Teresa Grant Page 4

  “—and leave again with the Prince of Orange. Have they had news? Is Bonaparte marching?”

  “Georgy, darling.” Suzanne slipped her arm round Georgiana’s shoulders. “It’s a truism of diplomatic life that balls are often the scene of negotiations. I think half the decisions at the Congress of Vienna were made in the midst of masquerade balls. I daresay Wellington needed to have a talk with the prince and thought it would be more easily accomplished here than at Headquarters.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes, though if you ask me they really may be drinking port.” Suzanne cast a glance round the ballroom searching for distraction. A splash of red and black caught her eye. Cordelia Davenport was leaning against one of the French windows in a pose of casual nonchalance, laughing up at a hussar and a dragoon who were both offering her glasses of champagne. For a moment Suzanne saw Harry Davenport’s harsh face and intense eyes when she’d told him his wife was in Brussels.

  “Was Colonel Davenport already a soldier when he married Lady Cordelia?” Suzanne asked. Harry Davenport had never seemed to her entirely suited to the life. She’d more than once caught a glint in his eyes that signaled frustration at orders.

  “Oh no,” Georgiana said. “He was fearfully bookish in those days. He was a classical scholar. I think he studied the Julio-Claudians.”

  Who would make poor Harry Davenport’s own scandal look positively tame. “It doesn’t sound as though he and Lady Cordelia were well suited,” Suzanne said.

  “A hopeless mismatch. I don’t know what they found to talk about.”

  “So Harry Davenport bought himself a commission to escape his failed marriage?” Suzanne had had too many other matters to contend with in the past two and a half years to spare a great deal of thought for the enigmatic Colonel Davenport, but he had always puzzled her.

  “He went to the Peninsula and ended up on Wellington’s staff. My brother March knows him.” Georgiana’s brother Lord March had also been an aide-de-camp to Wellington until he’d been seconded to the Prince of Orange’s staff. “March says he’s brilliant, but one can never be sure what he’ll say. I don’t think he’s been back to Britain since, not even when Wellington was in London last year before the Congress. A lot of people thought he’d sue for divorce, but I expect he didn’t care for the scandal. I don’t think they’re even formally separated.”

  “Do they have any children?”

  Georgiana’s lips tightened. “A little girl. Born some months after Harry left England. She bears his name, and I don’t think he’s ever made any effort to repudiate her.”

  “But of course there’s talk,” Suzanne said, thinking of her own son.

  “Of course.”

  “Lady Julia’s death is tragic and the prince’s involvement is a damnable inconvenience,” Wellington said to Malcolm and Davenport when Stuart had left the room to fetch the Prince of Orange. “But when all’s said and done it’s La Fleur’s death and why it happened that’s the real concern. What convinced Grant the French had broken our code?”

  “It seemed the logical assumption when we intercepted a dispatch of theirs that contained information they could only have obtained from our coded communications,” Davenport replied.

  Wellington frowned. “Damned shame. La Fleur was an invaluable asset. So the French followed and took him out?”

  “It seems the obvious conclusion,” Malcolm said.

  Wellington shot him a swift look. “Why seems?”

  “Just that in that case I wonder why they retreated without killing Davenport and me as well.”

  “Perhaps they ran out of ammunition. You say you hit one of them.”

  “So it seemed.”

  “If it wasn’t the French—”

  “Quite,” Malcolm said.

  Davenport was watching Malcolm closely. “Not that I have a great deal of faith in the understanding of French soldiers. Or British soldiers if it comes to that. But the whole thing was a bit rum. If—”

  The door swung open on his words and His Royal Highness William, Prince of Orange, strode into the room, Stuart following in his wake.

  Malcolm had known the Prince of Orange, more commonly referred to as Slender Billy, since boyhood. The prince had been only three when his family had fled to England to escape the French. Billy’s parents were friends of Lord and Lady Carfax, the parents of Malcolm’s friend David Mallinson. Malcolm had met the prince at Carfax Court. Four years Malcolm’s junior, Billy had been brash and eager and had enthusiastically embraced Britain and the British. Later, he had served in the Peninsula as an aide-de-camp to Wellington, when Malcolm was an attaché at the British embassy. Billy had been betrothed briefly to the prince regent’s daughter, Princess Charlotte, but Charlotte had broken off the engagement.

  “What’s the kickup?” the prince asked, his gaze sweeping the company. “Don’t tell me Boney’s on the march already.”

  “Not so far as we know.” Wellington surveyed him. Theirs was a somewhat delicate relationship. The prince had once served on Wellington’s staff, but more recently Billy had been the commander of the Allied army until Wellington arrived from Vienna to take control. The prince had relinquished his command with every appearance of respect, if not out-and-out hero worship, but Wellington’s relationship with his father, King Frederick, and the relationship in general between the British and their Dutch-Belgian allies was a more complicated thing.

  Stuart leaned against the closed door panels, while Malcolm and Davenport watched from the sidelines.

  Billy straightened his thin shoulders, reverting to the young aide-de-camp before his admired superior. “What is it, sir?”

  “I didn’t realize Your Royal Highness had an engagement that would take you away from the ball this evening.”

  Malcolm saw the color flare in Billy’s cheeks—he’d never been good at lying. “An engage—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Wellington reached inside his coat and held out the note Malcolm had found in Lady Julia’s reticule.

  The prince’s face turned as white as his starched shirt points. “Oh, Lord. It isn’t—”

  “It’s no concern of mine whom you choose to take to bed,” Wellington said. “Though I must say, it isn’t good for morale if it gets about that you’re bedding the wife of one of my officers.”

  “I never meant—”

  “For it to become public knowledge. So I should hope. Had you met Lady Julia at the Château de Vere before?”

  The prince dug the polished toe of his shoe into the Brussels weave of the carpet. “Edouard de Vere is a friend of mine. I knew the château was empty. It seemed discreet—”

  “And tonight?”

  “I never left the ball. Julia sent me a note saying we’d best not meet after all.”

  “When did you receive it?”

  “Just after I arrived here. One of the footmen gave it me.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  Billy reached inside his shirt cuff. Malcolm flicked a glance at Davenport and knew they were thinking the same thing. An intelligence agent would have burned it at once.

  The prince held a scrap of paper out to Wellington, who regarded it with a closed face, then handed it to Malcolm and Davenport. A torn piece of notepaper to which a faint odor of jasmine clung. H.R.H. the Prince of Orange was written on one side in a flowing hand with loops and flourishes. Malcolm turned the paper over. On the other side, in the same hand, the words:

  Not tonight. I’ll explain later.

  J.

  “Interesting,” Wellington said. “Because the thing is, Lady Julia did go to the rendezvous.”

  “Why the devil would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m afraid she had the misfortune to stumble into a French attack on an agent in our service.” Wellington drew a breath. “I’m very sorry to tell you this, Your Royal Highness, but I’m afraid Lady Julia was killed this evening.”

  For a moment, Billy stared at
the duke in blank incomprehension. Then the prince swayed on his feet. Malcolm pulled a chair forward and pushed Billy into it. Davenport crossed to a table with decanters, poured a glass of brandy, and put it in Billy’s hand. The glass slipped from the prince’s nerveless fingers, spattering cognac on his dancing shoes. Davenport caught the glass before it could fall to the floor and held it to Billy’s lips.

  The prince gulped down some brandy and coughed, his shoulders shaking. “But she can’t be—”

  “I’m afraid she most definitely is,” Malcolm said. “Davenport and I saw her. A terrible tragedy.”

  Billy stared up at him with numb eyes. “If I’d gone to meet her—”

  Malcolm gripped the prince’s shoulder. “She told you not to. Something went terribly awry.”

  “Who else knew you and Lady Julia planned to meet at the château this evening?” Wellington asked.

  “No one.” Billy gulped down some more brandy.

  “You’re sure? You didn’t mention it to any of your friends over port—”

  “What sort of an idiot do you take me for? I wouldn’t put Julia’s reputation at risk.”

  Davenport’s head snapped up, but he bit back whatever he had been going to say.

  “How long had the affair been going on?” the duke said, in the same measured voice.

  The prince stared at the splashes of brandy on the toes of his shoes, as though wondering how they had got there. “A month. Since early May. It was at the opera. She was so lovely. I never thought—”

  “One doesn’t usually in such situations,” Wellington said.

  “It didn’t seem—It’s the way marriages are conducted in the English ton.”

  Davenport didn’t so much as draw a breath, but Malcolm felt the tension radiating off him like waves of heat from a smoldering fire.

  Wellington, whose wife was home in London and who was himself engaged in what was at the very least an agreeable flirtation in Brussels with the very-much-married Lady Frances Webster, regarded the prince with drawn brows. “Not all English husbands are complacent. I don’t pay much heed to such things, but from what I’ve observed, John Ashton gave the impression of being very much in love with his wife.”

  Billy blinked. “Julia said they had an understanding. She—” He looked up at Malcolm with the confused gaze Malcolm remembered from boyhood. “Are you sure it was Julia? Perhaps you made a mistake—”

  “It was quite definitely Julia,” Davenport said.

  “She’s your wife’s sister, isn’t she?” Stuart said on a note of surprise. “I forgot—”

  “That I’m married?” Davenport asked. “I do the same myself much of the time.”

  Wellington stared at the prince for a long moment, flicked a glance at the brandy glass, looked pointedly at Davenport. Davenport refilled the glass and returned it to Billy.

  “Drink that down,” Wellington said, “and pull yourself together. You need to return to the ballroom as though nothing has happened.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “I assume you would not wish any scandal to attach to Lady Julia’s memory. Nor would you wish for any ill feeling between yourself and her husband and his fellow officers. Difficult, I know, but I have no doubt Your Highness is equal to the task.”

  Billy’s shoulders straightened perceptibly at this compliment from the mentor he admired. He swallowed the second brandy and got to his feet.

  Wellington gave an approving nod and clapped the prince on the shoulder. “You’ll do, lad. Stuart, you’d best go with him.”

  Stuart inclined his head and took Billy’s arm. “Your Royal Highness.”

  Wellington watched the door close behind the two men. Then his gaze snapped to Malcolm and Davenport. “What you just heard stays within these walls.”

  “Sir—” Malcolm said.

  “There’s enough tension between the Dutch-Belgian forces and our lads as it is.”

  “Billy’s popular among our officers,” Malcolm pointed out. “One of their own.”

  “Even so. We don’t need a damned scandal distracting everyone.” Wellington crossed to a table that held a brace of candles and held Billy’s note to Lady Julia to one of the candle flames. “You never saw this,” he said as the paper dissolved to black ash on the cherrywood tabletop. “Ideally Lady Julia was never at the château.”

  “And Julia’s husband?” Davenport asked.

  “He’ll have to be told something.” Wellington swept the crumbs of ash into his hand and tossed them into the cold grate. “But I don’t think he’ll want a scandal any more than we do.”

  Davenport had crossed to a pier table that held a single candle. He was holding Julia’s note to the prince to the light. Not to burn it, to study. He stared at it with drawn brows.

  “Best burn that as well,” Wellington said.

  “Not just yet I think.” Davenport looked up from the paper. “It appears to be a forgery.”

  5

  “What?”Wellington said. “You hadn’t seen Lady Julia in four years. How the devil can you recognize her handwriting?”

  “I can’t. But I know a forgery when I see it.” Davenport carried the note over to the duke. “See the breaks in the line? As though the writer wrote with painstaking care. Here he or she even traced back over. We don’t do that when we write ourselves. We scrawl the words without thinking.”

  Malcolm studied the note, remembering Davenport giving him a similar lecture three years ago over an intercepted French dispatch. “He’s right,” Malcolm said. The breaks in the lines were obvious now Davenport had pointed them out. “Davenport usually is.”

  Wellington looked from Malcolm to Davenport, as though he’d just glimpsed an extra regiment of enemy troops lying in wait right before a battle. “That would mean—”

  “That someone knew of the rendezvous and went to great lengths to ensure the prince wouldn’t arrive for it,” Malcolm said.

  “And that Julia would be there alone,” Davenport added.

  The implications hung in the air like smoke after a cannon blast. “No one could have known the French would ambush you,” Wellington said.

  “Unless it wasn’t the French shooting at us,” Davenport said.

  Wellington swung his gaze to the colonel. “You think someone who knew Malcolm was meeting La Fleur tonight lured Lady Julia to the château, shot at all of you, and killed La Fleur, just to get rid of Lady Julia?”

  “I admit it’s far-fetched. But it’s not impossible. It’s also possible that someone who knew nothing about Rannoch’s meeting with La Fleur planned to confront Julia at the château and then hung back because of the gunfire.”

  “Was Johnny Ashton in the ballroom all evening?” Malcolm asked.

  “I—” Wellington bit back the words. “I can’t swear to it.” His gaze was like ice. “But one way or another, Lady Julia’s husband is the next person we need to talk to.”

  “Mrs. Rannoch?”

  Suzanne turned to find herself looking into the bright eyes of Lady Caroline Lamb. Lord Byron’s erstwhile mistress, the estranged wife of Malcolm’s friend William Lamb, one of the most scandalous women in Britain. Suzanne smiled at her. She liked Lady Caroline despite—or perhaps because of—the stories of her outrageous behavior. Unlike many, Caro Lamb had never raised her brows at Malcolm Rannoch’s foreign-born war bride.

  “I don’t believe you’ve met Lady Cordelia Davenport,” Lady Caroline said, indicating the woman who stood beside her. “She’s just this afternoon arrived in Brussels and is staying with me.”

  Suzanne exchanged greetings with Harry Davenport’s wife. Close up, Lady Cordelia was not as tall as she had appeared when she entered the ballroom. Her presence lent her the illusion of height. The smile that had dazzled the ballroom was warm and direct, but Suzanne saw lines of strain behind Lady Cordelia’s artfully applied eye blacking, and her face was pale beneath her wash of rouge.

  “Caro says you’re one of the most sensible women in Brussels, Mrs. Rann
och,” Cordelia said. She had a low-pitched, musical voice. “And one of the best dressed. The second of which is quite obvious.”

  “She’s half-French,” Lady Caroline said. “She was born with an advantage.”

  “And that you’ve had all sorts of adventures in Spain with your intrepid husband.”

  Suzanne smiled. “No more than anyone else caught up in the midst of a war.”

  “And I daresay most of the arrangements for tonight’s entertainment were yours,” Lady Caroline said. “Stuart is fortunate to have you. Mrs. Rannoch, we need your help. You have a wonderful knack for knowing what is going on and to all intents and purposes you’re the evening’s hostess. Have you seen Julia—Lady Julia Ashton, that is?”

  “She’s my sister, you see,” Cordelia Davenport said. “She doesn’t know I’ve arrived in Brussels, and I’ve been looking everywhere for her.”

  Perfectly natural for Lady Cordelia to be looking for her sister, yet there was a tension in her voice that implied something more urgent than a sibling reunion. Suzanne cast a glance round the ballroom and then thought back through the evening. “I think the last time I saw Lady Julia was at supper. But there’s such a press of people I don’t think I’ve seen half the guests in the course of the evening.”

  “Of course,” said Lady Cordelia. “I’m sure we’ll find her eventually.” But the tension seemed to tighten between her perfectly groomed brows.

  The Honorable John Ashton, third son of the Earl of Langdon, had been in Malcolm’s year at Harrow, though he’d bought a commission when he left rather than going on to Oxford as Malcolm had done. Malcolm remembered Ashton as an agreeable fellow, good at sports, a bruising rider, popular but not arrogant with those less well favored. Malcolm had helped him with Latin translations once or twice and Ashton had seemed genuinely grateful.

  Ashton came into the salon to which Wellington had summoned him with a quick step, the light of the chase in his eyes. For him, like the Prince of Orange, secret councils implied Bonaparte was finally on the move. “Sir—” he said, then came up short at the sight of Malcolm. “Good God, Rannoch, what happened to you?” His gaze slid to Davenport and froze in confusion.