Banquet of Lies Read online

  “Come straight back if you don’t mind, Aldridge,” Durnham said, and Jonathan noticed Frobisher tensed at that. He didn’t want this interview, and he certainly didn’t want it in front of an audience.

  Jonathan held out his arm to Lady Durnham, and she slipped hers through it. She was elegant and as sharp as a blade. As they walked from the room, Jonathan suddenly didn’t doubt she had unusual contacts who could watch houses and not be seen. He wouldn’t have liked to get on the wrong side of her.

  As they stepped into the hall, she gave him a sudden grin that seemed more like that of a guttersnipe than a lady of the ton. “That Frobisher is too far north for me. What about you?” She pitched her voice low.

  Jonathan’s jaw dropped. Then he snapped it closed. “He’s a file, all right.”

  Her eyes lit with laughter, although the rest of her face remained as serene and calm as ever. “You know your slang, my lord.”

  “I was in the army.” He lifted his shoulders. “Rubbed shoulders with my men long enough to pick some up.”

  “I meant to ask you to dinner some time ago, but the months have run away with me, and, well, we’ve only been married for four months.” She slowed as they came to the door. “Would you like to join us one evening?”

  “I would love to come to dinner.” Jonathan had the sense of receiving a rare invitation, and of being offered a camaraderie that was very selectively extended.

  “Would Friday suit?” Already dressed for outdoors, she took a cloak down from a rack.

  “Friday does suit.” He looked back at the library. “Why did you take against Frobisher so quickly?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “First impressions are usually the right ones. He doesn’t like women, and he definitely doesn’t like having one around when business is discussed.”

  Her gaze followed his to the library. “Never trust a women-hater, Lord Aldridge. There is something wrong with a person who hates half the human race.” She paused. “That, and he looked over the library with a thief’s eyes. I’ve known enough thieves to recognize one when I see one.”

  The butler appeared and opened the door, and Jonathan gave a bow as she swept out to a coach waiting for her, too surprised to respond.

  “Charlotte get off all right?” Durnham asked as Jonathan walked back into the library. He and Frobisher were still standing near his desk.

  “Yes.” He came toward them and wondered why Durnham hadn’t invited Frobisher to sit.

  His rudeness to Lady Durnham might have had something to do with it.

  “Frobisher was just telling me how things stand in Stockholm.” At last Durnham motioned to the seats. Frobisher chose a hard wooden chair and sat on the very edge of it.

  “Were you there when Sir Barrington’s body was discovered?” Jonathan asked.

  Frobisher stiffened. “Yes.”

  Jonathan saw Durnham frown, but kept his own face blank. “Terrible business,” he said conversationally.

  “Terrible.” Frobisher answered, quite without emotion, but there was something Jonathan sensed—some sharp edge that played in the set of his mouth. “Always bad when a British national is killed on foreign soil.”

  Jonathan had the feeling he was talking about the red tape and paperwork, rather than the tragic loss of life.

  Frobisher raised his head when both Jonathan and Durnham kept silent. “Your report, sir. I rather expected Lord Dervish to be the one to request it.” He put a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a piece of folded paper.

  Durnham took it, his eyebrows rising. “Not much to it, Frobisher.”

  “I told Lord Dervish there was barely anything to go on. That’s all I have. Will Lord Dervish require a copy, as well?”

  “Lord Dervish is on his way to Stockholm,” Durnham said shortly. He unfolded the paper and read the contents. “Based on the rumor you told him you’d heard.”

  Frobisher’s face went white. “Lord Dervish has gone to Sweden based on this, sir?”

  It was the first genuine emotion Jonathan had seen in him since he curled his lip at the sight of Lady Durnham.

  “Yes.” Durnham smiled at him. “But don’t worry, he knew there wasn’t much hard evidence. I don’t think I realized how very little there was, though.” He tapped the paper against his thigh. “Tell me about this, Frobisher. This informant who told you he’d seen Miss Barrington in one of the smaller towns north of Stockholm—did he say how she was traveling?”

  “By coach, he said. He saw her when the coachman stopped to feed and water the horses at an inn.”

  “How did he know it was her?”

  “That’s why I told Lord Dervish it was unconfirmed, sir. The informant didn’t know it was her. We were asking if anyone had seen a young Englishwoman, and he said he thought the woman he saw spoke English, and that she was heading north. Because Barrington and his daughter had recently come from Lapland, it’s possible it was her.”

  “Yes.” Durnham leaned back. “It’s possible. You trust this informant?”

  Frobisher shrugged. “As much as I trust any of them.”

  There was nothing to say to that. They’d all used informants before, and Jonathan knew how untrustworthy they could be.

  “Very well, thank you, Frobisher.” Durnham stood, and Frobisher stumbled to his feet.

  “May I ask, sir, why you wanted the report now, with Lord Dervish already gone?” He still looked shocked to his core at the consequences of his information.

  “I asked for it the day before yesterday, before Dervish left. If you only received my request today, it’s because the message was delayed, or you weren’t in to get it.”

  Frobisher’s eyes narrowed at that, and Jonathan wondered which poor clerk was going to suffer for it. There was a mercilessness to Frobisher. A look he’d seen countless times in the give-and-take of violence on the battlefield.

  Frobisher took his leave curtly, with none of the fawning some junior Foreign Office diplomats might indulge in with Durnham. Jonathan should have liked him better for it, but he couldn’t.

  “What did you think?” Durnham leaned against his desk, only speaking when the front door closed.

  “Cold.” Jonathan looked out the window and saw Frobisher turn left, hunching against the rain, his face turned away.

  “What did Charlotte have to say about him?”

  “That he’s too far north for her.”

  Durnham blinked. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Jonathan laughed. “It means he’s too wily by far. Completely untrustworthy. As in, akin to dealing with a Scot from the far north of Britain.”

  “How do you know that?” Durnham asked. “I bet it impressed her that you did.”

  “I was invited to dinner.” Jonathan gave him a smug smile. “What do you make of him?”

  “This is only the second time I’ve met him. He has a smarmy attitude but he’s efficient. I don’t have to like him to work with him, and he doesn’t report to me.” Durnham spoke evenly, reasonably; straightened and thrust his hands deep in his pockets.

  Then: “I wanted to smash his face in. That sneer when he looked at Charlotte . . . like he wanted to fuck her and hit her at the same time.” He drew a breath. “Some men are just pigs, Aldridge.”

  “Any chance he was the one who killed Barrington?”

  Durnham sighed and shrugged. “He was at Tessin Palace that night and certainly had the opportunity—but so did about two hundred others. There is no evidence to suggest an English traitor. It’s far more likely to have been a French sympathizer amongst the Russian camp, or a French operative making sure an Anglo-Russian alliance doesn’t come off. Or even a Swede, for that matter, doing it to keep Sweden out of the alliance, or for nothing more than the gold the French would be willing to pay him.”

  Jonathan nodded. Everything Durnham said was true. “So why didn’t Miss Barrington go to Sir Thornton?”

  “Perhaps she was too afraid to return to the ball. Good God, if she witnessed her
father’s murder, she may have been out of her mind with shock and grief. And despite what Charlotte said earlier about her, the most likely reason we can’t find her is that she’s dead. Whoever killed her father chased after her and killed her somewhere in Stockholm and dumped her body, or threw it in the river.”

  He hoped that wasn’t true. “And Frobisher’s informant?”

  “A dud. Or someone overeager to be helpful. Or even someone trying to muddy the waters, create a false trail.”

  “Whatever the reason, Frobisher was certainly not expecting Dervish to hare off on that trail.” He thought again of how white Frobisher had gone. The reaction seemed extreme.

  “May be worried a finger will point back at him, if Dervish finds nothing. Waste of money and time and all that.” Durnham looked at the report in his hand. “Might be why he was so damn surly about handing the report over to begin with, come to think of it. Never leave a paper trail to your mistakes, if you want to get ahead in the Foreign Office.”

  Jonathan grimaced. That sounded all too likely. He was glad of one thing in taking Gerald’s title—that he was no longer in the ugly, duplicitous game of climbing the army’s promotional ladder. “Is there anything else I can do in the Barrington matter for you?”

  Durnham shook his head. “I’ll speak to Barrington’s lawyer, and if there is anything you can do arising from that, I’ll let you know.”

  Jonathan said his farewells and left, lifting his collar against the cold needles of rain as he waved down a cab outside Durnham’s house. He’d go home and wait for the afternoon calling hour. And then he was off to see a duke about a cook.

  20

  She wanted to trust Lord Aldridge, wanted to go to him and confess everything.

  It was the exhaustion talking, she knew.

  The idea of handing this mess over to someone else was as appealing as a glazed strawberry tart. Tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them back, angry with herself.

  She was alone in the house. It was most of the staff’s half day, and Lord Aldridge had gone out early and wasn’t expected back until this evening.

  She had dinner already prepared, lamb marinating in mint, garlic and lemon, and the crème brûlée baking gently in its bain-marie. There was nothing for her to do for the next half hour, and she went back into her room to pull on her grass-stained coat and sneak over to Goldfern to see if Dervish had come to drop off his note and take hers.

  She shouldn’t do it. If Dervish had come and gone and been followed by the thug from last night, the drop-off might well be watched. But she couldn’t let it go. She needed to know if Dervish had responded and taken her note.

  If he hadn’t, she had to face the fact that he might not be D., and might have no intention of responding to her.

  She slipped out the kitchen door. When she reached the alley she heard a shout from the direction of Goldfern, and then another, and then clanging and bashing, as if someone was rolling a metal bin over the cobbles.

  She peered around the corner, and though it was difficult to see with the way the alley twisted and turned, she caught sight of a rag-and-bone man in a small cart, having a loud argument with someone standing on a ladder. They were outside the house just before Goldfern.

  A maid came out of another back door and joined in the fray, and Gigi rested her head against the wall and closed her eyes.

  There was no way she could go now.

  She turned back and gave a shiver of relief when she stepped back into the warm, familiar kitchen.

  She would miss this job—this place—when it was over.

  She hung up her coat and then stood in her sitting room, wondering what to do. She couldn’t sleep, although she desperately wanted to. She had to pull the crème brûlée out of the oven in a bit.

  But . . . since the house was empty, she had a chance to see if Dervish had responded to Aldridge’s note. Harry had been sent round early with it, and Edgars had received several notes this morning after Aldridge had left.

  She might also learn what kind of man Aldridge was, from a quick look through his papers. Whether, as a last resort, she could trust him to take the letter to the right person and keep quiet about her identity.

  She rubbed her forehead.

  No.

  No man in his position would allow her to continue on her current course, looking for a way to bring down the shadow man. He’d insist on putting her somewhere safe, and sooner or later, the shadow man would hear of it and he would come for her.

  Gigi rejected that.

  She would be coming for him.

  But it would be good to get the letter off her hands. If Dervish’s note was above and the handwriting proved he was D., she would hand it over to him immediately.

  Before she could overthink it, she pulled off her boots and put on some soft slippers, then made her way up the stairs.

  Even though she was alone, the creak of the house in the wind, the groan of the floorboards under her feet, set her on edge.

  She didn’t like this. Not at all.

  The silver tray for correspondence wasn’t in the hall, so Gigi tried the library first. The desk was clean of anything, gleaming from a recent polish by Babs.

  She didn’t know where his study was, but hoped it was on the ground floor. Climbing the stairs seemed too much an invasion, although she knew her reasoning was totally illogical.

  She went back into the hall, and tried the door next to the library.

  His lordship’s study.

  She admired it for a moment. She would have loved a place like this for herself.

  There was a massive desk, neatly ordered with piles of papers and books, a stand with pens and ink, and a wall with shelves of books. It looked out on the back garden, probably directly above Edgars’ rooms.

  The thought made her go cold. If Edgars was in his rooms right now, he would hear every step she took.

  But he wasn’t, she reminded herself. He had gone out.

  He hadn’t been able to look at her this morning—or at Iris either, for that matter.

  Guilty conscience on both counts.

  Not that she blamed him for his feelings for Iris. She was a gem. One a rumormongering, dirty-minded little man like him didn’t deserve.

  Her thoughts went back to Edgars’ imagined garden incident. She’d replayed the notion in her mind so many times, she could almost believe it had happened, and every time she did, something coiled inside her, hot and tight.

  Although she was sure her imagination was leaving out the bad parts. Like the cold rain, and the even colder ground.

  Perhaps in the heat of passion, lovers didn’t notice things like that?

  She shook her head and forced herself to concentrate on the desk in front of her.

  Here were the letters Edgars must have taken in earlier. She sorted through them one by one.

  None looked right. If any of them were from Dervish, then he wasn’t D.

  She was nowhere nearer to finding an ally than she’d been before, and her frustration and bone-deep exhaustion overwhelmed her.

  She struggled against it for a moment and then let the tears filling her eyes fall silently while her body shook.

  There was a small sound, a creak so tiny it was amazing she heard it at all.

  She turned—and saw Lord Aldridge leaning in the doorway with his arms folded. Watching her.

  * * *

  He had walked into the house through the kitchen, not sure what he hoped to achieve by that, but giving in to the compulsion.

  It was warm and smelled so wonderful, like vanilla and rich cream.

  It was also empty.

  Though today was the servants’ half day, the fragrance of something baking was too strong for there not to be something in the oven.

  He opened the oven door, and the scent of vanilla clouded around him like a puff from a perfume bottle.

  Madame Levéel must be here; the dessert looked almost ready to take out.

  Then he’d heard the crea
k of a floorboard above, and he’d followed the sound, walking silently up the stairs and into the hall on instinct.

  He knew she’d been looking through his papers—he wasn’t delusional enough to expect an innocent explanation. But he hadn’t expected her to be crying.

  Weeping, actually, as if the world had come to an end and there was no hope for her.

  He must have made a sound—he was certainly startled enough—and she turned and looked at him. There was such embarrassment in her eyes, such shame at being caught looking at his things, that he had the sense that she had come here unwillingly, only under great duress.

  “What is it you’re looking for?” he asked.

  “Something to help me,” she answered, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks.

  She was being used. Forced to do this by someone threatening her or her family. He made the leap in logic in an instant.

  And she went from spy to victim in a heartbeat.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her lips trembled, and he couldn’t help the step he took toward her. He couldn’t take his eyes from that mouth, the memories from last night crowding his thoughts, driving him even closer.

  She looked at him uncertainly when he took another step, and then another until he was right in front of her, so she had to tip up her chin to look him in the eye.

  “Oh.” The word left her lips on a sigh as he pulled her close and lowered his head, so the air from her exclamation brushed his skin, and the vanilla scent of her teased him.

  She was delightful dips and curves, all quivering breathlessness and surprise.

  He had never wanted sex so badly in his life.

  His hands ran down her sides, and then behind to cup her bottom and pull her hard against him.

  She made a little noise at the back of her throat and he maneuvered her backward until she was up against his desk.

  He still hadn’t kissed her, their lips almost touching as they breathed hard, and he breached the final distance and cupped her head with a hand, holding her in place as he slanted his lips over hers.

  Below them the kitchen door slammed, and the sound of laughing and joking drifted up.