The Glenister Papers, page 30
"No. But that you didn't tell me, when you told me so much else, is."
"I know how you feel about Carfax, Malcolm. The feelings only seem to have grown stronger, from what I've seen in the last few days, but even eight years ago any connection to Carfax would hardly have engendered trust on your side."
"Precisely."
Kitty drummed her well-groomed nails on the polished wood of the table beside her. "Oh, do use your head, Malcolm. I needed Carfax's help. I needed your help. I did what was sensible to secure both."
Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. "Kitty, when did you stop working for Carfax?"
This time her eyes opened very wide. "When I left the Peninsula. Obviously."
"I don't see what's obvious about it. Carfax would have found reports from the Argentine very useful. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner."
Kitty pushed herself to her feet again, waged against him like a duelist. "Malcolm. Darling. My political views may not always align with yours, but they certainly don't align with Carfax's. I told you I was working with the rebels in Argentina."
"I know what you told me."
"Malcolm!" Her voice sharpened. "Can you seriously think I'd have worked for the Bourbons? I wanted freedom. I just didn't want the French. I'm not going quite so far as to admit I'd have done things differently eight years ago—really what's the sense in refining upon the past?—but I told you I'm as sick as you at what we helped the British make of Spain. The Spain I'm quite sure Carfax wants to keep." She took a step towards him. "Do you know me so little you could think I'd want what Carfax wants?"
Kitty had always been good at arguing passionately. He'd seen her argue just as convincingly to Don Ramón Castella. And in that case, he'd known the passion was as much strategy as conviction. "And if you thought you could manage Carfax by playing both sides?"
Kitty twisted a gold bracelet round her wrist. "That sounds like a very dangerous game." She returned to her chair.
He pulled up another chair and sat down opposite her. "You like dangerous games."
She gave a sudden laugh, "You have me there." She settled back in her chair. "You have to admit Carfax is hard to break away from, even if one isn't precisely working for him. Knowledge is power. Why not put that knowledge to use?"
"Does Carfax think you're still working for him?"
"Not any more than he thinks you are, I shouldn't wonder."
"I remind him all the time that I'm not. It doesn't seem to stick."
"Well, then."
Malcolm leaned back and crossed his legs. "What did you learn from him about the Goshawk?"
"I didn't come right out and say I was looking for the Goshawk. I don't have any illusions that Carfax would want to help the Spanish rebels now."
"But—?"
"I sounded him out. He was at such elaborate pains to appear not to have an interest in the Goshawk that I'm quite sure he knows more than he's letting on."
"You think he knows who the Goshawk is? Or that the Goshawk is a British agent?"
"You can't tell me you've never wondered that yourself, Malcolm."
"The thought has crossed my mind. Why the elaborate secrecy?"
"Back then, because if the Spanish had got even a whiff of suspicion that the Goshawk was working for the British, it would have destroyed the Goshawk's credibility. We may have been allies, but the Spaniards I knew felt only marginally better about the British being in their country than about the French being there."
"And now?"
"Now, because he wouldn't want his creation used to unsettle the monarchy he worked so hard to restore."
"Fair enough. That's much what I'd worked out myself." Malcolm regarded the woman he'd once been ready to spend his life with. "Did Carfax know Raimundo O'Roarke was an agent?"
Kitty's fingers froze on the satinwood of the table. Good to know he could still put her in check on occasion.
"I suppose I should have known you'd work that out," she said.
"Yes, you should. Why didn't you tell me?"
She folded her hands in her lap. "I wasn't sure what Raimundo was doing here. I wanted to find out first. You're not a Spaniard, Malcolm. Our goals may not entirely align, and I know perfectly well our tactics don't."
"You told me about your relationship with him."
"I knew you'd pick up on something between us. I had to give you some explanation."
"So telling me you'd been lovers was safer than telling me he'd been an agent?"
"Good God, yes. Telling you we'd been lovers was almost guaranteed to get you to stop asking questions."
"You're diabolical, Kitty."
"Thank you."
Malcolm looked into those familiar, maddening green eyes. "You sought Raimundo out in Hyde Park."
"Raimundo told you?"
"Palmerston did. Raimundo confirmed it. Did Raimundo tell you why he was in Britain?"
"This business with the Spanish ambassador."
"Do you believe him?"
Kitty raised a brow. "Will you believe my answer?"
"I'm not sure, but I'd like to hear it."
She gave a full-throated laugh. "I always loved you for your honesty, Malcolm. Even when it got in the way. I'm not sure if I believe Raimundo. He seems more complicated than the man I knew, even granted that the man I knew was an agent."
"He claims he was just fetching and carrying."
"It was a bit more than that. But not too much more, when I knew him. Now—he strikes me as having formidable talents."
"High praise from you."
"Or from you." She smiled.
Malcolm found himself returning the smile and then realized how fully Kitty had diverted him from his suspicions when he'd entered the room. Would he never learn?
"So I presume you also recognized Raimundo's handwriting on the love letter we found in the back of Annabel's picture of her children."
"There's no way I could possibly deny that, is there? Even if I wanted to, which I don't particularly. Yes, I recognized Raimundo's hand. I wanted to talk to him about that as well."
"To protect him?"
"To get his side of the story. I couldn't very well have told you about that without telling you the whole spy business."
"Fair enough. What did he say to you about her?"
"That he helped her recover a brooch from Martinez's effects. That he never meant things to go in the direction they did. And—without his actually putting it into words—that he's head over heels in love with her."
"Yes, that more or less tallies with what he said to O'Roarke and me. And what he didn't say. I agree his feelings for Annabel appear to run deep. Unless, of course, that's part of the act."
Kitty frowned.
"Don't tell me you hadn't thought of it," Malcolm said.
"It's possible. I told you he strikes me as much subtler than the man I knew. I believe him about his feelings for Annabel, but I suppose if he's really brilliant at deception, I might be taken in."
"That's quite an admission."
Kitty put up a hand to tuck a curl into its pins. "We can all make mistakes. But while I confess I was playing for time when I said yesterday that I took Raimundo at face value, I do believe him about his feelings for Annabel."
"Do you think he could be the Goshawk?"
Kitty chewed on her lower lip in that way she did when she was mulling over a problem. "I didn't until I talked with him yesterday. As I said, he's more formidable than the man I knew." She hesitated. "It's possible."
Colin looked over at the Berkeley Square garden. "It's empty. Can't we go play for a bit?"
"Play." Drusilla startled to hurtle off the pavement towards the garden.
Livia caught her younger sister by the arms. "Please, Mummy?" she said.
Cordelia smiled and scooped Drusilla up. "I'll take all of you. Mélanie and Laura will want to check if Uncle Malcolm and Uncle Raoul are back. You've been very good, and you haven't had much time outside yet today."
"Excellent plan," Mélanie said. "We'll have Valentin bring out some sandwiches. You can have a picnic."
"Will you come for the picnic?" Colin asked.
Mélanie touched her son's hair. "That depends if Daddy's back and what he's learned."
Colin nodded. He was used to the rhythm of an investigation.
"I'll carry Clara," Emily said.
Laura bent down to put the baby into Emily's arms. Clara stretched her small arms up. Laura bent to give her a kiss, and then she and Mélanie crossed to the house. Valentin met them at the front door.
"Is Mr. Rannoch back?" Mélanie asked.
"No, madam. That is, he was, but he's gone out again." Valentin hesitated the briefest fraction of a second and then continued as though determined to keep the words steady and normal. "Mrs. Ashford called while you were all out and waited for someone in the family to return. She and Mr. Rannoch spoke for a bit and then left together."
"Of course they did." Mélanie matched Valentin's tone with—if she did say so herself—enviable aplomb. "I'm sure Mrs. Ashford had news for the investigation." She pulled off her gloves. "We've promised the children sandwiches in the garden. Can you see if Mrs. Erskine can put up a hamper? Mrs. O'Roarke and I can take it out to them."
"Right away, madam." Valentin smiled in a way that offered comfort at the same time it denied there was any reason comfort should need to be offered.
"We can go into the library until the sandwiches are ready," Laura said. "It's so odd not holding Clara. I'm not sure what to do with my hands."
They moved across the hall to the library. The room in which they had most of their investigative counsels. Mélanie set her gloves and reticule on the library table. Folly to wonder which room Malcolm and Kitty had spoken in. And it didn't really matter.
Laura watched her for a moment, as though weighing her words. "It's never easy."
Mélanie turned and met her friend's gaze. "What isn't?"
Laura gave a faint smile and set down her own gloves. "Confronting ghosts."
Mélanie looked at the woman who had helped raise her children for almost three years. Who had become one of her closest friends. Who was technically Malcolm's stepmother. Which meant she was also married to Mélanie's former lover, which made Mélanie herself one of Laura's ghosts. "Laura—" What words were possibly adequate to encompass what she owed to Laura, how their lives had changed, what Laura's forbearance meant to her?
"I didn't mean it that way," Laura said quickly. "You're much too familiar to be a ghost. Or, at least, to be a frightening one."
"We've never really talked about it," Mélanie said.
"Not in so many words. But I can't tell you how relieved I was when we got back from Maidstone to see that you weren't upset. Even before I consciously admitted to myself that you knew what had transpired between Raoul and me. Even before I let myself consider that it might be something that was going to continue."
"I was so very happy to see you both happy. Malcolm was too."
"It would have been understandable if you'd been jealous."
"Yes, I thought I might be," Mélanie said truthfully. "Not of you, but of any hypothetical woman whom Raoul—"
"Yes," Laura said. "I can quite see that. Human nature."
"But I wasn't. Truly. Not more than the smallest sort of twinge that's probably inevitable."
Laura smiled. "I knew the truth of your relationship with Raoul before there was the least romantic development between us. That made a tremendous difference. For all so much about him was a mystery, you were part of his past I understood. And much too much in the present to be a ghost."
"Talking of being jealous."
"Well, I might have been. If I hadn't been so very sure of what you were to each other and what you weren't. I'm quite egalitarian, you know. I don't need to reign over a man's affections. But I do need to be equal." She hesitated a moment, plucking at the fabric of her sleeve. "Arabella, on the other hand—Let's just say I do understand ghosts."
Mélanie studied her friend. Something about the curve of her shoulder and the angle of her head held a vulnerability Laura didn't customarily let herself display. "I think he was a different man when he was with her."
"Mostly I tell myself that. That our life is here and now, that I know what he feels for me, that the past doesn't matter. Then he'll refer to her as 'Bella,' and all of a sudden it comes washing over me. His life has been so complicated, and I've known him for very little of it at this point. And Arabella was so inextricably bound up in so much of it. I think she'll always haunt me, because I know she still haunts him."
Mélanie stared at her friend. They each knew secrets of the other's life that almost no one else did. They had shared danger and exile. They trusted each other with their children. But those words, uttered in a controlled voice, were the most emotionally revealing speech she had ever heard Laura give. She put a hand on Laura's arm. Laura turned and gave her a quick smile.
"I knew Malcolm had a past," Mélanie said. "I always wondered about it. It's easier in some ways to confront that past. To understand it a bit." She drew a breath, seeing Malcolm's gaze meet Kitty's in an instinctive understanding so similar to what she and Malcolm shared. "Easier in some ways, and harder in others."
"I can see that," Laura said. "Imagining what it might be like if Arabella walked through the door." She touched her wedding band. "Events can pull us into the past. That's when I feel Arabella's presence the most. When Gisèle disappeared. All I could do was listen while Raoul combed through events that occurred long before I knew him. I could feel him moving away from me into the past. And it didn't entirely help that I knew that was precisely where he needed to be."
"Raoul's heart is in the present, with you."
"And Malcolm's is with you."
"Yes. I do know that. I know how fortunate I am." Mélanie smoothed the chain of her bracelet. It was so delicate and she'd broken a link a month ago.
Laura watched her. "But?"
"You and Raoul have both been through so much. But you chose each other knowing the truth of your pasts. There's a lot to be said for beginning with honesty. Malcolm and I didn't. Malcolm didn't really get to make a choice at all."
"You don't talk this way often."
"No. Folly to dwell in the past." Mélanie pulled her fingers from the chain. She wore it every day. She was going to have to trust it wouldn't snap again. Or that it could be mended. "Mostly I'm focused on making things work in the present. And then, there aren't many people I can discuss it with."
"Easier with Cordy, I should imagine. Less awkward."
Mélanie smiled at her friend. Laura had a wonderful way of confronting what could be uncomfortable. "There's no denying that. But it's good to talk about it with you."
"Whatever happened between Malcolm and Katelina Ashford, it ended long before he met you."
"And it didn't end by Malcolm's choice."
"For that matter, Raoul never chose to give up Arabella. He never did give her up." Laura folded her arms over her chest. "I don't use these words lightly. But you and Malcolm were made for each other. And I think you know that."
Mélanie laughed. "You know just what to say. But I think if that's true, it's because Malcolm and I've grown together."
"It's a bit more, I'd say. And I think my own husband sensed it from the first. Or we'd none of us be here now." She hesitated a moment. "Talking of giving people up, and choices."
Mélanie swallowed, an unexpected lump in her throat. Because much as she knew Raoul, complicated as their history was, there were aspects of it she was just coming to understand. Like a picture obscured by layers of smoke and grime, slowly cleaned to reveal the image beneath. "I know what Malcolm means to me," she said. "And yes, now I can admit that he started to mean that to me long before I'd have acknowledged it, even to myself."
"And what you mean to him."
Mélanie touched her bracelet again. "I may be his wife, but I wouldn't be so presumptuous as to assume I know that."
The door opened to admit Valentin again, but without the hamper. "Mrs. Erskine almost has the hamper ready," he said. "But you've had callers. Miss Simcox and Mr. Lucan. They say it's urgent."
Chapter 30
Frances looked up from her writing desk. Francesca and Philip were in baskets beside her. "Malcolm. I thought you were busy investigating."
Malcolm closed the door of his aunt's sitting room and leaned against it. "I am."
Frances's finely arced brows drew together. "You think I can help you? I admit I quite enjoyed Vauxhall last night, and I wish I could do more, but I didn't know Annabel Larimer."
"It's not about Annabel."
"What, then?" Frances regarded him. "Don't look so grave, Malcolm. Surely at this point you realize there's very little you can't ask me. And certainly very little that would disturb me."
Malcolm moved to a chair beside his aunt. "I've never liked to ask you about Alistair. Never felt the need to, for that matter. It's your past, and I have no particular interest in him."
"Good heavens." Frances set down her pen. "What has Alistair got to do with this?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but possibly a great deal. He did found the Elsinore League, which seem to be behind much of what is happening, even as they are tearing each other apart." Malcolm swallowed. He was treading on delicate ground. Ground he had treaded before with his aunt, but that didn't make it easier. Especially given the change in her circumstances. "I'm sorry. I don't imagine it's easy for you, either."
"My dear Malcolm." Frances's faint smile appeared genuine and held a touch of mischief. "I've always found such matters easier to speak of than you do. Aside from the fact that it's much easier to discuss sordid details about oneself than to discuss them about the parental generation."
"Now, of all times—"
"You mean because of Archie?" Frances leaned down to rock Francesca's basket. "Actually, being with Archie allows me to look back on Alistair with rather more equanimity. I think he may have been the only man I loved before Archie, you know."
