Malcolm found Glenister visiting his eldest son Quen (otherwise known as Viscount Quentin), Quen's wife Aspasia, and their baby son in their house in Half Moon Street.
"I never thought to see Father so besotted," Quen said, taking Malcolm through the house to the garden at the back. "With a mistress, let alone an infant. I can't believe he ever dandled Val or me like this." But Quen's smile was easy as he said it, far easier than two years ago when his face had worn a look of brooding despair that had no doubt stirred romantic comparisons in the minds of numerous young ladies leaving the schoolroom. Which might have been amusing, save that Malcolm had suspected the despair was all too real.
Quen opened a door to the garden. Glenister was on a blanket on the lawn with eleven-month-old Will, building a block tower. Quen's wife Aspasia sat in a chair nearby, watching with a smile, a book in her hand. She got to her feet as Quen and Malcolm came into the garden.
"Malcolm. How nice." She took his hand and lifted her face to receive his kiss on her cheek. "Will is quite delighted with Grandpapa's way with blocks, as you can see."
"I can't remember his ever playing with blocks," Quen said.
"I doubt you remember when you were less than two, my love." Aspasia moved to Quen's side and tucked her arm though his own. She had once been governess to Frances's daughter Chloe and was fifteen years older than Quen, yet they looked content and comfortable together in a way few couples did. Malcolm had thought, when he heard of their betrothal, that they were unexpectedly suited, but they appeared even happier than he had expected. Mélanie would no doubt accuse him of not having enough faith in the strength of romantic attachments. To which he'd claim that she was the romantic between them, and she'd say "nonsense."
Glenister looked up from his grandson, belatedly aware of Malcolm's arrival. "Malcolm." He started to push himself to his feet, then sat back as Will clutched at his grandfather's breeches.
"No hurry," Malcolm said. "Master Will seems to have grown an inordinate amount, though I saw him little more than a week ago."
"Fla," Will said with the air of one imparting great mysteries.
"He's been saying that about everything," Aspasia said. "It just started yesterday."
"I'll help with the tower, old chap." Quen dropped down on the blanket beside his son. "Let Grandpapa have a word with Uncle Malcolm. He'll be back soon."
Malcolm stopped to admire the block tower and accept a sticky kiss from Will in the vicinity of his knee, then he and Glenister went into the parlor that was just past the door in from the garden. Glenister, seemingly in a hurry to talk, led the way to the first room available.
"Annabel?" He shut the door, turned to Malcolm, and spoke in a quick voice. To his credit, it held a note that was distinctly parental. More parental than Malcolm recalled his being with Quen or his younger son Val.
"There's no change, but Blackwell says she's stable."
"The children?"
"They're as well as can be expected."
"Thank God." Glenister let out a gasping breath. "When I saw you come into the garden, I feared—"
"I'm sorry," Malcolm said. "I didn't mean to startle you. But I need more information."
"You have news? You must, or you wouldn't be here."
Malcolm studied Glenister. For all the disarming picture he'd presented on the blanket with Will, Malcolm still wasn't at all sure he trusted him. "This painting. The one where you hid the papers that reveal your affair with Catherine Collingwood and Annabel's parentage. Where did you acquire it?"
Glenister moved across the parlor and dropped down on a tapestry chair. Perhaps because his immediate fears had been allayed. Or perhaps as a form of prevarication. "Is that relevant?"
"Anything to do with the painting may be relevant."
"I told you, it wasn't one of my finer pieces. If you're suggesting its disappearance is simple art theft, there were a dozen finer pieces hanging in the same room, let alone round the rest of the house. It would make no sense to take this piece."
Malcolm pulled another chair across the Turkey rug so he could sit facing his godfather. "It's a Mazo. Mazo was hardly an insignificant painter, leaving aside that he was Velazquez's son-in-law. But more to the point, do you think it could have been taken from the French baggage wagons by a British soldier after Vitoria?"
Glenister shifted in his chair. "There are pieces hanging in a number of homes in Britain that were acquired at Vitoria. If British soldiers hadn't taken them, they'd be in French houses now."
"I'm not interested in debating the ethics at this point, though I'm not sure stealing stolen property makes a theft any less a theft. But if there are original owners who feel the painting is rightfully theirs, that could give another motive for taking it."
"Possibly. But while I make no pretense to say this about my entire collection, this particular painting came into my possession more than two decades ago. Long before Vitoria."
Malcolm watched Glenister. He was adept at social games, but not so much at intrigue. Malcolm was sure he was hiding something. "Whom did you purchase it from?"
"As it happens, I didn't purchase this particular piece at all."
"Where did you get the painting, sir?"
Glenister twitched his shirt cuff smooth. He'd removed his coat to play with Will and had left it outside. "As a matter of fact, Alistair gave it to me."
Malcolm wasn't quite sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. "When?"
"I told you. Over two decades ago."
"What year?"
"My dear boy, we're not all as young as you. Not an easy thing at my age to pinpoint an exact year."
"Try. Had you come into the title? How old were your children?"
"The boys were both in the nursery." Glenister's frown was quite believable, though Malcolm was sure he remembered more about the circumstances of his acquiring the painting than he was letting on.
"Where were you staying? Who was your current mistress?"
Glenister's mouth tilted in a quirk of acknowledgement. "I had just given the fair Latour her congé. So it must have been—'97. Early autumn."
"Where did Alistair acquire the painting?"
"I don't know." Glenister adjusted his other cuff.
Malcolm sat back in his chair, studying Glenister in the light from the window. "Was Alistair in the habit of making presents to you?"
Glenister drummed his fingers on the polished walnut of the chair arm. "I wouldn't say habit. We didn't exchange birthday and Christmas gifts, if that's what you mean. But we both had an interest in art. At times we'd see a piece we thought the other might like and make a present of it."
"But you said this wasn't a particularly remarkable piece."
"Not by the standards of our collections, no. I confess I was a bit surprised he chose it. I wondered if it was a piece Alistair had decided he didn't want for himself."
"Why do you think he gave you a present at that time at all?"
"Possibly because he had succeeded me in Hélène Latour's bed." Glenister frowned at a smudge on one of his highly polished Hessians. "But I fail to see why Alistair's having given me the painting is relevant, whatever his motives."
"Because it seems the painting came from the O'Roarke family. Alistair's giving you a painting that was taken from the family home of a man he intensely disliked is interesting, to say the least."
Glenister raised his brows. "He certainly never indicated it had belonged to the O'Roarkes. Perhaps that's why he gave it to me. Perhaps after Alistair acquired it, he learned it had come from the O'Roarkes and didn't like the association."
"That's one explanation. It would have been more plausible if Alistair had acquired the painting after Vitoria along with other art treasures. How it got from the O'Roarkes' hands to Alistair's in the late '90s is more complicated, let alone how it could have done so without Alistair's knowing the painting's provenance."
"It could have been stolen then and sold to Alistair."
"It could." Malcolm regarded Glenister. "Even if you got the painting in '97, it was still years after Catherine Collingwood wrote you the letters. Why did you hide them then?"
Glenister shifted in his chair again. "If you must know, a friend had had a blackmail scare. It woke me up to the prudence of concealing things."
Which still didn't quite account for Glenister's panic over these particular letters. "And why did you choose the painting Alistair gave you as a hiding place?"
"I'd recently acquired it, it seemed an innocuous piece that wouldn't arouse interest, and I wasn't particularly fond of it, so I was less worried about damage from removing the matting." Glenister frowned. "One of the Spanish O'Roarkes is in London, isn't he? Are you suggesting he might be behind the theft of the painting?"
"Raimundo. The son of the current holder of the title. It's a possibility we have to consider."
"But he wasn't at the party where the painting went missing."
"It seems less likely than the League's being behind the theft," Malcolm agreed. "But we have to explore all the options."
Glenister's frown deepened. "How well do you know Raimundo O'Roarke?"
"Not well at all."
"He's your cousin."
"And my father is estranged from his family. He's only met Raimundo a handful of times. I hadn't met him at all until yesterday."
Glenister pushed a hand through his hair as though in an effort of memory. "Yesterday, didn't you say Raimundo O'Roarke had called on Annabel just after she was attacked?"
"Yes. He knew her in the Peninsula, so there's a good explanation." Malcolm did not see a reason to tell Glenister about Raimundo and Annabel's affair and Raimundo's having been an agent. Not yet. "But it's an odd coincidence, his calling on your daughter and the painting's belonging to his family, the painting in which the secrets of your daughter's birth are hidden."
"You think he took the painting and found the papers and that's why he called on Annabel?"
"Could he have made a connection to Annabel from the papers?"
Glenister's eyes narrowed. "He might have been able to work out the Cathy in the letters was Catherine Collingwood."
"But according to Violet Durbridge, very few people knew Annabel wasn't their parents' daughter by birth. And Raimundo O'Roarke may not even have known Annabel's maiden name. It seems unlikely, though not entirely beyond the realm of possibility."
"That's hardly reassuring."
"My dear sir. Nothing is reassuring about any of this." Malcolm shifted in his chair. "Raimundo says the painting disappeared some two decades ago. And that his father refused to discuss why or what had happened to it."
"That fits with when I got it from Alistair."
"And implies Alistair got it fairly soon after it disappeared. It doesn't account for how it got from the O'Roarkes to Alistair, or why Alistair gave it to you."
"I fail to see any connection to the attack on Annabel. Or to the painting's disappearing."
"Since we don't know why Annabel was attacked, and we can't even be conclusively sure why the painting disappeared, it's difficult to see what is connected to what."
"It's your job, surely, to work that out. You're very good at it, from everything I hear."
"I don't know about that. I do know it's a job I can't do if people withhold information."
"I haven't withheld anything, Malcolm."
"So you say, sir."
"I have more wit than to ask for your help and then try to keep secrets from you. My God, aren't the secrets I've already shared with you enough?"
"In this tangle, sir? I suspect they're only the beginning."
"Mélanie." Lord Palmerston came round the side of his desk in the war office in Horse Guards. "Three times in as many days." He took her hands and bent to kiss her cheek. "But why do I think you haven't ventured to Whitehall simply for the pleasure of my company?"
Mélanie laughed. "You'd be reason enough, Harry, but in truth I need your help in our investigation."
"Why am I not surprised?" Palmerston moved a stack of files off a shield-backed chair and drew it forwards for her. The room was crowded with papers—sheaves of foolscap, ledgers, folders, loose sheets. For all his pose of man-about-town, Palmerston took his work very seriously, Mélanie knew. Emily bemoaned the long hours he put in with both frustration and affectionate admiration.
Mélanie sank into the chair and pulled off her gloves. "Last night at Vauxhall you didn't mention that you'd seen Annabel Larimer only last week."
"Didn't I?" Palmerston pushed aside some files and perched on the edge of his desk facing her. "It didn't seem relevant. And truth to tell, I didn't want to give Emily any ideas."
Mélanie looked directly into Palmerston's keen blue gaze. "Should she have ideas?"
"My dear Mélanie, you wound me." Palmerston laughed. Then his face went serious. "All other things aside, if there'd been anything of the sort between Annabel Larimer and me, don't you think I'd have been even more upset than I was to hear such terrible news about an acquaintance?"
It was a good point. Harry Palmerston was a lot of things, but he wasn't heartless. Still—Mélanie folded her gloves in her lap. "Why did Annabel Larimer come to see you last week?"
Palmerston gave a wry smile and cast a glance round the office. "It's amazing what a complicated thing it is to get the correct payments into the correct hands. Until I agreed to take over the war office I had no notion what a tangle it was. I took it over chancellor of the exchequer, which I was afraid would be over my head. Not at all sure I wasn't over my head anyway."
The different arms of British military administration were a tangle Mélanie was still sorting out after after almost seven years married to a British diplomat and MP. In broad terms, she knew the war office was responsible for military finances and also for answering for the army to the public and in Parliament. "I can't imagine your being in over your head, Harry," she said.
"You'd be surprised." Palmerston gave a wry smile. "Mrs. Larimer's widow's pension had been delayed, and then the amount wasn't correct when we finally started paying it. I sat in this office with her, went over the ledgers, and assured her we'd get the matter sorted out. I wrote her a draft on my own bank in the meantime. She refused. I insisted. She walked out that door after reluctantly tucking the bank draft in her reticule."
"Are you in the habit of giving bank drafts to widows in want of assistance?"
"I wouldn't say habit. In this case, I felt our own errors had contributed to the problem. She has three children. And a lot of courage."
"You know her considerably better than you implied last night."
Palmerston swung his leg against the side of the desk. "I told you, I didn't want to put unnecessary thoughts into Emily's head." He gave a rueful smile. "Wishful thinking, perhaps. Emily's not the jealous sort. But given her condition you must understand that I particularly don't wish to see her distressed."
"Of course." Emily had suffered a miscarriage the previous year, of a baby boy. Mélanie was quite sure Palmerston had been the father of that child as well, but for all their friendship she couldn't openly say so. "Did Mrs. Larimer say anything else that could be important?" she asked after a moment, her voice gentle.
Palmerston's brow furrowed. "Just before she went out the door. She turned back and asked for my assurances that if anything happened to her, the pension would continue for her children. I assured her of course it would. It never occurred to me—"
"No," Mélanie said, "it wouldn't have done. But she seems to have been concerned the past couple of weeks about what might happen to her children if she were gone."
"I wish to hell I'd known—it doesn't seem I gave her at all the assistance she really needed."
"She gave you no clue anything else was wrong?"
"I've been going over every moment of our interview, but no—none. Do you have any idea who the devil did this to her?"
"Some theories. Nothing definite yet. But she's well protected."
He watched her for a moment, then nodded. "I won't ask for details, but you'll let me know if I can do more?"
"Of course." Mélanie began to draw on her gloves. "I should go. I've left Laura and Cordy and the children in St. James's Park."
Palmerston walked her out through a warren of offices filled with busy clerks, the air thick with the sound of scratching pens and the smells of fresh ink and musty paper. "Don't let that bit about being in over my head get about," he said with an assumption of his former raillery, though his gaze remained serious.
"I wouldn't dream of it," Mélanie assured him.
Palmerston nodded and lifted her hand to his lips.
Mélanie tightened the ribbons on her hat and went out into the bustle of St. James's. Palmerston's concern for Annabel seemed genuine. He was her husband's friend. Her friend Emily's lover. Her own friend.
But she was quite sure there was something about Annabel he wasn't telling her.
The family were not at home when Kitty called in Berkeley Square. "And I expect that truly means they're out investigating, rather than merely not receiving visitors." Kitty smiled at the footman. "No, I know you aren't supposed to say where they are."
Interesting that Laura O'Roarke was apparently involved in the investigation as well. She was pretty, in a quiet, contained way that had none of Mélanie Rannoch's obvious glamour. But there was a glint in her eyes that hinted at a sharp mind, and she must have formidable powers—possibly including sorcery—to have turned Raoul O'Roarke into the relatively domestic man he appeared to be.
The footmen returned Kitty's gaze directly, with a faint smile of his own. He had a keen gaze and spoke with a faint trace of an accent. French or perhaps Belgian. "I have no objection to saying so, Mrs. Ashford. The Rannochs don't stand on ceremony, especially in the midst of an investigation. They are out and I believe it concerns the unfortunate attack on Mrs. Larimer. The children are with them as well. That is, with Mrs. Rannoch and Mrs. O'Roarke and Lady Cordelia. I can't say when they'll return or who will return first, but you're welcome to come in and wait for them, if you like."
"Thank you. That makes this much easier." Kitty moved past him into the hall and began to draw off her gloves.
The footman led her down the black-and-white marble checkerboard floor and up the staircase to a room he called the small salon. "I'll have tea sent in, madam. Or would you prefer coffee?"
"Tea, thank you. I've moved in British circles long enough to appreciate it."
Kitty glanced round the room when the footman withdrew. Airy sea-green walls and white-painted moldings. Delicate furniture but nothing gilded or overly ornate. Some of the pieces were from the last century and much of the artwork on the walls even older, but the room had plainly been redone in the past five years. Mélanie Rannoch's creation. Not surprisingly, it was exquisite. And surprisingly comfortable. There was even a basket of children's toys under one of the pier tables. Nothing to find fault with, even had she wanted to do so. Which of course she didn't. She was much too much a mature adult and much too much at peace with her situation to have any such impulse.
Kitty set her gloves down on a satinwood table beside her reticule. The painting over the mantel caught her eye. Mélanie Rannoch sitting on a bench in what might be the Berkeley Square garden, her little girl, then a baby, in her lap, young Colin leaning against her knees. Her straw hat was on the bench beside her, strands of hair escaped about her face. She was laughing with the children in a moment of unaffected joy. Surprisingly natural for a portrait, even by the standards of the day.
Kitty knew somehow that it had been Malcolm's idea to have the portrait taken. He'd wanted this likeness of his family, here, where he could see it at any moment. A perfect moment in time captured. A moment of a happiness he'd once thought never to find.
She glanced away, seeing not Mélanie and the children, but Malcolm as she'd first glimpsed him across Emily Cowper's ballroom. How often in the past eight years had she wondered if she'd feel the same tug? One glance had been enough to tell her he had changed. God knows she had done. She'd had no illusions it would ever be the same. But the tug of recognition was still there, the same one she'd felt in Sir Charles Stuart's library all those years ago.
He hadn't been her first love. He certainly hadn't been her first lover. But it had been different, in some way she still could not define, from what came before and after.
She looked back at the painting. Art could deceive, but she'd seen enough of Malcolm and Mélanie and their children to know the happiness wasn't an illusion. She wanted him to be happy. She'd thought that so often in the past years. In the privacy of her own thoughts, with no need to be generous, no need to pretend. But she could not deny now the pang she'd felt seeing him with his arm linked through that of his wife, seeing him turn his gaze to her with a love that was quite plain to anyone who knew him. To watch their gazes meet in the midst of the investigation, the way her own and Malcolm's had once done on a mission.
Folly to recast the past. To question choices that had never really been open to choice at all. She'd known from the start that it was a brief moment's madness. Giving way to impulse as she had in the past, seeking solace in the moment, which was the only way really to survive in a crazy world. She'd told herself that he also knew it couldn't be more than a brief interlude. But a part of her had known he took it more seriously, that whatever their circumstances he couldn't see a relationship as transitory. She was more experienced in these matters. As tried as he'd been in so many ways, he'd been untried in others.
She glanced round the room again. This house would never have been hers. They couldn't have lived in England. But they might have shared a home. It had been more tempting than she could possibly admit, even to herself, to run off with him. But even then she'd known that was no answer. One couldn't live on love. He'd have missed the life he'd left behind, the people he'd cut himself off from, however permanently estranged he might have thought he was. And even if he hadn't, if she were honest she would have missed a life of action. She wasn't made for sitting on the sidelines, however gilded the setting.
She tucked a strand of hair into its pins and looked at the basket of toys. Her life wasn't unhappy. She shouldn't envy Mélanie Rannoch. Shouldn't wonder how she had somehow found happiness in the role of a political and diplomatic wife. Mélanie was an agent, but she'd been very young when she'd married Malcolm. Perhaps spying had never been as central to her as it had been to Kitty. As it had become long before Kitty met Malcolm. Folly to compare the seeming tranquility of Malcolm's marriage with what she herself might have known with him. Whatever they could have shared, she was quite sure it would not have been tranquil. She felt herself smile. That had always been part of the allure.
She looked back at the painting. Colin looked to be about four in it. She could do sums. Mélanie had been three months with child when she and Malcolm married. Which meant their son probably wasn't Malcolm's. At least, Kitty wouldn't have though so. Wouldn't have thought Malcolm would take such a risk again, after what he and Kitty had been through, especially with an unmarried girl. But perhaps their own experience simply proved that passion could overwhelm sense, even in someone as controlled as Malcolm. God knows, however controlled he was, the passion was there. She'd seen it in his eyes when he looked at his wife. Seen it, and acknowledged a pang she knew she had no right to feel.
Colin looked like Malcolm. The pale skin, the shock of dark hair, the sharp-boned features. Looks could be deceiving, of course. She'd counted that a blessing more than once. Had relied on it to make her own life work. And he would model himself on Malcolm, whom he plainly adored. Still—
The door opened. She look round, expecting the footman with the tea, and instead found herself looking at her former lover.
"I was going to call on you." Malcolm pushed the door to and leaned against it. His gaze settled on her face like a sword point. "Easier this way."