"Marriage is complicated for everyone. And love doesn't always last."

  Sandy's eyes fastened on Malcolm's face. For a moment it was as though Malcolm had told Jessica happily-ever-afters in fairy tales might not be real. "Surely if it's real, it lasts."

  "Define real. Something can be real while it lasts, but still not endure." What he'd felt for Kitty had been intensely real while it lasted. Not that it no longer existed, but it was different.

  "But surely you and Mélanie—"

  "No. I can't imagine my feelings for her changing." Which left aside what circumstances could do to the state of their relationship. He was no longer as anxious about that as he had once been. But the concern still lingered. Sharpened at times, in ways he wouldn't admit to anyone. "Relationships aren't static," he said to Sandy. "They inevitably change with time."

  "For the worse?"

  "Not always. Sometimes by far for the better. Mélanie's and mine has. Which doesn't mean there still aren't challenges." Malcolm clapped a hand on Sandy's shoulder. "You and Bet have had a number of challenges at the start. That should help you weather a lot."

  Whether he'd ever get to the point where he could say that to Roth and Judith was another question entirely.

  CHAPTER 31

  Malcolm smoothed his hastily tied cravat and shrugged on a black cassimere coat. As he tugged at his shirt cuffs beneath the coat sleeves, a movement caught his eye in the looking glass. Addison, standing in the dressing room doorway.

  Malcolm turned to smile at his valet. "Just a family dinner, so I thought I could handle things myself. I hope my neckcloth doesn't set you over the edge."

  "On the contrary, sir. You're improving." Addison adjusted one of the folds round Malcolm's neck. "I just came in to say that I'll go back to the Three Queens tonight. I think it may take several visits to get the staff to really talk to me. I know Lord Carfax has been trying as well."

  "Thank you." Malcolm glanced in the looking glass. The cravat looked remarkably better with Addison's simple adjustments, the folds crisper, the lines more precise. "Thanks to you and Julien, we have a comprehensive list of the Three Queens staff. I think you have better luck there than I would."

  Addison smoothed Malcolm's coat over his shoulders. "It's difficult to imagine anyone's having better luck than you, sir. Or rather, greater skill. But it's possible I have certain insights into Jeremy's world that you don't."

  Malcolm caught Addison's gaze in the looking glass. "I didn't realize you called him Jeremy."

  Addison gave a faint smile. "He told me he'd stop visiting the house if I continued to call him Mr. Roth. It was Roth on its own, or Jeremy. He said Roth made him think of what Sir Nathaniel calls him."

  "And he calls you Miles?"

  "In general."

  Malcolm turned his head to study the man who in many ways had been his closest companion since he started at Oxford. Longer than his wife. "I don't suppose you'd consider calling me Malcolm?"

  "That would be singularly odd, sir."

  "Unlike the rest of life in this household, which is so very normal?"

  "Some rules can be broken. Others are more challenging."

  "Because of what? If we broke them, you wouldn't want to be a valet at all? I could understand that."

  Addison took a step back and then turned to face Malcolm, leaning against the dressing table, hands braced behind him. "I've always enjoyed being a valet. But I confess if I hadn't become your valet and learned to become an agent, I'd have grown bored. It's a remarkable life and I'm grateful to you for including me in it."

  "I'm grateful to you for putting up with us." Malcolm watched Addison a moment longer. "You're one of the most important people in my life, Addison."

  "Thank you, sir. I need hardly say the same applies in reverse."

  "It's all a ridiculous charade, you know. Masters and servants."

  "That charade supplies my livelihood. I know you're capable of dressing yourself, but I hope I'm not going to lose my employment in the name of principle."

  "Don't be an idiot, Addison."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "I don't suppose you'd consider calling me Rannoch."

  "What difference would that make?"

  "It's a bit more on a par with Addison. We'd be equal."

  "We're not equal, sir. Not in this world or any world you can even come close to imagining remaking."

  "Define equal."

  "Among other things, I can't vote."

  "If we succeed, you'll be able to. Sooner than Mélanie or Blanca."

  "A palpable hit."

  "Roth calls me Malcolm on occasion."

  "He doesn't work for you. I imagine it's challenging for him, though."

  "He looks at us with a much more jaundiced eye than you do."

  "You and Mrs. Rannoch provide employment for a number of people. On very fair terms. It may not be an ideal situation, but given the world we live in it's to be commended."

  Which was more or less how Malcolm viewed things, with less emphasis on the 'commendable.' But the words still had a bite. "You'll dine with us now."

  "Yes, that was a challenge. But Blanca persuaded me. My wife has quite a way with words."

  Addison was one of the first of Malcolm's friends who had known the truth about Mélanie. At the same time, he had learned the truth about the woman he himself loved. "I don't know how I'd have got through those days three years ago without you, Addison."

  "Nor I without you, sir."

  Malcolm tugged at his cravat. "You could just be an agent, you know. Stop being a valet. I'd pay you the same salary."

  Addison reached out and adjusted a fold of the cravat that Malcolm had disturbed. An almost imperceptible touch that somehow made the whole thing fall in more symmetrical folds. "I rather like being a valet. And with all due respect, sir, while you can manage without me, your attire is more harmonious when you have my assistance. I imagine Mélanie would tell you the importance of proper costume."

  "I imagine she would. What did you just call her?"

  Addison smiled. "A slip. But you know she does rather object to Mrs. Rannoch. And I've got used to what my wife calls her. Marriage has a way of changing one."

  "So it does."

  Raoul greeted Kitty and the children at the door in Berkeley Square. The boys and Genny ran into the library to find Colin, Emily, Jessica, and Clara. "Malcolm, Mélanie, and Laura should be down soon," Raoul said as he and Kitty followed more slowly.

  "Julien said he'd meet us here." Kitty dropped her cloak and reticule on the library table. Her husband, still inclined to fuss, had insisted she and the children take the carriage the short distance to Berkeley Square. "He came back to Carfax House, but then he went out again to make more inquiries. We haven't had a chance to fully compare notes."

  "Neither have the rest of us. We can catch up when everyone's here." Raoul had moved to the drinks trolley. He added whisky to his glass, then poured one for Kitty and handed it to her.

  "Thank you." Kitty accepted the glass and moved to one of the Queen Anne chairs. "There's been a lot to digest today. In truth, I don't think I've even begun to process all of it."

  Raoul sat in the other Queen Anne chair. "I didn't know Ashford well. But I saw enough to say with fair certainty that you don't owe him anything."

  Kitty tossed down a drink of whisky. The Rannoch malt tasted rougher than usual. "If your first wife had been murdered when you were estranged, wouldn't you have felt compelled to learn what happened to her?"

  Acknowledgement glinted in Raoul's gaze. "Caught. I wouldn't have been able to let it go. But I feel a certain amount of guilt where Margaret is concerned."

  "You think only men feel guilt about marriage?"

  "No, but I was older than Margaret and felt I should have realized what we had wasn't sustainable."

  "I was a bit younger than Edward, but arguably more mature than he was and certainly saw that what we had wasn't sustainable. Not that we ever had very much. And if I hadn't been an agent, if it hadn't seemed a good idea to get close to British troops, I probably wouldn't have married him. I can't say I took advantage of Edward precisely. And I can't say I didn't give him what he deserved, because I'm not sure what he deserved. But it certainly wasn't what a marriage should be. I didn't have a clue what a marriage could be then." She took another drink, fingers not quite steady. "But it means something. Living together all those years, however separately one lives. Sharing things, however imperfectly."

  Raoul met her gaze, unexpected kinship in his own. "Yes," he said. "It does. Whatever happened to Ashford, we'll all do our best to help you learn the truth. And we'll all understand. I venture to say your current husband most of all."

  "Oh, Julien understands everything." Including how damaging lies could be. "Julien will be all right. We'll be all right. We've both always known we'd end up lying to each other. It shouldn't be such a shock to me that he lied to me in the past." Kitty took a sip of whisky and watched as Raoul curled his fingers round his own glass. Perhaps it was a trick of the candlelight, but his face looked sharper-boned and more shadowed than usual, his eyes deeper set. "It must be a burden."

  "What?" Raoul asked.

  Kitty settled back against the sofa cushions and took another sip of whisky. "They all admire you. But it's more than that. You've molded them. Their ideals. What it means to be an agent."

  Raoul turned his glass in his hand. "Malcolm and Mélanie?"

  "Undoubtedly. But also my husband. He wouldn't admit it. But you've molded him far more than Hubert Mallinson has."

  Raoul gave a faint laugh. "By giving him something to react against?"

  "Now you're sounding like Julien." Kitty curled her feet up on the sofa. "He may not have admitted he was paying attention when you met him. When you were still fighting for the ideals of a revolution that had almost killed you. When he was trying to make everyone believe he was a cold-blooded assassin. But he was listening. That's why there's still a core of him left."

  Raoul shifted in his chair. "There was always a core of Julien that believed in humanity."

  "Yes. I quite agree. But without you he might have lost it."

  Raoul took a drink of whisky. "Julien has found his way back to ideals he never wanted to admit he hadn't abandoned, as much as he tried to make everyone believe to the contrary. Don't mistake that for any sort of influence I may have had."

  "You made him believe things could be possible. Change. A better world. Progress. Against all evidence to the contrary. Because you believed and kept on fighting."

  "Against all evidence to the contrary."

  "What could be more inspiring?"

  "Put like that, Don Quixote would be the most inspiring of all."

  "Which he is, in a way." Kitty took another drink of whisky. She'd first had it in Spain, but it was in Britain she'd truly come to appreciate it. It was so bound up in the life they all shared. A family she'd never admitted—never known—she wanted. "But you actually accomplish things."

  "At times."

  "Don't overdo the false modesty. You're a force to be reckoned with, Raoul O'Roarke. It's part of why Hubert Mallinson finds you so dangerous. You inspire people."

  He regarded her over the rim of his glass. "But you appear to have a bit more perspective."

  "It's different. I like you. I admire you. But I was an adult when I met you. And I use the word advisedly. I won't claim to have had more maturity than the others. But in some ways, I was more fully formed."

  "So you can see through me."

  "I don't think any of us can see through the others, do you? I might have done better if I'd had your example when I was younger." Kitty watched him for a moment. "You should give yourself credit for what you've done for all of them."

  "Or blame myself."

  "None of them are the worse because of you. I'm quite sure of that. And you can't tell me you don't worry about all of them." She watched him a moment longer. "Julien was a boy when he met you. A rather dangerous boy capable of very dangerous things. But still. He needed an example that something else was possible. Something and someone to hang on to."

  "Have you said that to Julien?"

  "Not in so many words. You have an amazing power, Raoul. And you still inspire the younger generation. I think you inspired Marco Esquivel."

  "I'm not sure how helpful it was if I did. I don't think I'm what sent him off to the Argentine, but I don't think I helped matters."

  "You think he should have stayed?"

  "Does that surprise you? I wasn't exactly the greatest success as a father, but I wouldn't have gone that far away for that long. I'm not sure I'd have put it that way then. I would now. Speaking as a father who's still gone more than I should be."

  Kitty smiled. "Malcolm's right. You're a fraud. You didn't change when you married. You revealed yourself."

  "Surely both are possible. I'm not the man I was. Thank god."

  "But you never were the man you showed to the world."

  He sat back. "Is any of us, truly? We show different parts of ourselves to different people in our lives. I'll own I felt more than I let on. I also didn't act on my feelings as much as I should have done. And much of the time my motives were a muddle."

  "Dear god. So were mine." Kitty curled her hands round her glass. "Perhaps that's the worst of Edward's death's being tangled in all this. It forces me to confront who I was and what I did."

  "We make choices," Raoul said. "The best choices we can at the time. Or, at least, it's folly to refine upon them."

  Kitty looked at him, understanding with the clarity of the crystal glass in her hand, just what he meant to her husband and Malcolm and Mélanie. "Thank you."

  He gave a crooked smile. "On the contrary. I owe you my thanks. My bones are aching considerably less than when we sat down to talk."

  Kitty found herself smiling in return. "What are friends for?"

  Mélanie leaned forwards to pour more coffee. They had spent dinner hearing Justine Lambton's account of the bust of Agrippina that Marco Esquivel had sent to her father and were now catching up on everyone's investigations of the afternoon. They still had more questions than answers.

  "Esquivel met Beardsley and Rowley and an Argentine expatriate named Alvarez at Goring's in Henrietta Street at seven," Raoul said, glancing at his notes. "Several of the staff at Goring's vouch for the time. From there they went to Covent Garden, where they arrived fashionably late and met two more friends, Flores and Varela."

  "So Esquivel would have had time to go to the Three Queens and kill Allegra," Malcolm said.

  Raoul nodded. "Though he'd have been gone before Kitty and Julien arrived, so it's more problematic that he hired Purvis. And he couldn't have shot Purvis—he was with Higgins by then."

  "You made more progress than I did," Julien said. "And I hope Addison does better than I did at the Three Queens. I went twice today, once disguised as a costermonger, the other time as a cyprian. I'm quite sure no one saw through either disguise, but they're so very close mouthed about the whole incident I can't but think there's more to uncover. I did find some drops of dried blood on the back stairs down to the kitchen. I'm quite sure the killer left that way. And possibly came up that way as well."

  "Wouldn't the killer have been terribly bloody?" Cordelia asked. "I mean, he or she would have been in the midst of a crowd once they got outside—"

  "They might not have been that bloody," Julien said. "It was a precise hit with a thin blade like—" He bit back the words.

  "Like George," Cordy said.

  "Yes. And if the killer was wearing a greatcoat or cloak or pelisse, they might have removed it before the murder and then put it back on after to cover any blood on their clothing."

  "That would mean the killer knew Allegra Roth," Malcom said. "Which fits with how close they got without a struggle."

  "It may have been the murder weapon that dripped on the stairs," Julien said. "I suspect the killer discarded it shortly after. Addison and I both searched round the Three Queens, and I'm sure Higgins had his men do the same. But in Seven Dials someone likely snatched it up to sell before Allegra Roth was even found."

  Kitty blew on her coffee. "I'm well served for not taking Edward seriously enough. It never occurred to me to look through his papers after he died. But I did keep them—I thought there might be something the boys would want someday. I looked through them this afternoon. I know he kept ledgers, but I didn't find those. Either he destroyed them before he died or someone managed to take them. But I found a draft of a letter, I'm not sure to whom, saying he felt as though he was being left to take the blame. It wasn't clear that he was referring to the silver mine scheme, but putting it together with what Julien says I suspect so. There's no date, but from where it was in his writing box I think it was from not long before he died."

  "That fits," Julien said. "Even by the time I left the Argentine the scheme was starting to unravel."

  "It's interesting," Kitty said, "but it doesn't really provide a murder motive unless his associates thought it would be easier to blame him if he were dead. Perhaps—"

  She broke off as the door opened and Valentin stepped into the room.

  "A Mr. Esquivel has called."

  It was the first time Mélanie had seen Marco Esquivel. Tall, dark haired, well-cut features, strong brows. He was not precisely her type, but she could see what must have attracted Allegra. He had an air of command, even as he hesitated just inside the library door. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt when you were entertaining. And I know I have not been introduced to many of you. But I received a note from Miss Lambton saying she would be here this evening."

  "You aren't interrupting." Mélanie got to her feet. "Nothing we do just now is unconnected to the investigation into Alejandra Vargas's death. And Miss Lambton is particularly eager to speak with you."

  "Mr. Esquivel." Justine got to her feet as well. "I don't know that you remember me—"

  "How could I forget you, Miss Lambton?" Esquivel bowed. "Though you were rather less tall at our last meeting."

 

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