CHAPTER 14
Rupert, Viscount Caruthers, walked beside a shaggy chestnut pony, steadying the small boy seated atop the pony’s back, while Bertrand Laclos carefully led the pony along the path that wound along the bank of the Serpentine through Hyde Park.
“Stephen!” Colin called from his perch on Malcolm’s shoulders.
Stephen looked round and waved. Rupert gave a wave as well, as did Bertrand.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.” Malcolm lifted Colin from his shoulders and set him on the ground.
“Always glad to see you.” Rupert grinned, in a way that recalled the undergraduate Malcolm had known at Oxford. He swung Stephen down from the saddle so he could run over to Colin.
Bertrand looped the pony’s reins round his wrist and moved towards Malcolm. He wore the English gentleman’s casual dress of buckskin breeches, Hessian boots, and an olive drab coat, but beyond that he looked at home here in Hyde Park. In a way that had seemed impossible when he first resurfaced in France. In a way that he hadn’t even seemed at home as an émigré at Eton and Oxford. Heartening to know some things could turn out for the best.
“Was just reading the transcript of your speech on Habeas Corpus over morning coffee,” Bertrand said. “Impressive.”
“Probably futile.”
“On the contrary. Someone has to make the argument or we’re truly lost.” Bertrand crouched down beside the boys. “Why don’t we take Lancelot for a walk and find a place to sail your boat.”
Colin and Stephen responded with cries of approbation. Bertrand gathered up the reins and cast a crooked grin at Malcolm and Rupert. “Looks as though you’ve got work to discuss. Glad to be out of that business.”
“As am I, technically,” Rupert said, watching his lover move off. “But as you warned me when I sold out of the army, one can never really leave off the intelligence game.” He turned back to Malcolm. “I’m glad I decided to stand for Parliament.”
“As am I. We could use more like you.”
“I don’t have your way with words, but by God it’s good to have something to do with myself. God knows I don’t miss the army, but I need an occupation. And it’s not as though Father’s going to let me help with the running of the estates.” Rupert drew a breath. “Losing your own father. That can’t have been easy.”
“No.” Malcolm stared at the Serpentine as a breeze rippled across the water. This was territory he didn’t venture into with many, often not even in the privacy of his own thoughts. But Rupert’s own history had opened their mutual scars to each other. And given Rupert’s situation, he deserved a more complicated answer. “Alistair and I were on speaking terms, but barely. Just enough for Alistair to make his contempt of me clear.”
Rupert cast a quick glance at him. “I’m sure—”
“That I’m misinterpreting? I’m sure a lot of sons do. But Father’s contempt would be hard to miss.” Malcolm watched a gilded leaf drift into the water, a remnant of autumn. “In some ways, because I scarcely knew him, I can’t feel his loss. But in others—I think having so much unfinished business makes it harder to lose someone.”
Rupert’s gaze narrowed against the glare of the sun, or perhaps against the complexities. “You’re saying I should swallow the past and speak to Father so it will be less difficult for me when he dies?”
“I wouldn’t presume to say anything of the sort.”
Rupert grimaced and looked away, into the shadows. “Bertrand thinks I should. He says no matter what, Dewhurst is my father and refusing to speak to him can’t undo the past.” His gaze settled on Bertrand and the boys up ahead. “Father tried to have Bertrand killed. Could you have spoken to Alistair if he’d tried to kill Suzanne?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said, though instinctive rage roiled through him.
Rupert scowled at a leafless tree branch trailing dark tendrils over the water. “It isn’t even that, though, because Bertrand’s right, not speaking to Father can’t undo the past. I think I could bring myself to speak to Father, for Bertrand’s sake, if it weren’t for Stephen.” Up ahead, the pony had his head down. Stephen was petting him. “I don’t want my father’s brand of hatred anywhere near my son.”
Malcolm watched as Colin flung his arms round the pony’s neck. “One wants to protect them from all hurts. It’s almost unbearable to realize one can’t.”
“Perhaps not forever. But I can keep Stephen away from Father until Stephen’s old enough for me to explain. Right now Stephen could be charmed all too easily. Because Father would dote on him. His heir.” Rupert’s mouth twisted.
“There’s the difference. Alistair never showed much interest in Colin.” But then there’d been no title at stake. And why should Alistair Rannoch have cared about the son of a son he doubted was his in the first place?
Rupert pushed his hair out of his eyes. “One day I’ll have to show Stephen his heritage. But not yet. Let him enjoy childhood. As we were never really able to do.”
Malcolm watched the boys run ahead while Bertrand gathered up the pony’s reins. “It’s a rare gift to give a child.”
“I’m fortunate. Fortunate to have Stephen, as Gaby reminds me. Fortunate in so many ways. Two years ago I didn’t think such happiness was possible.” Rupert turned and they began to walk along the winding path of the river, at a more temperate pace than Bertrand and the boys. “Sometimes I’m almost afraid to breathe for fear I’ll disrupt it.”
“I know the feeling.” Malcolm recalled standing in the nursery doorway that morning, watching Suzanne, her flounced skirts pooling round one of the tiny chairs, feeding porridge to Jessica and chattering in French with Colin. One of those moments he tried to hold tight to, afraid it would shatter in pieces.
Rupert shot a quick glance at him. “You don’t have reason to feel guilty.”
“You feel guilty because of Gabrielle?” Malcolm pictured Rupert’s wife’s laughing gaze and high color when he’d glimpsed her across the ballroom at Emily Cowper’s. “She seemed in good spirits last night.”
“She says she’s happy.” Rupert’s gaze lingered for a moment on Stephen, as Bertrand knelt between the two boys and helped them set a red-painted boat to sail on the water. “She’s been spending quite a bit of time with Nick Gordon. I’m glad. I want her to be happy. It’s just . . . a bit of an adjustment.”
“No one ever said feelings were logical,” Malcolm said.
“No,” Rupert agreed. “We’re friends, that’s what’s important. And Stephen has both of us. And Bertrand.” He frowned for a moment. “And I suppose he might have Gordon as well.”
They walked on in silence for a few moments, the fallen leaves crunching beneath their boots. “Why did you want to talk to me, Malcolm?” Rupert asked.
Malcolm drew a breath, oddly reluctant to break the spell of a few quiet moments with his friend. “I talked to your father last night at the Cowpers’.”
Rupert shot a look at him.
“I wanted you to hear about it from me,” Malcolm said.
“Since I doubt you’ve developed a sudden desire for my father’s company, I assume you sought him out. Which means he’s involved in something you’re investigating.”
“Yes. It remains to be seen how deeply involved.” Malcolm hesitated, unsure how much to reveal, both to reassure Rupert and because Rupert might have valuable information. “Your father and my father were in a sort of club together that goes back to their Oxford days. Called the Elsinore League.”
Rupert grinned. “Sounds more like a name you’d come up with.”
“You never heard of it?”
“No. But even when we were on speaking terms, Father and I were hardly confidants.” He frowned. “Whatever you’re investigating has to do with your father and mine?”
“And others.”
Rupert stared down at the russet and gold leaves underfoot. “I thought it was odd at the time. But I didn’t see any reason to tell you about it.”
“What?” Malcolm asked.
“Last summer. It must have been early June. Not long before Harleton died. I took Stephen to play with my sister Clarissa’s children. Clary seemed a bit distracted, but I didn’t make much of it. She’s always been something of a shatterbrain and with four children and a husband in Parliament she’s constantly going a dozen different directions at once. Then, as we were coming downstairs after settling the children in the nursery, the library door opened, and I came face-to-face with Father.”
“That can’t have been easy.”
“No.” Rupert stopped walking, gaze moving over the tangle of bare branches overhanging the opposite bank. “It isn’t easy for my sisters, for Clarissa and Henrietta, my not speaking to Father. I told them the truth. I felt I owed them that. But I don’t think they can bring themselves to accept that it’s true. At least Clary can’t. Hetty told me she could understand how I couldn’t forgive him, but she couldn’t stop speaking to her father. I could understand that. I understand both of them. Mostly we just avoid talking about him, and they’re careful not to invite us to their houses at the same time. But Father and his friends had surprised Clarissa.” Rupert dragged the toe of his boot over the leaves. “She told me afterwards that they’d arrived on her doorstep an hour since and said they needed a place to talk. She looked at me with those big pleading blue eyes, the way she looked when she tried to explain how she’d taken out my hunter when she was thirteen, and said, ‘I couldn’t very well have said no.’ Which of course was the case. I was only sorry she had to witness me cutting Father dead.”
“Friends?” Malcolm asked.
“Yes.” Rupert’s gaze skimmed over his face. “Sorry, got caught up in the personal. His friends are why I brought it up. My father was with your father and Lord Harleton.”
Malcolm kept his gaze steady on Rupert’s face. “Do you have any idea what they were talking about?”
“No. I excused myself and went back up to the children. But from the quick look I got at their faces—I don’t think it was a friendly discussion.”
“Colin!” Chloe ran across her mother’s boudoir and hugged her cousin. “Where’s Jessica?”
“With Suzette,” Malcolm said, bending down to ruffle his cousin’s hair. “Colin and I’ve just come from the park. I need to have a word with your mother.”
“So we have to go to the nursery?”
“Only for a bit. I’ll come up before I go with some tarts or cakes.”
Chloe reached for Colin’s hand. “We’re going to get a puppy,” she said over her shoulder.
“The puppy isn’t definite,” Lady Frances said when her daughter and Malcolm’s son had left the room.
“Liar.” Malcolm dropped down on the sofa beside his aunt. “You wouldn’t disappoint her.”
Lady Frances twitched the skirt of her dressing gown smooth. She was seated at her dressing table, where she had been completing her toilette. Her rouge and eye blacking were applied and her hyacinth scent filled the room, but her hair was still in curl papers. “You know me too well.” She reached for her coffee. “What else have you learned about Alistair? I take it that’s what’s behind this early morning intrusion.”
“It’s more a question of what I haven’t learned.” Malcolm helped himself to a cup from the coffee service on the sofa table. “About Alistair and Arabella. Did you know Mama had an affair with Archibald Davenport?”
Lady Frances raised her brows. “According to whom?”
“Lord Dewhurst and Davenport himself.”
“Interesting.” Lady Frances added more cream to her coffee. “They moved in the same circles, of course, but that’s one love affair she didn’t confide in me about. At least not to my recollection. My memory isn’t what it was.”
“Spare me, Aunt Frances. Your memory is as needle sharp as ever.”
“Yes, my dear, but with the passage of years there is more to remember. It’s difficult enough to keep track of my own amorous adventures, let alone Arabella’s. Is this affair with Archibald Davenport important?”
“It may be. It happened about the time of the Dunboyne leak. What seems even more relevant is that Father disappeared for a fortnight not long before he died. The story was that he was at Lord Glenister’s shooting box in Argyllshire, but I know that to have been a fabrication. Do you have any idea where he might have gone? Or whom he might have gone to see? Was he with the Elsinore League?”
Lady Frances drew a breath. The lines showed more than usual in her carefully tended skin, and the rouge she had just applied stood out on her cheeks and lips. “No.”
“You know where he was? Because it could be important—”
“Malcolm, no.” Lady Frances took another sip of coffee as though she wished it were whisky and set her cup aside with deliberation. “Odd how one can swear one will never mention something and then—”
“Father told you where he was?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Lady Frances folded her hands in her lap. Her sapphire ring flashed in the sunlight. “Your father was in Devonshire for that fortnight.”
“How do you know? If he told you—”
“I know because he was with me.”
“What on earth were you—” Malcolm stared at his aunt. His mother’s sister and best friend. “Good God. But—I thought you didn’t even like Father.”
Lady Frances lifted a hand to adjust her cameo necklace. “Liking has very little to do with it.”
Both Alistair Rannoch and Lady Frances moved in circles where numerous lovers were commonplace. Where thoughtful hostesses placed their guests in bedchambers beside current lovers at house parties. Where even love affairs were hardly exclusive while they lasted. But still—“How long—” He bit back the words.
Her fingers trembled for a moment against the carved alabaster of the cameos, but her gaze was steady. “A house party in Derbyshire. The Beverstons. I don’t know why I accepted, neither of them was the best conversationalist and they had a way of dampening the wit of the company. Alistair and I were both bored. We were having one of our quarrels, and then that night we were the last two to take our candles and go up to bed and one thing led to another. The next morning I was horrified. I don’t pretend to anything much in the way of morality, but on sheer aesthetic grounds . . . And he was my sister’s husband. I swore it would never happen again.” She reached for her coffee cup and tossed down a sip. “But it did. The allure of the forbidden. The erotic side of anger. God knows.”