The Paris Affair Part 36

"Watch how you speak to a lady," another mumbled.

"Doesn't look like a lady."

"I fought for my country," said the fair-haired man.

"You fought for that tyrant."

Malcolm took a step forwards and took another fist to the jaw. He went reeling backwards and caught himself against the wall of the house.

"Stop."

It was Dorothee's voice. Suzanne looked over her shoulder to see her friend run up.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" one of the men demanded.

"My uncle is the prime minister of France," Dorothee declared.

The claim did not have the desired effect. "Your uncle's the turncoat Talleyrand?" the burly man said.

Dorothee drew herself up. "Talleyrand is not a turncoat."

The burly man gave a low laugh.

"Prince Talleyrand is a patriot," the fair-haired man said.

The burly man lunged again. Malcolm moved between them. The burly man stumbled. His blow caught Dorothee on the shoulder and sent her reeling to the cobblestones.

CHAPTER 25.

The men went still. "Now look what you've done," the dark-haired man said.

Malcolm strode across the cobblestones to Dorothee's still form, a fragile tangle of spring green fabric and dark hair. Blood showed at her temple. Suzanne had already dropped down beside her friend. She put her fingers to Dorothee's throat, then met Malcolm's gaze and gave a nod of relief. Answering relief coursing through him, Malcolm knelt down and scooped Dorothee into his arms. The crowd scattered save for the dark-haired man and the fair-haired man, who both ran to Malcolm's side.

"Is she all right, sir?" the fair-haired man asked.

"She will be."

Both men helped him lift Doro. The coachman had sprung down and had the carriage door open.

"You need to tend to your face," Suzanne said to the fair-haired man, when they had lifted Doro into the carriage.

"I'll do, madame. My wife's inside."

"I'll see there's no more trouble," the dark-haired man murmured.

Suzanne settled in the carriage with Dorothee's head in her lap. Doro stirred as the carriage set into motion. "What-"

"Don't move too quickly, dearest," Suzanne said. "You hit your head."

"I never thought-"

"A name isn't always protection," Malcolm said. "Sometimes it can mark one for trouble. There's a lot of anger in Paris these days."

Dorothee turned her head to look at him across the carriage. "My uncle has served France all his life."

"There are a lot of definitions of what serves France, I'm afraid."

When they pulled up in the courtyard of the Hotel de Talleyrand in the Rue Saint-Florentin, Dorothee sat up, then swayed and grabbed Suzanne's shoulder. Malcolm scooped her up and carried her into the house. They were greeted by a wide-eyed footman and a gasp of surprise. The latter came from Talleyrand himself, who crossed the hall to their side with surprising speed for a man with a clubfoot, his walking stick thudding on the marble tiles.

"In G.o.d's name-"

"I'm all right." Dorothee turned her head on Malcolm's arm to look at Talleyrand and managed a smile.

Talleyrand's gaze fastened on the blood at her temple. Fear and anger did battle in his eyes. "Who-"

"We stumbled upon some Ultra Royalists taking out their anger on a Bonapartist," Malcolm said. "We got caught in the middle."

Talleyrand touched his fingers to Dorothee's hair as though he feared to hurt her. Or perhaps himself. "What were you doing abroad at such an hour?"

"Edmond was a fool," Dorothee said.

"Edmond-"

Malcolm glanced at the footman. "Perhaps this had best wait until we have her settled in her room."

Malcolm carried Dorothee upstairs to her bedchamber, Suzanne leading the way and Talleyrand following behind. When they had seen her settled on her bed, with Suzanne and her maid fussing over her, he and Talleyrand withdrew. Talleyrand cast a last glance at his nephew's wife from the doorway. Her bonnet was off, her dark hair spilling free of its pins, and Suzanne was dabbing at the blood on her temple. Dorothee sent him a smile of rea.s.surance.

Talleyrand led Malcolm down to his study without further speech. "Edmond challenged Clam-Martinitz to a duel," Malcolm said the moment the door was closed.

Talleyrand grimaced. "The young fool. What then?"

Malcolm recounted the events of the morning, from the interrupted duel through their encounter with the Ultra Royalists on the drive home.

Talleyrand drew a breath. An uncharacteristically uneven breath. "I owe you my thanks, Malcolm. I owe you more than that. When I woke this morning to find Dorothee had left the house-And when I saw her when you brought her in-" He moved to the boulle cabinet and picked up a decanter of Calvados. The crystal rattled in his fingers. He set it down. "I should never have exposed her to such danger."

"Dorothee exposed herself to the danger."

"And wouldn't thank me for trying to keep her out of it?" Talleyrand gave a bleak smile. His face was ashen.

"Any more than Suzanne would me. They both take responsibility for themselves." Malcolm crossed to Talleyrand's side, poured two gla.s.ses of Calvados, and put one in Talleyrand's hand.

Talleyrand took a quick swallow, fingers white round the crystal. "Very true. But a man cannot but feel the responsibility to protect the woman he-"

He bit the word back and instead took another, deeper swallow of Calvados.

Malcolm regarded the cold-blooded schemer he'd known since boyhood. "The woman he loves?"

Talleyrand set the gla.s.s on the cabinet, as though to jostle the liquid in the slightest would be tantamount to an intolerable admission. "Dorothee is my niece by marriage. Of course I feel a responsibility towards her."

"Responsibility never made you nearly spill a decanter of good Calvados." Malcolm took a sip from his own gla.s.s.

Talleyrand reached for his gla.s.s, as though to prove he could do so. "I didn't realize how much I'd come to depend on her. Not until-"

"You faced the prospect of losing her?"

"She was never mine to keep." Talleyrand clunked the gla.s.s back down on the marble top of the cabinet. "A man would have to be blind not to be aware that she's a beautiful woman. But she has a remarkable grasp of politics and strategy. Some of my favorite moments in Vienna were when she'd perch on my desk and help me draft a communique."

"Suzette helps me draft dispatches." Malcolm's mind shot back to the night she had brought him a cup of coffee and ended up perched on the edge of his desk, reading the dispatch over his shoulder, taking the pen to make notes. Their relations.h.i.+p had s.h.i.+fted that night, though he hadn't recognized it until much later. "My feelings for her sneaked up on me as well."

"Suzanne is your wife." Talleyrand took a swallow of Calvados. "Dorothee is . . . my nephew's wife."

"Whom your nephew fails to appreciate."

"One of my most d.a.m.nable errors, championing that marriage. But now she has Clam-Martinitz."

"That doesn't make the feelings conveniently go away."

"I don't admit to feelings, remember?"

"Neither do I," Malcolm said.

Talleyrand's fingers closed hard round his gla.s.s. His other hand tightened on the diamond head of his walking stick. He moved with deliberation across the room and sank down into a damask chair. "On the contrary, Malcolm. You may have liked to pretend you didn't have feelings. You may even have convinced yourself you didn't have them. But your feelings have always been transparently obvious to one who knew where to look. From the five-year-old boy I met who worried even then about his mother's stability."

Malcolm's fingers bit into the crystal of his gla.s.s. "You won't avoid this by bringing up my mother. Usually your strategy is more subtle than that."

"A point." Talleyrand leaned back in the chair. "The seriousness with which you took your feelings stopped you, I suspect, from indulging in one of life's most agreeable pleasures. I, on the other hand, have always taken my love affairs lightly. Including with Dorothee's mother."

Malcolm pictured Anna-Dorothea, d.u.c.h.ess of Courland. A beautiful, regal woman. Talleyrand had seemed to genuinely care for her, as much as Malcolm could read him. But his feelings had appeared to be within his control. As they usually were. "What you're experiencing now doesn't appear to be light."

"Nor is it a love affair."

Malcolm moved to a straight-backed chair opposite the prince. "How long do you think you can go on deceiving yourself?"

"About what?"

"That you don't have feelings."

Talleyrand took a sip of Calvados. "It will pa.s.s."

"Are you sure you want it to?"

"Nothing else is possible. However much of a fool I may be."

Malcolm settled back in his chair. "I thought for a long time that I couldn't make Suzanne happy."

Talleyrand shot a look at him. "Yes, you were quite a fool to outside observers. Unable to see what was in front of you. Suzanne is your wife. She's your age. I'm an old fool who's discovered my weakness far too late in life."

"Do you deny you love her?"

"Deny it?" Talleyrand's voice cut through the room with sudden force. Then he slumped back in the chair. "I could deny it. I should deny it, if I had any sense. But I find my flexibility with the truth does not extend so far. Or perhaps that's one blasphemy I cannot bring myself to commit."

Malcolm got to his feet and dropped down in front of Talleyrand's chair. The lines in the prime minister's face seemed more deeply scored than usual. But it was his eyes that shocked Malcolm. The shade of irony and detachment had been stripped away to reveal naked pain and longing.

"I've always foreseen a love affair's end before it began," Talleyrand said. "Not as a failure, but as a welcome escape before boredom set in. I've never imagined that having someone there as a constant presence could be a delight rather than a burden." He stared into his gla.s.s, brows drawn. "I can't imagine this ending. Senility perhaps."

"Or reality." Malcolm put his hand over Talleyrand's own on the chair arm.

Talleyrand gave a wintry smile. "I know what they say of me. That I'm besotted. That I'm a doddering fool so obsessed with a woman young enough to be my granddaughter that I've quite lost track at the negotiating table." He took a measured sip of Calvados. "For what it's worth, I don't think that's true. I've always prided myself on my ability to handle more than one situation at once. I don't see why that should change just because one of the situations begins to tinge on emotional excess." His fingers tightened on the chair arm beneath Malcolm's own. "But G.o.d knows I could be mistaken. I fully admit to having lost some of my equilibrium."

Malcolm looked into the cracks in that usually cool blue gaze and felt a welling of sympathy he'd never have thought to feel for the master schemer before him. "Even with your equilibrium disrupted, you have a keener mind than anyone else at the negotiating table."

"You're kind, my boy. But then I always knew that. Always worried it would be your downfall." Talleyrand tilted his powdered head back against the damask. "The truth is I love her as I've never loved anyone on this earth. And I have a dreadful suspicion I will carry that love to my grave."

"You'd never guess it was anything more to her than another in the summer's round of entertainments," Simon murmured. "She has the makings of a brilliant actress."

He was looking across the Duke of Wellington's ballroom . . . at Dorothee, who had just entered the room on Count Clam-Martinitz's arm. The candlelight flashed off the diamonds in the comb in her hair and round her wrist and the crystal beads on her lilac crepe overdress. Her head was held high, her lips rouged with a steady hand, her smile brilliant as a steel breastplate. Only Suzanne would have been able to tell that the ringlets falling with careless abandon over her forehead hid the cut on her temple.

"She's grown up on a political stage," Suzanne pointed out.

"It's funny," Aline said. "No one owns to having talked about the duel and yet the news is all over Paris." She glanced at Suzanne. "Did Edmond really try to stab Clam-Martinitz in the back?"

"I haven't the least idea," Suzanne said.

"You can save your breath," Simon said. "Whoever talked, everyone knows you and Malcolm were there."

"People will say all sorts of things."

"Doing it much too brown, Suzanne," Aline said. "Even I can see through that. I must say I'm glad you and Malcolm were there to stop them being idiots."

"Poor Dorothee." Cordelia swept up beside them with a rustle of French blue tulle. "I know just what it's like to be on the receiving end of all those gazes. Though I never was quite so spectacularly the center of attention. Being a Princess of Courland has its drawbacks."

Wellington was bowing over Dorothee's hand with the genial cordiality he afforded pretty women. Not one to be shocked, Wellington. In Brussels, he'd raised eyebrows by insisting on inviting Lady John Campbell to his parties. Then again, Wellington wasn't one to listen to gossip, so it was also possible he hadn't even heard about the duel.

Dorothee and Clam-Martinitz left Wellington and moved towards Suzanne and her friends. Suzanne went forwards to embrace Doro. "I wonder if there's a soul left in Paris who hasn't heard," Dorothee said.

"There have to be a few who are deaf," Simon pointed out.

"How very true, Monsieur Tanner." Dorothee glanced through the crowd towards the pillars on the side of the room where her sister stood with Lord Stewart. They appeared to be arguing.

A few minutes later, Wilhelmine joined them. Alone.

"Let me guess," Dorothee said. "Stewart didn't want you a.s.sociating with your disreputable sister."