Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (15 page)
A girl with nut-brown hair poked her head out a door down the passage. “Brawl,” she shouted at Rachel. “Best take cover.”
Instead Rachel and Suzanne ran down the passage.
Malcolm and Davenport slipped through the side entrance to Le Paon d’Or. They were in a narrow, dimly lit passage, but the smell of perfume and the strains of a waltz played on a pianoforte drifted from ahead.
And then a raised voice. “Bloody frogs. Can’t keep your hands off our women.”
“If you can’t satisfy your women yourselves—” That voice was Belgian accented.
“Here now,” said a third voice with a Scots burr. “Plenty of girls to go round. Give us a kiss, Marie.”
A flirtatious giggle. Then a curse. “It’s not the girls here. Their damned prince took the wife of one of our officers to his bed.”
“That’s a filthy—”
“Can’t the blighter get his own women without poaching—”
“How dare you insult His Royal Highness—” Another Belgian voice.
“If he’s a rutting bastard—”
The sound of a fist connecting with flesh. A girl screamed. Something heavy crashed to the floor. Malcolm and Davenport took a step back. Two men hurtled round the corner, pummeling each other, and careered into Malcolm and Davenport. One of them drew back a fist and hit Malcolm in the eye rather than his opponent.
Malcolm ducked. The man grabbed him by the shoulders. “Can’t get away so easily, you frog coward—”
“As it happens, he’s not—”
Davenport’s words were cut off as the other man landed him a blow to the jaw. In the room beyond, glass shattered.
Malcolm jerked away from his opponent, pulling out of his coat, which was cut more for comfort than fashion. He whirled round and caught the man’s arm as he drew it back to land another blow. “Look.” He spun his opponent round, holding the man’s arm twisted behind him. “I’m not Belgian. And I’m not interested in fighting.”
Three more shadowy forms hurtled into the darkened passage. One aimed a blow at Malcolm’s opponent, knocking him from Malcolm’s grip. The other struck Malcolm. Pain slashed through Malcolm’s ribs. He dropped to the ground and rolled across the floor. He sprang to his feet in the room beyond, wincing at the pain in his ribs, just as a bottle went sailing across the room and smashed into the gilt-framed mirror over the mantel.
The smell of good Burgundy filled the air. Two girls clad in clinging white dresses, one fair-haired, the other a brunette, stood on oval-back chairs, screaming. Another girl, chestnut hair fallen from its pins, flung a bucket of ice over the dragoon and the man in civilian clothes who were pummeling each other on the floor.
“Slimy bastards. That mirror belonged to Madame Grès’s grandmother.”
With a roar of rage, a Belgian lieutenant knocked a man in a powdered wig and footman’s livery into a shelf of books against the wall. Leather-bound volumes and sheets of newspaper went flying. Malcolm pushed himself to his feet. The man who had thrown the bottle grabbed another bottle from the drinks table and brought it down on the head of a Belgian sergeant who was staggering to his feet. The Belgian sergeant slumped back to the floor and would have collided with Malcolm if Malcolm hadn’t dodged out of the way.
A scream sounded from the hall beyond. Not a cry of rage, but an actual scream of pain and terror. Malcolm ran across the salon, dodging the two men battling on the floor, broken glass crunching beneath his boots.
A man in his shirtsleeves with a dragoon’s sabre thrust through his belt had a flaxen-haired boy pinned up against the wall at the base of the stairs. The boy’s face was drained of color, his eyes wide and desperate. The dragoon’s hand was round his throat.
Malcolm launched himself at the dragoon’s back. The dragoon whirled round and struck Malcolm across the face. The flaxen-haired boy slid to the floor.
“How dare you interfere,” the dragoon said.
“I wasn’t aware strangling children had become part of military duties.”
“Impertinent puppy.” The dragoon whipped his sword from its scabbard and brought it down on Malcolm’s arm. Malcolm staggered back.
“Fight like a man, you frog coward.” The dragoon lunged after him.
“Rannoch.” Davenport’s voice came from the archway to the salon, rising over the thuds and cries and crash of broken glass. Malcolm risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Davenport held a cavalry sabre, which he sent spinning through the air. Malcolm caught the sword and brought it up to meet the dragoon’s relentless attack.
The blades slid against each other, disengaged, met again. Malcolm turned, holding the blade of his sword taut against the dragoon’s, and backed up the stairs. The dragoon followed, pressing his attack. His cuts were swift and reckless. Malcolm could have dodged beneath his guard, but he had no desire to wound the other man.
Malcolm’s boot slipped on the polished mahogany. He caught himself on one hand. Pain shot through his arm. The dragoon’s blade slid along his cheekbone. Malcolm pushed himself to his feet and engaged the other man’s blade, forcing it down.
He jumped backward up the last two steps, parrying for all his life was worth.
A pistol shot cut the air. The dragoon dropped his sword and whirled round, clutching his shoulder. “What the devil—”
Suzanne lowered her smoking pistol. “Sorry. But I rather take exception to someone trying to kill my husband.”
16
S
uzanne regarded her husband’s erstwhile opponent. High cheekbones, sandy hair, a face flushed with drink. Blue eyes fixed on her as though she were one of Titania’s minions, tumbled out of the midsummer night.
uzanne regarded her husband’s erstwhile opponent. High cheekbones, sandy hair, a face flushed with drink. Blue eyes fixed on her as though she were one of Titania’s minions, tumbled out of the midsummer night.
“You impertinent doxy—”
“Careful,” Malcolm said, lowering his sword. “I may have to challenge you to fight all over again.”
“He’s lying,” Suzanne said, over the sound of a crash from below. “My husband wouldn’t really get into a fight to defend my honor. He knows I can take care of myself.”
The dragoon took his hand away from his arm and stared at the smears of crimson on his fingers. “I’m bleeding.”
“I only meant to wing you.” Suzanne stepped closer and peered at his shoulder. Red was seeping through the fine linen of his shirt, but not enough for her to have hit anything serious. She tugged a handkerchief from her cuff. “Yes, I thought so. I very seldom miss.”
“You damned—”
“Hold still.” She bound the handkerchief round his shoulder. “There. Go downstairs and put some brandy on it and then swallow some yourself.”
The dragoon stared down at her, anger given way to utter bewilderment. “Who—”
“I’m a mother. It’s excellent training for patching people up. Well, living through a war helped as well.”
Another shot rang out from below, followed by two more in quick succession.
“Madame Grès,” Rachel said, as the tumult below went abruptly still. “That should get things under control.”
“Let’s see how bad the damage is, darling,” Suzanne said. “Mademoiselle Garnier, could you fetch me that bottle of cognac? I hate to waste it, but it’s the closest alcohol to hand.”
It was a quarter hour since Madame Grès’s pistol shots had restored order to her establishment. Those of the brawlers who had not been summarily tossed out by Le Paon d’Or’s footmen were being served coffee in the salon and presented with a bill for the damage. Suzanne, Malcolm, Davenport, and Rachel were back in the sitting room with the pink-silk lamp shades.
“My compliments, Rannoch,” Davenport said. He was slumped in an armchair, a towel full of ice pressed to his face. He had a split lip and a bruise beneath his eye and he was holding his bad arm close to his side, but he showed no sign of wounds.
“Where did you get the sword you tossed me?” Malcolm asked, wincing as he struggled with the buttons on his waistcoat.
“Off another dragoon who was trying to bring it down on my head. Seemed a good idea to get it away from him. I dealt him a right hook and snatched up the sword.”
“My thanks.” Malcolm dropped his hand from the waistcoat, the buttons half-undone, breathing hard.
Suzanne leaned over him to undo the last of the buttons. “Good God, darling.” Blood had welled through his shirtsleeve, but more bright red stained his side, where it had been covered by the waistcoat. “If I’d known how much damage the dragoon had done, I wouldn’t have just winged him.”
Malcolm glanced down. “It wasn’t all him. Someone knifed me earlier.”
“Who?” Davenport pulled the ice away from his face.
“I couldn’t tell.” Malcolm glanced at Suzanne and tugged at the folds of his cravat. “It was when we were in the passage. There must have been five or six men, and I couldn’t see anyone’s face.”
Rachel crossed to Suzanne, carrying a decanter of cognac. “We get brawls every now and then. More lately with so many soldiers in Brussels. Two start fighting over a girl or a wager or God knows what, and it seems to spread. But this is the worst I can ever remember. Do you know what started it?”
Malcolm flicked a glance at Davenport. “The British and the Dutch-Belgians. Apparently Julia Ashton’s liaison with the Prince of Orange is no longer secret.”
Suzanne took the ends of the cravat from her husband’s fingers and unwound the folds of linen. “You heard the soldiers quarreling about it?”
Malcolm nodded. “Wellington isn’t going to be happy.”
“Take your shirt off, darling. I don’t think we’ll offend Mademoiselle Garnier’s sensibilities.”
He glanced up at her, an ironic glint in his eyes. “You’re going soft, sweetheart. This is nothing compared to Spain.”
She helped undo his shirt cuffs and pull the torn shirt over his head. The blood was already clotting in the scratch on his shoulder, but the wound on his side was still bleeding. Her throat tightened. It was true she’d seen her husband more badly injured, but each time was a reminder of the reality they lived with every day but tried to cheerfully ignore. That she could lose him at any moment.
She unstopped the decanter and poured cognac onto a cloth. “Besides the two of you, who knew about Julia Ashton’s affair with the Prince of Orange?”
“Wellington. Stuart.” Malcolm winced as she pressed the brandy-soaked cloth against the wound in his side. “The prince himself. John Ashton.”
“My wife.” Davenport dropped the dripping towel into the ice bucket beside his chair. “But though Cordelia’s capable of a lot of things, I doubt she’d have let anything slip. She tends to keep her word. At least about some things.”
Suzanne recalled Lady Cordelia’s haunted gaze across the café table less than two hours before. “No, I wouldn’t think she’d have talked,” she said, dabbing at the scratch on Malcolm’s shoulder. “But—”
“Lady Julia or the prince could have let something slip to someone else,” Malcolm said, the muscles in his arm tensing beneath her touch.
“The timing’s suspicious though.” Davenport pushed himself to his feet and strode across the room. “The news apparently got out right on the heels of Julia’s death.”
“Wellington and Stuart wouldn’t have talked,” Malcolm said as Suzanne wound linen round his ribs. “And I don’t think Ashton would have based on what we saw last night. But Slender Billy’s never been the best at keeping secrets. I imagine when he left the ball he sought refuge in a bottle. Which would have made him all the more likely to talk.”
“Damage is done.” Davenport frowned at the Corinthian pilasters that flanked the mantel as though they held answers to unasked questions. “Though I doubt this will be the last brawl it’s an excuse for.”
Malcolm turned to Rachel. “Why did you send for us in the first place?”
“I’ll show you when your wife’s finished bandaging you.”
When Suzanne had the bandage in place and had helped Malcolm back into his bloodstained shirt, with waistcoat and cravat covering the stains, Rachel picked up the cognac decanter and glanced into the passage. She nodded that the way was clear, then led them down the passage, still littered with shards of the broken vase, and opened one of the white and gold doors. The door gave onto a bedchamber with a large four-poster bed draped with gauzy white hangings. The peach satin coverlet was rumpled, and beneath the smells of tuberose perfume and lavender a faint musky odor hung in the air. Rachel walked to the wall behind the bed and pressed one of the flowers in the peach damask wall hangings. A panel slid open.
“Concealed room. For people who like to watch,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s all right, Henri. You can come out now.”
A young man ducked through the secret door. He was tall and lanky, with curly dark hair that fell over his thin, sharp-boned face. His coat was unbuttoned, but it bore the insignia of a lieutenant in the Dutch-Belgian army.
“Lieutenant Monsieur le Vicomte de Rivaux,” Rachel said. “Monsieur and Madame Rannoch and Colonel Davenport, Henri.”
Despite the disorder of his attire, Rivaux put his feet together and bowed with the formality of the ballroom.
Rachel gestured toward the chaise-longue and chairs by the fireplace. “Perhaps we’d best sit down. We can count on privacy here.”
They disposed themselves about the fireplace, Suzanne and Malcolm on the chaise-longue, Davenport and Rivaux on the chairs. Rachel poured the cognac into five glasses set out on a side table and handed them round like a hostess in her salon.
“Henri is one of my best sources,” she said. She glanced at Malcolm as she handed him a glass of cognac. “Our best sources.”
Rivaux took a sip of cognac. “I have heard a great deal about you, Monsieur Rannoch.”
“Brussels is a small town,” Malcolm said.
“Not in the ballroom. In intelligence circles. You are much talked of. Even before you came to Brussels.”
Malcolm settled back on the chaise-longue, wincing as he jostled his wound. “All sorts of speculation have run rampant in recent months. I didn’t realize it had descended as low as the exploits of attachés.”
“False modesty doesn’t become you, Rannoch.” Davenport tossed down a swallow of cognac.
“I’ve heard about Madame Rannoch as well.” Rivaux inclined his head to Suzanne. “It is an honor to meet you both.”
“You’re very kind, Monsieur le Vicomte,” Suzanne said.
Rivaux looked from her to Malcolm. “You investigated a murder in Vienna.”
“We didn’t solve it,” Malcolm said, cradling his glass in his hand.
“Not officially. Rumor says otherwise.” Rivaux leaned forward. “I believe you to be a man of honor. That’s partly why I—But I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“Henri came to me today with information I thought you should hear in person,” Rachel said, dropping into a chair. “It was safer to summon you here than to take Henri to meet you. I’m sorry—”
“You couldn’t have known,” Malcolm said.
“Some weeks ago, shortly after the emp—Bonaparte escaped from Elba, I was approached by some of my fellow officers,” Rivaux said in a quick, intent voice. “Men still loyal to Bonaparte. Who wanted Belgium to return to the Empire.” He looked Malcolm directly in the eye. “It’s no secret that I read Paine and Voltaire and have Republican sympathies.”
“So do I.” Malcolm took a sip of cognac. “So these fellow officers thought your Republican sympathies meant you would join them in plotting for Napoleon Bonaparte’s victory?”
Rivaux nodded. “I was horrified. Whatever I think of the current government, I’m a soldier. We have made a commitment to our allies. I don’t believe in going back on commitments.”
“A somewhat novel position in international politics these days,” Davenport murmured.
“I told Rachel—Mademoiselle Garnier. We were already—er—acquainted at that time.” His gaze lingered on Rachel’s face for a moment, with something that went far beyond the relationship between a client and a prostitute. His eyes held all the wonder of young love. Suzanne’s fingers tightened round her glass. It was definitely not a way she and Malcolm had ever looked at each other. “I was going to report the men who had approached me to my commanding officer,” Rivaux continued. “But Mademoiselle Garnier persuaded me I could be of more use by joining them and passing information on to her. I knew she was working with you. I believed you could be trusted. So you see, you benefited from your reputation preceding you.”
“Not the first time I’ve had cause to be grateful for entertaining fiction,” Malcolm said.
Rivaux’s gaze flickered over Malcolm’s face. “Mademoiselle Garnier says you’ve known about the spy ring for some time.”
Malcolm nodded. “We’ve found it useful to keep track of it. You’ve been an important part of that.”
Rivaux’s shoulders straightened. “I don’t need to be coddled.”
“No, but I don’t imagine you enjoy betraying your comrades. I thought it might help to know the value of your efforts.”
Rivaux stared at Malcolm for a moment, eyes wide. “How did you know? That is, that I don’t—”
“You seem entirely too decent for the espionage game.”
Rivaux flushed. “Thank you. I think.”
“Believe me it was a compliment.”
Davenport stretched out his legs. “Some of us have been in the espionage game long enough to envy you your decency.”
Rivaux turned to look at Davenport. “I heard about the ambush at the Château de Vere. I saw some of my associates last night, and they could talk of little else. I also heard about the death of the French officer La Fleur. According to our French sources, La Fleur was a traitor, but they had only just discovered it and weren’t behind the ambush.”
Malcolm nodded. “That fits with what Mademoiselle Garnier told me earlier today.”
Rivaux leaned forward. “I came to Mademoiselle Garnier today to tell her what I’d heard. She said you already knew the French weren’t behind the ambush last night. She also said you were looking for information about the Silver Hawk.”
Malcolm didn’t move a muscle, but Suzanne felt the shock of attention that ran through him. “You’ve heard of the Silver Hawk?”
“Last night. I wasn’t supposed to. I’m not in the inner circle. I’m excluded from many of the most important discussions.”
“Fortunately, I have other sources for those,” Rachel said.
Rivaux cast a quick glance at her, his brows drawn.
“It’s my job, Henri.” Rachel touched his hand. “Not pretty, perhaps, but then it doesn’t involve as many betrayals as espionage. Unless one happens to be combining the two.”
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