The Mayfair Affair by Tracy Grant

face. "If—"
    Simon pushed himself to his feet and put a hand on his lover's shoulder. "David, you can't blame yourself. Despite all your instincts."
    David gave a wry grimace. "That's much what Malcolm said."
    "Malcolm knows you well." Simon stared down at David's tousled dark hair, wondering how much to say and how to frame it. Part of him wanted not to stir the conversational waters. It could be damnably difficult to take words back once they were spoken. And yet he owed David his support, and with that went honesty. "David—I know this is an intolerable situation."
    "Yes, I think my sister's husband being murdered qualifies as intolerable."
    "On its own." Simon dropped down on the sofa beside David. "And then there's your father putting his own stamp of interference on it. And your best friend running the investigation."
    "Malcolm will manage things well for Mary."
    "But it also complicates your own choices."
    David shot a look at him. Simon met the look and stepped forwards onto uncomfortable ground. "How much did you tell Malcolm?"
    David held his gaze for a moment, as though seeing five steps ahead in the conversation. But when he spoke, it was an opening gambit, not the endgame. "I told him the truth."
    "All of it?" Simon got to his feet and moved to the drinks trolley.
    "I told him I was convinced Trenchard had struck Mary. That I had told Father about it. That I realized it gave both Father and me a motive to have killed Trenchard."
    Simon picked up the whisky decanter. "And?"
    "When Malcolm said that in Father's defense, if he were guilty he probably wouldn't have wanted Malcolm involved, I pointed out that Father might have wanted Malcolm to keep a check on Roth."
    "You're learning to appreciate deviousness." Simon crossed to David's chair, refilled David's glass and then his own. "You realize of course that it also gives Mary a motive."
    David's hand jerked as he reached for the whisky. "That's—"
    "Undeniable." Simon set the decanter on the sofa table. The lamplight caught the Mallinson crest etched on the glass. "Having a motive doesn't mean she's guilty." He took a sip of whisky. It seemed to burn more than usual. "Did you tell Malcolm the rest?"
    David met Simon's gaze. This time he didn't pretend not to understand. They were beyond opening gambits. "Simon—"
    "I'm not saying you should have done." Simon stared down into the pale gold liquid in his glass. It cast an opaque haze over the pattern of the carpet at his feet. "I'm not sure what I would have done in your situation."
    "Simon." David sprang to his feet and gripped Simon's arm. "You can't—"
    "You think I'd go to Malcolm behind your back?"
    "Yes, if you felt it was called for. You have your own sort of honor."
    "I wouldn't call it honor." To Simon, the word would never lose its aristocratic trappings. "But you may be right. In the right circumstances. But not in this. This isn't my fight. "
    David nodded, gaze on his whisky glass.
    "Not that I don't care about your family," Simon said. "You care for them, so I do as well. But when it comes to how to protect them, it's your judgment to make."
    David's gaze shot back to Simon's face. When it came to issues concerning the Mallinson family, David could look at once as vulnerable as a schoolboy and as remote as the future Earl Carfax. "Then you accept my decision in this?"
    "I accept that it's your decision to make. But Malcolm won't let go of it, you know."
    "I have every faith that Malcolm will find Trenchard's killer."
    Simon nearly asked David if he was sure he wanted Malcolm to learn who had murdered Trenchard, but instead he said, "In the process, Malcolm is very likely to learn that you lied to him."
    David swallowed. "That's a risk I have to take."
    Simon nodded. Malcolm, he would swear, mattered to David as much as David's family. And yet David was a Mallinson first and foremost. Before he was Malcolm's friend. Before he was Simon's lover. "David?" Simon asked, even as his mind told him to