The Paris Affair Part 33

"It's never been your job to protect me from anything."

"Can you convince Malcolm to stop the investigation?"

She tightened her fingers. "I wouldn't."

"No, you wouldn't, would you?" Raoul gave a faint smile. "We'll have to make Fouche think the investigation has stopped."

"It's not your problem to solve."

"Of course it is. I got you into this."

"I got myself into it. You always said we had to extricate ourselves from trouble." Though Raoul had rescued her more than once in the past, most notably from a group of bandits who had been within hours of killing her. She'd never forget the harsh tone of his voice or the gentleness of his hands lifting her onto his horse as she sagged into unconsciousness.

"I could have-"

"Stopped it?" She looked up at him. Despite her tightly clenched hands, she was shaking. Terror chilled her blood and scalded her insides.

His fingers tensed, as though he would touch her, but he didn't move. "I won't let Fouche destroy your marriage, querida."

"You can't promise that, Raoul. Not even you." She drew a breath, forcing the air from her lungs. "Perhaps I should tell Malcolm."

"For G.o.d's sake, Suzanne. A grand sacrifice won't solve this."

"As long as he doesn't know, I'm a liability. People can use it to force my hand-"

"No one's forced you to do anything yet, have they?"

"I've been lucky."

"You've been clever and resilient. Querida . . ." He hesitated, and she sensed that once again he forced himself not to touch her hand. "If Malcolm knew, you'd just put the risk of someone using the information onto him. He'd have his enemies threatening his wife to manipulate him. And he's not as trained to combat manipulation as you are."

She met Raoul's gaze, forcing herself to look into a bleak future. "If Malcolm knew, I wouldn't be his wife anymore."

"Don't talk foolishness. You can't think-"

"You can't seriously think Malcolm could know the truth and still want to go on living with me." She couldn't quite picture what would happen, but she could see the love fading from his eyes. The love she had barely begun to realize was there.

Raoul returned her gaze, his own at once gentle and uncompromising. "I don't know. But I know he wouldn't let the mother of his child and the woman with whom he's shared his life face arrest and imprisonment. Whatever was between you in private, I'm quite certain he'd do everything in his power to protect you."

She opened her mouth to protest, but for all the fears roiling inside her, she knew Raoul was right. Malcolm took his responsibilities seriously. Even if he knew the truth, even if he hated her, he'd consider her his responsibility. They might not share a bed or even a roof, but he'd risk his career, his reputation, even his own safety to protect her.

"I'll handle Fouche," Raoul said.

"You can't-"

"I may not be the man I once was, but I think I'm still a match for Fouche."

"It's not your-"

"My dear girl. Malcolm isn't the only one who takes his responsibilities seriously."

Gui staggered into the pa.s.sage before Cordelia could reach his side. She followed and found him being sick into a Sevres vase on a console table. She touched her fingers to his shoulder. "Gui."

He started and spun round. His face had a greenish cast and his eyes were hollow. "Sorry. You know me. A tendency to overindulge."

"I don't remember it hitting you this hard."

"I'm not as young as I once was."

"Rubbish. You can't say that without making me feel old, and you're much too gallant for that."

He gave a faint smile. She took his arm and steered him to a settee. He put a hand on the gilded back and lowered himself carefully. "Aren't you concerned for your reputation?" he asked with a glint of the old Gui.

"It's already in tatters."

"And your husband?"

She swallowed. "Harry's understanding."

"I met him at the Salon des Etrangers. From my observation he's very much in love with you."

"My dear." The raillery in her voice sounded forced to her own ears. "I didn't think you were given to such romantic fancies."

"I'm not. But I'm also not entirely un.o.bservant." A smile drove some of the shadows from his face. "I'm happy for you, Cordy. You deserve it."

"I don't think I deserve it in the least. But I know how fortunate I am."

"You're too hard on yourself."

"On the contrary. I let myself wallow in bad behavior for far too long." She studied his face, searching for the right opening. But with Gui, directness had always seemed best. "Gui. Harry told me you were seen at Antoine Rivere's rooms two nights before he was killed."

Fear shot through his gaze, but he was too clever to deny it. "I should have realized. A man who trusts his wife would confide in her. Did he tell you I'd gone to talk to Rivere about gambling debts?"

"He said that was what you'd told him."

"But he didn't believe me."

"It's his job to ask questions."

"And yours?"

Cordelia swallowed. "Gui-I can't claim to know the workings of your mind. But it's evident you're in torment."

He gave a brief laugh. "Now who's using overblown language?"

"That's just it. I don't think it is overblown." She looked into his haunted eyes. "What's Fremont?"

For a moment he went absolutely still. Then he laughed again. "For G.o.d's sake, Cordy. You're not placing credence in my midnight ravings years ago."

"Yes. I think it was important."

He pushed himself to his feet, then dropped back down on the settee, his head in his hands.

Cordelia touched his back again. She could feel the lines of tension through the superfine of his coat. "For years I didn't like myself very much. There are still times when I don't. But I'm trying. I'm trying to be someone my daughter can be proud of. Someone my husband can love. Someone I can like myself. I didn't want to confront my past. I was running from it when you met me. In Brussels circ.u.mstances forced me to face it or I don't know that I ever would have. But it was only that that let me move forwards."

"You're romanticizing commonplace dissatisfaction."

"There's nothing commonplace about you, Gui."

He shot a look at her. "You think I killed Rivere?"

She swallowed. "No, actually. But I'd like to be able to explain my certainty to Harry and Malcolm."

"Sometimes confronting the past doesn't solve problems. Sometimes it makes them worse." He stared down at his hands. "And yet it's hard to see how the Laclos family could come to worse straits." He spread his fingers in his lap. He wore a signet ring with the Laclos crest on his right hand. "I used to think it didn't matter so much that I was such a disappointment because my uncle and aunt had etienne and Bertrand. Two sons to be proud of. Poor Oncle Jacques and Tante Amelie. They were nothing but kind to me from the moment I first came to live with them. They never berated me for my exploits. They never had the least idea they harbored a cuckoo in their nest."

Cordelia stared at her former lover, not sure she'd heard correctly.

Gui turned his head and met her gaze. His own was level and completely focused. "Fremont is the name I was born with. Victor Fremont. The name I bore until I was fifteen and brought to England in the guise of Guilaume de Laclos."

CHAPTER 23.

Cordelia had the sense she'd tumbled into a hole far deeper than anything she'd imagined. She studied the face of the man she called Gui Laclos. She'd known he harbored some secret. But she'd never doubted his ident.i.ty. She knew few people were wholly what they seemed on the surface. But their names, the history written down in the family Bible, the portrait galleries of ancestors, the lists of those enrolled at Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge, those belonging to White's and Brooks's and Boodle's. Those were constants one never questioned, the warp and weft of her world. "You're-"

"My mother was Marianne Fremont, a nursery maid in the Laclos household. The household of Georges Laclos, the comte's younger brother, that is. The second of the three sons in that generation." He spoke in the quick, dispa.s.sionate tone he might use to recount the plot of a novel. "Apparently trusted and valued by the family, because when she married one of the grooms the Lacloses gave them a cottage on their estate in Provence. A short time later I came along. My mother continued to help out in the nursery, and I played with young Gui and Gabrielle. I have only the most shadowy memories. The nursery walls were a pale apple green. There was a wooden horse with a yellow mane that I liked to ride. Gui"- his voice caught for a moment on the name-"and I used to pretend we were musketeers. Gaby used to ask me to read to her."

"You would have been-"

"Five. Gaby was in Paris with her uncle and aunt when the chateau was attacked. She'd had a chill and they wanted her near the best doctors. I was at the chateau with my mother when the attack happened. The house was set on fire. My mother tried to get Gui and me out. I . . . saw the falling beam that killed both of them." He swallowed, his gaze fastened on a still life of fruit that hung on the opposite wall. "The next instant another piece of timber knocked me out. I came to in the back of a cart, with sacks thrown over me. My father had died in the attack as well, but another groom who was a friend of his smuggled me off to cousins nearby. I lived with them for ten years. That part of my history is true."

"And then? Lord Dewhurst-"

"Lord Dewhurst arrived claiming I was Gui Laclos and he'd come to restore me to my birthright. I protested there was some confusion. Dewhurst persisted. Finally my foster father took me aside and told me not to be a fool. He said this could be the making of me. I'd have a life most could only dream of. That this is what my mother would have wanted for me."

"Gui." Cordelia touched his hand, still struggling to make sense of his revelations. "You were so young. Is it possible-"

"That my memories are distorted and I'm actually Gui Laclos? No," he said in a flat voice. "I was five. I remember my mother and father. I remember the real Gui. I knew I was going along with a lie when I let Dewhurst bring me to England. I've known it all these years."

"You were a child."

"I was fifteen. Boys my age fought and died at Waterloo on both sides." He sc.r.a.ped the toe of his evening shoe over the floorboards. "I didn't realize. What it would be like to be an outsider. An outsider as an emigre and an outsider to the family who took me in. The kinder they were, the more of an outsider I felt."

"And so since you couldn't tell them the truth, you were determined to prove how unworthy you were?"

He turned to her with a twisted smile. "A bit simplistic perhaps. A lot of it was sheer love of indulgence. But there may be a degree of truth in what you say."

"And then etienne and Bertrand were gone-"

"And the cuckoo became the Comte de Laclos's heir. I suppose a revolutionary would approve. But Oncle Jacques would be horrified."

"Everyone knows Caro's husband, William Lamb, is most likely Lord Egremont's son. And Talleyrand as good as acknowledges the Comte de Flahaut."

"But they didn't knowingly pa.s.s themselves off as impostors."

Cordelia pressed her hands over her lap. "Rivere knew?"

"G.o.d knows how. The man had an unholy knack for uncovering secrets."

"What did he want?"

"My influence with Lord Dewhurst to convince the British to get him out of France. He seemed to think as Dewhurst's G.o.dson my pleas would hold some weight." He looked into her eyes. "I was angry. And frightened. I don't deny it. I'd lived with the secret for so long that to hear someone voice it was like the first crack that set my world crumbling. But I didn't kill Rivere. In fact, I told him I'd do what I could with Dewhurst, though I wasn't sure how much weight my pleas would carry."

"I believe you."

"You're far too trusting, Cordy."

"Perhaps. But my instincts rarely fail me." She hesitated, understanding the choices her husband and Malcolm and Suzanne regularly faced. "Gui-"

"You have to tell your husband and the Rannochs. I know. I knew that before I confided in you. Do what you must. I'm going to talk to Gaby and Rupert." He pushed himself to his feet. "It's time this comedy came to an end."

Gabrielle stared at her brother. At the man she had thought of as her brother for twelve years. "I remember you. From France. Before."

Gui's mouth twisted. They were in the study in Rupert's and her house in the Rue d'Anjou. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair, a little removed from her and Rupert, out of the circle of light cast by the branch of candles Rupert had lit. "You were only three."

"But I remember." She leaned forwards on the sofa and looked into his shadowed eyes, conjuring up memories of that dark-eyed boy with the untidy brown hair, trying to overlay his face over Gui's own. "You used to play dolls with me sometimes when I teased you. You were a deal kinder to me than Gui was, actually. I remember-" She bit back the words, stared for a long moment at the man she had called brother, then spoke them in any case. "I remember wis.h.i.+ng you were my brother."

Gui drew a sharp breath. "Gaby-" He turned his head away.

Beside her on the sofa, Rupert had been staring fixedly at Gui. Now he pushed himself to his feet. "What did my father know about this?"

Gui's gaze shot to him, wide with surprise. "Merely that someone told him I was Guilaume de Laclos."

"Are you sure?"

"Why else would he have brought me to England and given me into the care of his closest friends?"

"I don't know. But I do know he's capable of anything."

"Rupert." Gabrielle got to her feet as well and touched her husband's arm. "This has nothing to do with-"

"You can't know that, Gaby." Rupert wrenched himself away from her. "My father sent etienne on the mission that led to his death. He had Bertrand killed-"

"What?" Gui sprang to his feet.