The Mayfair Affair by Tracy Grant Read Free Book Online Page B

know. But sometimes you're so busy looking after everyone else, your forget to look after yourself."
    "All right. I won't give in to any extravagant guilt-driven impulses—not that I'm admitting to having them in the first place—if you won't give in to any extravagant protective impulses."
    "Fair enough. If—"
    From the sudden tension that ran through her, he felt her sense what he had in the same instant. Nothing as defined as footfalls or movement in the shadows or a rustle of clothing, but someone was following them.
    "Diversion," she murmured.
    The uncomfortable moment was gone. They were a team again. Of one accord, they moved into the doorway of a shuttered shop. Malcolm pulled her close and pressed a quick, hard kiss against her lips. Suzanne drew back with a silent laugh. "Hotspur," she whispered against his cheek. Then she slipped from the doorway and moved down the street. A few seconds, perhaps half a minute later a figure went past in the darkness. Malcolm hurled himself from the doorway and tackled the shadowy form.
    They thudded to the cobblestones in a tangle of greatcoats and boots. The man Malcolm had tackled drew a winded breath that was half a laugh. "Malcolm, for God's sake, I was trying to catch up with you without yelling in the street."
    Malcolm sat back on his heels and stared down at the man he was sitting on. Even in the darkness, the eyes burned bright and the mouth gleamed with mockery. Malcolm got to his feet and extended a hand to the other man. "Damn it, O'Roarke, what are you doing here?"

Chapter 5
    Raoul O'Roarke sprang to his feet with his usual catlike grace. Suzanne's former spymaster and lover. Malcolm's childhood mentor and friend. Who also happened to have been his mother's lover and Malcolm's own biological father. The revelations of three months ago had at once smashed the ties between them and created stronger ones.
    O'Roarke looked from Malcolm to Suzanne, who had come running back to the two men. "I imagine I'm doing the same thing you are. Looking into the Duke of Trenchard's death."
    The unease that had coiled within Malcolm from the moment he saw O'Roarke tightened into dread. "How do you even know Trenchard is dead?"
    "Janet sent word. The underhousemaid at Trenchard House. She's been in my employ for some time."
    It was all Malcolm could do not to reach for Suzanne and pull her tight against him. O'Roarke's words, O'Roarke's involvement, O'Roarke's very presence threatened their fragile marriage on any number of levels. "Why do you have a source in Trenchard House?"
    "Because Trenchard was a member of the Elsinore League."
    Malcolm bit back a curse. The Elsinore League, the mysterious club begun by a group of powerful, ambitious young men with the aim of manipulating the world to their own advantage. Their membership remained mysterious, but it was without question that Alistair Rannoch, Malcolm's putative father, had been one of the founding members. That Malcolm's mother, Arabella, had been involved in trying to unearth the club's secrets and put an end to their actions; that she had very likely even married Alistair for that reason. And that she had involved her lover Raoul O'Roarke in that quest.
    "Damnation," Malcolm said.
    Something softened in the hooded depths of O'Roarke's gaze. "I'm sorry."
    "I knew this seemed too disconnected from everything else," Suzanne said in a voice of worn silver plate polished to show the brass beneath. She cast a glance at Malcolm. "We can't stand here discussing this in the street."
    "Quite." Malcolm jerked his head at O'Roarke. "You'd better follow us to Berkeley Square, O'Roarke. At a bit less of a distance than you were."
    And so the three of them proceeded down Berkeley Street and across Berkeley Square to the house Malcolm had inherited from Alistair Rannoch. Valentin, the footman who had come with Malcolm and Suzanne from Brussels to Paris and then to London, opened the door without surprise. O'Roarke was a relatively frequent