The Seven Dials Affair, page 17
Malcolm and Julien left the home office in silence, and of one accord turned in to a coffeehouse filled with glossy dark wood and hushed voices. The sort of place where undersecretaries, MPs, and journalists scribbled in notebooks, and deals were made about upcoming votes. They nodded to a few acquaintances, ordered coffees, and folded themselves onto chairs at a table at the back.
"Do you believe him?" Malcolm asked.
"About which part of it?"
"All of it. But mostly that he doesn't know more about Allegra and he wasn't behind Ashford's death."
Julien took a drink of coffee and grimaced as though it was bitter. "I'm not sure he doesn't know more about Allegra, though I tend to think the basic outlines he told us are the truth. My instinct is he wasn't behind Ashford's death, but god knows I could be wrong. I could even be going soft when it comes to my uncle. What a ridiculous thought."
"For someone who prides himself on being without emotion, Hubert has a way of playing on emotions." Malcolm took a drink of coffee. It was strong but not burnt. It should have gone down more easily. "I think Ashford would have had to pose a greater threat than anything we've uncovered so far for Hubert to have killed him. Which isn't to say there couldn't be more to uncover. And if Hubert was behind Ashford's death and Allegra worked it out—"
"It gives Uncle Hubert a motive to be behind Allegra's death." Julien turned his coffee cup in his hand. "Before we knew she was his agent, I didn't think she was much of a threat to him. As an agent, given what she could have known—she might have been." He took another drink of coffee. "I should have added brandy to this." He clunked the cup down. "Kitty isn't going to let this go. She claims Ashford meant nothing to her, and I think it's true, in a way. But he was her children's father and she's too responsible not to pursue it."
"He was a bastard," Malcolm said. The words came out with unusual force. He was also the man Malcolm had betrayed with his wife. "Kitty owed him nothing." He looked down into his coffee. "Though I do confess to a certain amount of guilt where he was concerned."
"More fool you then." Julien met Malcolm's gaze, at once acknowledging their mutual tie to his wife and defusing it of tension. A unique talent Julien had. "Ashford wasn't worthy of it. I wasted no guilt on him. And I don't think Kitty did when we were together. I don't think much of him as a father. In fact, I think distinctly ill of him. But I can now say he meant something to the boys. They may have questions as they grow up. I couldn't look them in the eye knowing we hadn't done everything we could to arrive at the truth. And Kitty takes her responsibilities seriously. Ashford was one of her responsibilities. Whatever she thought of him." He tossed down another draught of coffee. "This is going to rip open old wounds."
"She'll understand your keeping quiet about spying on Ashford," Malcolm said.
"Maybe. Not everyone is quite as understanding in these matters are you are, Rannoch."
"It's practicality. One knows what one values and doesn't want to lose it."
"Oh, if it comes to value I'm lost."
"Don't talk rot, Julien. You know what Kitty thinks of you."
"Mmm. If she thinks too much, I'm rather afraid of where her thoughts will take her. She managed to trust me enough to marry me. I'm worried about what I've done with that trust."
"We all know we have other loyalties in our work. I was a bit slow to get the point. But I finally did."
"You're a bloody saint, Rannoch. Not that I believe in saints."
"I'm a pragmatist who recognizes what's important. Kitty will too."
"Kitty doesn't like to lose."
The memory of his last, horrible quarrel with Kitty echoed in Malcolm's head. She had indeed not liked losing. And it had destroyed what was between them. Which, given who they both were, would probably not have survived in any case. He had no doubt that they were both happier where they were now, and what regrets he'd had had been erased by their current friendship.
Still. It was not a pleasant memory.
Julien turned his cup in his hand, watching Malcolm. Seeing more than was intended, as he had a way of doing. "Quite. I adore my wife. I believe in what is between us. In a way I never thought I'd be able to do. But though I may be late to even believing in relationships, I recognize that any relationship is a precarious balancing act. And ours is perhaps more finely balanced than most."
Malcolm reached for his own cup and stared into it. "Perhaps the trick is recognizing the balance is fragile and not panicking when it's overset."
"So you don't worry yourself?"
"My dear fellow. I worry every day. Every day is a balancing act, as you said. I don't doubt my feelings for my wife. I don't doubt hers for me. I do doubt where the future could land us. Though perhaps less than I used to."
Julien frowned into the depths of his coffee. "I was stupid. Uncle Hubert couldn't threaten me with much at that point. I didn't need to take his orders. I resisted the assassination he wanted me to carry out when I got to Buenos Aires. I should have resisted spying on Ashford. Especially because he was Kitty's husband."
"Perhaps that was why," Malcolm said.
"You mean I had a grudge against Ashford because he was Kitty's husband?"
"No, I don't think you're so petty. But knowing you, I do think perhaps you may have been alarmed by your developing feelings for her. And I can see your responding by not letting personal feelings interfere with spycraft."
"Damn it, Rannoch, I hate it when you're right. That's possible." Julien took a drink of coffee.
"And Hubert still had a hold on you. You went to great lengths after you came back from the Argentine to get the papers Hubert had." Now that Malcolm knew who Julien really was, he could begin to piece the timeline together. "You never let yourself appear rattled, but knowing what I know now, I think that effort was singularly important."
"As I recall, I've appeared more than a bit rattled several times where Kitty was concerned, and more than once in front of you." Julien slumped back in his chair, nursing the coffee. "Getting those papers back did give me freedom. A freedom I needed to have a life with Kitty, now I think about it, though I wouldn't have put it that way then. And it helped others escape Uncle Hubert. If I'd known he had that evidence to use against me, it would have been dangerous to get too close to Kitty and the children. But I still shouldn't have followed his orders about spying on Ashford. Kitty has a right to be angry."
"Kitty understands compromise."
Julien met Malcolm's gaze, blue eyes agate hard. "Spycraft broke the two of you."
"But we didn't have what you have."
"You're putting a lot of faith in what we have."
"That's because I've seen it."
For a moment, Julien's eyes were raw and roiling as water when a sheet of ice has cracked. Then he gave a crooked smile. "You're a hopeless romantic, Rannoch."
"Mel's the romantic in the family. I'm much more inclined to pragmatism."
"In theory. As I think you'd say yourself, watch your hands." Julien pushed himself back from the table. "We have work to do. However Kitty feels about me, she's going to need my help. The investigation is going to dredge things up. She may speak lightly about Ashford, but he put her through a lot. A lot I'd have liked to spare her."
"Talking like a romantic."
"Oh, I'll freely admit Kitty makes me a romantic. At least, I'll admit it to you. Kitty's likely to run screaming in the opposite direction if I admit it to her. But you suffer from the same disease. Fortunately, none of us lets it interfere with completing an investigation. I have inquiries to make at the Three Queens."
"And I should see William Beardsley," Malcolm said.
"I like Beardsley," Julien said. "He has the courage to stand up for himself. And he's the sort who drives Uncle Hubert mad."
"Precisely."
"All of which leaves a larger question."
"Do we tell Esquivel about Allegra?" Malcolm asked.
"It might be a good way to gauge if he knew already."
"And better we break the news than Bow Street do. Higgins isn't a fool. He's likely to work it out eventually."
"So this is our chance to see his reaction. You don't let a chance like that pass by. Poor devil."
"Yes." Malcolm tossed down the last of his coffee. "But I'm not the one to tell him. Raoul is."
CHAPTER 22
"Hubert is very interested in Esquivel," Malcolm said as Raoul shrugged on his greatcoat. Malcolm had found his father in Berkeley Square, and Raoul had agreed it made sense for him to talk to Esquivel.
"Not surprising." Raoul settled the coat over his shoulders. "Hubert casts a wide eye when it comes to advancing Britain's interests."
"He doesn't seem as afraid of revolution in the Argentine."
"Given that the revolution removes the influences of Spain and Portugal? No. And he may believe ideas don't travel that far. In which I'd argue he's mistaken."
Malcolm followed his father from the library to the hall. "Is Esquivel that important?"
"He's intelligent. And he's outlasted Alvear. He'll be part of the new nation that's forged."
"There's a lot of excitement in the sound of that."
"And a lot of the same infighting and compromising one finds in a country that's centuries old."
"So it makes sense Hubert engaged Allegra to spy for him. On Esquivel."
Raoul turned back, one hand on the front door, and met Malcolm's gaze. "This has to have resonance."
Damn. Better to have said as little as possible. "Even if Esquivel can come to terms with Allegra, she's gone. It makes me realize how fortunate I am."
"Because you still have Mélanie?"
"Inestimably. But also because we had the chance to confront the past." The words tumbled out almost unbidden. "Because I got to see her for the person she was, knowing the truth of her past and her motives. Esquivel is left with questions and shadows. The woman he loved is dead and he won't even have her memory because she isn't the person he thought she was. He doesn't have a chance to get to know the real Allegra." Malcolm drew a breath that scraped his throat. "Don't tell Mel I said that."
"I'd never tell Mélanie something you said." Raoul touched his shoulder, and then went out the door to deliver a blow from which Marco Esquivel would find it hard to recover.
Unless of course he already knew.
Raoul climbed the steps at Mivart's again. Once, the knowledge that he'd made unforgivable compromises had been a bite he'd lived with daily. An ache beneath the surface, so ever-present one got used to not letting it affect daily life. Like Harry Davenport's injured arm. Most of the time a casual observer wouldn't even know Davenport lived with an injury. But then he'd make a sudden movement or sit too long in one position and a flash in his eyes would reveal the pain he lived with daily. Raoul suspected Harry couldn't imagine his life without that ache.
So one simply got in the habit of not dwelling on it. Of not letting it interfere with one's daily actions or choices.
But in recent years, the ache he had learned to live with had begun to recede. Malcolm and Mélanie were happy, happy enough he could at times ignore what he'd done to both of them. Malcolm accepted him as his father and perhaps even more amazingly, as a friend. Mélanie was forging her own life. Raoul had found Laura and was managing to balance marriage and being a spymaster. They had young children, which had a way of focusing one's mind on the present and making the future seem full of promise. He was living a life that was more content than anything he'd known in the past thirty years.
Until something like a murder victim proving to have been spying on her lover for five years brought it back. Because the news he was about to share with Marco Esquivel would unleash the same pain he had brought down on his own son three years ago.
He found Esquivel in the restaurant, finishing a hasty meal. He'd been out making arrangements for Allegra's funeral, he said, though they had to wait for the inquest. When Raoul said he had news, Esquivel made no objection to returning to his suite.
Once there, he listened to Raoul in thunderous silence.
"You can't seriously expect me to believe this nonsense."
"I can imagine how difficult it is," Raoul said. He could see the banked devastation in Malcolm's eyes when Malcolm had confronted him in a similar sitting room in this same hotel just after learning about Mélanie. Which in turn was shortly after Malcolm had learned Raoul was his father.
"Because it's absurd." Esquivel strode across the sitting room. "I've lived with Allegra for five years. We discussed my work. We shared the same vision. She believed in it as much as I did."
"I imagine she convinced herself of that much of the time," Raoul said. "It's what an agent has to do under deep cover." It was what he'd done, on shorter assignments. It was what Mélanie had told him she'd done in the years before Malcolm learned the truth.
"She wasn't under deep cover. We were in love."
"The two are not mutually exclusive," Raoul returned.
"Don't be an idiot, O'Roarke. If she'd gone into the relationship to spy on me, stayed in it to spy on me, it would have all been a game. You don't think I could have told if the woman I shared my life and my bed and my innermost thoughts with was playing a game with me for five years?"
It had been five for Malcolm and Mélanie. Almost to the date of their fifth wedding anniversary. Though it had been less than two before Mélanie told Raoul she was in love with Malcolm. And yet she'd continued to spy on him. And if Raoul hadn't pushed her to, he certainly hadn't stopped her. "I think a number of people can be deceived in that regard," Raoul said. "And I think the lines become blurry."
"For whom?"
"For everyone. But particularly for the spy." So blurry that by Waterloo, it had begun to seriously damage Mélanie's health.
"Damn it, O'Roarke. You're an agent. A bloody spymaster. You must have set up missions like this. Are you telling me you could live a lie for five years with someone you were gathering information on, someone you disagreed with, and that you could genuinely care for the person even while you were rifling through their papers and reporting their private conversations?"
"Could I do it?" Raoul asked. "Perhaps. I'm good at compartmentalizing, though that level of mission would take an extraordinary amount of skill. But I know agents who could." Mélanie. Julien. Kitty. Malcolm's sister Gisèle. Probably Laura. "And I do think it's possible to fall in love in the midst of the deception."
Esquivel spun away and slammed his hand down on the satinwood table. "I knew Allegra. You can't tell me I didn't."
"I'm not telling you anything of the sort. After so much time together, I can't imagine you didn't know her."
"What the hell do you call—"
"I'm not sure we ever fully know another person," Raoul said. "We know bits and pieces. More with those we're closest to."
Memories twisted through Esquivel's gaze. "I was as close to her as one can be—"
"And she probably lost herself in what she shared with you. But I'm afraid we've seen papers she wrote to her spymaster confirming her work."
The realization slammed home in Esquivel's gaze.
"I don't think she could have carried on for so long if it wasn't genuine," Raoul said.
"Genuine?" Esquivel's voice cracked and bounced off the ceiling. "It was lies, through and through. If what you're telling me is true. And god help me, it sounds as though it is."
Raoul looked into Esquivel's eyes. He recognized that torment. But he also knew what had got Malcolm through it. "Tell me you've never lied to someone you genuinely cared about."
"I—Not on this level."
"But it's the idea," Raoul said. "I imagine for weeks, months at a time she lost herself in caring for you and the life you had together. She didn't even think about her mission." He saw Mélanie, waiting to meet him behind an aisle of books in a lending library, dropping into a seat at the back of a café. Seeming to physically transform from a political wife to an agent as she drew off her gloves.
"I loved her."
"I suspect she loved you," Raoul said in a quiet voice. "And for your sake, I hope you can let yourself love her again."
"Love her? It seems I didn't even know her."
"She may have been more herself with you than with anyone."
Esquivel spun away, then turned back to Raoul. "Does this have to do with why she was killed? Did some source kill her? Someone on her own side?"
"I don't know," Raoul said. "But it opens up a number of possibilities."
"Because I want to know. Whoever killed her, I want to know. And I want them held to account. Whatever she did to me, I owe that much to what we shared. Even if it was a fairy tale."
"Rannoch." William Beardsley set down his copy of the Morning Chronicle as Malcolm came into the sitting room at Brooks's. "Thank god, a friendly face. Everyone looks at me as an interloper here. Of course, I am an interloper here. Wouldn't have joined except there were one too many times people wanted to draft bills here and I had to have someone else bring me in. Rather felt as though I were capitulating."
"Sometimes one has to meet others on their own territory," Malcolm said.
"You mean the enemy?"
Malcolm moved to the chair across from Beardsley. Covered in a fine velvet, but well worn. Brooks's still had one foot in the last century. As did the Whig party, some might say. "I'd hardly call the Whigs the enemy."
"No, that's plainly the Tories. Still, I sometimes wonder if I've got so far inside the system I've forgot what's wrong with it."
Malcolm glanced at a print on the wall, riders sending their hunters over a fence in ardent pursuit of a hapless fox. "I worry about the same thing myself. But as long as you can ask the question, I rather think you haven't."
Beardsley nodded. "What brought you here, Rannoch? Do you want my support for a new bill? If it's yours, you need hardly ask."
Malcolm sat back in the chair worn smooth by decades of Whig politicians. "I'm grateful. And I'll undoubtedly take you up on that. But that's not it this time. I'm here because I've learned you were at Cambridge with Marco Esquivel."
