"Davenport. What are you doing at Vauxhall? Thought you were tied to your wife's apron strings these days."
Archie smiled into Reginald Pomfret's florid face. "That sounds quite agreeable, actually. But I don't think Fanny would care for it. She is quite particular about her independence. She's here, as it happens."
"Wandered off, has she? That's the risk with a woman like that."
Archie adjusted his walking stick in his hand. Josefina Lopes had left the stage and Harry had gone off to speak to her. Malcolm and Mélanie had gone to their meeting with Gisèle. The rest of them were wandering about the grove to reinforce the impression that everyone was simply exploring on an evening of pleasure and entertainment. Archie let his gaze linger for a moment on Frances, who was a short way off talking with two acquaintances. "On the contrary. I know perfectly well whom she's going home with."
Reggie gave a rough laugh. The glass of brandy he carried tilted in his hand. "So long as you don't worry about what she does before you go home."
"Oddly enough, I don't."
Reggie snorted. "You're either a complacent husband or a besotted fool."
"Oh, I'm quite besotted." Archie felt himself smile. "But I don't think I'm a fool."
Reggie's gaze settled on Archie's face, steadier than it had been before. "Dashed fine woman, Frances Dacre-Hammond."
"Yes," Archie said. "She is."
"I should say Frances Davenport, that is." Reggie coughed. "Not sure I ever properly offered you my felicitations, old fellow. You're a lucky man to have won her."
Archie had known Reggie Pomfret for some three decades. They had first met at Oxford, where they'd run vaguely in the same circles. They had played whist together, greeted the dawn in the same gaming hells, run horses against each other at Newmarket and Ascot, once or twice pursued the same opera dancer. Pomfret was a surprisingly good judge of wine. They'd shared numerous bottles of claret. Often at Elsinore League gatherings, for Pomfret was also a member of the League, though hardly an insider. Archie had been reporting on the League since Arabella Rannoch had recruited him three decades before. Reggie Pomfret wasn't the man Archie would expect the League would send to check up on him now. Still, one could never be sure.
"Thank you, Reggie," he said, "I am lucky. I wonder at my good fortune every day."
"And you're a father. Should have felicitated you on that as well. Can scarcely remember when my own were babies, but it's a bit of excitement."
"It's quite remarkable," Archie said with truth.
"Enjoy it. More agreeable now when they're cooing in the nursery and playing on the drawing room carpet than later, when they're asking for new gowns or getting sent down from Eton and Oxford." Reggie cast a glance round the shadowy avenues. Plenty of people within sight, but no one within hearing. "See here, Davenport. What's going on with the League?"
"You're asking me?" Archie shifted his weight on his walking stick. "My dear Reggie, as you yourself pointed out, I've succumbed to domesticity. If Fanny hadn't been pining for a reminder of her old life, I wouldn't be here tonight. I'm a laughingstock among the League. And too content with my life to care."
"You'll never be a laughingstock, Davenport. And the League always took you more seriously than they did me. Don't know why I ever bothered, really, except the parties were agreeable, and the secrecy seemed to give me some caché. Tried to stay out of the rest of it. But damned hard to do so now. Fellows looking daggers at each other. Beverston and Carrick both asked if they could count on my support and I can't figure out for what, or for or against whom. What the devil's going on?"
"I don't know," Archie said with truth.
Pomfret scowled at a tree, turned fantastical by the red and purple lights above. "Say what you will about Alistair Rannoch, at least it was clear who was running things in his day. Now I can't make out who's pulling the strings."
Which pretty much put Pomfret on the same footing as Archie, the Rannochs, Raoul, and their other friends. "Not unusual for there to be a power vacuum after the loss of a strong leader."
"Damn, Archie, this is a club, not a country."
"Similar principle."
Reggie shook his head. "Tempted to turn my back on the whole thing. But then I think about what they have on me." He cast another glance round to make sure no one was within earshot, and took a step closer to Archie. "I mean, no one's ever threatened to use any of it, but we know what they do with information. Stupid to think they wouldn't turn on their own."
"In point of fact, they have," Archie said.
"Quite. Eldest son's standing for Parliament. Second daughter's about to make her début. Can't afford a scandal." Pomfret peered at Archie as though Archie held the map to a mysterious land. "How did you manage to walk away?"
"I wouldn't say I walked away so much as that the League were relieved to wash their hands of me when I married Frances." Or wanted to keep him within view. "I'm hardly living their sort of life now."
"Wouldn't mind a bit more quiet myself. Though I'm not sure Maria wants me at home. And White's gets a bit tiresome." Reggie took a drink from his glass of brandy. "What the devil do you think they're after? Never could keep up with some of the plots."
"I don't know," Archie said honestly.
Pomfret stared into his glass for a moment. "Don't know how it happened," he said, voice lowered, "because you know how closely the League guard secrets, but I swear someone from the outside is running things." He looked up from the glass and met Archie's gaze. "Someone new."
"What makes you think so?" Archie tried to keep his voice casual.
"There are whispers. It's not clear who's behind things, but it's clear someone is, and it's not any of Alistair Rannoch's inner circle. The ones who used to run things. Not Glenister or Beverston or Carrick. How an outsider got such power—" Reggie hunched his shoulders. "Always thought the League were a bit of lark. Used to laugh at the plots I couldn't follow, like some play that went above my head. The thing is now—Davenport, I think they're dangerous."
"Laura."
The voice drifted on the breeze with the scent of candles and snuff and Parisian perfume. Laura looked round to find herself staring into a pair of familiar blue eyes.
Will Cuthbertson. Who had once provided much-needed escape from the disastrous tangle of her life and to whom she had perhaps meant more than she had realized. Though he had certainly been keeping his own secrets.
He closed the distance between them. His smile was easy and remarkably open.
"I didn't know you were back from France," Laura said.
"A month since. I've sold out. Spent a fortnight with my brother and his family, then came up to London to look about. Vauxhall's not a place I'd have expected to find you."
"In truth, it's my first visit. We came with friends who got up a party."
Will stopped a few feet off, a comfortable distance away that did not intrude. "I heard you'd married."
"Last April." She kept her voice steady and conversational. "I'm Laura O'Roarke now."
"I'm glad. That is, I assume—I presume, I suppose—that it's the man you told me about. The man you didn't think you'd be able to marry."
"Yes." Thank goodness Will had confronted the situation head on. "Circumstances transpired in our favor. We have a second daughter. I'm far more fortunate than I deserve."
"I would never say that." Will watched her a moment. "I remember your dancing with him at the Lydgates'. I was a fool, I think, not to see what was before me."
"We were trying so hard to be discreet." A relief, in a way, to be able to address it directly. "I couldn't talk about it. Not then. Later, in Italy, we were more open." She drew the gauzy folds of her shawl about her shoulders. "I never meant to hurt you, Will."
He gave a faint smile, the sort one gives at a bittersweet memory. "You were worth it. And I wanted your happiness."
"I'd never have made you happy. I'm much too much of a rebel." At least, that was what she'd assumed when she still thought Will to be the fairly conventional man he'd seemed when she'd known him in India. Before she'd learned he'd been an agent for Carfax.
"I wanted to make your life easier," he said.
"But what I needed was to sort out what to do with it."
"Have you?"
"I'm starting to."
Will nodded. "There's a lot to be said for the right marriage, I imagine."
"Yes. But that's only part of sorting it out." And Raoul was wise enough to understand that, while she wasn't sure Will would have been.
"I've had a lot to sort out, myself," Will said. Events just over a year ago had freed him and others from their work as part of Carfax's network. "I feel freer of the past than I have in years. And yet, at times it still intrudes." He hesitated. "Harry Davenport is one of your party, isn't he?"
"Yes, along with Cordelia and Harry's uncle and Lady Frances and the Rannochs." Laura studied her former lover. Harry and Will had known each other in the army. It wasn't entirely surprising for him to ask about Harry. And yet tonight her senses were keyed to incongruity. "Will? Did you come here to find Harry?"
Will cast a quick glance about the trees, then took a step closer. "I came here to find any of you. You investigate with the Rannochs, don't you?"
"And the Davenports." Laura kept her gaze steady on Will. During their affair, she'd thought him remarkably easy to read. Now, for all she believed his feelings for her had been real, she still wasn't sure how much of a role his work for Carfax had played in their affair. Which made everything about the past—and everything he said to her now—questionable. "Will—did you know Annabel Larimer?"
Will released his breath. "What do you know about Annabel?"
"I know she was attacked today. I suspect that's why you want to talk to Harry."
"Safer to talk to you."
"Do you trust me?"
He gave a twisted smile. "I should probably ask you the same question."
"I think we have to trust each other." Odd to be talking this way. More openly, in some ways, than when they had been lovers. "But I suppose I'm surprised—before, you seemed quite focused on protecting me."
"Perhaps we've both learned to see the other more clearly." His smile was unexpectedly sweet. And seemingly open.
"What do you know about Annabel Larimer?"
Will cast another quick glance about, then took her arm and drew her to the side, into the shadows of the spreading tree branches. "I suppose Davenport's told you she worked for him?"
"Yes. He said no one else knew."
"That's more or less the case, officially. Carfax suspected."
"But surely—" She did sums in her head. "You were still in India when she was working for Harry."
"And hadn't heard of either of them. It was after I came back. When I was in England before Waterloo. Carfax wanted me to seek out Annabel when I went to Brussels in the run-up to Waterloo."
Laura shook her head. "Carfax wanted you to spy on a British agent?"
"A military intelligence agent. You know different networks don't always communicate."
"But at that point, she wasn't really an agent anymore, was she?"
"That's one thing Carfax wanted me to find out. How active she still was. And what she knew about Diego Martinez."
"You mean Carfax had you looking for who killed Diego Martinez? More than two years after he was murdered?"
"Martinez's death was still a mystery. Though Carfax thought the French were behind it."
Which meant Laura's husband. Who had been rueful about his own son's suspicions in that regard only a few hours before. "But he wasn't sure."
"Carfax is rarely sure of anything."
"And it was important enough to him, right before Waterloo, that he tasked an agent to get close to Annabel Larimer?"
"I was surprised too. Carfax said whoever was behind Martinez's death could have implications for the war."
"How?" Laura asked.
"He didn't elaborate. Except that Martinez was working for the French and the British were spying on him. Through Annabel Larimer. Who was working for Harry Davenport."
"Harry didn't kill Martinez. I'm quite sure of it." Possibly more sure than she was that Raoul hadn't been behind it, which was something she really didn't want to ponder at the moment. "Could Carfax have been behind Martinez's death?" she asked.
Will's gaze narrowed in honest consideration. "If so, he didn't tell me. Truly. I wouldn't hold that back from you. You know what I think of Carfax, and Carfax would be the first to admit it wouldn't be the first time he'd had a troublesome agent killed. But if he was behind it, I don't see why he'd have had me investigating."
"He might have wanted to find out what Annabel Larimer knew about his role in Martinez's murder."
"Perhaps. Perhaps I'm flattering myself that Carfax would have been concerned about what I might uncover. In any case, in those days I followed his orders more or less without question."
"And so you sought out Annabel Larimer." She hesitated, because what an agent might do in seeking to get close to someone comprised a number of possibilities. After all, didn't she have the same suspicions about the reasons Will had sought to get close to her?
"Yes." Will drew a breath. "I didn't necessarily intend—Annabel was lonely, I think. I don't know that she loved Martinez ever, but obviously her marriage hadn't been what one would wish. She said she missed her life during the war."
"From what I've learned about her just today, I think she missed being an agent."
Will met her gaze, in a direct way he wouldn't have in the old days when they were both, to a degree, hiding behind roles. "Yes, I imagine she did. And I was mourning your death. Your supposed death. You could say Annabel and I were both in search of solace, though neither of us could confide in the other about what we were grieving."
"And it's one of the oldest and most obvious ways for a spy to gather information."
Will didn't look away, though she saw the recoil in his eyes. "That wasn't why—"
"Can you be sure? Any more than you can be sure of why you began our affair?"
"Damn it, Laura—" Will put out a hand then snatched it back. "I make no claims to heroism. But that's not why I—"
"No? You knew you needed information about the Elsinore League. You knew my father-in-law was one of the leaders. You couldn't have forgot that when we met, when we spoke, when we—anything else."
He flushed unexpectedly in the colored lamplight. "I never told Carfax—"
"About our affair? No, I can believe that. But are you really saying you never sent him any information you gathered from me? I must have let things slip, even without your trying to draw them out."
Will went silent. She could see the memories flitting like ghosts through his eyes.
"My dear." Laura put out a hand and touched his wrist lightly. "It's entirely possible for a spy to fall in love in the midst of a mission."
"Did your husband tell you that?" Will drew a sharp breath. "Sorry."
"No. He might well have done. But I worked it out for myself. Did Annabel know what you were really doing?"
"No. That is—" Will dug a hand into his hair. "I didn't think so at the time. I hadn't seen her in years. Not since she and Larimer left Paris. We knew what we were to each other and what we weren't. We said our farewells and wished each other well. Dangerous to write, and I think we both knew there was no sense in drawing things out. When I heard Larimer had died I sent the sort of polite letter from a friend that would rouse no suspicions if it fell into the wrong hands, and she replied in kind, saying she quite understood my life was very different now. Which I took her to mean she had no expectations of and no wish for anything to resume between us now her husband was gone. So I was shocked last week to receive a message in her hand asking me to meet her."
"Where?"
"At the British Museum. She didn't want me to call at the house. I knew something was wrong. Annabel is a strong woman. It would take a great deal to shake her. In that, she reminds me of you. She was very direct. She asked me who else knew about her work in the Peninsula, almost without preamble. I stared at her. For a moment I honestly wasn't sure what work she meant. Annabel laughed despite her fear and said did I really think she hadn't seen through me all those years ago?" Will gave a twisted smile. "That was chastening. Though, knowing Annabel, perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. She seems the epitome of a decorous officer's wife, but she's quite remarkably matter-of-fact. In that, she also reminds me of you."
"Though hardly in being a decorous officer's wife. Or even seeming to be one. Go on."
"When I started to apologize, she said not to be silly, that without my mission we might never have met and she'd quite enjoyed our time together. There was no sense in worrying about what had brought us together now. Save that she needed to know who knew about her past as an agent."
"She asked Harry the same question."
"I told her very few people, as far as I knew. I asked why it mattered now. She wouldn't tell me. But obviously she was afraid of the past coming to light."
"Did you tell her Carfax knew?"
"Yes, though I added that presumably she already knew that, if she knew I'd been working for him."
"Did she seem afraid of him?"
Will frowned. "She said Carfax was not a man to be trifled with. She seemed aware he could be a threat. But I don't think he was the threat she was worried about."
"Even so—as I said at the start, if Carfax was behind Martinez's death and thought Annabel Larimer knew—"
"Why now? I told him four years ago that I didn't think she knew." Will glanced away for a moment, as though seeking answers in the shadows of the branches. "I'd have sworn I was free of illusions, where Carfax is concerned. But perhaps I can't bear to think that a man I worked for—a man I respected, however I came to resent his hold over me—could do that to a woman like Annabel. A British agent."
"An officer's wife."
"I suppose so. Yes."
"So you'd prefer he confined his killing to the French?"
"Damn it, Laura, you have to admit there's a difference."
"There's a difference. I'm not sure it changes the line that's being crossed. Did Annabel ever mention the Goshawk to you?"
Will's eyes widened. "You think Annabel had something to do with the Goshawk?"
"Someone does."
"No, she never mentioned the Goshawk. She talked about Martinez quite frankly. How she couldn't forgive him at the time, but now she'd always be grateful to him, because without him she'd never have had the chance to be an agent. That she understood his betrayal more, now she'd been an agent herself. She said she often puzzled over who had killed him. That she felt she should have been able to do something because she'd been there. But she couldn't arrive at the truth or even a plausible theory."
"Do you think—" Laura began.
"Laura?"
Laura turned round at the sound of her name to see her husband approaching them. One of the French agents Carfax thought had killed Martinez. Whom Will had just defined as the enemy in a way a British agent never would be to him.
Raoul hesitated a little way off, taking in the scene before him. Wondering, she thought, if she needed him or if he were intruding.
"Sweetheart." She held out her hand to him. "You remember Colonel Cuthbertston, don't you?"
"Of course." Raoul closed the distance between them and held out his hand. "It's good to see you, Cuthbertston. I didn't know you were back in Britain."
"O'Roarke." Will clasped Raoul's hand. "My felicitations. Laura is plainly very happy. Which matters a great deal to me."
"And to me." Raoul's hand settled at Laura's waist.
"Colonel Cuthbertston knew Annabel Larimer in Brussels," Laura told Raoul. "We've just been discussing her." She looked at Will.
"Of course," Will said. "I meant to share the information with all of you."
Laura told Raoul about Will's involvement with Annabel. She left their actual affair a bit unexpressed, though she knew Raoul would read between the lines.
"We keep coming back to Martinez's death and the questions round it in investigating the attack on Mrs. Larimer," Raoul said. "Carfax seems to be more involved than we realized."
Will's mouth tightened. "I told Laura I can't see Carfax's being behind the attack. I could be wrong. If there's anything I can do—Annabel was—is—a friend." He drew a rough breath.
"I understand," Raoul said.
Will met his gaze for a moment. "Thank you."