The Paris Affair Part 30

He put up his hands to cover her own. "That's foolishness, ma belle. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. If I hadn't-"

"It's not the time for regrets, mon amour."

He ran a hand over her hair. His fingers trembled against her scalp. "You're a remarkable woman, Juliette."

"Hardly." She looked into his eyes, seeing the man she'd met ten years ago in Cafe Belles Lettres, a sketch pad in his lap, a notebook at his elbow. "But I think I'm strong enough to face the past. And I think the man I fell in love with is as well."

He looked down at her for a long moment. She could feel his breath warm on her face and words of acquiescence trembling on his lips. Then he wrenched away from her and strode across the room. "I know what I owe you, Juliette. I'd give my life for you. But I can't do this. Don't ask it of me."

Lord Dewhurst looked up at Malcolm from behind the mahogany and bra.s.s of his desk. His gaze hardened. "If you've come to make more d.a.m.ned accusations, Rannoch, I have nothing to say to you. Rupert can talk to me to my face if he wishes."

"Rupert didn't send me." Malcolm closed the door and advanced into the office. It smelled of good ink, old leather, and older brandy and was heavy with gilt and expensive fabric. "I don't believe he has any wish to talk to you at all."

"If it's about Laclos-"

"It's not." Malcolm stopped three paces from the desk. "At least not about Bertrand."

Dewhurst's brows lifted. "What the devil-"

"Nine years ago, you were behind a plot to bring down Napoleon."

Dewhurst's gaze flickered to the side, then narrowed. "We were at war with France at the time. d.a.m.n it, if we could have removed Bonaparte-"

"I didn't come here to argue the morality of covert operations. Wellington may have caviled at shooting Bonaparte on the field at Waterloo, but this was hardly the only plot our government financed to bring him down. You sent etienne Laclos as your emissary."

Dewhurst grimaced. "etienne was an able young man. A bit too much of an idealist, perhaps, but he'd have grown out of that. It was tragic what happened. Why do you care?"

"Because I've just learned that Antoine Rivere was his confederate."

Shock shot through Dewhurst's eyes. Shock but not surprise. "Who told you that?"

"Are you saying it isn't true?"

Dewhurst gave a short laugh. "You wouldn't believe me if I did."

"No. That's true enough."

Dewhurst pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "d.a.m.n it, Malcolm, you can't think-"

"I think anything to do with Rivere may have a bearing on why he was killed."

Dewhurst spun away.

"I didn't realize Rivere reported to you in his work as a British agent," Malcolm said.

"He didn't." The words seemed to be dragged from Dewhurst's throat. "He reported to Carfax. Carfax suggested him for the mission."

"So you and Carfax devised the plot against Bonaparte together?"

"Has there been any British intelligence mission in the past thirty years that Carfax hasn't known about?"

"A point. Did the plot start with you or him?"

"As it happens it started with etienne." Dewhurst leaned against a marble-topped pier table that supported a candelabrum and a globe. Some of the tension left his shoulders. He seemed to almost enjoy reliving the planning of the mission. "His cousin had written to him that Bonaparte could be vulnerable."

"His cousin? Not Gui?"

"No, Gui had been sent to England long since. Christian. His father was the third Laclos brother. That branch of the family had stayed in France and managed to survive the Terror. In fact, Christian was employed in the foreign ministry. He and etienne corresponded secretly. Christian wrote to etienne that he'd been sent to Malmaison with papers and it was amazing there wasn't more security. etienne repeated it to me. I don't think either he or Christian saw the operational implications."

"But you did."

"I could hardly fail to do so. It isn't often something drops into one's lap like that. I went to Carfax. He suggested Rivere would be a good source and that he was practical enough to keep the two Laclos cousins in line."

Malcolm moved round the side of the desk to where he could once again face Dewhurst directly. "So you packed etienne off to Paris with British gold."

"Naturally we funded the mission."

"Was anyone else involved besides the three of them?"

"Not to my knowledge." Dewhurst flicked a piece of dried wax off the candelabrum. "It seemed safer to keep it small."

"What went wrong?"

Dewhurst's brows drew together. "I don't know. Someone betrayed them."

"They didn't make a mistake and betray themselves?"

"That's what I thought at first. etienne and Christian were both untried. But they'd managed quite well until that point. Everything was proceeding apace. Then all h.e.l.l broke loose."

"But etienne was the only one caught."

"He didn't break and betray his comrades. A splendid young man, as I said."

"And perhaps in this case being an idealist served him well."

"Perhaps." Dewhurst frowned at the dried wax on the marble of the table. "There was one thing."

"What?"

"The gold we'd sent with etienne to fund the mission. It disappeared."

"Into someone's pockets?"

"One can't but wonder."

"Rivere?"

Dewhurst swept the wax fragments into his hand, then crossed the room to dump them into a bin beside the desk. "If so, there's no record of him ever spending it. You didn't find it when you searched his rooms, did you?"

Malcolm shook his head.

"There's no record of Christian Laclos spending it, either."

Malcolm hesitated, weighing risks and rewards, then said, "Did you know etienne was involved with Tatiana Kirsanova?"

Dewhurst straightened up from the bin and stared at him. "The Russian princess? The one who was murdered in Vienna?"

Malcolm swallowed. "Yes. She was also an agent."

"For us?"

"For Talleyrand. He sent her to work with us in the Peninsula."

"Talleyrand sent a French agent to work with us during the war-"

"She wasn't a French agent, she was his personal agent. And he was out of power and making overtures to the British at the time. But T-Princess Tatiana also struck out on her own and worked for the highest bidder."

"You think she was working with etienne?"

"I don't know. It's possible she was merely his lover. Though Princess Tatiana was rarely merely anything."

Dewhurst tapped his fingers on the desktop. "I never heard that etienne had a mistress. Though it's not the sort of thing he'd have communicated with me about. Do you think it was Tatiana Kirsanova who betrayed the plot?"

That possibility had, of course, occurred to Malcolm from the first, but he kept his face impa.s.sive. "There's nothing to suggest that."

"If she's as good as you say there wouldn't be." Dewhurst leaned against the desk, facing Malcolm. "Someone betrayed them. You say Princess Tatiana was Talleyrand's creature. Perhaps he put her up to the affair to keep tabs on the conspirators."

"a.s.suming he wanted to protect Napoleon. At that point in Talleyrand's career, it's difficult to say what he wanted when it came to the emperor."

"Or perhaps someone else put her up to it. The woman was obviously an unscrupulous adventuress-" Dewhurst bit the words back, though Malcolm doubted the other man could have actually seen his nails digging into his palms. "Forgot the talk about the two of you. But d.a.m.n it, Rannoch, even if she was your mistress you can't have illusions about her."

"No. That is, no, she wasn't my mistress, and no, I'm quite free of illusions where Tatiana Kirsanova is concerned." Though he wasn't entirely sure that was true.

"Well then."

"She hid etienne Laclos the night the plot was discovered."

"But he was caught all the same." Dewhurst rested his hands behind him on the desk, a man in command of the setting and the situation. "Perhaps she led the conspirators right to him. Hiding him would be a good way of making sure she knew where he was."

That, of course, had also occurred to Malcolm when St. Gilles first told them the story. "And reportedly she was devastated by his death."

"She wouldn't be the first woman to feign grief over a lover. Or perhaps she really did feel it. Never held much call with it myself, but agents have been known to be struck by guilt. I'd have thought you knew quite a bit about that."

"As it happens." Far more than Tatiana, actually. But even Tania hadn't been entirely immune to twinges of guilt. Malcolm remembered the suspicious streaks of damp on her face after a young French lieutenant she'd seduced had died in an ambush in Spain. An ambush she had instigated.

"Nothing to be done about it, I suppose," Dewhurst said. "She's dead and beyond retribution. But I'm relieved to have the mystery solved."

"If it is solved."

Dewhurst shot him a look. "Not as free of illusions as you claim, are you, boy?"

"Perhaps. I've also learned it can be a mistake to accept the obvious explanation."

The scent of orange trees wafted from the orangerie as a breeze rippled across the Jardin du Luxembourg. Gabrielle Caruthers sat with her sketch pad by the Medici Fountain, Marie de' Medici's fanciful re-creation of Renaissance Florentine style, set in a statue-filled grotto. Gabrielle's little boy twirled a top nearby under the watchful eye of his nurse. Gabrielle looked up at Suzanne and Colin's approach and to Suzanne's relief smiled. "Mrs. Rannoch. And Colin. Would you like to play with Stephen? I know he'd be glad of company his own age."

Colin grinned and ran forwards. He and Stephen were soon happily engaged taking turns with the top. "It's a gift to make friends easily," Gabrielle said. "I don't think I ever quite had it."

"Colin seems to take everything in stride," Suzanne said, settling her muslin skirts as she sank into a chair beside Gabrielle. "I think it's a happy side effect of the unhappy fact of spending his early years in a war-torn country. It rea.s.sures me that we weren't horribly selfish to drag him about with us."

"Children are amazing." Gabrielle rested her chin in her hand, watching the boys. "Whatever becomes of a marriage, one knows one will always have them."

Suzanne had thought much the same herself on more than one occasion. What she hadn't antic.i.p.ated properly was how Malcolm's tie to Colin would tie her to Malcolm as well. "It's a bond I had no conception of," she said. "Not until Colin was born."

Gabrielle turned her head and looked into Suzanne's eyes, her own clear and open in the afternoon sunlight. "You know, don't you? About Rupert and Bertrand?"

Suzanne returned the other woman's gaze. "I'm afraid murder investigations dredge up all sorts of secrets. Your husband told you?"

Gabrielle nodded, as though she didn't trust herself to speak.

"I'm glad he told you. But it must have been a shock."

Gabrielle gave a dry laugh. "Everyone keeps behaving as though I'm a sheltered girl still in the schoolroom. It's not as though I've never heard of such things. To own the truth, once Rupert told me I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before."

Suzanne thought of the weeks last autumn when she'd been convinced Tatiana Kirsanova was Malcolm's mistress. "It can't have been easy."

"Easier in some ways than having a woman as a rival. At least now I understand why he never-" Gabrielle swallowed. The pulse beat rapidly in her throat just below the blue satin ribbons that fastened her bonnet. "Why he never could desire me."

Suzanne gripped her hands together. That at least was something she had never found lacking in her relations.h.i.+p with Malcolm. For a moment, the startling intimacy of her wedding night was vivid in her mind. She had been playacting, years of experience subsumed into the role of a girl who had known only violence, yet she had rarely experienced desire that was so honest. "You were caught in an intolerable situation."

"That's what Rupert said. But knowing about him and Bertrand doesn't change my grat.i.tude to Rupert for coming to my rescue." Gabrielle looked down at her hands, ungloved and smeared with pencil. "I'll own at times thinking it over I've been angry. I smashed one of my scent bottles, and I nearly broke a jewelry casket Rupert gave me for our first anniversary. But even then I was angrier at the situation than at Rupert. He's as trapped as I am, and he's actually been faithful to his vows. I think because what he felt for Bertrand was so strong he can't bring himself to seek such intimacy again. I only wish-" She drew a breath, as though parched for something she could not name. "I could see the depth of what he felt for Bertrand. I should like to experience that myself, not the pale counterfeit I found with Antoine."

Suzanne had often felt the same, looking at David and Simon and other couples who shared startling intimacy. Now, at moments, she wondered if perhaps she and Malcolm had it themselves. "It's a rare thing," she said. "And something not many find in their marriages."

"But you did."

"Perhaps."

Gabrielle looked up as her son gave a sudden shriek of delight. "Rupert won't let his father see Stephen now. I can still scarcely take it in. That Lord Dewhurst was behind Bertrand's death-"

"You were fond of your father-in-law?"

Gabrielle twisted a stray blond ringlet round her finger. "He was always kind to me. It was rare to find an English aristocrat so welcoming to an emigree. Now I understand that it wasn't me at all. He was relieved to see Rupert married to a woman, any woman." She swallowed and jabbed the ringlet back beneath the chip straw brim of her bonnet. "I hate that I helped his plans along, however unwittingly."

"Your cousin etienne had worked for him as well."

"And went off to his death on Dewhurst's orders. No, I suppose there I wrong Dewhurst, much as I despise him. etienne was eager enough-filled with thoughts of honor and dreams of glory. I'll never understand men. Women are much more practical."

Suzanne nodded, though she knew full well what it was to be driven by a cause. "Did you correspond with etienne at all after he went to France?"