18. CHAPTER 18
D alton had been expecting the summons. He had known since the morning he let Alfred walk free that this conversation was coming. He resented the timing all the same.
The Foreign Office at four o'clock on a Tuesday was its usual beehive of activity. Clerks carried papers through corridors. Secretaries murmured behind closed doors. His own office was in a quieter part of the building. He had not set foot in it in almost a month.
He paused outside Stanley's door long enough to settle his cuffs.
He knocked once and entered without waiting.
Lord Stanley did not rise. He sat behind his desk with his hands folded over a file and regarded him with unreadable eyes.
"Your Grace. Close the door."
Dalton shut it. Took the chair without being offered one. Crossed one leg over the other and waited.
Stanley let the silence hold for three beats. Dalton had been using that trick on foreign agents since Stanley was reading Classics at Oxford.
"It has come to my attention," Stanley said at last, "that you aided the escape of a traitor."
"That assessment is incorrect."
"Is it?" Stanley opened the file. "After apprehending Alfred St Aubyn — your cousin — you gave him thirty thousand pounds, escorted him to a neutral vessel, and permitted him to sail beyond the reach of English law. Which part of that have I misrepresented? "
"The word aided implies cooperation. He blackmailed me. The facts are in the report I submitted."
"Ah yes. Your report." Stanley turned a page. "Which neglects to mention that you acted without consulting this office. Without notifying the Home Secretary. Without, in fact, telling a single soul until the ship had, quite literally, sailed."
"Time was against me."
"Time is always against you, Dalton. That is the nature of the work. The difference is that on every previous occasion, you managed to exercise the judgment the position requires."
The blow landed. Not because it was unfair. Because it was not.
Dalton uncrossed his legs. Leaned forward.
"He told me my wife was alive."
Stanley's mouth thinned. "So your report states."
"She had been living on Guernsey for seven years. Suffering from amnesia. No memory of her name, her family, or her marriage. He was the only person who knew where she was, and he made it clear her safety depended on his freedom. I made a tactical decision under duress."
"You made a personal decision dressed in operational language."
"I planted an agent on the ship to track him. The plan was sound."
"It is misprision of treason." Stanley tested the phrase. Let it sit. "You knew your cousin had committed treason. You chose not to surrender him. The statute does not make an exception for sentiment."
"The statute does not make an exception for bureaucratic delay either.
If I had waited for this office to authorize a response, my wife would have married another man before I reached Guernsey.
The marriage would have been void, but she would have been living with him.
As his wife in every way that mattered. You may consider that an acceptable outcome, my lord. I did not."
A muscle worked in Stanley's jaw. For all his rigidity, the man was not heartless. Dalton watched the calculation — sympathy meeting duty, and duty holding, as it must .
"I'm glad the duchess is alive and in your care," Stanley said. Stiff. "But gladness is not a policy position. You exchanged a traitor's freedom for personal gain. If that becomes public — "
"It won't."
"If it does," Stanley pressed, "no one will consider it a husband's devotion. They will view it as corruption. A duke using the apparatus of the Crown to settle a private matter. Parliament will want blood. The press will give it to them."
Dalton said nothing. Stanley had only voiced what he already knew.
If the affair became public, it would not only end his career.
The gossip sheets would devour every detail.
A duchess returned from the dead. Seven years under an assumed name on a Channel Island.
A marriage ceremony to a country doctor.
The questions would be vicious. Had she lived with him?
Had there been intimacy? Was the amnesia real, or a convenient fiction?
And Vivienne, who was only now beginning to trust him, to laugh in his company, to reach for his hand, would suffer all of it. She would be examined. Picked apart. Reduced to the ugliest reading of her suffering.
He would see this building in ashes first.
"It won't become public," he said again.
His voice had dropped to the register that made men in small rooms reconsider their answers.
"Because I'm going to find Alfred. I'm going to take apart what remains of his network.
And I'm going to deliver him to you in chains. That is not a promise. It is a plan."
Stanley held his gaze.
"One month," the Foreign Secretary said. "You have one month to locate your cousin and bring him before this office."
"I'll need resources. My continental network reinstated. The Admiralty's shipping manifests for every vessel that left any port on both sides of the English Channel since August."
"You'll have the manifests. The network is your own affair."
"And I'll need you to keep Barrington at a distance. The Home Secretary has never grasped the difference between intelligence work and policing. His involvement will scatter Alfred's contacts before I can reach them. "
Stanley's eyes narrowed. He was not used to a man receiving an ultimatum turning it into a requisition.
But he was not a fool either. He knew what Dalton was.
Knew the networks he ran, the agents he controlled, the debts owed across half the capitals of Europe.
You did not replace a spymaster by advertising in The Times .
"I will manage Barrington," he said. "But hear me.
If you do not produce Alfred St Aubyn within the month, I will accept your resignation.
And if I discover you have again put your personal affairs above the interests of this nation, I will not stop at resignation.
I will refer the matter to the Attorney General. "
"Understood."
"Is it? Because I am not persuaded, Your Grace, that you appreciate your position. You are the finest operative this office has produced in a generation. You are also, at present, the most compromised. The two cannot coexist."
Compromised. The word Dalton had been circling for weeks without letting himself land on it.
He stood. Buttoned his coat. Gave Stanley a nod.
"One month. You'll have your traitor."
He walked down the corridor at an unhurried pace. Nobody looking at him would have guessed his jaw was clenched hard enough to ache.
His carriage was waiting just outside. He climbed in, shut the door, and sat in the dark a moment before rapping the ceiling.
One month.
He had left Vivienne at Penrose this morning before the sun had even risen. Three days away. It should have been straightforward — see Stanley, gather intelligence, return before the distance between them hardened.
Nothing about it was straightforward.
Alfred was not a fugitive cousin with a grudge.
He was part of something larger — a foreign network threading itself through the British government, engineering deaths, moving compromised men into positions of power.
Dalton had spent eighteen months mapping it.
Alfred's capture was supposed to be the thread that, when pulled, unraveled the rest. Instead, Dalton had cut the thread loose.
Stanley was right to be furious. The professional failure was real.
The danger it created was not abstract. Alfred had likely engineered the shipwreck.
Had hidden her for seven years. He would not hesitate to do worse.
And if his cousin sensed him closing in, he would reach for the weapon that had already worked once: Vivienne.
He could not allow that to happen.
The carriage stopped in front of his mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens. He opened his eyes. Straightened his coat, and stepped into the lamplight wearing the face of a man with nothing to fear.
He would find Alfred. He would keep Vivienne safe. He would hold it together by force of will if nothing else. And if it came apart, he would choose her again.
Compromised , Stanley had called him.
He was right.