Authors: Imperial Scandal
Teresa Grant (16 page)
Rivaux flushed. “No one could question your sacrifices—”
Rachel squeezed his fingers. “I’m good at my job. Both of them.”
Rivaux’s fingers twined round her own when she tried to draw her hand back. He looked at her for a moment, then turned back to the others. “Last night, one of the senior men and I were waiting for a contact who was late. We shared a flask of brandy. He let something slip. Eager to show off how much inside information he had, I think. The Silver Hawk is a code name.”
Malcolm exchanged a look with Davenport. “We thought as much. For whom?”
Rivaux drew in a breath. “A British officer who’s an agent for the French.”
Davenport whistled. “Well, that’s an interesting twist.”
“Who?” Malcolm asked.
“I don’t know his name. The Silver Hawk works on his own, and his identity is a highly guarded secret.”
“One can see why,” Davenport murmured.
“There’s more, Monsieur Rannoch.” Rivaux leaned forward. “That’s why I had to see Mademoiselle Garnier today, and why she sent for you. Apparently the Silver Hawk had been ordered to assassinate someone.”
Malcolm looked at Suzanne. Echoes of their adventures in Vienna. “Who?”
Rivaux swallowed. “You, Monsieur Rannoch.”
17
S
uzanne’s hand moved involuntarily to her husband’s arm. “Did your source say why the Silver Hawk wanted to kill Malcolm?”
uzanne’s hand moved involuntarily to her husband’s arm. “Did your source say why the Silver Hawk wanted to kill Malcolm?”
“No,” Rivaux said.
“But he used Malcolm’s name?” Her fingers tightened on Malcolm’s arm, feeling the solid warmth of his flesh beneath the linen.
“Most definitely.”
Malcolm shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Rivaux said it.” Davenport shifted in his chair, cradling his bad arm. “Your reputation preceded you to Brussels.”
“It’s preposterous.” Malcolm glanced down at Suzanne’s fingers on his arm, then met her gaze, an ironic glint in his eyes. “We’re on the brink of war. Brussels is full of generals and kings and princes. I’m surprised anyone even knows who I am. Even granted the most highly romanticized stories about my supposed exploits, it would make no sense to kill me.”
“It would put a crimp in British intelligence,” Davenport said.
“A mild crimp.”
“You must represent some sort of threat.” Suzanne willed her heartbeat to be still. “Because of something you know?”
“Something that would identify this Silver Hawk person?” Rachel suggested.
“That would certainly give him a motive for killing me.” Malcolm squeezed Suzanne’s fingers and detached them from his arm. “Save that I hadn’t even heard of him until just now.”
“Unless it’s something you know but don’t realize you know,” Suzanne said. “Even you can’t put the pieces together when the picture’s too murky, darling.”
“However clever this Silver Hawk is, he hasn’t actually managed to make an attempt on my life,” Malcolm said.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Davenport swirled the cognac in his glass, frowning into the golden-brown liquid. “Energetic as the brawl was, there weren’t a lot of knives drawn. And yet if that cut to your ribs had been a few inches over, your lovely wife might be a widow. And we still don’t know who attacked you.”
Rachel clunked her glass down on a side table, spattering drops of cognac on the polished rosewood. “You think the brawl was an attempt to kill Monsieur Rannoch?”
“Not a very tidy assassination attempt.” Malcolm took a swallow of cognac.
“But easy to cover up,” Davenport pointed out. “If we were followed to Le Paon d’Or—”
“You think someone managed to follow us without either of us tumbling to it?”
“Lamentable, but supposedly this Silver Hawk is good at what he does.” Davenport stretched his legs out and crossed his feet at the ankles. “If he saw us go in the side door, there’d have been time for him to go round through the front before the fight broke out.”
“Barely.”
“A house full of soldiers chafing at inactivity in the face of coming battle. All it would take is a few well-chosen words.”
“Chancy,” Malcolm said.
“Most attempts at murder are chancy,” Davenport countered. “So which British officers might you know enough about to identify them as French agents?”
“My source didn’t say the Silver Hawk had decided to kill Monsieur Rannoch,” Rivaux interjected. “He said the Silver Hawk had been
ordered
to kill him.”
ordered
to kill him.”
“Even odder,” Malcolm said. “I can’t imagine why French intelligence would waste time on me.”
Suzanne took a sip of cognac, forcing down a welling of panic and fury. “Something you know. But about what?”
Davenport tipped his glass back, draining the last of the cognac. “Perhaps whoever was behind the ambush last night wasn’t after La Fleur or Julia. Perhaps you were the target.”
Suzanne’s fingers curled into her palm.
“The French said it wasn’t their attack,” Rachel pointed out, getting up and reaching for the decanter to refill the glasses.
“But as Rivaux said, the Silver Hawk works on his own. Perhaps someone very high up is running the Silver Hawk.”
“I think so.” Rivaux leaned forward. “Few people know about the Silver Hawk and even fewer know his identity. But last night my source was boasting. Implying he’s in contact with the Silver Hawk. I tried to get him to reveal the Silver Hawk’s identity, but there was only so much I could do without betraying myself.”
“Sensible.” Malcolm cast an approving glance at Rivaux. “I can’t tell you how many promising double agents we’ve lost to clumsy, overzealous questioning. Who is this man?”
Rivaux hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “Foolish to cavil at betraying him now. It’s Dumont. A captain in my regiment.”
“You can’t confront him,” Rachel said. “You’d—”
“Blow our knowledge of the spy ring.” Davenport met Malcolm’s gaze and grimaced. “Devil of a fix.”
“Dumont receives messages at the opera,” Rivaux said. “I’ve seen it. One of the footmen brings them round with the champagne glasses and slips them into his hand.”
“Messages from whom?” Malcolm asked.
“I don’t know. The one night I was with him when he got one, he made a great effort to prevent my seeing it. But now we know he’s working with the Silver Hawk—”
“Is it always the same footman?” Suzanne asked.
“The two times I saw him receive a note. The footmen are all tall and all wear powdered wigs, but this man has fading pox scars on his cheeks.”
“So we get a look at one of these notes, and with any luck it will lead us to the Silver Hawk.” Davenport took a sip from his refilled glass. “Of course intelligence missions are rarely so simple, but we can but hope.”
“Dumont should be at the opera tonight,” Rivaux said. “If he gets a note perhaps I can retrieve it before he sees it—”
“No,” Malcolm said. “He’d be bound to suspect you. We need someone unassuming, someone above suspicion. Someone with a devastating skill at sleight of hand.”
“Thank you, darling,” Suzanne said. “I thought you’d never ask.” She looked from Malcolm to Davenport. “I may need your help creating a distraction.”
“We’re at your service, Mrs. Rannoch,” Davenport said.
“And if luck is extraordinarily with us, as Davenport says, this may lead us to the Silver Hawk,” Malcolm said.
Suzanne gripped his arm again. “Darling—”
“I’ll be on guard. And I’ll have Davenport for backup.”
“And me.”
“And you.” Malcolm lifted her hand to his lips and lightly kissed her fingers. “What could I possibly have to fear?”
“La Fleur warned you about the Silver Hawk,” Davenport said. They had returned to the house in the Rue Ducale, where they could talk in private, and were again ensconced in the salon off the garden. “No doubt because he knew the Silver Hawk was trying to kill you. And we know the French had intercepted our communications with La Fleur. If the Silver Hawk knew you were meeting La Fleur at the château and knew La Fleur was warning you—”
“We’ve still got the fact that someone made sure Julia Ashton would be at the château alone.” Malcolm took a sip of the coffee Suzanne had ordered. It was just past four o’clock, and they still had a long evening’s work ahead of them. “If the Silver Hawk was behind the attack at the château, who sent the note to the Prince of Orange so he wouldn’t show up for his rendezvous with Lady Julia? And why?”
“It’s a damnable coincidence someone luring Julia there at the same time as the ambush.” Davenport scowled into his cup. “I hate coincidences.”
“What if—” Suzanne froze in the midst of pouring warm milk into her coffee, the jug tilted over her cup. “What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if the Silver Hawk wanted to get rid of Lady Julia as well?”
“My God.” Davenport stared at her across the sofa table. “You are good.”
Suzanne set down the jug before her cup could overflow. Droplets of milk spattered on the blue and white porcelain of the tray. “Lady Julia told her sister she’d tumbled into something that was beyond her control. Nothing we’ve learned about her so far explains why she feared for her life. But if she’d realized a man she was close to was a French agent—”
“It’s a good theory,” Malcolm said. “But there’s no proof.”
“Actually there is of a sort.” Davenport leaned forward. “Whoever started the fight at Le Paon d’Or knew about Julia’s affair with the Prince of Orange. As far as we know the only people privy to that information were Wellington, Stuart, you, me, Mrs. Rannoch, Cordelia, and the prince himself. And whoever sent that note to the prince canceling the rendezvous, the same person who may have been behind Julia’s death. Far tidier if the person who sent the note to the prince also started today’s brawl.”
Malcolm took a sip of coffee. “It’s only surmise that the Silver Hawk was behind the brawl.”
“If he wasn’t, we have another damned coincidence on our hands,” Davenport muttered.
“And all we know about the Silver Hawk is that he’s supposedly a British officer. There are hundreds of British officers in Brussels—”
“And Julia Ashton was married to one,” Suzanne said, looking at her husband. “And mistress to another.”
Davenport twisted his cup between his hands, as though answers were hidden in the transferware pattern. “Ashton would make the perfect spy. The upright Englishman who seems to actually believe all the scept’red-isle nonsense and looks as if he couldn’t even conceive of the word ‘betrayal.’ ”
“It would make him one hell of an actor,” Malcolm said.
“Which the Silver Hawk is to hear young Rivaux tell it.” Davenport took a sip of coffee and looked as though he was debating its degree of bitterness. “Of course Anthony Chase is a much more obvious choice. He plainly has no morals when it comes to his women, so why should he when it comes to his country?”
“If every officer who betrayed his wife betrayed his country, God help the British army,” Malcolm said.
“Captain Ashton and Captain Chase are the most obvious possibilities, but there are others.” Suzanne took a careful sip from her cup, which was full to the brim. The hot liquid scalded her tongue. “Society in Brussels is confined, and Julia Ashton was at the heart of it. In theory she could have stumbled upon information linking any British officer with the Silver Hawk.”
Malcolm set his cup down with a quiet click of porcelain. “It’s a tidy theory, Suzette. But you know as well as I do that you still need facts however clever the thesis.”
“Then we’ll have to find the facts.” Davenport folded his hands behind his head. “And yes,” he added, forestalling a protest from Malcolm, “without ignoring the possibility that the facts may lead us to some other theory. Though I somehow doubt that Mrs. Rannoch’s theories often prove incorrect.”
“Thank you, Colonel Davenport.” Suzanne smiled at him across the coffee things. “I knew you were a man of sense.”
“Assassinate Rannoch?” The Duke of Wellington’s eyes widened in rare surprise. “Why the devil would anyone care about getting rid of Rannoch?”
“Precisely my reaction,” Malcolm said.
“Nevertheless.” Davenport met Wellington’s gaze without flinching. “We have no reason to doubt Rivaux’s story. And there’s already been one attempt on Rannoch’s life, possibly two.”
“One of which could have been a tavern brawl, the other of which could have been an attempt to kill La Fleur or Julia Ashton,” Malcolm said.
Wellington’s gaze snapped to Malcolm. “False modesty isn’t helpful, Rannoch.”
“I thought you were on my side.”
“I said I couldn’t understand the French wasting their time trying to get rid of you. But this wouldn’t be the first time French motives have baffled me.” The duke picked up a sheaf of papers from his desktop and snapped them down hard on the polished wood, aligning the edges. He wore evening dress, the Order of the Garter pinned to his dark coat, but he was still in his office at Headquarters. He drew a harsh breath, gaze on the papers in his hands. “You’d never heard of this Silver Hawk before?”
“Not until La Fleur’s warning,” Malcolm said.
Wellington set the papers down on the desk, tightly controlled precision in each movement of his hands. “And he’s a British officer?”
“According to Rivaux’s source,” Davenport said. “We can’t confirm it, but Rivaux’s intelligence has been trustworthy so far.”
Wellington scowled at the papers. “Damnation.” He slammed his hand down on the desk. “As if we don’t have enough to contend with, with the French congregating round Mauberge.”
“What?”
Malcolm and Davenport said almost in one breath.
Malcolm and Davenport said almost in one breath.
“Bonaparte was bound to move sooner or later.” Wellington continued to frown at the papers. “No sense in doing anything until we have intelligence about where the main attack will come from. A wrong move could leave us dangerously exposed. But the last thing we need is further distraction among the troops. We couldn’t even control the news about the prince’s affair with Julia Ashton for twenty-four hours. Now we’ve got soldiers brawling, rumors flying—” His mouth tightened. “If it gets out that a British officer may be a French agent—” He realigned the edges of the papers he’d disarranged when he slammed his hand on the desk. “Learn what you can at the opera tonight. With Bonaparte on the move, time is of the essence.” He glanced up at Malcolm. “You think you can intercept the communication for this Dumont?”
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