The Mayfair Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

don't. There are certain questions it's never occurred to me to ask her."
    "You wouldn't pry."
    "That's part of it. But— we live in the same house with them. We trust them with our children. But in so many ways we don't know them at all. It—"
    "Outrages your Republican sensibilities?"
    Suzanne looked up at her husband. "Yes. I wasn't born into this world."
    "And the fact that I was means my sensibilities, however Radical Carfax would claim they are, are undisturbed?"
    "It makes it more understandable that you don't question such things."
    "I think that's giving me at once too much and too little credit. I don't think I should be excused from noticing. And it does bother me. But you're right, I think you have a more clear-eyed perspective."
    Sane, reasonable Malcolm. She was beyond fortunate that he was so understanding. Yet she sometimes wondered if he could be entirely human. Or when he would crack.
    As though he understood, his fingers tightened over her own and he carried her hand to his lips, just as Jeremy Roth pulled open the door and swung into the carriage.

Chapter 3
    The footman greeted Malcolm, Suzanne, and Roth without surprise in the high-ceilinged entrance hall of Trenchard House. He wore immaculate livery but his wig was slightly askew and powder dusted the blue brocade shoulders of his coat. "The duchess asked me to bring you into the blue salon when you returned, Mr. Roth," he said and proceeded to conduct them up the gilt-railed stairs to the first floor.
    Malcolm gave Suzanne his arm. It was bizarrely similar to a social call, save that the house was still shrouded in darkness, with only a lamp and brace of candles lit in the hall and two of the wall sconces on the stairs, turning their shadows into giant, flickering shapes against the white and gold of the stair wall.
    The Duchess of Trenchard, the former Lady Mary Mallinson, came forwards when the footman opened the door of the blue salon. She had dressed in a black day dress, severely cut but in too glossy a fabric to qualify as mourning wear. Her ivory skin looked even paler than usual above the high-standing lace collar. Her heavy dark hair was simply but immaculately dressed and pearl earrings framed her face. Malcolm had first met her over twenty years ago, when he came home from Harrow to stay with his friend David. Mary had been thirteen, already a young lady above showing much interest in her younger brother and his friends, though there had been moments when her girlishness showed through. It was that girl Malcolm saw now, beneath the set mask of the woman before him. A girl in a blue-sashed white dress, dark hair spilling down her back, cameo features the same but less contained than now, the chin with the same determined slant, the eyes deep-set as they were now but glowing with laughter.
    He took her shoulders in a light clasp. "Mary. I'm so very sorry."
    Her hands came up and for a moment he felt the clutch of her fingers through the fabric of his coat. Then she stepped back, her expression as controlled in its own way as Laura's had been. "Thank you, Malcolm." Her gaze moved beyond him. "Mrs. Rannoch. Inspector Roth. My father told me you'd likely all want to see the study. I thought you could do with coffee." She gestured to a silver coffee service and silver-rimmed cups set out on the sofa table.
    "That was kind of you, Duchess," Suzanne said, and added her own words of condolence.
    "It was a relief to have something to do." Mary gestured them to be seated, dropped down on the sofa, and began to pour coffee. Her voice was steady but the glimmer of the silver coffeepot in the candlelight betrayed her shaking fingers. "I haven't told the children yet. It seemed cruel to wake them, as though I'd be doing it mostly to comfort myself. The morning's soon enough to tell them. The girls, that is. Bobby's at Harrow. I was going to send for my stepson, but he's in Richmond until tomorrow, and I thought I'd wait to see if you had anything else to