The Seven Dials Affair, page 26
"So you'd be closing off your options as well."
"I'm older. More than half again her age."
"So it wouldn't bother you? Moving into a world you despise."
Jeremy frowned. "I never said I despised it."
"Not in so many words. But even though we all lamentably missed so much about you and Judith, I wouldn't be much of an agent if I couldn't read faces. You're very forbearing, but I know what you think of Mayfair."
"You make me sound a conceited prig."
"On the contrary. I've thought it myself. I never moved in what anyone would call society until I married Edward. I was living with a guerrillero band as a teenager. I didn't experience Mayfair until a year and a half ago, when I brought the children to London. It's a bewildering world, and from some angles, quite appalling. But many of my favorite people grew up in it. Yours too, I think. And it has its compensations."
"That's not—You know what people would say of me."
"Jeremy Roth. Since when do you of all people care what people think?"
He looked up and caught her gaze. "We're all susceptible."
"Ah. I can't argue with you there. The remarks behind the fans bother me more than I'd ever admit to Julien."
"It's not just what people say. Our whole lives have been different. It's a whole vocabulary of what matters, what's familiar, what one cares about."
"I'll grant that. Julien despises hunting, but he has a whole lexicon about it I can't understand. You're tough though. I have no doubt you could handle it."
"It's Judith I'm worried about."
"I gather that," Kitty said. "But surely the woman you fell in love with is equal to it?"
Jeremy drew in his breath, but before he could respond, Genny came hurtling across the room and held her arms up to Kitty. "Hold you."
Kitty scooped her daughter into her lap. Genny's favorite phrase was singularly apt. She couldn't say which of them needed to be held more.
CHAPTER 33
Frances closed the door to the night nursery where Francesca and Philip were asleep. She'd already tucked Chloe in, though she'd probably have to go in in another half hour and tell Chloe to douse her candle and stop reading. She wouldn't go down the passage to Judith's room, the room that had been hers from girlhood. But she had a feeling Judith's troubled face when they'd said goodnight would haunt her dreams. "I'm a fraud, Archie."
She was turned to the door, but she heard her husband's soft laugh. "You're the furthest thing I can imagine from a fraud, my love."
Frances turned round and met Archie's blue gaze. "I scoff at the idea of fairy tales. Even when I fell in love with you, I'd have said we were lucky to be in a real relationship instead of some sort of happily-ever-after nonsense. But I wanted that for Judith. The fairy tale and all that goes with it. Or at least I was happy that she seemed to have found it. That she of all my children had seemed to transition seamlessly from adolescence into adulthood and fallen genuinely in love, without broken hearts or traumatic secrets or anyone spying on anyone. I never even quite thought I had that when I married Dacre-Hammond. But everything that seemed so dull to me as a girl seemed so perfect when my daughter had it."
"I think it's perfectly reasonable to want one's children to find happiness without trauma in getting to the happiness," Archie said. "I wouldn't trade the life I have for anything, but I rather hope Chloe and Philip and Francesca find love before fifty. And I'm sure Harry and Cordelia hope Livia and Drusilla don't go through what they did."
"No, of course not." Frances moved into the bedchamber that had been hers for so many years. She hadn't shared it with anyone, including her first husband, until she'd taken the risk of marrying Archie. Against all sense and reason and all the supposedly hard-fought lessons of the first five-and-forty years of her life. "But I keep thinking that if I hadn't been so busy being pleased things had worked out so perfectly for at least one of my children, I'd have noticed the cracks in Judith's marriage sooner. Because, even for people who don't make the spectacular mistakes I did, life isn't a fairy tale. It's far more complicated and interesting. Look at Allie and Geoff. Their romance was free of the angst that's troubled so many of our friends, but no one would call it a fairy tale."
"I'm not sure why we can't call it a fairy tale," Archie said. "Except that they're both too interesting to be a prince and princess. If that's the only difference, who would want a fairy tale?" He studied her for a moment in the shifting candlelight. His gaze was soft and yet piercing in that way it could be. "It's hell watching one's children in pain. I remember when Harry and Cordy were separated. It was far harder on me than I'll ever admit to either of them. One of the worst times of my life. But they came out of it happier. Judith may as well. She may discover she has interests far beyond those of a fairy-tale princess whose life bored her."
Frances managed a smile. "Are you saying I underestimated her?"
"Possibly. She's always struck me as more like you than you perhaps credited. And she's already shown surprising mettle."
"She has." Frances frowned. "I'd never have thought of Jeremy Roth for her. But perhaps I didn't know her at all."
"Oh, I think you know all your children very well. But children can surprise one. That's part of the fun of being a parent."
Frances felt herself smile. She went up to Archie and put her hands on his chest. "You're very wise, Archie. Why didn't I find you earlier?"
"You did. You just didn't think I was interesting enough."
"I thought you were in love with my sister."
He slid his arms round her. "The perils of good cover."
"And I think I hadn't grown up enough," Fanny said. "It's not just finding the right person. It's finding the right person at the right time. You didn't think I was interesting enough before either."
"Hardly that." He brought a hand up to cup her cheek. "You didn't show an interest in me. And I knew about—"
"Alistair and me."
"Well, yes. That was a deterrent. All things considered, as well for us that I thought he was dead when we started our affair, even though he wasn't."
They could talk about it now. Her love for Malcolm's putative father, who had caused so many problems and who was still a threat. Talk, and even almost laugh. That must be an improvement. Even if she could feel the strain beneath the laughter. Even if her insides were twisting into knots beneath the linen of her nightdress and the silk brocade of her dressing gown.
"He's gone now," she said.
Archie looked down at her, his gaze at once open and armored. "He'll never really be gone, my darling. But that doesn't matter."
"It doesn't matter to me. But—"
"Alistair will always matter to you." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "It's all right, Fanny. I can live with it. Now. I was a bit of an idiot for a while. Jealous idiocy is possible at any age."
"You weren't at all an idiot, Archie." Fanny swallowed, realizing she'd never quite addressed it. "You were—quite amazing."
"I don't think I trusted my wife enough. I don't think I trusted what was between us. Because while I may not believe in fairy tales, I do believe in love. And I believe one can go through something and come out stronger on the other side."
"Is that what we've done? That sounds if not like a fairy tale, rather like something out of a play."
Archie bent his head to kiss her. "I've always believed there's a great deal of truth in fiction."
Kitty smoothed the blankets over Genny. She managed to hold her fingers steady as she did so, so she didn't jerk the soft merino, a gift from Lady Frances, who had a surprising love of knitting. She wasn't as confident she managed to keep Genny from sensing the tension in her fingers. But she'd long since given up even trying to keep the children from sensing her tension. It would do more harm than good. Or perhaps that was an excuse.
She turned from the cradle and strode across the bedroom. "I should have seen it."
"What Ashford was involved in?" Julien closed the door of the boys' room. He'd had it ajar ever since they'd tucked them in, listening to them settle.
"I keep remembering when we decided to go to the Argentine. I was so focused on what I needed to do. What I wanted."
"You needed to leave Spain."
"I needed to get away because Edgar Rannoch had raped me and left me pregnant, and I couldn't bear to be near Malcolm, who'd been my lover and would think the child was his. Unless I told him the truth and ruined his relationship with his brother. No sense in wrapping plain facts up in clean linen."
"Which you never try to do." Julien leaned against the nursery door, watching her.
"But I couldn't say any of that to Edward." Kitty stopped beside her dressing table. She remembered her discussion with Edward about going to the Argentine, by her dressing table in their lodgings in Lisbon, in another bedroom that they hadn't shared, though sharing her bed with Edward that night had been part of the price she'd paid for persuading him. "So I had to focus on convincing him we should go to the Argentine. Trying to make him think it was his idea." She folded her arms, gripping her elbows. "I was so focused on making him think it was his idea, that it never occurred to me it might have been his idea in the first place."
"You think Edward was already plotting the silver mine scheme then?"
"What do you think? You seem to know more about my husband than I did."
Julien moved away from the door and leaned against the bedpost, closer but not within touching distance. "Edward was far more of a player than I suspected before Uncle Hubert tasked me with looking into him. Edward always struck me as an opportunist, but he also seems to have been more forward thinking than we thought. And I always suspected he was involved in more than the one mine, and the scheme wasn't his alone, which seems clear from the letter you found today. So it's possible he was planning it before you left Lisbon."
"And I played into his hands."
"You needed to leave for your sanity. If Edward was determined to go to the Argentine, you wouldn't have been able to dissuade him." Julien moved to the cradle and smoothed the blanket over Genny. "And if you hadn't gone, we wouldn't have Genny."
"No." Kitty chewed her nail. "I know it's folly to refine upon the past. But I think in retrospect Edward agreed too easily. And if he already had the plan in mind, I don't think it was his alone." Kitty loosed her hands and pushed her hair back from her face. "I'm sorry. But I need to know."
"I understand."
"I wish to hell I did. I wanted to leave Edward in the past. But I can't let go of the fact that I should have known what was going on, and—"
"Protected him?"
"All right, yes." Kitty dragged her fingers through her side curls, sending two hairpins tumbling to the floor. "He was an idiot. But at that time, we were family."
"He didn't do much to protect you."
"I didn't want him to. And he wasn't capable of it. He might have challenged Edgar to duel after the fact, if he'd known the truth, but that would hardly have improved the situation." She bent down and scooped up the hairpins. "I'm the one who should have seen what was going on and ensured Edward was safe."
"So you could have divorced him," Julien said. "I mean, you'd have had to, for us to be together."
She tossed the hairpins on her dressing table. "I wouldn't have let him be killed so we could be together."
"No. Nor would I, tempting as it would have been. But I wouldn't say you owed him anything."
"I missed something, and the father of my children is dead." She looked at Julien quickly. "You're their father. But Edward—"
"Was. It's all right."
"If I'd known—"
"You mean, if I'd told you what he was involved in."
"No. Yes. You couldn't have known. But it might have helped."
"From what I knew, I didn't see Edward's activities leading to anything violent. Which means I missed obvious clues too. You have a right to be angry at me."
"It wouldn't help anything for me to be angry at you."
"That's never stopped anyone from being angry."
Kitty spun away and drummed her fingers on the polished walnut of her dressing table. "How would you have done it?"
"Done what?"
"Murdered Edward."
"I didn't—"
"I know, but if you had. If he was murdered, he must have been poisoned, mustn't he?"
"Yes," Julien said, in an easy voice that was somehow like frayed rope. "I can't say how I would have done it, but based on what I've heard, if he was murdered, I suspect it was foxglove. Which Geoff would tell us can be a handy medicine, but with the right dosage can bring on a heart attack. Difficult to prove. Even though Edward was young, a doctor would be much more likely to think it was natural causes."
Kitty nodded. "How long—"
"It works slowly. He might have ingested it a couple of hours before."
"I'd been to a concert at The Philharmonics the night before. I'm not sure where he was. He came home after I did, and left before I got up. At this point, at this distance, it's impossible to know whom he might have seen before he went to the fencing academy. He could have stopped at a café or a tavern or the British Commercial Subscription Room. A servant could have been bribed to put it in his coffee at home, even. Though I trusted our staff."
"Most likely someone was paid to do it. Even if we could determine who did it, it won't tell us who was behind it."
Kitty nodded. "I need to learn what happened. I can't promise that will solve it. But it will give me back a measure of control. Because that's what started all this. Our going to the Argentine. My losing control. Having it ripped from me. In the worst way possible." She pressed her hands to her face for a moment, then dragged them away from her eyes and looked at her husband. "I told myself I'd put it behind me. That it was a horror many women suffered and I had to get on with my life. And I did get on with my life. But it's not behind me."
Julien hesitated a moment, then closed the distance between them and put his hands on her shoulders. Lightly. Just brushing the velvet of her gown. "You're the strongest person I know. And whatever you need to do to get through this, I'm here. I always will be."
Kitty nodded, and put her hands over his own.
Malcolm closed the nursery door. "Investigations tend to keep them up all night along with the rest of us."
"They can sleep later tomorrow at least. Although they're more likely to come bounding in asking what we're Investigating." Mélanie moved to her dressing table and unfastened one of her garnet earrings. "Malcolm." She looked through the soft glow of candle and lamplight at her husband. The topic none of them had quite ventured to broach in front of Roth hung between them. Given their family, it shouldn't be hard to ask. "Judith's father—"
Malcolm moved to the bed and began to undo his shirt cuffs. He'd already removed his coat before they looked in on the children. "Has Aunt Frances said anything to you?"
"No." Mélanie unhooked the second earring without looking away from her husband. "But Allie once said when Judith was younger she liked to give herself airs and claim her father was royal."
Malcolm grimaced, gaze fastened on a button. "According to Aunt Frances, Judith was correct. Though Fanny didn't want to admit it to her."
"Did she say which royal?"
"No."
"But Frances was—"
"Rumored to be connected with at least three of them."
"So Judith's father could be—"
Malcolm released the button. "The king. Quite."
Mélanie bent down to pick up Berowne before he could climb the pomegranate terry velvet of her gown. "Odd. It sounds more official than saying Prince of Wales." She settled Berowne against her shoulder and pressed her face into his fur. "I imagine the king has a number of children." Including, if rumor was correct, her fellow playwright George Lamb, the brother of her friend Emily Cowper. "But if she's his child, and the home office know about her and Roth, and that's entangled in the murder investigation—"
Malcolm tugged at the folds of his cravat. "Quite. I need to talk to Frances."
CHAPTER 34
"I still can't believe we never noticed anything about Roth and Judith." Cordelia turned to look at her husband in the privacy of their bedchamber. They had put the girls to bed and said goodnight to Justine, and finally had a moment to talk alone.
"Always a good reminder of what the best agent can miss." Harry moved to the armchair by the fire.
Cordelia pulled a pin from her hair. "There's plenty all of you get as agents that I miss. But I rather pride myself at being good at noting personal feelings. Especially romantic intrigues." She pulled out another pin. "They used to be my forte." They could joke about that now. Better to joke about it.
"Sometimes one doesn't see what one isn't looking for."
Cordelia pulled out another handful of pins and shook her hair out. "I can quite see it now, though. Judith was bored. She won't be bored with Jeremy."
"I hope they both have the chance to put that to the test," Harry said. But he was frowning and Cordelia didn't think it was about Roth and Judith, however concerning their situation was.
"Darling?" Cordelia asked. "What is it? Something about the case?"
"No." Harry gave her a quick smile. "That is, there's plenty to be concerned about over the case. But I was remembering how Gerry talked to me about his father this afternoon. About how it's hard to forgive him. I'm the last to want to make things easier for Theodore Schofield. But I couldn't but be aware that I was quick to forgive Archie for being a spy."
"It's a bit different." Cordelia moved to the armchair and dropped into her husband's lap. "Theodore Schofield sold British secrets for money and then used his inside knowledge from his spying to make still more money. Archie was acting out of principle. And he wasn't paid for it."
Harry's arms tightened round her. "So it's the motive that matters?"
