The Paris Affair Part 13

"Quite. My cousins tried to be kind, tried to show me how to go on. I'm afraid I didn't appreciate them properly until after they were gone." He cast a quick look from Suzanne to Cordelia. "They-"

"etienne died on a mission in France and Bertrand fighting in Spain," Suzanne said. "Your family have been through a great deal."

"Next to them I've been fortunate." Gui flashed a careless smile, bright as the crystal and gilt of the chandeliers overhead. "Life in Britain has had its compensations." His gaze lingered on Cordelia for a moment. "You look well, Cordy. I heard you'd been in Brussels during Waterloo."

"That's where I met Mrs. Rannoch." Cordelia kept her gaze on Gui's face. He deserved better from her than Edmond Talleyrand. "And where I reconciled with my husband."

Gui's eyes widened. "I heard of course-"

"That we were living under the same roof?"

"But I didn't realize-"

"I learned a number of things about Harry in Brussels. And about myself."

Gui regarded her for a moment. His eyes now held not insouciance or the scars of the past but something that might have been regret mixed with affection. "Congratulations, Cordy. I'm happy for you. And Davenport's a lucky man."

He touched her arm, nodded to Suzanne, and moved off. Cordelia drew a harsh breath. "You must think me quite indiscriminate," she said, not meeting Suzanne's gaze.

"Hardly that. He's very charming. And clever enough to hold a woman's interest, I should think."

Cordelia folded her arms, gripping her elbows. "It didn't last very long. A fortnight at a house party in Devon. The Somertons'. I don't know why I accepted. I never did well immured in the country, and then the weather was wretched. Gui made things so much more amusing."

"There's nothing wrong with amus.e.m.e.nt."

"I was married."

"And separated from your husband. And treated like a pariah by society."

Cordelia gave a bleak smile. "Are you saying I lived up to my reputation?"

"I think you lived in the society that would accept you."

Cordelia forced herself to stare into the past without flinching. "Somehow I didn't realize quite how many ghosts I was creating in the process. But then I was never very good at thinking ahead."

"Cordy-" Suzanne adjusted one of the pearl b.u.t.tons on her sleeve. "Did Gui Laclos ever talk about his family?"

"Is Gui caught up in this?"

"The Lacloses are caught up in this. What happened to his cousin Bertrand could have to do with why Antoine Rivere was killed and have a whole host of implications."

Cordelia frowned, fingering the ebony sticks of her fan. She understood the questions that had to be asked in an investigation, better now than she had last June in Brussels. And she understood that Suzanne and Malcolm didn't ask those questions idly or reveal confidences if they didn't have to. But a part of her still s.h.i.+ed away from probing into the lives of her friends. "Gui didn't talk about his family much. Except at first to tell me he was the black sheep and quite everyone's despair. Said partly as a dare, partly with little-boy ruefulness. Then later after we"-she hesitated, then wondered at her hesitation over the wording; it was nothing Suzanne didn't know-"after we became intimate," she said with determination. "The weather had cleared for a bit and we were walking along the stream bank on the estate. Gui mentioned the first time etienne and Bertrand took him fis.h.i.+ng after he came to England. A common enough story, but unusual, because he didn't often talk about them." She frowned, trying to remember back to that exchange. The damp chill of the air cutting through her pelisse, the tug of the breeze on her bonnet ribbons, the firmness of Gui's arm beneath her gloved fingers were all vivid, but the precise words eluded her. "I think I said something about how it must have been nice to have cousins to show him how to go on in England-trying to be innocuous. And I suppose perhaps trying to learn more about his past. Gui stopped then and looked across the water." The muscles in his arm had gone taut beneath her touch. "He said Bertrand and etienne were quite different from him. And that perhaps he was fortunate duty and honor had never meant a great deal to him. His mouth twisted as he said it with a sort of self-derision. He added that his lack of sensitivity to the call of duty was perhaps the only reason he was still alive, while his cousins were not."

"This must have been not long after Bertrand Laclos was killed," Suzanne said.

"About six months. Most people wouldn't have described Bertrand's going to fight for Bonaparte as honorable, but one could take the view that he was serving the country of his birth." Cordelia studied Suzanne for a moment. "Or wasn't he at all?"

Suzanne returned her gaze for a moment, her own gaze still and steady. Cordelia thought she would deny that she had the least idea what Cordelia was talking about. Instead she gave a sudden smile. "d.a.m.n it, Cordy, you're much too quick. Or have you heard something?"

"There was always talk that no one could make sense of what Bertrand had done," Cordelia said, putting into words thoughts that had only been half-formulated until now. "But it was mostly that here you are implying there's some mystery about his life and death. He never struck me as the sort to turn his back on his family and fight for Bonaparte. If nothing else because of the family duty that Gui was talking about. He had to have known the burden it would place on his parents."

"Do you think Gui knew or suspected Bertrand's defection wasn't all that met the eye?"

Cordelia considered her former lover. For all his seemingly careless, open manner, there was a great deal she hadn't known about him. "I'm not sure. Perhaps. Otherwise that comment about Bertrand being driven by family and duty like etienne doesn't make a great deal of sense."

"It must have been terribly difficult for all of them."

Cordelia rubbed her arms. "Gui was tormented. I've never been sure how much of it was growing up in a completely different world and then being transported abruptly to England, and how much was losing his two cousins. He went from being the rebel outsider to the family heir and the only surviving son in effect." She forced her mind back to those days in Devon. For all the affair had been lighthearted and agreeable, it had had moments that touched on something more serious. "Gui had nightmares. One night we both indulged in too much champagne, and he fell asleep in my bed. Which would have been problematic if my maid had found him there in the morning. Instead, I woke to the sound of Gui screaming."

"I have nightmares myself," Suzanne said. It was one of those moments when Cordelia had the oddest sense her friend had made a great admission. "Did Gui scream anything in particular?"

" 'Fremont.' I have no idea who that is. Or what. I shook him awake. He stared at me quite wild-eyed, as though for a moment he wasn't sure where he was or who I was. Then he came to and apologized profusely, He said he should know better than to fall asleep in a lady's bed. I asked if anything was the matter, and he a.s.sured me it was just the champagne talking. But-"

"What?" Suzanne asked.

"He asked if he'd said anything tiresome." Cordelia's fingers tightened on her fan. "Perhaps it's nonsense, but I had the oddest sense he thought he'd betrayed something while he slept."

"Did you ask him about Fremont?"

"No. It seemed better to ignore the whole thing. He continued perfectly charming after that, but he was more guarded than ever." Cordelia flicked her fan open and looked down at the copy of a Fragonard painting on the silk. A couple in a decorous garden obviously about to indulge in some very indecorous behavior. "I can't claim Gui and I were confidants. I certainly didn't confide in him about my life and past. But we were both outsiders in society in one way or another. He because of being an emigre and coming here late, and I because of my own scandals and folly. I think that was part of what drew us together."

Suzanne drew a breath, but Harry came up beside them before she could speak. "I've been getting the oddest number of sympathetic glances," he said.

Cordelia slid her arm through her husband's own. "Poor darling." Her voice was light. The undertone was not.

Harry grinned down at her, mockery tempered by something softer. "It's amazingly easier to take when one knows the sympathy is quite misplaced."

Suzanne touched his arm. "You're a generous man, Harry."

"Don't let it get about. You'll ruin my reputation."

Dorothee Talleyrand swept up to them and claimed Suzanne. Cordelia watched her friend move off. "Harry-"

"Mmm?" Harry was studying her face.

"Do you think that Suzanne-"

"What?" Harry's gaze turned sharp.

Cordelia watched Suzanne, a slender figure in pomegranate gauze over ivory satin, laughing with Dorothee and Lord Granville and the Russian envoy Pozzo di Borgo with just the right blend of charm and flirtation. "We shared so much in Brussels. I've confided things to her I haven't shared with anyone. And yet there are times I feel there are whole sides of her I don't know at all."

Harry's gaze narrowed as he too looked at Suzanne. "That's true of most people, I expect. And Suzanne's had a more difficult life than most of us."

"But I'm-"

"Not everyone is as wonderfully straightforward as you."

"Harry."

"It's true. You have a wonderful, dangerous knack for doing what seems right to you and d.a.m.n the consequences."

"I don't-"

"Why else would you have run off with George Chase in the teeth of society?"

Cordelia bit her lip. Talking, even thinking, about George was painful. But she understood why Harry didn't shy away from mentioning him. Ignoring him would make it worse. "That was because-"

"You loved Chase, or thought you did, and that came first. It was more important than anything."

"Including my marriage."

"Well, yes." Harry returned her gaze without recrimination or any hint of softness. "You weren't in love with me at the time. And afterwards you didn't hide away-"

"No," she said, the bitterness back in her throat, "I fairly flaunted my damaged reputation."

"You have a great knack for being yourself, Cordy. It's the same knack that had you in Brussels, caring for your bitter fool of a husband when all common sense dictated you should be elsewhere. And that made you jump in to help Suzanne and Malcolm with their investigation, whatever the consequences to your own reputation."

"What you're saying is, I blunder straight into trouble. Suzanne's much more sensible. But she's not the sort to pretend simply because of what society thinks."

"No," Harry agreed. "But I think her life has taught her to foresee consequences."

Cordelia's gaze returned to her friend, now accepting a gla.s.s of champagne from Pozzo di Borgo with a smile that held just the right flirtatious edge for a beautiful woman who was also a virtuous wife. "I just hate to think-"

"What?"

"Of her hiding anything from Malcolm." Worry bit Cordelia in the throat. Suzanne and Malcolm had been an inspiration to her in Brussels when she took the seemingly impossible step of reconciling with Harry. Perhaps she needed to believe in the solidity of their happiness to believe she and Harry had a chance at making their fragile, wonderful reunion work.

"Don't you think we all hide things from the people we love?" Harry said in a soft voice.

Her fingers tightened on his arm, for she feared he was right. "But-"

"Malcolm understands his wife. Whatever's between them, he understands its limitations."

Cordelia cast a quick glance up at him. "I hate the thought of limitations."

Harry squeezed her fingers. "That's what makes you you, my darling." He looked down at her for a moment, his gaze still and neutral. "Did it go all right with Edmond Talleyrand?"

She drew a breath. Perhaps she had been worrying over Malcolm and Suzanne's relations.h.i.+p to avoid having to concentrate on her own. "Yes. Edmond was . . . Edmond. But he mentioned Bertrand was Louise Carnot's lover, which gives Suzanne a new lead."

Harry nodded. "And?"

"I didn't say 'and.' "

"No, but it's in your eyes. Not that you need tell me of course."

Cordelia closed her fan and ran her fingers over the silk and ebony. "Edmond's not-That is, he isn't the only-"

"The only one of your former lovers in Paris? I wouldn't have thought so. A matter of mathematical odds."

She looked up at him with a surprised laugh, torn between amus.e.m.e.nt, exasperation, and the sharp bite of guilt. "d.a.m.n you, Harry-"

"You needn't tell me who else if you'd rather not." His voice was level, but he seemed to be choosing his words with a trifle more care than usual. "I've no objection to hearing, but there's no need to drag out tiresome details simply to satisfy some urge of confession."

"No, I wouldn't-But it seems it may have to do with Malcolm and Suzanne's investigation. And if you hear any gossip-"

"Who?" Harry asked, in a voice of carefully calibrated disinterest.

She drew a breath and looked steadily into the eyes of the man she loved. "Gui Laclos."

Harry considered for a moment. "Yes, I can see how that could touch on the investigation. I saw you and Suzanne talking to him earlier, didn't I?"

"Were you-"

"I wasn't spying on you. But it's difficult for me not to be aware of you. It always has been."

She flushed. "Gui came up to me. So I told Suzanne, and then of course she had questions."

"I never knew him well, but he strikes me as having more wit than Edmond Talleyrand."

"Yes. And he's a nicer person." She forced her gaze to stay on Harry's face. "He wasn't-I liked him, but it never meant anything-Oh, poison, that makes me sound horrid. It never meant more than a fortnight's diversion, on either side. I wasn't looking for more. I didn't want to feel more. I didn't think it was possible to feel more."

He kept his gaze steady on her face. Resolutely honest and yet barricaded. "What was between us was over. You can't betray vows that are already broken."

"I was the one who'd broken them."

"I walked away." His voice turned rough. It was an admission he hadn't made before, even to her.

She touched his arm. "You didn't-"

"Think you had the least desire for me to stay? No, that's true. But it's also true I was afraid to fight for you. Easier to walk away and d.a.m.n the world to h.e.l.l than face the messy consequences. And then I left you to raise our daughter alone."

She drew a breath that cut through her. "That was because-"

"Because I didn't know if I was her father? But having given her my name, I was. I realized that in Brussels. Ignoring Livia is one of the things for which I'll never forgive myself."

She shook her head. "You shouldn't-"

"Berate myself now? That applies to you as well, sweetheart. We can only move forwards." He regarded her for a moment. "For what it's worth, the few times I sought consolation in the years we were apart, it didn't mean more than a momentary escape, either."

Her chest constricted beneath her corset laces. Not that she'd thought Harry had been celibate in the years they'd been apart. But she didn't like thinking of him with another woman. Which was absurd. She could lay no claim to him in those years. "I never thought-"

"That I was chastely pining? That would be a bit too clean and romantic."

Which perhaps was why he had told her. Not to punish her, but to even out the field between them.

"It's now that matters," he said. He slid his hand down her arm to grip her own and drew her onto the dance floor.

She stepped into his arms. She knew he was right. Save that it wasn't just now that mattered. She needed to be confident of the future.