The Paris Affair Part 10

Malcolm pushed himself to his feet and strode to the unlit fireplace. "I was afraid of this."

He could feel Talleyrand's gaze on him. "You blame yourself too much, Malcolm."

Malcolm spun round and looked at the man he had known since boyhood, his grandfather's and mother's friend. "An innocent man may have been killed because of me."

"And in your line of work, I highly doubt he was the first. Or the last. You reported the evidence, Malcolm. Evidence which must have been fabricated."

"By whom?"

"A fascinating question." Talleyrand tented his fingers together. "I must say this is interesting. I can certainly understand Rivere's claims that he could shake the British delegation."

"I'm glad our difficulties amuse you, sir."

"You must allow me to take my amus.e.m.e.nts where I can, Malcolm. There are few enough of them these days."

Malcolm crossed back to Talleyrand. "Laclos was friendly with your nephew."

"So he was."

"Did you arrange it?" Malcolm dropped back into his chair and leaned towards the prince.

"My dear Malcolm. I choose my agents with care, for their keen understanding and discretion. Which is why I've always regretted I couldn't have you for an agent. And why I'd never want Edmond for one. I did suggest it might be a good idea for Edmond to show Laclos round Paris."

"And you got reports on Laclos from him."

"I found it useful to get Edmond's rather unsophisticated view of Laclos. Later when I learned Laclos had been working for the British, I wondered if Laclos had encouraged the friends.h.i.+p because Edmond was my nephew. Perhaps he thought my avuncular affections went further than they do."

"You got Edmond his wife," Malcolm said, perhaps unwisely.

"So I did." Talleyrand's fingers tightened. He unclenched them and curved them round the arms of his chair. "Speaking of actions which haunt one."

"Actually knowing Dorothee makes it clear she's not a chess piece?"

"Regrets come with age. G.o.d knows what that means lies in store for you, considering the number you already appear to have at-what? Eight-and-twenty?"

"Come October."

"When I was eight-and-twenty-" Memories drifted through Talleyrand's eyes. "I thought I knew a great deal, but in many ways I think I was much younger than you. I certainly hadn't yet learned the meaning of regret. Or of love."

Malcolm watched the prince for a moment. "Sometimes the two go hand in hand."

"Yes." Talleyrand's fingers tensed on the chair arms. "So they do."

"Rivere said one thing more." Malcolm drew a breath, his throat raw. "Sir, is it possible Tatiana had a child?"

Talleyrand went still. His eyes became even more hooded than usual. "Rivere knew how to wound."

"Is it-"

Talleyrand folded his hands together. "It's possible Tatiana did any number of things."

Malcolm studied the man his grandfather had trusted with the secret of his unmarried mother's pregnancy thirty-some years ago, the man his mother had trusted to keep an eye on her secret daughter in France. The man who had made Tatiana his agent. "Are you saying you knew-"

"My dear Malcolm. If I'd known your sister had a child I'd have told you."

"Would you?"

"After Tatiana died." Talleyrand's gaze was now unusually open.

"You might have thought I was better off not knowing. You might have made a promise to Tania."

Talleyrand's mouth curved in a rueful smile. "I'm not as protective as you think me. And I've learned to take a flexible att.i.tude towards promises."

Malcolm pushed himself to his feet, crossed the room in two strides, and leaned over the prince's chair. "What do you know?"

Talleyrand looked up at him with the same open gaze. "A few stray comments that might, in retrospect, mean something."

"What comments?" Malcolm's fingers bit into the fabric of the chair.

"An uncharacteristically wistful look in her eyes when she saw a small child once or twice. A comment, on hearing of a courtesan or actress who'd found herself in a delicate situation, that at least she herself had learned the value of precautions. And-"

"What?" Malcolm tightened his grip on the chair, holding Talleyrand's gaze with his own.

"She asked me to help arrange time away from Paris for her. She needed a rest, she said. She needed not to be troubled by any of her various lovers. She was gone for about five months."

"When was this?" Malcolm did calculations in his head.

"The spring of 1807."

Malcolm straightened up and paced across the room. "More than three years after Tania left Russia. So the father couldn't have been Tsar Alexander. Who could have fathered the child?"

"My dear boy. No offense meant to your sister-I hardly consider such behavior offensive-but keeping track of Tatiana's conquests would have left me quite without time to tend to the business of France. I was still foreign minister at the time."

"And Tatiana was your agent. Whom else did you have her collecting information from?"

"You can't be so crude as to think the only way of collecting information-"

"Perhaps not the only but certainly one of the most likely with a beautiful woman like Tatiana."

"She was establis.h.i.+ng herself in Parisian society. She was indulging in flirtations with attaches from the Austrian and Prussian emba.s.sies. I don't know if they went further. Even if they did, I see no reason for a child born of such a liaison to be kept secret."

Malcolm locked his gaze on the prince's own, trying to see behind that enigmatic stare. "Is there any chance Tania was involved with Napoleon Bonaparte that early?"

Talleyrand hesitated a fraction too long before he answered. "Not that I know of."

"Not that you know of?"

Talleyrand smoothed his ruffled s.h.i.+rt cuff over his fingers. "I'd be lying if I said Bonaparte hadn't noticed her. And it was like Tania to set her sights on men in the highest positions of power. It's possible something had begun and she had reasons for keeping it from me. But even if it had, even if he was the father of her child, there'd have been no need then for such excessive secrecy. Bonaparte was generous with his b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

Malcolm paced back to Talleyrand's side and stood looking down at him. "What else?"

Talleyrand looked up at him, gaze bland as b.u.t.ter. "I don't believe there is anything else."

"Doing it much too brown, sir. You admit yourself you suspected Tania had had a child. And that she might have been Bonaparte's mistress. You can't expect me to believe you didn't ask her about the child's parentage."

Talleyrand's mouth curved with appreciation. "I could deny it, but I suppose there's no point now. Yes, as it happens I did ask her. Tatiana didn't deny there was a child. But she went as serious as I've ever seen her. She begged me not to ask any questions about the baby's parentage. Not for her sake, but for the child's." He shook his head. "I've never been the sort to take vows seriously."

"She made you swear not to ask more about the child's parentage?" Malcolm asked.

"She made me swear not to tell anyone there was a child." Talleyrand met Malcolm's gaze, his own deceptively clear and direct. "Especially you."

"Suzie." Simon Tanner slipped through the crowd with the ease allowed by his height and theatrical background. "You look exquisite. No one would guess you hadn't had hours to prepare for the ball."

"Darling Simon." Suzanne gave him her hand and leaned forwards to accept his kiss on her cheek. "But how on earth do you know I wasn't chained to my dressing table all afternoon?"

Simon's dark brows lifted over his sharp blue eyes. "Because I know you. You've never been chained to your dressing table in your life."

"And because we know about the Rivere affair." David Mallinson, Viscount Worsley, moved through the crowd after Simon.

Suzanne gave David her hand. David as well leaned forwards and kissed her cheek, which was a sign of what degree of intimacy they had achieved. The heir to an earldom, who carried the weight of all that entailed on his shoulders, David had treated her with careful formality when they first met in England a year ago, for all she was his best friend's wife. But their time in Britain had broken much of his constraint, and then she, David, Simon, and Cordelia had been in Brussels together during Quatre Bras and Waterloo. With wounded and dying men on pallets in the hall, the house shaking from the cannonade, and Malcolm, Harry, and many of their friends risking their lives, any last vestiges of formality had fled. She could still remember Simon and Cordelia scrambling eggs in the kitchen and David coming through the front door, his hair dripping wet, his arms full of rolls of lint and bottles of laudanum.

"I can't imagine what the Rivere affair should have had to do with my dressing for a ball," Suzanne said, though she permitted a smile to play about her lips.

"My dear Suzanne," Simon said. "We may be civilians, but we aren't that slow. When put together with the fact that you and Malcolm were off on an errand last night-"

She laughed. "You know us too well."

David ran a sharp gaze over her. "You're all right?"

"Perfectly." That wasn't entirely true. She had chosen a gown with pearl-b.u.t.toned sleeves of satin and gauze that stretched down to her elbows, concealing the fresh dressing Malcolm had put on her right arm before they left for the ball.

"And Malcolm?" David asked. "I haven't seen him except across the room."

"Preoccupied, but unhurt." David and Simon were Malcolm's closest friends, but it was up to Malcolm to decide what, if anything, he told them about Tatiana Kirsanova and her possible child.

Simon's gaze lingered on Suzanne, and she thought he sensed her reticence. Simon had a way of sensing entirely too much. She loved him, but she knew it made him dangerous to someone in her position.

He turned away and cast a glance round the room. "I still can't quite grow accustomed to hearing people speak French all the time. Though I remember when it was just as unusual to hear English spoken."

Simon had been born in Paris. His father, the son of a wealthy Northumbrian brewer, had gone to Paris to study painting and married an artist's model. Simon had lived on the Left Bank-enjoying a warm, chaotic childhood that sounded not unlike Suzanne's own theatrical upbringing-until the death of both his parents when he was ten sent him to England and a family who didn't understand his French words or his French ways.

"I spoke with Gabrielle Caruthers this afternoon," Suzanne said. "She was saying how at home she felt in Paris, though she was little more than Colin's age when she left it."

"It is like returning home in a way," Simon said. "And yet returning to a home that's changed. And it's not just the Royalist c.o.c.kades replacing the tricolor. Paris burned with excitement in my childhood. And with fear. There's fear now, but precious little excitement, I'd say."

Simon's parents, Suzanne knew, had been supporters of the Revolution, though like many they'd lived in fear during the Reign of Terror. Simon's own politics were more Radical than David's Radical-leaning Whiggishness or even Malcolm's.

David was watching her with concern. "I'm sorry, Suzanne, it must be difficult-"

"No, it's quite all right." She put a hand on his arm. "Not that I remember Paris myself. I was only a baby when we left." After all these years, her supposed Royalist background, in which her parents had fled Paris for Spain during the Reign of Terror, was the hardest part of her cover story to maintain. "And I don't think anyone could fail to be concerned for the reprisals that are taking place now."

"Well, not quite anyone," Simon said. "Or they wouldn't be happening."

David grimaced. "I don't think this is what anyone envisioned after Waterloo."

"On the contrary," Simon said. "The risk was clear."

Simon's and David's gazes met. Nominally they had shared rooms since they came down from Oxford. In reality, they were closer than most married couples Suzanne knew. But though it was politics that had drawn the two of them and Malcolm together in their undergraduate days, politics sometimes divided them. David would always be an aristocrat. Simon would always be a revolutionary. Suzanne well understood the tension.

"I always felt a bit sorry for Gabrielle Laclos," David said. "It wasn't easy to be an emigree. And then her cousin etienne was killed, and his younger brother-"

"Bertrand." Simon frowned. "I'd forgot. I didn't know him well, but I liked him. Brilliant at Latin and mathematics. He never seemed like a Bonapartist, though."

"Perhaps he wanted to get his estates back," Suzanne suggested.

"Not at the expense to his family," David said.

Suzanne nodded. It was the sort of thing David would understand.

"At least Caruthers married Gabrielle," David continued. "Rupert's a good man."

"Yes," Simon said. "So he is." But Suzanne would have sworn a shadow flickered across his face before he said it.

"You know Lord Caruthers well?" she asked.

"Not particularly," Simon said. "We were at Oxford together, but he was older and moved in different circles, at least from me."

"He was more of a sportsman," David said. "While Simon and Malcolm and I were either organizing theatricals or writing political tracts. But I've known Rupert since we were children. His father, Lord Dewhurst, is a friend of my father's. I remember the family visiting us for a house party when Rupert and I were ten or so. We got up a game of cricket. I can still see Dewhurst frowning on the sidelines when Rupert bowled less well than he expected. Even my father wasn't so exacting, at least not then."

One of the footmen approached Suzanne with a question about opening more champagne. David and Simon were claimed by Harriet Granville. Suzanne turned from the footman to hear her voice called from the doorway. Dorothee, lovely and fragile in sapphire crepe over white satin, had just stepped into the ballroom on Count Karl Clam-Martinitz's arm.

"Doro." Suzanne leaned forwards to embrace her friend and then offered her hand to Clam-Martinitz. He and Dorothee moved about Paris as an established couple.

Dorothee cast a glance round the salon. "I suppose Edmond's here."

"In the card room. It shouldn't be difficult to avoid him." Clam-Martinitz's well-molded mouth tightened. "We don't need to-"

"Karl, please." Dorothee looked up at him, her white-gloved fingers curled round his arm. "For my sake."

Clam-Martinitz's face softened as he looked down at her. He was the picture of a hero out of a novel, with his thick dark hair and well-molded features, but what endeared him most to Suzanne for her friend's sake was the kindness in his eyes. Doro had found all-too-little kindness in her young life. "I'd do nothing to cause you distress, ma chere. But I won't hide from him."

"Just don't seek him out." Dorothee turned to Suzanne. "We'll find some champagne. I know you must have all sorts of things to do."

"I did promise Lady Castlereagh I'd help."

Dorothee smiled. "I imagine that's the least of it."

And yet even Doro couldn't know how very complicated her evening was. As Suzanne watched Dorothee and Clam-Martinitz move into the ballroom, she caught sight of Raoul across the room by the French windows. She didn't let her gaze so much as rest on him. She made her way across the room without haste, stopping to speak to John Ashton and Violet Chase. Raoul had been speaking with Tsar Alexander's envoy Pozzo di Borgo, but he moved away just as Suzanne approached, though he hadn't seemingly so much as glanced in her direction.