"You'd think at this point I'd be used to people we know being capable of all sorts of things." Cordelia sat hunched on the sofa in the Berkeley Square library, hands curled round a cup of coffee, as though she needed warmth inside. "But somehow it's always still a shock. Not that I can claim to know Edgar well."
"I've known him since he was a baby," Frances said. "And it's a shock. Mostly because Alistair never seemed to take an interest in him. But I can see Alistair playing on Edgar's loyalties. And I'm not shocked that Edgar was jealous of Malcolm." Her sapphire ring flashed as her fingers locked together. Archie put a hand on her arm.
Mélanie pushed her hair back from her shoulders. She'd removed her wig with more frustration than finesse and her hair was tumbling loose from its pins. She said nothing, because there was nothing she could say. Yesterday's revelations about Edgar and Kitty in a way made this news less of a shock to her, and presumably to Raoul, and most definitely to Malcolm. But that still wasn't something she felt she could share.
"There's little more we can learn tonight," Frances said. "But I can't help—"
She broke off as the door opened and Valentin came into the room. "Forgive me, but you have a caller. One I think you'll want to see." He stepped aside to usher in Gregory, Annabel Larimer's manservant.
Gregory's face was flushed, as though he'd been running, and his eyes glowed with excitement. "Mrs. Larimer is awake. Talking quite like herself. Dr. Blackwell's there—he's smiling like I never thought to see. Mrs. Durbridge said to come to you right away. And Mrs. Larimer's asking for Mr. O'Roarke. Not you, sir." He looked at Raoul. "Mr. Raimundo O'Roarke. We weren't sure where to find him."
"I'll get him." Raoul pushed himself to his feet and looked from Mélanie to Harry.
"We'll go to Annabel's." Mélanie reached for her cloak. "As quickly as possible."
A smile broke across Annabel Larimer's face as Mélanie and Harry came into the bedchamber. She was sitting up in bed, her children clustered round her. Her brown hair still spilled loose over her shoulders and she still wore a nightdress, but her face was lit with an animation that quite transformed her features. "Harry. It's good to see you." She held out a hand.
"I can't tell you how much the feeling is mutual." Harry took her hand and lifted it to his lips.
"Mrs. Rannoch." Annabel smiled at Mélanie. "I think you've learned a great deal about me since we last met when I was conscious."
"All of which makes me all the happier to be able to speak with you again." Mélanie smiled at Annabel and then at Catherine, Benjamin, and Timothy.
Annabel gathered her children in for a hug. "Run along with Aunt Violet for a bit, darlings. I need to talk to Colonel Davenport and Mrs. Rannoch."
"I'll give you some privacy as well." Geoffrey moved to follow Violet and the children from the room. He turned back and regarded Annabel for a moment. "I won't tell you not to overtax yourself, because I know there are things you must do. But try to conserve your energy for what's most important."
Annabel looked from Harry to Mélanie as the door closed behind Geoffrey. "I know you must have a lot of questions. But there's someone I need to talk to first—"
"It's all right, Annabel." Raimundo O'Roarke stepped into the room, Raoul behind him. "They already know about me. That I was a French agent." He stared at Annabel, face pale, eyes lit with relief. "What surprises me is that you do, as well."
Annabel Larimer's gaze locked on Raimundo's across the room, putting an end to any speculation about how she felt about him. "I didn't know until I found Diego's letter. My darling, why on earth do you think I was doing every thing I did in the past days before I was attacked?"
Malcolm surveyed Glenister down the green baize-covered length of his billiard table. He had found Glenister, like Carfax, at home, and perhaps more surprisingly for Glenister than for Carfax, alone. "We found the papers."
Glenister let out a gasp of relief. "Thank God." He hesitated a moment, clutching a billiard cue in both hands. "All of them?"
"Yes." Malcolm held his godfather with his gaze. "Did you think we wouldn't examine them?"
Glenister went a shade paler in the flickering candlelight, but he didn't shrink from Malcolm's gaze. "Surely that wasn't necessary once you found them."
"Given the questions round Annabel and the League? We'd have been derelict in our duty if we hadn't looked at them. All of them."
Glenister's gaze hardened, but he said nothing.
"There's a great deal you didn't tell me," Malcolm said.
Glenister tore his gaze away from Malcolm's own, as though what he might reveal was too private to be shared. "Surely you can see why."
"I think so. It's an awkward story for you. In a number of ways."
"My God." Glenister tossed his cue down on the billiard table and spun away, hand closed hard on the edge of the table. "Do you know it was a wager?"
"A wager over your wife?" Malcolm had few illusions about either Alistair or Glenister, but that shook even him.
"No. Not over Mary. It began—we were sitting over port at White's one night. Alistair and I and Beverston and a handful of others. Someone commented on a lovely lady who was a new bride. I said that while married ladies who had given their husbands an heir were fair game, no gentleman would seduce a bride who hadn't given her husband at least one son. Ideally two."
"Did you think about how Alistair would have taken that?"
Glenister's brows drew together. "I didn't—No. I wasn't thinking of Alistair at all. Not consciously. Not even unconsciously, I don't think. In any case, I don't think Alistair would have seen O'Roarke as a gentleman."
"No, I don't suppose he would have done. But while I'm the last to make excuses for Alistair, I suspect that any reminder about his own situation nicked a raw wound."
"Perhaps. If I'd been thinking—" Glenister shook his head. "I wasn't thinking at all, I was stating something I took as common knowledge. Alistair at once accused me of being practically a Puritan and quite lacking in creative thinking." Glenister's hands curled into fists. "He wagered me his new curricle team against a bronze of mine he'd always coveted. That he could seduce a married lady who had not yet given her husband an heir. Someone of our acquaintance he stipulated. It never occurred to me—"
Glenister looked away, then met Malcolm's gaze. Malcolm said nothing. "Yes, I know," Glenister said. "I was wagering about someone else's wife."
"You were wagering about a woman who was probably young and with few defenses in the world."
"Damn it, I assumed—We all know how the game is played. Our wives, as well."
"Had you discussed that with your wife?"
"No, of course not. It would never have occurred to me to do so."
"Precisely."
Glenister grimaced. "In any case, I went to the Continent for four months. I returned to town to find Mary looking a bit unwell. She said it was nothing, just a slight indisposition. That night at White's, Alistair told me I'd lost the wager. When I asked for proof, he suggested I ask my wife."
Malcolm was not in a mood to feel any sympathy for either Alistair or Glenister but he could not but feel a stab of empathy. "That must have been—"
"Mary was never good at lying. She confessed the whole when I confronted her. And she confessed that she was with child. She could have tried to wait, to muddy the waters, but—" Glenister shook his head. "Best, perhaps, that I knew the truth. Wondering would have been endless torment."
He picked up a glass of whisky from the edge of the billiard table. "There wasn't any way out of it. No evidence for a divorce, even if I'd wanted to go through the scandal and embarrassment. It wasn't Mary's fault, in any case. That is—I wish she'd been able to hold out against Alistair's laying siege to her, but I understood the situation I'd put her in. It would have been hard to put her through a divorce after that."
"Odd," Malcolm said, "when notions of fairness suddenly occur to us."
"I couldn't tell anyone," Glenister said. "Couldn't risk the truth getting out. I saw that at once, for all my impulse to ask Alistair to name his seconds. I won't deny it was difficult, accepting people's congratulations, hearing how like me my son was. And yet—I know you're thinking that's why I favored Val, but the truth was, as the boys grew I thought about it less and less. Or perhaps it seemed less and less important. They were both my sons, for better—or, often, for worse."
He took a turn about the room. "Mary and I never discussed it. Not after the first confrontation. Ours was hardly a love match. We got on well enough. It would be folly to say it wasn't between us, but then there wasn't a great deal between us for it to interfere with. We went our separate ways more and more after Val was born. Neither of us had ever expected anything different, even before the whole sorry business."
"Do Quen and Val know?"
"Of course not. They're fond of each other, for all their differences. I wouldn't put that between them. Quen's my son. I can't claim to have been comfortable with that from the beginning—I'm not the man you are, Malcolm—but it's true now. And Will is unquestioningly my grandson. Damn it, whatever the League do to me, I'm not going to see them hurt. Does that surprise you?"
"No. What surprises me the most in all of this is you went on being friends with Alistair."
Glenister gave a sharp laugh that bounced off the fretted ceiling. "You assume we were friends."
"You were acting all those years? That's on the level of being deeply undercover, sir."
"I don't know that I'd call it acting. I do know that at times I hated him. Wanted to challenge him to the duel we'd never fought, or, better yet, thrash him or smash all his precious treasures. I did smash a fourteenth-century casket of his once, as I recall. Years later, but I know why I did it. But the world had to go on seeing us as friends, you must see that. Bad as what had happened was, it would have been worse if the truth had got out. Besides"—Glenister frowned as though a thought was only just occurring to him—"Alistair would only really have won if I'd let him see how much I cared."
"So being magnanimous was the only way to get any of your own back?"
"I suppose so. Yes. And then—we'd been friends for a long time, Alistair and I. We'd shared a great deal. We went back to doing the things we'd always done. The racing parties. The shooting parties. The nights at Vauxhall or the latest gaming hell. For days, weeks even, at a time I'd forget what Alistair had done. Forget that we really weren't friends anymore. That must sound mad."
"No. It sounds precisely the way I've heard agents talk about being under deep cover. The only way to survive is to lose oneself in the role."
"We were boys when we met," Glenister said. "There are ways Alistair knew me as no one else did. After this, it was never the same, of course. But there were still times—I suppose he didn't precisely stop being my friend."
"I can understand that," Malcolm said.
"Can you?"
"Relationships can survive a great deal."
Glenister spread his fingers on the green baize. "Alistair didn't taunt me with it, I'll give him that. There was the occasional dig, but mostly he let it go. That was part of what shocked me so much. That it didn't matter more to him."
"It was very hard to tell what mattered to Alistair. I wonder perhaps if he wanted to bring you to his level."
"Knowing my heir wasn't a child of my blood? Possibly."
"I imagine he was always jealous. He was the outsider, after all. You were a marquis. He was a charity student until a lucky inheritance." Which, according to Malcolm's grandfather, had come from mysterious sources.
Glenister frowned. "Alistair was always cleverer than I."
"But you had the fortune and position. Alistair recommended art treasures for you to buy in those early years."
"Alistair always had more love of art than I did."
"But you were the one with the resources to buy the things he picked out."
"So he resented me from the start? And was just biding his time until he could attack me?"
"I doubt it was that simple. I doubt anything with Alistair was that simple."
Glenister took a drink of whisky. "I couldn't bear the thought of the papers falling into the League's hands. Not for my own consequence anymore. But because of what it might do to Quen and Will. And Val."
"Who else knew the truth in the League? Besides Alistair."
Glenister frowned. "No one but Alistair was there when I confronted him. I never confided in anyone. I never discussed the truth with anyone save Alistair and Mary and you now. But Beverston could have guessed. So could the others who were there when we made the wager."
"Someone knew you had the papers hidden in the painting. Had you told anyone?"
"No. When Quen was born, it seemed important for some reason to have a record of the truth. I got Mary to sign something. God knows why. Now it seems an act of foolery. But it seemed right somehow to hide that paper with Cathy's love letters. Evidence of a child who wasn't mine by blood and one who secretly was."
"No one's made any demands on you using the papers as leverage?"
Glenister shook his head. "Whatever they were going to ask of me, they must have been biding their time."
Malcolm watched Glenister for a moment. "Speaking of the League and of sons, sir, did Alistair talk to you before he recruited Edgar?"
Glenister blanched, putting an end to any possibility that he hadn't known about Edgar. "How long have you known?"
"I found out tonight. The biggest surprise, I think, was that I never thought Alistair had so much respect for Edgar."
Glenister tossed down a drink of whisky, then crossed to a table with decanters, poured a second glass, and put it in Malcolm's hand. "Nor did I. But as you say, Alistair could be hard to read. And he found Edgar useful."
"It started about the time Arabella died, didn't it?"
"You've learned a lot."
"I'm reasonably good at reading the past."
"I think Arabella's death may have made Alistair reexamine his family ties. And Edgar went into the army. That put him in a position to be of use."
Malcolm took a drink of whisky. He needed it more than he cared to admit. "I assume the Goshawk was Alistair's idea."
"Not in the beginning. Edgar was sent on a mission. He really did send supplies to a village. It was only after Carfax recruited Edgar that Alistair saw how useful his role could be. I still remember his telling me about it."
"Useful how? Alistair didn't have that many interests in Spain that I know of. Was it all just so he could siphon off money? Surely by that time Alistair didn't need it."
"Alistair never coveted money so much as what money could give him. Position. Power. And art."
Malcolm froze, the glass halfway to his mouth. "Alistair was using the Goshawk's funds to buy art in Spain?"
"It was a good place for it. Bonapartists had been gathering up art treasures all over the Continent. A number in Joseph's court brought pieces with them into Spain. They acquired more after they got there. As the situation began to unravel, some weren't averse to selling. Or they had Spanish servants who were happy to liberate items. Spanish nobles were keen to keep their own treasures out of French hands and get cash in the bargain. And in the general chaos it was easy for things to go missing. Spain was always a good exit point for shipping art off the Continent, in any case. One could get in and out when France was closed. Alistair'd been buying from people in Spain for years."
Malcolm set down his glass. "Patrico O'Roarke had been facilitating art sales for Alistair."
Glenister took a drink of whisky. "Yes. For over a decade. I think they first met because Alistair went to Patrico seeking information to use against Raoul. Patrico O'Roarke needed funds. He sold Alistair the painting I eventually used to hide the papers. But rather than sell off more of his own collection, he preferred to facilitate sales by others. Then the art trade got more active during the war."
"Edgar was funneling funds the Goshawk was meant to distribute to Patrico, Patrico was using them to buy art, and Edgar was seeing the art shipped back to Britain."
"That's more or less it."
"Do you know about a man named Diego Martinez?"
"Who?" The question sounded genuine.
"He was tasked with killing Edgar because the British had got wind of what Edgar was doing. But he was killed himself first. He was also your daughter Annabel's lover."
"What?"
"So the answer may be connected to what happened to her."
"When was this?"
"March of '13."
Glenister frowned. "I think—yes, it would have been then. Alistair said there had been a threat. To the Goshawk operation. That we are going to have to pull back, but for now the threat had been dealt with."
"Did he say who had dealt with it?"
"Not specifically. But he said his son was more enterprising than he'd credited."