"Nor did I, but I've certainly been capable of it. When I was with Bella and knew we hadn't made promises to each other. I confess to feeling a twinge when I learned about her affair with Carfax—Hubert. I felt a twinge with Margaret and Desmond, even though our marriage was effectively over and a part of me was relieved." He'd even felt a twinge with his own son over Mélanie, though he wasn't going to say so, even to Archie. "I felt a twinge with Laura's William Cuthbertson."

  "I remember your watching him dance with her. But I don't think he's been Laura's Colonel Cuthbertson for some time."

  "So I know, on some level. It doesn't make the twinges go away." Raoul shot a look at Archie. "Even long after Arabella died, when I briefly thought you'd been her lover. Which I wouldn't have blamed you for."

  Archie's gaze shot up. "I wouldn't—"

  "You'd have been well within your rights. I had no claim on Bella."

  "Our friendship gives you a claim on me."

  Raoul met his friend's gaze. "Thank you."

  Archie inclined his head, eyes steady on Raoul's own. After a moment he said, "What do you think Alistair wants?"

  "You know him better than I do. You worked with him. You even had the illusion of being friends."

  Archie frowned. "I can't claim to have known him. Even in my very early days in the League, when I was amusing myself and didn't quite know what I was into. I knew enough to know we didn't have much in common. I thought he was a bit of a poseur. I tried to get to know him better after I went to work with Arabella against the League. But for all he was at the center of a large organization given to excess and indulgence, he was a difficult man to get close to. I always thought he was jealous of Glenister. Long before we knew he'd seduced Lady Glenister to win a bet. He was cleverer than Glenister, but Glenister had the title. And the fortune, in those early days. And I always thought Alistair was jealous of you. More than either you or Bella realized. I'm sure he was jealous of Hubert when he learned the truth."

  "You think that's why he's moving against Glenister and Hubert and me now?"

  "I think it's part of why he was trying to bring you down at Dunboyne. It may be part of what's going on now, but there has to be more to it. The reason he's disappeared. The reason he wants a pardon. And he's after Smytheton as well. I don't think Alistair was ever jealous of him."

  "No, but Smytheton was involved in Alistair's getting me out of Ireland. I keep going over that, but I can't think of what Alistair could be afraid would be revealed about it now."

  "Alistair loved Arabella. Assuming one can say he's capable of love."

  "There are different types of love."

  "Quite." Alistair twisted his walking stick again. "But I think he loved Fanny, too."

  Raoul looked sideways at Archie. "Yes, so do I."

  "Do you think he wants her back now?" Archie asked, gaze on the walking stick.

  "I'm not sure about that. But I don't think Fanny wants to go back to him. I don't think Fanny ever was with him, precisely."

  "I remember the duel Alistair fought with Harleton. Harleton was the one who challenged Alistair over Fanny. Alistair claimed to be amused over the whole thing. As though Harleton was behaving like a schoolboy to care. But I caught him looking at Harleton once, not long after, when we were all drinking port at White's. And I'd say Alistair felt more than a twinge of jealousy." Archie was silent for a moment. "She kept it secret. Seeing him."

  "Only for a few hours."

  "We drove home in those hours. Looked in on the children. Got into the same bed. Woke and breakfasted with the children. I knew something was bothering her, but I never dreamt—"

  Raoul watched his friend. "You've kept things from her."

  "So I have. It's a given we keep things from our spouses, as we all say. But—"

  "None of them has involved a former lover."

  "No. And of course, she had a right to keep it to herself, to try to sort through what it meant. She owed Malcolm an explanation before she owed me one. But I can't help wishing—that she'd wanted to tell me."

  "She probably would have, eventually."

  "And the damnable thing is now I'll never know."

  Malcolm stepped over the threshold in Berkeley Square. Beneath the familiar fanlight, onto the familiar checkerboard marble tiles, the staircase his children slid down in view across the hall. Odd to feel like an interloper in one's own home. But then, it wasn't really his home. It never had been.

  "Is Mrs. Rannoch back yet?" he asked Valentin.

  "Not yet, sir. Mrs. O'Roarke is upstairs with the children. But you have a visitor waiting in the library. Mr. Benedict Smythe. He's most anxious to speak with you."

  Ben stood by the library table, hands clasped behind his back. "Nerezza and I are betrothed."

  "Congratulations." Malcolm clapped him on the shoulder. "That's wonderful news." And particularly welcome today.

  "We have Father's blessing too. Which I didn't need and didn't expect. I was prepared to go forwards without it. But I have to say I'm glad to have it."

  "Your father can be surprising."

  "But you don't look surprised."

  "He said something to me about it. I'm never quite sure of anything your father says, but he convinced me he wanted the two of you to be happy."

  "He said he'll talk to Mama. I'm hoping she'll come round as well."

  "I imagine she will."

  Ben nodded. His face was suffused with wonder, but also uncertainty. "It's all I've wanted since I met Nerezza. I was afraid she wouldn't agree, for all sorts of reasons. I still can't quite believe it's real."

  "Not surprising." Malcolm hesitated. Ben was looking at him as though expecting him to have some sort of advice. He struggled to come up with something that wasn't a platitude. "Marriage takes work. And I'd be lying if I said there weren't challenges. But I think you have every chance of being very happy. You've already proved how devoted you both are."

  "Thanks." A grin broke across Ben's face. "I know I can't be happy without her, and I hope I can make her happy."

  "I don't know that one person can ever make another happy. That's something we have to find for ourselves. But the right partner can certainly help. It's quite clear you're both happier together."

  "I hope so." Ben shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "See here, Rannoch. I'm not—That is, Nerezza's the first woman I've loved."

  "Not surprising, at your age."

  "Yes, but I haven't—" Ben glanced to the side. "I mean, I never liked the idea of dalliance. Not really fair to the girl involved. And I didn't want—well, I did want to, of course, at times, but it also seemed so cheap. So I haven't—I can't say I'm experienced. I'm not experienced. Not in the least."

  For a moment, Malcolm was thrown back to himself at much Ben's age, his mind at war with the confusing impulses of his body. "You're to be commended for your restraint. You certainly have a lot of time to explore such things."

  "Yes, but Nerezza—I wouldn't say these things, but I know you won't judge her. I know you know that one shouldn't judge anyone, man or woman. She's—she's more experienced than I am. I expect you're not surprised."

  "Not entirely," Malcolm said.

  Ben stared down at his hands on the brown-veined marble of the table. "I told her it didn't matter. And it doesn't, not in the least. It's in the past, and what I care about is our future. But it does mean—when we—when we're together as husband and wife—Nerezza will know a great deal more than I do."

  "Not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, for one of you to be more experienced than the other."

  Ben frowned, as though he'd translated a difficult passage and wasn't sure he'd got it right.

  Malcolm drew a breath, sifting through his own past—and Mélanie's—unsure of how much to share. "That is, there's a great deal to be said for discovery, but sometimes it's easier if one of the explorers has—trod the path before, so to speak."

  Ben colored, but his gaze still showed a concentration that went beyond embarrassment. "Yes, but—"

  "Usually it's the man? True, at least based on assumptions. But there's no particular reason it should be."

  "But—" Ben hesitated, shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "I want to make Nerezza happy."

  Fears from his own past shot through Malcolm's head. Standing in his sitting room in Lisbon on his wedding night, wondering if he should knock on his wife's door. Qualms and questions he still sometimes had. "My dear fellow, Nerezza is madly in love with you. I can't imagine anything that happens on your wedding night changing that."

  Ben flushed. "I'm afraid it won't be what she'll expect. I haven't precisely told her—"

  "Perhaps you should."

  Ben's gaze jerked to Malcolm's face, wide with horror. "Good God."

  "I admit I'm not sure I'd have been able to do so myself." Malcolm hesitated again, the past welling up in his throat. "I understand your qualms. I wasn't very experienced on my own wedding night."

  Ben's gaze went wide with embarrassment, but also with relief. "But you weren't—that is, you had—"

  "Yes. A bit." Leaving aside that he had been without experience with Kitty, and that hadn't gone badly—at least, not the part in bed.

  Ben nodded, gaze on his hands. "I'm afraid I won't know what to do."

  "I think you'll find it comes naturally."

  Ben's gaze shot to his face. "You're very comfortable talking about it."

  "Oh, I wasn't for years. Not at all. I'm still not."

  "A lot of fellows are. I remember boys at Eton who already had women in the village."

  "A lot of fellows are comfortable boasting about their exploits. Or what they claim are their exploits. That's not at all the same thing."

  "Do you think so? I never thought of it that way. I've never really talked to anyone—that is, I couldn't to my father. I thought about talking to Roger, but even that—"

  "Different with one's family." Malcolm drew another breath. He was going to have to get used to this. Colin would have questions in another fifteen years. Or ten. "I can't claim to a great deal of knowledge. But don't be afraid to ask me questions. If nothing else, you may find my lack of knowledge reassuring."

  Ben gave a shy grin. "You're very kind."

  "My dear fellow. You may find it comforting to talk with someone who's as uncertain as you."

  "You're going off to investigate again, aren't you?" Leo reached across the Carfax House breakfast table for another piece of toast. They were gathered for a late morning repast.

  "I'm afraid so," Julien said. "But we'll have dinner with you tonight, one way or another."

  "Can we all go the Rannochs'?" Timothy asked.

  Kitty met Julien's gaze across the table. "Possibly. The Rannochs are even busier than we are. But we'll probably be there later today."

  Leo and Timothy nodded. Investigations and missions were part of ordinary life in their experience. What they couldn't know was how much even the unconventional framework of their lives had been shaken the previous night. Julien was still coming to terms with it himself.

  Kitty wiped Genny's face. She was feeding herself porridge and had managed to get most of it in her mouth. Julien refilled Genny's milk cup. He was watching her take a careful sip when Cam, the second footman, came into the room.

  "Lord Pendarves has called, my lord. He's in the library."

  Julien pushed back his chair. "Papers for me to look at. It shouldn't be long."

  But when he went into the library, Pen greeted him with a white face. "I went to get my notes from six years ago to bring you. But they're gone."

  Chapter 50

  Malcolm saw Ben from the house himself. He was halfway up the stairs to see Laura and the children when he heard someone at the door. He ran back down the stairs and waved to Valentin that he'd get the door. He opened it to find Lord Molyneux on the steps. "I'm sorry," Molyneux said. "I imagine you're in the midst of a lot."

  Malcolm bit back a laugh at how very true that was. "Not so much that I can't talk. Come in. We don't stand on ceremony, as you see."

  "Thank you." Molyneux's tone was level and matter-of-fact, the tone he would use to ask if they could discuss strategy over a bill. But in his contained face, his gaze was that of a man stepping over a precipice.

  He sat opposite Malcolm on one of the Queen Anne chairs in the library, but hesitated, hands on his legs. "I don't quite know where to begin."

  Malcolm had no wish to betray Phoebe Molyneux's confidence unless it was absolutely necessary, but he needed to persuade Molyneux to talk, and, like Pendarves, Molyneux was not the sort who would speak of personal matters easily. "I assume this is about the Blayney investigation."

  Molyneux inclined his head.

  Malcolm leaned back in his chair. "We already know your wife grew up with Captain Blayney."

  Molyneux's mouth tightened. "Blayney was in the Peninsula by the time I married Phoebe. I don't believe I even heard of him until we were at Drury Lane two years into our marriage and I noticed my wife staring at a man who had come into a box across from us. In a way I'd never seen Phoebe look at anyone before." For a moment, in the gaze of this settled, sober politician, Malcolm saw a flash of the desperate longing of Kit Montagu or Benedict Smythe or Sandy Trenor in the throes of first serious love. Molyneux swallowed as though his throat hurt. "One doesn't ask such questions, but from when we first met, Phoebe made it clear that she had no interest in romantic overtures. I could not but suspect that meant some unhappy past love. When I saw her looking at Captain Blayney, I was quite sure that was the case, and that Blayney was the man in question. But of course, I couldn't ask. Later, Blayney came up to us in the grand salon. Phoebe introduced him as a childhood friend. We spoke briefly. My attention was claimed by an acquaintance. I noted Phoebe and Blayney speaking longer, but of course I could not ask her about it either."

  Some husbands wouldn't have hesitated. But Molyneux appeared at once too restrained and too sensitive to intrude on his wife's history. And perhaps also to express his own feelings to his wife.

  "We saw Blayney a few times, at various events," Molyneux continued. "I greeted him as an acquaintance. I saw Pendarves and Prescott and Sophia and Pippa do the same. It would have felt like a violation of my wife's privacy to ask questions of her family about a friend. I don't know how much Phoebe spoke with him. I didn't have a meaningful conversation with him until some seven days since. When he called on us. At a time when I believe he could have known Phoebe would be from home. He—made some rather extraordinary claims about my wife."

  "And asked you to ensure his silence?" Malcolm said.

  Molyneux leaned forwards, brows knotted. "He wanted to know if I knew anything about Pendarves's work with the Russians six years ago."

  "You were in London then." Malcolm could remember Molyneux at events during the Allied sovereigns' visit to Britain.

  "Of course. Difficult to avoid it. I remember Phoebe's saying she hadn't seen her sisters and brother so many nights running since they'd left home. Balls, receptions, Ascot. We even all tramped down to Oxford for the tsar and the others to get honorary degrees." Molyneux grimaced. "Prescott drank too much, and I found him being sick in the Prussian delegation's retiring room. Reliving his undergraduate days. But I was hardly going to share details with Blayney, who was clearly looking for more gossip. You're a husband, Rannoch. And the father of a daughter. You must understand my feelings towards a man who had behaved so towards a young girl who was little more than a child. Let alone towards the woman I—towards my wife. I am not a man of violence, but it was all I could do to avoid planting the man a facer."

  "It would be distressing for your wife, should the events be brought up, but they are in the past, and she is comfortably married now—"

  "It's far more than that, Rannoch." Molyneux drew a hard breath. "Blayney threatened to claim that my eldest son isn't mine. That he fathered Freddy."

  "That must have been horrible to hear."

  "It—" Molyneux's hands curled inwards. "Yes."

  "Did you believe him?"

  "Not at first. I said I was hard put to avoid planting him a facer. At that, I did. I knocked him to the hearth rug. It was very satisfying, but not particularly helpful. He was undeterred. And I—it is difficult not to wonder."

  "Did you ask your wife?"

  "Good God, Rannoch. It's not something we could discuss."

  "Not even after you knew about her past with Blayney? You could say you needed to know the truth to protect her." Malcolm had once said something similar to Raoul about Mélanie.

  "It would—it would seem to violate what is between us. And, in a sense, it doesn't matter. My son is my son, whatever the circumstances of his conception."

  "I honor you for that."

  "And slander about his birth could hurt him and his mother and his brother, whether true or a fiction. I don't want my son to grow up doubting that he's the rightful Lord Molyneux. I don't want my younger son to feel that his brother's title should rightfully be his."

  Malcolm thought of his own brother. "I completely understand. But the need to protect your children is perhaps something for you to discuss with your wife. Even if you don't wish to ask her for the truth."

  "How the devil am I supposed to do one without doing the other?" Molyneux sat back in his chair. "Your pardon, Rannoch. You evidently speak much more freely with your wife than I do with mine."

  "It's not my business to ask," Malcolm said. "And not directly relevant to the investigation. But does your wife know how you feel about her?"

  Molyneux drew a hard breath. "Phoebe's my wife. She knows the respect and affection I have for her."

  Malcolm studied the emotion behind Molyneux's carefully contained expression. Like a dam that can't quite contain the raging water behind it. "But does she know you're in love with her?"

  Molyneux's gave shot to Malcolm's face, then away. "You seem to be blessed with a happy marriage, Rannoch. Phoebe made it clear to me from the start that she had no interest in romantic overtures from me. I married perhaps later than I should have done. I should perhaps have married a woman closer to my own age. I arguably should not have married a woman for whom my own feelings could generously be described as 'foolish.' But having made the mistake of doing so, I can at least attempt not to embarrass us both with a public display."

 

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