CHAPTER 29
“Harry.” Malcolm touched his friend on the shoulder as the second interval started. They were standing in the anteroom of their box. Suzanne and Cordelia had been besieged by admirers in the box and Strathdon had gone to speak with Lady Frances. By the time Malcolm and Suzanne had finished talking with Crispin, the second act had been starting, so this was his first chance to speak with Harry.
Harry raised a brow, but behind his look of inquiry was a concern all the sharper for being veiled. Harry knew, Malcolm realized with a sick shock of surprise. If not all the details—how could he?—he knew that something had gone wrong between Malcolm and Suzanne.
“How do you fancy a spot of treasure hunting?” Malcolm asked.
Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Looking for more manuscripts?”
“Looking for something from clues in the manuscript.” Malcolm explained about his grandfather and Aline’s discovery and Crispin’s theory about the jewels being hidden at the Richmond house.
Harry gave an unexpected smile. “Cordy will like this. She’s always been good at party games and riddles. And it will be good for the girls to have a day in the country.” Harry’s gaze went to the curtains to the box. Cordelia’s laughter carried through, followed by the murmur of several male voices, but Harry’s eyes held no hint of jealousy.
Malcolm surveyed his friend. “You’re happy.”
Harry met his gaze and gave a wry smile. “The shock in your voice speaks volumes.”
“I’m sorry.” Malcolm shook his head. “That isn’t what I meant at all. Though I suppose anyone being happy is something of a feat.”
“And I used to sneer at the very possibility.”
“You had good cause.”
“I found it easier to sneer than to attempt to make something of my life.”
“We’re all shaped by the past.” Malcolm struggled for the right words that would neither offer insult nor reveal too much about his own wife’s secrets. “What I marvel at is how you’ve—”
“Forgot my past?” As usual, Harry knew precisely where Malcolm was headed. Malcolm wondered if there was any chance he’d ultimately be able to keep Suzanne’s secrets from Davenport. “But I haven’t. I know it would be impossible. And I’m not even sure I’d want to. The past is my first glimpse of Cordelia across the Devonshire House ballroom, the way the candlelight gilded her hair, and the wonder of her agreeing to dance with me. The day she agreed to be my wife, the first time she laughed at one of my jokes, the glee on her face when we discovered a bit of Roman pottery on our wedding journey. All those are as much a part of the past as the quarrels and silences and finding her in George Chase’s arms and the endless gossip that followed me to the Peninsula. In the end the real challenge wasn’t realizing I could live with the past, it was persuading Cordy we both could do so. She was sure one day I’d look at her across the breakfast things and hate her.”
In the carriage driving to the Tavistock, Malcolm had looked over at Suzanne, hair perfectly coiffed, the blacking round her eyes, her familiar scent filling the air, so much his wife and such a stranger. Anger had welled up on his tongue like blood from a sword slash. Difficult to imagine that anger ever wholly dissipating. “And you haven’t?”
Harry raised his brows.
“I’m fond of Cordy,” Malcolm said. “But she did—”
“Betray me? True enough.” Harry glanced again at the curtains to the box, then leaned his shoulders against the wall, putting his back to the curtains. “No, I don’t look at Cordy and hate her. I don’t think I ever will. I think the risk is more that she’ll hate herself.”
Malcolm saw Cordelia’s brilliant, defiant gaze. “I think Cordy’s too strong for that.”
“Yes. It’s one of the reasons I love her.” Harry regarded him for a moment. “When I step back from the situation instead of looking at her as my wife, I find it isn’t nearly so clear-cut where the blame falls. We both made choices. We both made mistakes. If I’d seen Cordy properly, I’d never have put her in the situation where she was torn between hollow marriage vows and George Chase. And in the end if the past hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be where we are today.”
“Harry—” Malcolm frowned at the candle sconce on the wall opposite, glittering against the gold damask wall hangings with cool fire. “Did you ever wonder why you did it?”
“It?”
“Intelligence work.”
“Oh, that’s easy. It was my job.”
“It wasn’t a job you needed.”
“Define ‘need.’ Perhaps I didn’t need it financially, but I needed something to keep me from going mad, hitting my wife’s lover again, or crawling to her on my knees begging her to take me back on any terms.”
“You could have gone to dig up antiquities or buried yourself in an archive.”
“The war had made Continental travel problematic. And I was in the mood to bash something. The army had its appeal.”
“So you could have worked for the French just as easily?”
“Certainly, if I’d been French.” Harry stooped to pick up a hairpin that had fallen on the carpet and set it on a marble side table. “And I’ll own there were more than a few times in the Peninsula when I wondered if the French weren’t doing more good than we were.”
Malcolm recalled a Spanish advocate he’d met in the course of a mission who’d detailed the progressive legal changes under Joseph Bonaparte and the stories of how in Lisbon the French government had found work for the poor cleaning the city. “I’ll own I did at times myself.” He frowned at the shadows the candles cast on the carpet. “God knows I don’t share Wellington’s and Castlereagh’s vision of the world. In the end I couldn’t take more of advocating policies I didn’t agree with across the diplomatic negotiating table. Only last month when I made my speech urging the repeal of the Habeas Corpus suspension one of the Tory backbenchers called me a traitor. It wasn’t the first time I’ve been called that.”
Harry grinned. “Badge of honor.”
“In a sense I saw it that way. I’ve certainly never gone in for talk about Crown and country. But—It has to mean something.”
“It? England? You’re a Scotsman.”
“Britain. But I didn’t mean the country so much as loyalty itself. Or perhaps it’s simply the idea that there’s something one’s working to perfect. One can walk away, but one doesn’t betray it.”
“One could make a fair case that one can’t walk away. At least Carfax would argue that.”
“Perhaps it’s simply the idea of making a commitment and sticking with it.”
“In the course of which one cheerfully betrays the other side.” Harry met Malcolm’s gaze for a long moment. “By the time of Waterloo, I was fighting for my friends. And to stay alive.”
The remembered smell of blood and cannon smoke welled up in Malcolm’s memory. “That’s what it came down to for me as well in the carnage. And yet I felt I needed to be there, even though it wasn’t really my fight.”
“You also told me you found yourself wondering if your first loyalty shouldn’t have been to stay with Suzanne and Colin and stay alive for their sakes.”
It was true. Ironic that his first loyalty had been to his French agent of a wife. And yet one could say he too understood divided loyalties.
“I’m glad to be out of it,” Harry said.
“You just said we couldn’t really be out of it.”
“True enough. I’ll even confess a part of me wouldn’t want to be entirely. But we can pick and choose assignments more.” He gave a grin. Malcolm had the oddest sense Harry was trying to cheer him. “I’m quite looking forwards to Richmond tomorrow. Nothing like a treasure hunt.”
“Thank God.” David ducked into the anteroom of the box. “Mind if I seek refuge?”
“Difficult night?” Malcolm asked.
David grimaced. “Family dinner. Family and a few select friends. They sat me next to Lady Mary Cranford. Mother’s latest attempt at finding a wife for me, carefully vetted by Father. Simon, needless to say, wasn’t invited. Just as well, as he’d probably have stalked out. Lady Mary is a perfectly agreeable girl. Out for a few seasons so rather more rational than the eighteen-year-olds they sometimes throw at me.”
“And looking for a husband,” Harry said.
“Quite. I hope tonight didn’t give her any ideas about my intentions. I tried to be careful, but Bel said my attempts to be polite could be misread.” David gave a wry smile. “It isn’t easy. Not being able to be one’s self. Or at least keeping large parts of oneself hidden.”
Malcolm stared at his friend and realized his hands had gone still at his sides. “I don’t think I ever realized quite how difficult it is.”
“Didn’t mean to whinge on about it. But it’s hard, knowing what I owe my family.”
“You’re responsible to yourself first.”
“ ‘To thine own self be true?’ Not anymore. Not since I became heir to the title.” David twitched his shirt cuff smooth. “I thought it would get easier when the ladies left the table, but then Father started going on about the uprisings in the north. Calling them treason. And Lady Mary’s father said the MPs who spoke out in support of the protesters were traitors as well. As if there’s no difference between attacking injustice and spying for the French.”
“And yet there are times at least one could make a case the French were doing a better job of fighting injustice,” Harry said. “Certainly some Spaniards reached that decision. Many of the more enlightened ones.”
“That’s different. They were fighting for what they thought was best for their country. We’re Englishmen. One can criticize one’s country, but once it commits to a course of action one supports the action.”
“Does one?” Harry asked.
“It’s what we did when Bonaparte escaped from Elba. I spoke out in the House against war, but once war became inevitable we had no choice but to support our country.”
Malcolm thought back to some discussions in Brussels. “I’m not sure Simon would agree.”
David frowned. “One has to draw the line somewhere. Simon and I just disagree sometimes about where the line should be drawn.”
“The line?” Harry asked.
“Between treason and supporting one’s country.”
“And if our country declares war on the protesters?” Malcolm said.
David’s brows drew together. “That would be declaring war on Englishmen.”
“So that’s what matters?” Harry inquired. “Whether they’re English or not?”
“You have to admit a quarrel among Englishmen is different from defending one’s country against a foreign opponent. Whatever insults we hurl across the House, we’re all Englishmen.”
“Actually, Rannoch’s Scots,” Harry said.
“And a quarter French thanks to my mother,” Malcolm added. And a quarter Irish and Spanish thanks to Raoul O’Roarke, he realized.
David grinned. “It’s the same island. I wish my father understood that.”
“That Britain is one island?”
“That too, to hear him talk about the Scots and the Welsh. But I meant that we both love this country. That whatever our quarrels with each other, we stand fast against our enemies.”
“Such as French agents?” Malcolm asked.
“Those are more in your line than mine. But yes.”
“So if you knew who was responsible for the Dunboyne leak you’d expose them?” Harry asked.
“My God, of course.”
“Even though it’s in the past?” Harry persisted.
David stared at him. “English—British—men died.”
“People died on both sides,” Malcolm said.
“Yes, but—Malcolm, surely I don’t have to remind you what country you belong to. One has to—”
“Draw the line somewhere?”
“Quite.”
“Mademoiselle Caret.” Strathdon swept a bow with the courtly grace of the last century, neatly contriving to avoid a collision with any of the wigs, masks, and costumes that littered Manon’s dressing room. “A charming performance. Quite touching at the end. Made me realize the surprising complexities beneath the surface of the story.”
Manon smiled and extended her hand. She might have been a duchess receiving guests in her drawing room, Suzanne thought, standing back with Cordelia and Harry. Manon still wore the spangled gown that was her last-act costume, and her hair—she hadn’t worn a wig in the play—spilled about her face in a riot of ringlets. “Do tell Simon that. Working on
Hamlet
has him fretting about his own play.”
“Already told him. Said false modesty didn’t become him.”
“Simon was grinning ear to ear.” Malcolm leaned against the closed door of the dressing room. “He has the greatest respect for your opinion, sir.”
“Good to know you were all paying a bit of attention as boys.”
“Do sit down.” Manon waved a hand towards the settee and chairs. “When Suzanne said they were bringing you round I told them I wouldn’t receive any other visitor this evening. I’m so looking forwards to a sensible discussion of theatre rather than the usual undergraduate prattle.”
“Most of your admirers are considerably older than undergraduates,” Crispin said.
“But their behavior isn’t. Roxane, Clarisse. Come and make your curtsies to His Grace.”
Roxane and Clarisse came in from the adjoining sitting room and made careful curtsies to the duke. The daughters of a Republican agent curtsying to an English aristocrat. Suzanne wondered how Manon felt about the irony. The girls went back to Berthe in the sitting room. Suzanne, Malcolm, Strathdon, and the Davenports settled themselves about the dressing room. Crispin opened a bottle of champagne and filled the glasses Berthe had set out on a wicker hamper.
“I was privileged to see you as Cleopatra,” Strathdon said, settling back in his chair with a glass. “I don’t think I’ll ever see anyone your equal in the role.”
“You’re very kind, Your Grace.” Rather than the artifice she usually displayed receiving post-performance compliments, Manon seemed genuinely flattered.
“Not in the least. I speak the unvarnished truth, at least as I see it. France’s loss is undoubtedly England’s gain. You have a gift for interpreting our greatest writer.”