danger.”
“You said it yourself. One can never be sure who will turn violent. It never occurred to me I’d find myself planting Anthony Chase’s brother a facer.”
Malcolm cast a glance at Davenport. Beneath the dappling shadows of the trees, his face was set in lines of determined control, his mouth twisted with self-derision. “You had considerable provocation.”
“It seemed so at the time. If I’d managed to get over my feelings for Cordelia sooner, we’d have all been spared an uncomfortable scene. But the fact remains I found myself behaving with a lack of control of which I’d have thought myself incapable.”
“You didn’t—”
“Kill my wife? No, oddly enough that didn’t even occur to me. There’s no accounting for responses.”
Malcolm stopped walking and touched the other man’s arm. “Davenport—”
Davenport swung round to look him full in the face. “I’m hardly the most disinterested party when it comes to the Chase family or to my wife and her family. On the other hand, I’m known to be a cold-blooded bastard. I should be able to muddle through without entirely losing my perspective. Though it’s probably just as well I have you to keep an eye on me.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t let it get about.”
“Monsieur Rannoch.” A towheaded boy darted down the path toward them. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“What is it, Pierre?” Malcolm asked, looking down at the boy’s freckled face and serious blue eyes. “You have a message?”
Pierre was the son of one of the women at Le Paon d’Or, Rachel’s brothel. He ran errands for the brothel, and Rachel had more than once employed him to send messages. At the age of eight, he was more reliable than many men of five-and-thirty.
Pierre cast a sideways glance at Davenport and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“It’s all right,” Malcolm said. “This is Colonel Davenport. You can talk in front of him.”
Pierre drew a breath. “Mam’selle Rachel didn’t give me a written message. She just said you were to come at once.”
Malcolm dug his purse from his pocket. “Thank you.” He pressed a coin into Pierre’s hand. “You’d best take a roundabout way back to Le Paon d’Or.”
“I know the drill.” Pierre pocketed the coin with a grin, then bowed his head formally and ran back down the path.
“From Mademoiselle Garnier?” Davenport asked.
“Do you want to come with me?”
“Delighted you asked. That will save me following you.”
“Le Paon d’Or. Off the Place Royale.”
Davenport regarded Malcolm as a yellow-wheeled cabriolet tooled by a young buck with high shirt points rolled past. “You’re going to walk right into a brothel? Not exactly the discretion I’d expect of one of Britain’s finest agents.”
“Usually I meet Rachel away from Le Paon d’Or, but sometimes it’s easier for me to go there than for her to leave. There’s a side entrance that some of the more discreet customers use. We won’t attract as much attention there. If we are seen going in, people will just assume we’re there for obvious reasons.”
“Won’t it look suspicious for the last faithful husband in the beau monde to be seen going into a brothel?”
“I said I wasn’t unfaithful to my wife, not that others believed it. In Vienna everyone assumed I had a mistress.”
Davenport cast a sideways glance at him. “You have unexpected depths, Rannoch. Is your mistress-in-name-only still in Vienna?”
For a moment Malcolm’s throat felt as raw as if he’d swallowed acid. “She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
Malcolm fixed his gaze on the shifting shadows cast by the overhanging branches, though Tatiana’s image was still etched sharp in his memory. “She wasn’t actually my mistress.”
“But her death meant something to you. Unless my powers of observation are quite failing me.”
Malcolm jerked his head toward the end of the Allée Verte. Davenport was almost as sharp-eyed an observer as Suzanne.
Which could be damnably inconvenient.
There were disadvantages to being the wife of a man connected to the most powerful families in the British ton, Suzanne thought as she stood in the shadows cast by a walnut tree across the street from Le Paon d’Or. For instance, it made it much more difficult to enter a brothel undetected than she would have found it a few years ago. Not that she cared so very much for her reputation, but gossip would be tiresome for Malcolm. Though he didn’t listen to it himself, a scandalous wife could be a detriment to a diplomat’s career.
A diplomatic wife was supposed to practice discretion. She owed Malcolm that much. Besides, becoming a social pariah would make it difficult to investigate. Women like Violet and Jane Chase wouldn’t be so quick to confide in her.
She tugged at the brim of her gypsy hat so it enveloped her face and pulled the folds of her plain blue kerseymere shawl more closely about her shoulders. Blanca had brought the hat and shawl in the basket that now dangled over Suzanne’s arm and had taken away Suzanne’s hat, spencer, and gauze scarf. At the bottom of the basket were bottles and flasks, which let off a fragrant scent. Suzanne could pass for a shopgirl making a delivery from a parfumerie.
She waited until three British officers had descended the steps of Le Paon d’Or, exchanging tense nods with two Dutch-Belgians who were going in. Then she darted across the street just before a fiacre clattered by in a cloud of dust. Two young ensigns jumped down from the fiacre. Even with her limited peripheral vision thanks to the deep brim of the hat, she’d swear one was Teddy Fairbanks, whom she’d danced with last night at Stuart’s ball. His gaze swept past her as though she were part of the area railings.
As Teddy and his friend climbed the steps to the front door, Suzanne descended the area steps and rang a bell. A maidservant in a crisp green print dress and a starched apron opened the door.
“I’m here to see Mam’selle Garnier,” Suzanne said, softening her voice into the accents of Belgian French. “She ordered some new perfumes from Lamier’s. I’m new there, I wasn’t sure which door to go to.”
“You can go through the kitchen.” The girl stepped aside to allow Suzanne into the room. Copper pans hung on the wall and enamel tins lined the shelves. The air smelled of salt and lemon peel and wine from the decanter and glasses that stood on a tray on the long deal table. It might be the kitchen in any town house in Brussels.
The maid led the way across the kitchen, through a door, and up a narrow pine staircase. A flirtatious laugh came from above, followed by the sound of a door slamming. Memories shot through Suzanne, sharp as a palm connecting with her cheek. Her hand closed on the railing, sending a sliver through her glove, but the maidservant was walking ahead and there was no one else to see.
The maid left her to wait in a small sitting room with lamps shaded in pink silk and graceful gilded furniture. Suzanne gave her a card that was from Lamier’s parfumerie but had a code scribbled on the back. A few moments later Rachel Garnier appeared in the doorway, a gauzy pink shawl thrown over her sprigged muslin dress. She closed the door and stared with raised brows. “What on earth—”
Suzanne tugged at the ribbons on the gypsy hat and pulled it from her head. “Your note sounded urgent. It seemed faster to come here than to try to track down my husband.”
Rachel’s gaze swept over Suzanne. “So you came to a brothel.”
“It seemed the simplest solution.”
“I knew you were a surprising woman the moment I met you, Madame Rannoch. Well, the very fact that your husband introduced you to me confirmed it. But apparently I didn’t realize the half of it. If Monsieur Rannoch finds out—”
“He’ll only want to know why you summoned him so urgently.”
“Do you know, I think you may be right?” Rachel tilted her head to one side, considering. “Monsieur Rannoch is a man of surprises himself.” She took a quick step forward. “Madame Rannoch—”
A crash and a cry from the passage drowned out her words. Of one accord the two women ran to the door. As they stepped into the passage, a girl raced by, gold ringlets tumbling down her back, clad only in a large flowered silk shawl and stockings worked with pink clocks.
A Dutch-Belgian lieutenant and a British major had apparently tipped over a demilune table and sent a vase crashing to the floor. They were now pummeling each other on the carpet. The lieutenant, who was on top for the moment, drew back his fist to punch the major in the jaw. The major brought up his knee and hit the lieutenant in the groin. The lieutenant rolled off with a cry and landed on the shards of broken vase.
A door was flung open. A bare-chested man with his breeches unbuttoned ran out and hurled himself into the mêlée on the floor. A redheaded girl in a chemise followed and flung a pitcher of water over the men. None of the men responded.
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