The Whitehall Conspiracy, page 22
"My father quite agreed when he heard about the plot," Malcolm said. "And he's hardly an admirer of Lord Liverpool."
"Nor am I," Beverston said. "For different reasons. But Liverpool, for all his faults, isn't going to gobble Britain up whole."
"None of which explains why Alistair had to disappear," Malcolm said. "Long before the plot failed."
Beverston and Glenister looked at each other again.
"If I knew that, I'd understand Alistair," Glenister said. He looked more in command of himself now, his habitual armor settling back into place, a mask behind his mask. "And I don't. I never have. He had secrets. The entire time I knew him."
"The plot was causing unrest in the League," Beverston said. "But it hadn't failed by the time Alistair supposedly died. In fact, Trenchard didn't really set it into place until after Alistair supposedly died. Disappeared."
"Did Trenchard turn on Alistair?" Malcolm asked.
Beverston swirled the brandy in his glass. "I don't think so. But even if he had, why would Alistair have disappeared? He had money and property and position. Why not stay and fight Trenchard?"
"Why indeed?" Malcolm said. "Was Alistair working for the French?"
"What makes you ask that?" Glenister's voice cut with unexpected sharpness.
"He's afraid of being accused of treason. He wants a pardon."
"Your father would know more about that," Beverston said. "Or your wife. Or you." He looked at Julien.
There was a time when those words would have had Malcolm arranging to get his family out of the country. But Mélanie and Raoul had pardons. And he was coming to terms with how much of their activities a number of people knew. "None of them knows of any connection of Alistair's with French intelligence," Malcolm said.
"Assuming they're telling you the truth," Beverston said.
"Always an assumption. And one I know better than to make." Malcolm held Beverston's gaze steadily. "Are you saying you know to the contrary?"
"No. Any moral lapse on Alistair's part wouldn't surprise me. Assuming any of us can even use the word moral. But I would be surprised to find him working for the French. Perhaps, above all, because I don't think he'd have wanted to associate himself so closely with O'Roarke."
"I can see that," Julien said. He was standing to the side, one hand resting on the back of a gilded settee, legs crossed at the ankle. "By the way, I really don't know of any connection of Alistair's to French intelligence. Not that I would know. And not that I expect you to believe me."
"And yet Alistair apparently committed treason," Malcolm said. "Enough that he's set on getting a pardon."
"Enough that he faked his own death," Julien said. "Not something one does lightly. Speaking from experience."
Beverston shot him an appraising look. "Yes, I imagine you do know. Judging by circumstances. Perhaps you'll have more ideas about Alistair than I do."
Julien took a sip of brandy. "Believe me, I've devoted a lot of attention to Alistair. And his motives baffle me."
"What does Lady Shroppington have to do with it?" Malcolm asked.
"Why should she have anything to do with it?" Glenister asked.
"She's been connected to the League from the start. And presumably to Alistair."
Silence gripped the room. Beverston cast a glance at Glenister. "I think it's past time we told them."
"Told them what?" Glenister asked.
"Surely you've suspected. Or perhaps you know."
"Know what?" Glenister's voice was taut.
"The reason for Lady Shroppington's singular role in the League."
"She doesn't have a role. Not really. It's not as though she came to our parties." Glenister gave a rough laugh. "The very idea is absurd."
"I can imagine more absurd things," Beverston said. "And our parties were absurd enough as it was."
Glenister shot him a look. "She may have dallied with Alistair, but she's not the sort for the type of dalliance that took place at League parties."
"I very much doubt she dallied with Alistair." Beverston tossed down a drink of brandy. "Unless this whole business is even odder than it already seems. But she's always been there. Funding expeditions. Drawing the line at certain activities. Reining Alistair in. To the extent anyone could."
"No one could rein Alistair in," Glenister said.
"But you have to admit Lady Shroppington could better than most. I remember her appearing at Oxford when we were all staggering back from a punting expedition that had involved considerably more than punting. She just stood there, with the point of her parasol sticking into the mud on the riverbank, and stopped Alistair dead in his tracks. I think I knew then."
"What?" Malcolm asked. His voice came out sharper than he intended.
"If you're implying that she was his mistress—" Glenister began.
"For god's sake, Frederick, no. I already said so. I'm quite sure Lady Shroppington is Alistair's mother."
CHAPTER 23
Malcolm put out a hand and found himself gripping the giltwood chair back. A dozen confused thoughts tumbled in his brain. And yet behind them was the sort of clarity that comes when a code is broken or the theme of a story makes the disparate pieces fall into place. "I don't know why that's surprising," he said. "Given the other stories we have of people's birth. But somehow, I never thought—" He shook his head. "Fatal mistake."
"Hard to imagine a change to something one grows up with as immutable fact," Julien said. "Alistair's supposed parents—"
"He never talked about them much," Malcolm said. "He never talked to me much about anything. And fairly early, I was sure his parents weren't my grandparents. His mother died in childbirth. Supposedly died in childbirth. One more reason I never questioned it, I suppose."
"They must have been planning to pass him off as a twin," Julien said. "And then she died and lost her own baby."
"Yes." Malcolm met Glenister's gaze for a moment, because that was precisely what had happened when Glenister's own sister gave birth to the man who was now married to Malcolm's sister, Gisèle. Save that Andrew's adoptive mother and sister had survived. "I gleaned enough growing up to know he had an isolated childhood," Malcolm continued. "I can see why, if his adoptive father had lost his wife and baby and perhaps didn't regard Alistair as truly his. They lived in a remote part of Scotland. A lonely childhood. I can almost—"
"Rannoch, no," Julien said. "You're the most compassionate person on this benighted planet, but don't start feeling sorry for Alistair. That's too much even for you."
"One can feel sorry for what someone has gone through without making excuses for the man he became," Malcolm said. For a moment, memories of moments from his own childhood chilled him. Curled up with a book in the library at Dunmykel. The rattle of his mother's carriage receding in the distance. And he had been far less isolated than Alistair seemed to have been. "I had Raoul. And Arabella, at least some of the time. You had your mother for six years."
Julien nodded. "I may not have your compassion, but I can at least appreciate it. Who sent Alistair to Harrow and Oxford?"
"His godfather. Sir Ian Rannoch. From whom Alistair later bought Dunmykel. At least, that's the story." Malcolm frowned, dredging up the fragments of information he had about Alistair's past. Bits and pieces he overheard as a child. Careless comments his mother had made. Alistair had never told him anything.
"Lady Shroppington would have been a young wife when Alistair was born, if I'm right about her age," Julien said. "Could Ian Rannoch have been Alistair's father?"
"I don't think so." Glenister spoke up for the first time. He drew in and released his breath. "Lady Shroppington is, in truth, Alistair's mother. He told me as much one night at Oxford, when we'd both drunk enough for confidences without quite being insensible." He drew another breath with the scrape of iron. And perhaps regret. "In the days when we were still friends. She paid Alistair's school and university fees. Ian Rannoch was a cousin on her mother's side. She sent the money through him. According to Alistair, Ian Rannoch was no more than a go-between. Alistair said Ian Rannoch's tastes ran to men."
"That doesn't necessarily mean they didn't also run to women," Julien said cheerfully.
"No," Malcolm agreed. "Though one would hope if he was the father, he'd have done more than act as a go-between." He turned to Glenister. "Did Alistair know who his father was?"
"He told me not," Glenister said.
"Your father trusted Alistair," Malcolm said to Glenister. He didn't elaborate—Georgiana Talbot's out-of-wedlock pregnancy wasn't something to share with Beverston if he didn't already know about it—but he held Glenister's gaze as he spoke.
Glenister glanced away. "Alistair was clever. Father could appreciate that. And didn't hesitate to make use of Alistair's talents."
"Could it have been more than that?" Malcolm asked. It would make sense of so much. Alistair's jealousy of Glenister, the bond between the two men, the way Alistair pushed against the bond, broke it with betrayal, and yet the two remained twined together.
The gaze Glenister turned to Malcolm was stark with a torment that said he recognized it too. "I don't know," he said in a raw voice. "I wondered. Not at first. But not long after we left Oxford. When I learned my father had employed Alistair to do errands for him. Not even at first with that. But eventually the thought occurred to me. And then it was like being struck in the head or slapped in the face, and I couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to me sooner."
"Did you ask Alistair?" Julien said.
"I danced round it. He claimed not to know. He may have been telling the truth. Though if so, it was one of the few times Alistair ever did. At least when it came to me."
"Did you ever ask your father?" Malcolm said.
"My god, no." Glenister turned a face of horror to him. "My father and I didn't have frank conversations in general. That would have been beyond the pale."
"Did your father know Lady Shroppington?" Julien asked.
"Of course he knew her. They both traveled in London society. He didn't know her well, so far as I know. But then I suspect my father bedded any number of women I have no reason to think he knew well." Glenister glanced into his glass. "I confess I have as well."
"Do you have any reason to think your father supported Alistair?" Malcolm asked. "Aside from hiring him for odd jobs?"
Glenister's brows drew together above his mask in seemingly genuine concentration. "Not that I know of. I confess when I inherited the title, I even looked through his papers for any connection to Alistair. But aside from payments I already knew about or suspected, I didn't find anything. However, there were a number of payments in my father's records that are vague as to whom they were to and what for. I'm quite sure his papers included payments for by-blows. As I mentioned to you once before, Malcolm." Glenister coughed, because that discussion had included Andrew's birth and Glenister's sister Georgiana's illegitimate child, whom Alistair had helped conceal. "My father wasn't sentimental. Not with his children—his acknowledged children. So I don't imagine he'd have been so with by-blows." Glenister tossed down his brandy. "I don't know if Alistair's being my brother would make me feel better or worse about him."
"Understandably," Malcolm said.
Julien looked at Beverston. "You've been very quiet, sir."
"I'm on the fringe of this," Beverston said.
"You aren't on the fringe of anything when it comes to the League. You've been part of it from the first."
"Almost the first. It started with Alistair and Glenister." Beverston nodded at Glenister.
"I heard recently that it started with Lady Shroppington."
Glenister and Beverston exchanged looks. "Alistair suggested forming a club to me," Glenister said. "But later he admitted it had been Lady Shroppington's idea. She gave him funding for some of the first—League events."
"Interesting." Julien leaned against the wall, legs crossed at the ankle. "Considering what went on at those events. Though perhaps her tastes ran that way. Did she attend?"
"Good god, no," Glenister said. "Alistair would have been horrified at the very idea."
"If Alistair knew she was his mother, he couldn't very well have been blind to what she'd got up to. Though I suppose it is different with one's own parents."
"You know damn well it is."
"I always thought Alistair designed the League to get himself ahead in the world," Malcolm said. "But it was Lady Shroppington who wanted that for him."
"Alistair wanted it too," Glenister said. "But Lady Shroppington saw the possibilities. Before Alistair did, I think. She had a great deal she wanted him to achieve."
"Not uncommon in a parent," Julien said. "Though most don't create secret societies with an international reach and a penchant for blackmail to bring it about. From what I've seen of Alistair, I imagine at times he frustrated her."
"God, yes," Glenister said. "That was clear from the first. She had her own ideas about who should and shouldn't be in the League. They didn't always agree with Alistair's."
"What about my father?" Julien asked.
"What about him?"
"Did she want him in the League? Or my uncle?"
Glenister frowned. "She wanted them both, actually. Alistair was reluctant. He went along with your father. He drew the line at Car—Hubert. Said he was dangerous."
"He had a point. Lady Shroppington didn't think he was dangerous?"
"She said it was better to have him on their side."
"She had a point as well. Possibly a better one."
"I only heard rumors," Beverston said. "But the story was she wasn't happy about Alistair's adventures in France in the eighties. Especially the business with Jeanne de la Motte and the diamond necklace."
"I'm not surprised," Julien said. "I should think even a quite ruthless woman would be a bit alarmed at her son's helping bring about a revolution and topple a monarchy. On purely selfish grounds, even if she hadn't a thought for the politics."
"She threatened to cut off his funds," Glenister said. "But by that time, Alistair had enough of a fortune of his own that she couldn't control him." Glenister crossed to the drinks table, refilled his glass, refilled the others' glasses, took a drink. "I don't think Alistair knows who his father is. At least, I don't think he did in those early days. One night, after one of our parties—in the early days—before I was married. Before Alistair had started his games with my wife—when we staggered back to our rooms at Oxford, Alistair dropped his coat on the floor and said it was odd to think one or more of the men there tonight might be his brother."
Malcolm's fingers tightened round his glass. "So he thought his father was the father of another League member? Do you think Lady Shroppington told him as much?"
"I don't know. I asked how he knew, and he said, 'Just a feeling.' Perhaps she implied something to him. Which of course made my own father an option. So I said, 'Do you know—' and Alistair just said, 'I don't know anything at all.' He could shut down a conversation more ruthlessly than anyone I've ever known."
Malcolm looked at Beverston. "If you're asking what I know, I don't know anything," Beverston said. "I wondered, at times. I can't quite say why—the way Alistair would look round the group. The fact that Lady Shroppington had helped put the League together. She wanted men who would help him, that was clear even to me on the fringe. Presumably his brother or brothers would be someone who could help."
"Your father—" Malcolm said.
"Would be the right age," Beverston said. "He wasn't conveniently out of the country at the time of Alistair's conception. I admit to checking the dates. He knew Lady Shroppington in the social sense. I can't say there was any more to it than that. But I also can't be sure there wasn't. Like Glenister, I prefer to know as little as possible of those details about my parents. I never guessed they could be of tactical advantage at some point."
"Alistair tried to help make Trenchard prime minister," Malcolm said.
Beverston tossed down a drink of whisky. "Don't think I haven't thought of that."
"And presumably the plan was for Alistair to be the power behind the throne."
"In Alistair's mind, I suspect," Beverston said. "And in Lady Shroppington's."
"I confess to a distinct lack of interest in the details of the peerage," Julien said. "Talking of things one doesn't realize could be of tactical advantage. Trenchard's father—the late Trenchard's father—"
"Would have been alive when Alistair was conceived," Beverston said. "I can't speak to whether or not he was in London or elsewhere in Lady Shroppington's vicinity at the requisite time. But it's possible."
"And now?" Julien said. "Alistair wants to reinstate himself. Presumably the truth of his parentage isn't the secret that made him flee Britain. But could his parentage be part of his plan to reinstate himself?"
"Alistair's plans have always been a mystery," Glenister said.
Beverston frowned into his brandy. "I agree. But without laying undue importance on bloodlines—which I agree really aren't the issue here—I can't help but think that Alistair's father's identity may be the key to who he is."
CHAPTER 24
Edith Simmons turned from a group of friends—or perhaps acquaintances was a better word—and took a step towards the supper room to find herself face to face with Thomas Thornsby.
Thomas hesitated, leaning slightly to one side, which was perhaps discomfort, perhaps an attempt at verisimilitude in his Claudius costume. "It's good to see you."
"It's been a long time."
"I don't go out in society a great deal. There haven't been events to bring us together."
"You could call in Hill Street. You can't think Harry and Cordy wouldn't be glad to see you. You've been friends forever."
"That's not—I can't properly offer you what I should, Edith. So it seemed I had no right to call on you."
"Oh, stuff. That assumes calls are only part of the marriage game. I'm not in the least interested in the marriage game. I'm a teacher now. I have a job, not just teaching, but running the school Laura is starting with the Rannochs and Davenports and Carfaxes. A job I can build on. I doubt I'll ever get married."
