The Westminster Intrigue, page 9
"Yes, but—" Pendarves stared at Julien, gaze wide with incomprehension. "How long—how on earth did you—"
"Oh, she's known about my—past for some time. From the first, really. I never tried to hide it. But I didn't enumerate my past lovers any more than I expected her to enumerate hers. Much better to leave that in the past, unless the past intrudes on current matters. Which happens more often than you'd think. Kitty didn't know about you until tonight. I may not appear to have a great deal of delicacy, but I do try to respect friends' privacy."
"And you can simply go on—"
"It's in the past," Julien said. "That helps. Kitty's not much concerned with who was in my bed before we met—before we—committed, I suppose you'd say—any more than I'm concerned with who was in hers." He met Pendarves's confused gaze and gave a twisted smile. "Probably franker than any conversation you've had with your wife. But Kitty and I are quite different people."
"Yes." Pendarves passed a hand over his face. "I can see that."
"On the other hand, I'd be rather distressed at the thought of anyone else in her bed now."
"My dear fellow. She's your wife."
"That doesn't seem to concern a number of our colleagues in the Lords. And the Commons. And the world in general. And more power to those for whom the arrangement works. But I realized it wouldn't suit me. I don't intend to have anyone else in my bed either. In fact, I find I don't want to."
Pendarves met his gaze for a long moment while memories danced between them. "I didn't ask."
"No, you wouldn't." Julien returned Pendarves's gaze. "I love my wife, and I have no desire to be with anyone but her. But I wouldn't give up my memories for the world."
Pendarves gave a wry smile. "It was an assignment."
"It wasn't just that," Julien said, in a moment that revealed more than he was wont to show to anyone. "Speaking as one who knows the difference."
Pendarves swallowed and released his breath. "Thank you."
"It's the truth. It's part of why I came tonight. Because I was concerned Blayney's death could expose you to comment and worse. I wanted to warn you right away."
"I appreciate that." Pendarves reached for his glass, but his fingers stilled on the crystal. "Part?"
Julien picked up his own glass and took a sip. "Blayney was murdered. We need information from those who knew him."
"Of course. And I've admitted he was blackmailing me without either of us ever acknowledging it. Which doesn't mean I didn't find it tiresome. That he might not have escalated it or I might not have decided to put a stop to it without his escalating it." Pendarves met Julien's gaze, his own clear and steady and yet harder than Julien had ever seen it. "In other words, I've just given myself an excellent motive for murder."
Chapter 9
Kitty dragged a cloth dipped in face cream over the blacking round her eyes. It was taking longer than usual to clean her face with the heavier cosmetics. And things weren't where she was used to, though Mélanie had laid everything out for her on the brown-veined ivory marble top of the pretty satinwood dressing table in the bedchamber they were occupying in Berkeley Square. Mélanie was the perfect hostess. She was perfect at so many things. It would be so easy to dislike her if she weren't such a good friend.
Kitty glanced at the cradle where her toddler Genny was sleeping, then looked back in the glass. Her own eyes stared back at her. It must the traces of blacking that made them appear so shadowed, and the flickering light of the tapers beside the glass that put such a haunted look in their depths. She started to dip the cloth in the rose-flowered bowl again when a movement caught her eyes in the glass. Her husband leaned in the doorway. She wasn't sure how long he'd been there. Julien moved like a cat.
Kitty turned round and met his gaze. "Did you see him?"
"Mmm." Julien moved to the dressing table and put his hands on her shoulders. "I'd forgot how difficult it is to confront someone one's deceived. Or maybe I simply haven't done it much. Fortunately or unfortunately, he seems to believe Uncle Hubert's story that I was undercover for Britain and assumes I was getting information for Uncle Hubert about the Russians. I didn't tell him that the truth was worse—or perhaps better. He says Blayney didn't know about our relationship."
Kitty released her breath.
Julien cupped her cheek. "Craven."
"You can't blame me for being worried about my husband."
"There are a lot of things people could hold against your husband." Julien dropped down on the dressing table bench and turned sideways to face her. "Fortunately, the proof is murky. But apparently Blayney did have knowledge of Pendarves's affairs that he tried to use against him. Did use against him. Apparently he made vague not-quite-threats that prompted Pendarves to lend him money for years."
"Affairs with whom?" She scanned his face.
"He didn't say."
"It gives them both a motive. Pendarves and his lover. Lovers, perhaps."
"Yes. I'll have to try to work it out of him. I don't think he's been pining for me, but I think our association probably meant more to him than it did to me. Poor devil. He's a good man." He gave a crooked smile. "I didn't used to talk that way. What have I come to?"
Kitty met her husband's gaze. "You like him."
"Yes, I do. He cares about his wife and can't tell her or their children the truth of who he is. He has the life David might have had. That Rupert would have if he hadn't managed to talk to Gaby." He tucked a curl behind her ear. "You're right, I do like Pendarves. And I kept thinking tonight—he doesn't have anyone he can be himself with. At least, not that I know of. Which makes what I have with you even more of a miracle."
"My love. It's a miracle in any number of ways. Not least because we're managing to make it work."
"Yes, I imagine a number of those at our wedding would have given even odds or worse.
"Oh, no. Our friends are very supportive. And rather more inclined to romantic delusions than they admit."
Julien pushed himself to his feet and poured two glasses of whisky from the decanter on the pier table by the windows. "Kind of them to leave us this."
"Mélanie thinks of everything."
"Mélanie went undercover as the perfect wife almost a decade ago. In many ways, she's just coming up for air." He put one of the glasses into her hand, then stared into his own glass. His brows were drawn, his gaze hooded, as though he didn't like what he saw in its depths.
Kitty pushed herself to her feet and touched his arm. "Darling?"
"I'm all right. It's not Pendarves."
"It's the earlier part of the night."
Julien took a drink of whisky and nodded, as though he didn't trust himself to meet her gaze. "It's just—been some time."
Kitty slid her arm round her husband. One night in Argentina, he'd killed a man in a knife brawl. A man who had been attacking both of them. She remembered the economy with which he'd pocketed his own knife, his brisk inquiry if she was all right, his professional disposition of the body. There'd been the briefest flash of acknowledgment in his eyes, but otherwise nothing to betray he was anything other than a professional who had done this countless times before. But a lot had changed since then. "You didn't kill him." She reached up to touch his face with her free hand. "You wouldn't have."
"No, that would have been foolish." Julien tossed down another drink of whisky. "We needed information. Which is why his companion killed him before we could get it. It's a long time since I've been that close to—anything of the sort. Not since—"
Not since a year ago, when he'd killed Malcolm's brother, Edgar Rannoch, who had been trying to kill Malcolm. Who had once taken Kitty by force. Whom Julien had known since they were boys. Whom Kitty had asked Julien to help her with on the night that had brought them back together and in a sense set them on the path to where they were today. That night had ended with their lying on her bed, both fully clothed, holding each other against demons past and present.
Kitty didn't say more but slipped her arm tighter round her husband. "It's not that I thought we were out of danger. It's not that I even wanted to be, frankly. But I didn't think we'd confront this so quickly. At least, I don't think we need worry being Lord and Lady Carfax will render us dull."
"Yes, we've managed to stake out our own territory." Julien took another drink of whisky. "Are you all right, Kitkat?"
"Oh, yes." Kitty took a sip from her own glass. "All he did was grab me and put a knife to my throat. I've been through far worse."
"That was enough. But it's not what I was thinking of." Julien laced his fingers through her own. "Perhaps it's just the fact that I'm replaying the events of tonight myself."
Kitty turned towards him. "Damn it, you know me too well. I don't particularly care for the idea that James Blayney is dead remotely because of me."
"We don't know that he is."
"Says the man who's brooding over the man who attacked me."
Julien frowned down at their clasped hands. "I suppose this is what it is to have a conscience."
"You've always had a conscience."
"A working conscience. It always seemed to me that Malcolm and Mélanie and O'Roarke—who has more scruples than anyone, much as he tries to deny it—spent far too much time dwelling on their past actions. But the devil of it is once one starts, one can't seem to stop." He glanced over at Genny's cradle.
"I know," Kitty said, "It's different, wondering what they'd think of you. But perhaps more wondering what you think of yourself."
Julien nodded. "Odd. I didn't used to care much what I thought of myself. On the whole, that was easier. And then there's the fact that I now have to worry about what my wife thinks of me."
Kitty tightened her fingers over his own. "I can't imagine why you would."
"Possibly because her opinion matters to me. Not that I'd admit it. Mostly for fear of sending her shrieking in the opposite direction."
"I love it when you talk nonsense," Kitty said. "Unless it's in the midst of a mission." She turned her head to kiss him, then said, "If I weren't Lady Carfax, Roth might have arrested me tonight."
"Roth's too sensible to have done that."
"He might not have had a choice. He arrested Laura."
"Laura was found with a pistol in a room with a murdered man. But you're right, if you were the woman you'd been playing tonight at the Chat Gris, there might have been pressure to arrest you."
Their conflicting worlds came rushing over them. As had always been inevitable. She'd just been hoping idiotishly that it wouldn't happen so soon. "It's not going to be easy for you if the truth comes out."
"I'm not beholden to anyone. They can say what they like about both of us. I'll still have a seat in the House of Lords. And it would drive Uncle Hubert mad. Which is a rather agreeable thought."
"Uncle Hubert knows perfectly well what we were both doing tonight."
"Oh, yes." Julien grinned. "He just counts on it not becoming public." His grin faded. "Odd how one's perspective can shift. There was a time when a mission that ended with one or two dead bodies wouldn't have given me pause."
"Nor me. But we're not in the midst of a war. And somehow—I feel more responsible."
"So do I." He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Perhaps I don't like confronting the person I used to be."
"Oh, my darling, who does?" Kitty rested her head against his shoulder for a moment. "I certainly don't, at least at times. But we wouldn't be here without the people we used to be." She'd never been so aware of that as she had the night they'd reunited.
"A good point. And I'm immeasurably grateful for the woman you are. I'd be quite satisfied if I ever become half as worthwhile a person." He stared down at his fingers in her hair, the smile leaving his eyes. "Someone stabbed his comrade tonight, a handsbreadth away from both of us. Seemingly without a second thought. In the service of a mission. The man who did that is closer to the man I used to be than I care to admit. And the fact that I even talk about the man I used to be indicates quite a significant change."
Kitty tilted her head back and put her hand against the side of his face. "I know you, Julien. I know the person you've always been."
"That's more than I do, my darling. I'm still trying to work out who I am."
"I expect we're all doing that too. But I know a great deal about who you are. Among other things, my husband. Our children's father."
He put up his hand and gripped her own. "And I'm trying to do my best to live up to both."
Chapter 10
Chelsea was only three miles from Charing Cross yet still a rural village, surrounded by pastures where cows chomped at the grass, orchards in turning autumn gold, and meadows sloping down to the river. Malcolm pulled his curricle up before the Blayney house, a brick villa with door and window frames sorely in need of a fresh coat of paint, and a front garden that looked as though someone had stopped caring about it some months since. A child's wagon filled with rainwater lay forgot beside weed-choked flowerbeds that hadn't been pruned for autumn. He glanced sideways at Roth.
"Whatever Blayney was up to, he doesn't appear to have been supporting his wife," Roth said.
"No." Malcolm tethered the horses to the gatepost and they rang the bell. A maidservant of indeterminant years with tired eyes opened the door.
Malcolm offered her his card. "Is Mrs. Blayney at home?"
The maidservant nodded and led them down a cramped passage to an overstuffed sitting room choked with the smell of cheap potpourri.
"Blayney was living a very different life in London," Malcolm said. "Of course, they're hardly the only married couple to lead separate lives. We have the king and queen as an example."
Roth looked at a red-painted top that had rolled under the settee. "It's more complicated when there are children involved."
Malcolm shot a quick look at his friend. Roth's wife had left him and their two sons years ago. Malcolm still didn't understand the reasons. For all they had shared, Roth had never confided them, but the wound obviously cut deep. "Yes," Malcolm said, in an even voice. "This will be hard for Blayney's children." Easier, perhaps, paradoxically, if he'd been an entirely absent father.
"Do you think—" Roth bit back whatever he had been about to say at the sound of footsteps in the passage. The door opened, admitting a child's cry from the back reaches of the house and the person of Mrs. Blayney. She was a woman in her early thirties, with a rounded figure that might once have been trimly voluptuous, dark hair haphazardly dressed, and a face sunk into premature lines of disappointment.
Her gaze darted from Malcolm to Roth. "What can I do for you?"
"Mrs. Blayney." Malcolm inclined his head. "My name is Rannoch, and this is my friend Roth. I'm afraid we have some unfortunate news. It's about your husband."
She pushed the door shut, rattling the sagging frame. "You can skip the pleasantries. How much does he owe you?"
"You are mistaken, madam," Roth said. "Neither of us has met your husband."
"Ha. That wouldn't stop Jamie from owing someone money." Her gaze shot between them. "What is it?"
"Perhaps we could sit down?" Malcolm said.
She dropped into a chair and gestured to the settee opposite her, uncertainty in her gaze. "About the only time I hear from Jamie is when someone comes to me needing something. Or when Jamie comes to me needing something. What is it?" Her voice was sharp and weary but held an undercurrent of anxiety.
"I'm very sorry to tell you that your husband was killed last night, Mrs. Blayney," Roth said.
"Killed?" She blinked. Not with grief or shock or horror, but with disbelief. "He couldn't have been. Jamie is the most hard-headed man imaginable."
"I'm afraid there's no doubt, Mrs. Blayney," Roth said, in a gentle but inexorable voice. "Your husband was positively identified. I realize this must be a great shock."
"But—" Her gaze shot between them. "Jamie survived the Peninsula. He survived Waterloo."
"As I did myself," Roth said. "It's a tragedy to get through that hell and meet death at home."
Her fist shot to her mouth. She doubled over, shoulders shaking.
Malcolm got to his feet and went to a cabinet that held an array of decanters. He poured a glass of sherry and put it into Mrs. Blayney's hand. Her fingers tightened round the glass, as though she were holding on to her sanity. She stared into the glass for a moment, like one searching for answers, then gulped down half the contents. "What happened?"
"We aren't entirely sure," Malcolm said. "He was knifed."
"In a fight?"
"No. He'd been drugged first." He hesitated a moment, but there was no point in avoiding the truth. "He was in a tavern called the Chat Gris."
"He was drugged at a table?"
"No." Malcolm returned to his chair and kept his voice level. "He was in a room upstairs."
She gave a rough laugh. "You mean the Chat Gris is a brothel."
"It seems to be something of the sort," Malcolm said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Though apparently your husband was there to sell information."
"Jamie?" Her brows drew together. "You're telling me my husband went to a brothel to conduct business? That's rich."
"According to his friend Ned Royston, he had a number of schemes for making money," Roth said.
"That he did." She sobered and grimaced. "One more foolish than the last. But—What was he trying to sell this time?"
"Information, apparently," Malcolm said. "Some papers written by a lady whom we haven't been able to identify."
"Jamie was selling love letters?" Mrs. Blayney took another drink of sherry. "That's rich."
"They aren't love letters," Malcolm said. "They aren't letters at all. They appear to be some sort of diary or memoir."
"Jamie was selling a lady's secrets?" She frowned. "Was it one of the Langdons?"
"What makes you think so?" Roth asked in a neutral voice.
"Jamie grew up with them. And their brother. Their father was Lord Pendarves. Their brother is now."
"Yes, we learned that from Captain Blayney's brother last night."
