CHAPTER 30
Colin looked up at Laura as she put on her bonnet. “Why aren’t you coming to Richmond with us?”
“Because it’s her afternoon off.” Suzanne Rannoch was coaxing a wriggling Jessica into her pelisse.
Colin blinked and looked from his mother to Laura. “Where are you going?”
Laura smiled. He was a very grown-up four, but he still quite failed to understand that adults might have lives outside the time they spent with him.
“That’s her business.” Mrs. Rannoch got Jessica’s second arm into a sleeve. Jessica’s attention was on her stockings. She had one half-off and was staring at the black merino toe with great concentration as she tugged it.
“To see a friend,” Laura said. It wasn’t precisely the truth, but it was closer to it than some of the things she said. Though she often felt hopelessly compromised, she tried at least to be honest with the children.
Colin smiled at her. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”
“I’m sure I will.” Laura tightened the ribbons on her bonnet and bent to kiss his cheek, something she wouldn’t have done a year ago. She straightened up and turned to Suzanne. “I should be back by five.”
“Stay out for the evening if you like.” Suzanne gave Jessica a hairpin to hold and managed to get the stockings in place with that distraction. “I don’t know what time we’ll be back from Richmond, and Malcolm and I don’t have plans this evening.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Rannoch.” Laura looked at Jessica. The pelisse was on and the stockings were more or less in place, at least for the moment. “Do you want me to help you get her shoes on?”
“No, I’ll manage.” Suzanne reached for the shiny black shoes. “Go and enjoy your day off.”
Laura smiled at Suzanne, touched her fingers to Jessica’s cheek, picked up her gloves and reticule, and whisked herself out of the room.
Suzanne Rannoch had seemed pale lately, lines of strain showing about her eyes, but she looked better now that she was with the children. Laura had glimpsed the same tension in Mr. Rannoch’s face last night when the couple came into the nursery for supper. Perhaps it was the investigation they were in the midst of, but Laura had seen them involved in investigations before and she’d swear this was something different. She’d almost say the tension was between the two of them.
Laura shook her head at herself as she reached the ground floor hall. Dangerous for a governess to care too much about her employers. Particularly dangerous for someone in her other line of work. She should know better than anyone what a downfall personal entanglements could be.
She tugged on her gray doeskin gloves, smiled at Valentin, and stepped through the front door he was holding open for her.
A crisp wind cut across Berkeley Square, tugging at the ribbons on her bonnet. The day was gray, but the air had a bracing chill with none of the damp promise of rain. She walked at a brisk pace, grateful for the distraction of the cold and the exercise. Her dark blue pelisse, trimmed with black braid, and plaited straw bonnet with blue satin ribbons were her best going-out clothes, chosen because the household would expect her to wear them on her afternoon off, but still dark and anonymous. The habit of a governess made for an excellent disguise. No one looked at governesses. If she was doing her job well, a governess blended entirely into the background.
She thought for a moment of the black net and champagne satin Suzanne Rannoch had worn to the theatre the night before. Mostly Laura would have said she was resigned to her lot in life. That her past was buried so deeply it was like a dimly remembered foreign country. And of all the things she missed from her old life, Laura wouldn’t have said clothes were high on the list. But there were times....
She went into a bakeshop and ordered tea, drank half a cup with the careful sips of a governess savoring a rare moment alone, then got to her feet, teacup still on the table, and went behind the screen to the ladies’ retiring room. He was already there, in the shadows. She could smell his citrus shaving soap before she made out his form. “Right on time as always.”
“A governess needs to be punctual. There’s little room for spontaneity. Though the Rannochs aren’t as strict about nursery schedules as some families.”
“You like them.” It was neither censure nor praise.
Laura swallowed. Perhaps she should have put sugar in the tea. It left a bitter aftertaste. “I can’t afford to like them.”
“As a governess?”
“Among other things.”
It was too dark to make out his expression, but she could feel his gaze moving over her face. “What do you have to report?”
Jessica had taken three more faltering steps, a fortnight after the first set, before deciding crawling was safer. Colin could sign his name and was autographing every paper he could get his hands on, including one of his father’s draft speeches. Berowne had got off his lead in the square garden, and Laura had had to climb one of the plane trees to get him down, with the children calling anxiously to her from the ground. But of course that wasn’t what he’d been asking about. “The Rannochs are involved in an investigation. I don’t know the precise details, but it centers round this new version of
Hamlet
that the Tavistock Theatre is putting on. Mr. Tanner came to see them about it late one night. He was injured, according to Valentin.”
“The footman?”
“Yes.” One would think he could make the effort to keep the servants’ names straight. She’d been reporting to him on many of the same people since Paris. “I think someone was trying to steal the manuscript. The next night someone set fire to the kitchen and tried to break in. There hasn’t been trouble since. I assume they’ve moved the manuscript.” She paused. Not the first time her impulse had been to hold something back. But she knew that way lay disaster. “Also Raoul O’Roarke’s been to the house.”
She felt his attention quicken as though he had scented something on the wind. “Interesting. Because of the investigation?”
“Or something connected to it. Mr. and Mrs. Rannoch . . .” She hesitated, fingering a fold of the serviceable kerseymere of her pelisse.
“What?”
The words stuck in her throat, an intolerable invasion of privacy.
Damn it.
This was what came of letting people in under her guard. First it was Colin’s small hand in hers, then it was Jessica’s smile echoing her own, next thing she knew she was caring about their parents. “Something’s . . . shifted . . . between Mr. and Mrs. Rannoch.”
“They’ve quarreled?”
“Not that I heard. Not that there’s been any servants’ gossip about. They’re faultlessly polite with each other. But I can feel the constraint between them.”
“When did it start?”
Laura gave the question honest consideration. “She’s seemed under strain for some days now. But the first I noticed something wrong between them was when they came into the nursery last night to have supper with the children.”
“Do you think he has a mistress?”
Laura blinked. “I can’t imagine—”
“Your incredulity is touching, Laura, but he is a man after all.”
“You know I’m anything but a romantic. But I’m also a good observer. If you’d seen the way he looks at her—”
“Mooning about after one’s wife is no guarantee.”
“It’s not that. He’s one of the least romantic men I’ve met. And yet—He looks at her as though she holds the secret to his soul.” The words tumbled out without thinking. She braced herself for his derision. Instead, she sensed his appraising gaze.
“Perhaps she’s the one who was unfaithful.”
Laura frowned, unease prickling the back of her throat. Somehow that seemed more plausible. “She loves him.”
He gave a low laugh. “I’m sure she’d say she does.”
Laura tugged at her braided cuff. “A love affair is the obvious explanation when there’s trouble between a couple. But with Mr. and Mrs. Rannoch, the obvious explanation is rarely the correct one.”
“You have a point.” He shifted as though trying to see her better in the shadows. “How did O’Roarke seem when he visited the house?”
“Polite.”
“How did he seem with the Rannochs?”
“They were all serious.”
“Any unease from any of them?”
Laura cast her mind back. O’Roarke talking with Colin and Mr. Rannoch. Suzanne Rannoch nursing Jessica, her gaze on the men. “They were friendly enough. Even took time for the children. But no one was in what I’d call an easy humor.”
“Interesting.”
“You don’t think O’Roarke—”
“Raoul O’Roarke is a complicated man. With a complicated relationship to the Rannochs.”
Laura scanned his face. As much as she told herself she was better off not knowing details, it was difficult not to search for clues. Natural curiosity. But more than that. The Rannochs intrigued her, but they had also got their hooks into emotions she had thought safely suppressed. “Mr. Rannoch knew Raoul O’Roarke as a boy.”
“Indeed.”
“But there’s more?”
“Not that you need to know.”
She felt the ribbons on her bonnet tighten as she lifted her chin. “Surely I can gather information more ably if I have more to work with.”
“As I’ve said in the past, you can do your job better without distractions.”
Frustration rose up in her throat. For a moment, the temptation to turn and walk away was almost overmastering. They wouldn’t be able to find her. Surely they wouldn’t look that hard. She could start again. Not an easy task for a woman on her own, but she had been taking care of herself for a long time. She could feel the satisfaction of staking out her independence ripple through her. But only for an instant. Because then the memory of everything she had to lose coursed over her, rooting her to the ground. She swallowed her anger and her thirst for autonomy. “Are you implying O’Roarke could be connected to Suzanne Rannoch? That he could be her lover?”
“What do you think?”
She checked an instinctive denial. She had few illusions about fidelity, but she’d seen the bond between the Rannochs. And yet Raoul O’Roarke’s visits were connected to the start of the constraint. An image lingered in her mind as O’Roarke and the Rannochs crossed from the square garden to the house. Mr. O’Roarke’s gray-gloved fingers extended and then checked as though he had pulled himself back, inches from the mulberry velvet folds of Mrs. Rannoch’s pelisse. Sometimes restraint could tell far more than an open display of affection. “I think Mrs. Rannoch loves her husband.”
“So you’ve said. Love doesn’t preclude infidelity.”
The urge to protect (often a traitorous urge) warred with the need for honesty. She dragged herself back to the rules of ruthless practicality that had served her so well in the past. “You’re right. His relationship to the Rannochs is complex. What else?”
“Who’s been to the Berkeley Square house besides O’Roarke?”
“The usual people. Mr. Lydgate and Lady Isobel and the children. Colonel Davenport and Lady Cordelia and their children. Simon Tanner and Lord Worsley.”
“To talk about this play?”
“I assume so. I’m not privy to their conversations.”
“You bring the children into the drawing room after dinner. I know full well the Rannochs spend more time with their children than many couples. And I know how good you are at gathering intelligence.”
“They’re trying to verify the authenticity of the play. Mrs. Blackwell is helping. And the Duke of Strathdon.”
“Ah, yes. I heard he’d come to stay. Impressive this brought him to London.”
“One can imagine him being drawn in by a Shakespeare manuscript. He went to see Mr. Tanner this morning.”
“And Mr. Rannoch?”
“Of course he’s spending time with Mr. Rannoch.”
He took a step closer to her. His breath smelled of coffee. “Don’t play games, Laura. It doesn’t become you. How are they getting on?”
“They would hardly quarrel in front of me.”
“But?”
She swallowed. “Family relationships are usually complicated.”
“And you’ve proved excellent at decoding them. It’s part of what makes you such an effective asset.”
Her fingers twisted in the skirt of her pelisse.
Ruthless practicality.
“I believe Mr. Rannoch and the duke have been discussing his parents. The investigation seems to have opened questions about Alistair Rannoch’s death. Mr. Rannoch now wonders if it was an accident.”
“Damnation.”
Laura stared at him in the shadows. “You mean it wasn’t? Good God, did you—”
“Don’t be stupid, Laura. Why would I—we—have wanted Alistair Rannoch dead?”
“I haven’t the least idea why you want anything.”
“You’re a tough woman, Laura, but you’ve lived with them for some time.” His voice held an odd sort of sympathy, which was somehow worse than derision. “And the Rannochs can both be very disarming. You’ve seen them
en famille,
playing with their children, being kind to their staff. They’re really quite ruthless.”
A laugh escaped her lips unbidden. “Remarkable coming from you.”
“It takes one to know one. I know Suzanne Rannoch seems like the perfect wife and mother—”
“Actually, what I like about her is that she’s well aware that she’s not perfect.”
“—but you have no idea what she’s capable of.”
Laura saw Mrs. Rannoch coaxing Jessica into her pelisse. “Doing it much too brown. Just because she’s not a milk and water miss—”
“Suzanne Rannoch is a great deal more than that. She’s not what she seems.”
“No, she’s much more capable and less decorative. Men always talk this way about a woman who can think and act for herself.” And yet certain memories sprang to mind. Meeting Mrs. Rannoch in the upstairs passage in the middle of the night in Paris. Mrs. Rannoch had been dressed as a groom. Easily enough explained by her investigations with her husband. As was the time Laura was quite sure there’d been bloodstains on the triple-flounced skirt of Mrs. Rannoch’s morning dress. But there was one occasion she was quite sure Mrs. Rannoch had climbed in through the breakfast parlor window and Mr. Rannoch hadn’t had the least idea about it. Laura had kept silent of course. Because that was what a governess did. And because her sympathies were directed towards Mrs. Rannoch.