The Paris Affair Part 19

"No. Only Bertrand's parents did. They never told Gaby. I'm sure they didn't tell Gui. Other than his parents, only I knew."

"And his masters."

"Yes." Rupert's frown deepened. He wasn't as used as Malcolm to the idea of finding betrayal on one's own side. "But as I told you, I don't know of any particular enemies he had."

"Did he ever talk to you about the Comte de Carnot?"

Rupert s.h.i.+fted on the ground. "Bertrand was friendly with his wife."

"Bertrand let it be rumored that he was Louise Carnot's lover so her husband wouldn't learn about her affair with Emile Sevigny. It's all right, I know you're trying to protect Louise, but she confessed the whole to Suzanne. She was quite frank. Also concerned that her husband might have had something to do with Bertrand's death."

"Bertrand was very fond of Louise. He always said he could handle anything Carnot tried. But for Carnot to have framed Bertrand, he'd have had to know Bertrand was reporting to the British."

"Surprising," Malcolm said. "But not impossible."

Rupert stared at him. "I'll keep my temper in check. I won't do anything rash. I won't impede your investigation. But in turn-I want you to tell me the truth. I want to know who did this. I know it won't bring Bertrand back, but I owe him that much at least."

Malcolm, thinking of his own reaction to Tatiana's death, could only nod.

Dorothee fingered an ivory kid glove edged with cerise ribbon. "This could be quite dramatic with my new crepe. I think it's the right red." Her fingers stilled on the glove. "It seems horrid to be talking about clothes. Worse than in Vienna somehow."

"We still have events we have to dress for." Suzanne cast a glance at Colin, asleep in the baby carriage Malcolm had specially designed to make it easier to take him about with them. Colin had his arm curled round Figaro, the stuffed bear they'd given him in Brussels for his second birthday.

"Poor Princess Tatiana." Dorothee picked up a pair of wrist-length gloves of dove-colored kid. "When I think how I disliked her in Vienna for your sake. And now all I can think is how different her life would have been if my father had acknowledged her."

"Tatiana Kirsanova had a taste for adventure. That wouldn't have changed."

"But she would have had security. She wouldn't have had to be so grasping." Dorothee gave a wry smile. "It's easier to be a nice person when one doesn't want for anything. Perhaps she wouldn't have had to hide her child away."

"Willie did."

Dorothee's delicate brows drew together. "I still find it hard to look my mother in the face, knowing what she did to Willie."

"It can't have been easy for your mother, either." Gustav Armfelt, the man who seduced the eighteen-year-old Wilhelmine, had been her mother's lover for several years.

Dorothee drew the gloves through her fingers. "No, I know that. But to have pressured Willie to give the child away so Willie may never see her again-"

Suzanne cast another quick glance at her son. When a marriage ended in separation or divorce, the father almost always retained custody of the children. One of her greatest fears about her past coming to light was the possibility of losing Colin. Tonight's rescue of Manon Caret hung before her, a challenge and a risk.

Dorothee set the gloves down abruptly. "I'm not in the mood for trifles. Let's go."

They left the glovemaker's and stepped out into the bustle of the Boulevard des Italiens. Sunlight spilled onto the broad, cobbled expanse of the boulevard, a marked contrast to most Paris streets, where the light leached through a narrow sliver between tall, close-set buildings. Fiacres, cabriolets, wooden carts, and crested private carriages rattled over the road. Suzanne and Dorothee threaded their way along the pedestrian walkway in a throng of ladies in muslins and silks, ribboned bonnets and flower-trimmed hats, and gentlemen with high, gleaming s.h.i.+rt points and fas.h.i.+onably cut coats.

And of course soldiers. Fair-haired Prussians in coats of blue or brown or green. Cossacks in short red jackets and billowing trousers. Dark-mustached Hungarian grenadiers in fur caps. Dutch-Belgians in blue or green. And a sea of red-coated Englishmen, here and there relieved by the blue of a dragoon, the dark green of a rifleman, the kilt of a Highland regiment. Colin wakened, pushed himself up in the baby carriage, and glanced from side to side with wide eyes.

Dorothee gathered up her French-worked skirts as they brushed past three ladies with shopping parcels, relaxing in wooden chairs on the pavement hired out from a white-haired man in a worn black coat. "Karl wants me to go back to Vienna with him," she said, her gaze fixed on two British dragoons up ahead.

Suzanne swung her gaze to her friend. Dorothee's delicate profile was set as stone beneath the quilted yellow satin of her poke bonnet. "Paris is difficult for you."

"Yes." Dorothee's gloved fingers moved over the carved ivory handle of her parasol. "It's odd, I'm happier than I was before Vienna. I used to be so desperately lonely. Vienna changed that."

"You have Karl," Suzanne said. It was almost a question.

Dorothee hesitated a fraction of a second. "Yes."

A husky voice drifted across the street. A ballad singer in a flowered shawl stood on the opposite walkway singing a Gluck aria. Eurydice lamenting for her husband.

"Edmond never used to seem to pay the least attention to what I did," Dorothee said. "I'd swear he didn't even know where I was half the time. Whom I spoke with or danced with. Whom I slept with or the fact that I slept alone."

Suzanne took a biscuit from her reticule and leaned forwards to give it to Colin. "There's nothing like a wife's infidelity to arouse a husband's interest."

"He's never paid so much attention to me the entire time we've been married. Now when I see the way he looks at Karl-"

"Doro." Suzanne laid a hand on her friend's arm. "You can't blame yourself for Edmond's idiocy."

"Isn't a wife supposed to be able to manage her husband?" Dorothee shook her head.

"A wife shouldn't have to manage her husband."

"Ma chere Suzanne, you're talking like a revolutionary."

"Dix sols pour chacun!" "Sept sols seulement, madame!" Shouts from open-air tables offering bottles of scent, carved wooden toys, gaudy gla.s.s jewelry, and all manner of trifles rose above the strains of Gluck.

"In Vienna Karl and I could go about as a couple quite openly," Dorothee said, "as my sister Jeanne does with Monsieur Borel. Without fear of Edmond. I'd feel at home there, in a way I don't think I ever will in Paris."

They moved past a cafe. The smell of coffee and fresh-baked bread, roast meat and wine drifted into the street. "And yet?" Suzanne asked.

Dorothee bent over the baby carriage and touched her fingers to Colin's hair. Colin grinned up at her. "Tante Doro."

"Mon cher." Dorothee straightened up. "My little boys. Edmond would lay claim to them."

A chill cut through Suzanne's jaconet gown and twill silk mantle. "Children are considered a father's property."

A thin-faced girl darted through the crowd and ran up to them. "Que voulez-vous, madame?" She reached into the basket over her arm and held up a handful of toothpicks. "Deux sols, madame. Mon pauvre pere, il est malade."

She looked no more than eight. The age Suzanne's sister had been when she lost her life. Suzanne reached into her reticule and pressed some coins into the girl's hand. "Get yourself a decent meal," she said in French.

"I doubt her father really is ill," Dorothee said.

"No, but she looks underfed." For a moment, Suzanne was back alone and hungry on the streets of Leon. And she at least had been fifteen. A world away from the court of Courland, where Dorothee had grown up with a private orchestra and their own theatre company and house parties overflowing with royal guests.

"Willie and Princess Tatiana had to give up their children," Dorothee said. "I don't know how they did it. But they were babies. They'd barely had a chance to know them. When I think of my boys-"

Suzanne leaned down to brush biscuit crumbs from Colin's s.h.i.+rt. Colin grinned at her. "It's every mother's nightmare."

"Perdita!" Colin's gaze fastened on a wooden horse in the stall they were pa.s.sing.

"Yes, it does look like Daddy's horse," Suzanne said. "But you already have two horses-"

"There's always room for another horse in a stable." Dorothee opened the steel clasp on her reticule.

"Doro-," Suzanne protested.

"No, please, I'd like him to have it." Dorothee purchased the horse and gave it to Colin, who curled his hands round it with delight. "It's lovely at this age when the smallest thing can make them happy," she said, watching Colin turn the horse over in his small hands. "One must enjoy that."

"You're a good honorary aunt, Doro. And a good mother."

"I don't know about that. I often feel as though I'm fumbling to find the right way to go on."

"Doesn't everyone? I know I do. I wasn't even sure how to hold a baby when they first put Colin in my arms." For a moment she could feel the small weight of his newborn body cradled against her, his limbs squirming, his small head bobbing about, so insubstantial and yet at the same time so tangible it sent a shock through her. And then she saw Malcolm sitting on the edge of the bed, drawn back a little as though he feared to intrude, yet looking at both of them with an expression that cut her soul in two.

"You make it look effortless," Dorothee said.

"If so, it's only because I'm a good actress."

A sizzling sound cut the air. They moved round a crowd surrounding a man frying sausages in a pan. "Some couples are able to come to an amicable arrangement over children," Suzanne said. "If you could find a way to share the boys with Edmond-"

"I can't imagine that," Dorothee said. "But even then-"

She broke off. Suzanne heard the trouble in her friend's voice even before she turned her head to see the line of worry between Doro's delicate brows. They moved past a boy polis.h.i.+ng boots. The earnest voice of a young man discoursing on Descartes washed over them. "There are other considerations that would keep you in Paris?" Suzanne asked in a soft voice.

Dorothee frowned. "Vienna changed so much for me. I never thought I fit in as a girl in Courland. The sallow little younger sister who trailed after Willie and Jeanne and Pauline. I never felt I could compete with my dazzling sisters. Or with Maman. And G.o.d knows I didn't fit into Parisian society as a bride. I went tongue-tied whenever I went into company. It was as though I came alive in Vienna. Among new society I didn't have the baggage of my childhood hanging over me. I could be a different person. Karl-Karl changed a lot for me. But it wasn't just him. I was able to use my mind as I hadn't since my girlhood lessons."

"You helped Monsieur Talleyrand with communiques and correspondence," Suzanne said, watching her friend carefully.

"He genuinely seemed to listen to me and value my opinion." Dorothee's eyes lit in a way they hadn't all day. "He said I was an invaluable help, and I actually believed him, though I'm sure it was partly just that he was being kind." She looked at Suzanne as Suzanne smiled. "Yes, I know, most people would laugh at the idea of Monsieur Talleyrand being kind, but he is kind to me."

"I know he is," Suzanne said. "I've seen it."

Dorothee turned her gaze away. They had neared another stall. It contained engravings, but not the views of Paris and copies of old masters displayed elsewhere. These pictures showed men and women in a variety of positions. A number of which Suzanne had attempted, though some appeared physically impossible. The artist was not without talent, and Suzanne could not deny the effect quickened her blood. "The French are so wonderfully frank about these things," she said.

Dorothee's gaze darted to Colin.

"Much better not to make a fuss over it," Suzanne said. "As though there's something wrong. It's a perfectly natural act after all." She cast another glance at the engravings. "At least most of them are."

Color flooded Dorothee's cheeks beneath the brim of her poke bonnet. "I didn't grow up an innocent. Not in Courland. I never thought-I hadn't-It's not that I was ignorant, but I didn't understand what all the fuss was. I had few illusions about fidelity, but there seemed no point. I couldn't imagine enjoying-Until Karl."

Suzanne swallowed. It had been that way for her in the brothel. A way of survival, a game at best, but not something she'd enjoyed. Not until later. "Learning that is worth a great deal."

"Yes, but it's not-"

"Enough to build a life on? Not on its own."

"I love Karl or I could never be his mistress. But-" Dorothee cast a quick glance about. "Oh, the devil, I'm tired. Let's go into a cafe."

She said nothing further until they had repaired to the nearest cafe and were seated by a sparkling gla.s.s window, supplied with cups of cafe au lait and a mug for milk for Colin. Dorothee stared into her frothing cup. "I think my uncle would miss me if I went to Vienna."

Suzanne took a sip from her own cup. "I'm sure he would."

Dorothee picked up the silver spoon and frowned at it. "I'm not blind or deaf. I know what people are saying. That he's besotted with me. That he's lost track of the negotiations with Britain and Russia and the other powers. As though personal feelings could ever make Talleyrand lose track of anything."

"No. Though I do think you've upset his equilibrium more than has happened to him in many years."

Dorothee fixed her gaze out the window. Two ladies in flowered bonnets were pa.s.sing on the pedestrian walkway, accompanied by two British infantry officers. "Some people say I've been his mistress since Vienna." She cast a quick glance at Suzanne. "I'm not. We've never-"

"I didn't think you had."

Dorothee studied her with a mixture of relief and curiosity. "No?"

"One notices such a thing about one's friends."

Dorothee reached for her cup again and blew on the steam. "Not that-It's not the same as Karl, but I don't think of Monsieur Talleyrand as-I don't precisely think of him as an uncle," she said in a rush, not meeting Suzanne's gaze.

"He's not your uncle. He's your estranged husband's uncle. He's no blood connection to you at all."

Dorothee took a careful sip of cafe au lait. "No. He isn't." She set down the cup. "At times I feel years older than Karl for all he's more experienced than I am in many ways. I wonder sometimes-"

"If you'll outgrow him?" Suzanne picked up the mug of milk and held it so Colin could take a careful sip.

"No. Yes. Perhaps. I think Talleyrand will fascinate me forever." Dorothee hunched her shoulders, as though she felt a chill despite the warmth of the day. "I feel so safe with him. And yet sometimes the way he looks at me almost frightens me."

Malcolm's gaze, in rare moments of naked vulnerability, shot through Suzanne's memory. "It can be scary, being cared about that much."

"Yes. That is, I don't know that he-But it feels that way."

Dorothee picked up the spoon again and turned it between her fingers. "I worry about Talleyrand if I go to Vienna. But sometimes I think if I don't leave him now, I'll never be able to do so."

"Do you want to leave?"

Dorothee looked at her with stricken eyes. "I'm not sure."

Suzanne stared at the swans floating on the surface of the pond in the Jardin des Tuileries. "I should have guessed sooner. About Bertrand Laclos and Rupert Caruthers."

"In the end you did guess," Malcolm said. He was sitting in a chair beside her.

"Not until I talked to Louise."

"I don't see how you could have worked it out sooner."

"The way Gabrielle Caruthers described her marriage. This makes so much sense of it. But at the time I merely thought-"

"That they were like us?" Malcolm asked, his voice soft and neutral.

She swung her gaze to him. "How could you-"

"Because I thought the same thing when Rupert was talking to me about his marriage. English-Scots-man comes to the rescue of penniless emigree and offers her the protection of his name and fortune. A pleasing fairy tale. Only he can't share himself as easily as he can share his position and worldly possessions."

Her throat closed. "Malcolm-"