The Paris Affair Part 5

"Which doesn't mean he isn't behind Rivere's death. Julia was an English lady. Rivere was a French double agent who was trying to blackmail the British." Harry kept his gaze on Malcolm. Uncompromising, yet oddly compa.s.sionate. "War isn't played by gentlemen's rules. You know that."

"Neither are politics or diplomacy."

"Go carefully, Malcolm. Wellington can be dangerous."

"At least I know him."

"That's precisely what makes him dangerous." Harry cast a glance round the room. "You take the boxes on the left. I'll take the right."

The boxes contained bills, innocuous correspondence with an elderly aunt, tradesmen, a school friend who was an advocate in Provence. And books-an eclectic collection of Montaigne, Voltaire, and Rousseau, bawdy novels, and some bawdier love poetry, and a few volumes of military history. But all free of notes in the margin or papers tucked between the pages or sewn into the binding.

"Here's something." Harry was kneeling beside the swept-clean writing desk, the empty drawers pulled from their slots and stacked on the floor beside him. He was pulling a small drawer from the top of the desk and reaching behind it. He withdrew a crumpled paper. "Something whoever swept the room clean missed."

Malcolm crossed the room as Harry smoothed out the paper on the desktop. It was a letter. A partial draft later rewritten or abandoned and never sent.

Ma chere Christine, You can't seriously have thought I meant to end things. I won't say you should have more faith in my constancy, but surely you have faith in my common sense. How could I let something as rare and valuable as you slip through my fingers? I'll admit to having been preoccupied of late, but not because of another woman. We've both always been able to juggle more than one of that sort of interest. No matter who else was in my bed, it couldn't lessen my desire for you. No, my mind has been preoccupied by something rather more urgent. The prospect of riches.

You'll appreciate I can't put more in writing. But should we meet tomorrow night- The writing broke off, with a stroke of black ink across the bottom of the page. "We need to find this Christine," Malcolm said. "She seems to have been one of the few people Rivere confided in."

"I'll work on it." Harry picked up the letter and tucked it into his coat. "I have contacts in the Paris demimonde. Purely professional."

"No need to explain yourself."

"I'm not. I'm confessing that even at the worst of our estrangement I was too obsessed with my wife to have much thought for anyone else. I'll handle this. I suspect you have other things to keep you busy."

Malcolm cast a sharp glance at his friend. Harry's answering look was bland as b.u.t.ter. "After all," Harry said, "you're a busy man, Rannoch."

Suzanne slipped into the high-backed bench at the back of the cafe. A typical sort of Parisian cafe, with newspapers rustling, games of chess in progress, gla.s.ses of wine and cups of cafe au lait circulating. The sort of cafe frequented by midlevel clerks and middling tradesmen. As innocuous and unremarkable as the red wine being poured or the prints of the French countryside that hung on the blue-papered walls.

Enough women were present-talking with friends, flirting with gentlemen, with children in tow, with shopping parcels beside them-that she didn't stand out like a sore thumb. It was blessedly easier to move about on the Continent than in Britain.

She ordered a bottle of red wine and two gla.s.ses. Coffee would have been safer, but she needed the fortification. She'd sent her message on short notice, but she knew he wouldn't fail her if he could help it. She sipped from the gla.s.s of wine the waiter poured her and waited.

He came five minutes after the appointed time, wearing a plain dark coat. Though he made no obvious effort at concealment, somehow he blended effortlessly into the crowd, so that it was a moment before even she noticed him. He approached her table without haste and at last met her gaze.

Since the day she'd told him she would no longer work as his agent in the service of Napoleon Bonaparte, she and Raoul O'Roarke had met at least a dozen times. They'd exchanged greetings at receptions in Brussels and Paris, ridden past each other in the Bois de Boulogne, sat in adjacent boxes at the theatre. He'd tipped his hat to her and Colin by the fountain in the Jardin des Tuileries and admired Colin's dexterity with his toy boat. At Tsar Alexander's military review last month Raoul had stopped by Malcolm's and her carriage for a few minutes. But they hadn't met in private. It made all the difference. Memories thickened in the air like drops of condensation.

"Thank you for coming," she said. Her throat was surprisingly dry.

"Did you doubt that I would?" Raoul asked, with the lift of a brow.

"No. But I'm sorry-I didn't mean to-"

He regarded her for a moment, then dropped onto the bench across from her in one economical motion. "I don't recall either of us imposing a rule that we could no longer meet in private. I'll even go so far as to say I was glad to hear from you. Save that I confess I fear your running the risk means something's wrong. Given that you're the one with more to lose."

"Am I? If you were discovered-"

He leaned back against the bench. "I've been a few days from the guillotine before."

A chill cut through the sarcenet of her spencer and the muslin of her gown. "It's not funny."

"No. It's a fact of our life now."

She tugged at one of her gloves. "A foreign ministry clerk named Rivere was knifed in a dockside tavern last night."

Raoul reached for the bottle and filled the second gla.s.s. "Yes, I heard. Were you and Malcolm there?"

Her fingers froze on the threadnet glove. "Don't tell me you were following us."

"When have I ever had you followed?"

"I don't work for you anymore." She set the glove down with care. As well as she knew Raoul, she'd never know his limits. "The rules have changed."

"My dear girl. Some things are off-limits. Besides, I trained you well enough to know following you would be a waste of time." He took a sip of wine. "Rivere was a British agent. I a.s.sumed he was in that tavern to meet with someone from the British delegation."

She scanned his face, alert to clues. "How long had you known?"

"That he was reporting to the British?" Raoul draped one arm along the back of the bench, the winegla.s.s held between two fingers of his other hand. "Since before Waterloo. I used him to pa.s.s along false information more than once. I a.s.sume he wanted Malcolm's help to get out of France. His cousin's been making things difficult for him."

"He threatened to reveal information if the British didn't help him. Information that could bring about renewed hostilities with France."

"Regarding?" Raoul watched her for a moment. "Or would you rather not say?"

"I need to. I need information." She took a sip of wine to swallow a curse of frustration. "Regarding Bertrand Laclos."

"I see." Raoul tilted his head back, his eyes narrowed. "That could cause complications."

She scanned his face, seeking clues in the familiar lines and hollows, the hooded gray eyes. "You knew Laclos?"

"Rather well." Raoul took another sip of wine. "And yet I never tumbled to the fact that he was working for the British. One of my most egregious failures."

"When did you find out?"

"Not until after he died. The circ.u.mstances of his death were suspicious. And we'd intercepted a communication that suggested the British might have been behind it. I searched his rooms. I found evidence he'd been working with the British-well concealed, but there was one coded letter locked away that I decoded."

"The British thought-"

"That he'd been a double working for us all along. Extraordinary."

"He wasn't?" Suzanne studied his face, trying to peel away layers of defense and pretense. She could almost always tell when Raoul was speaking the truth. Almost. But not invariably.

"No." Raoul's voice was flat.

"Can you be sure? You didn't run the only network in the Peninsula."

"But I knew the others who did. I made inquiries after Laclos's death. I'm as sure as I can be. Someone wanted him out of the way."

"Not the French?"

"We didn't know he was a double," Raoul pointed out. "Besides, we wouldn't have used such convoluted methods. I'd say someone British wanted him dead. British and highly placed."

"Did you find anything in his rooms to suggest who?"

"A love letter to an R. Seemingly a longtime lover in an affair that went beyond the trifling. But there were impediments to their being together."

"So if R. had a jealous husband-"

"It's one possibility."

Suzanne turned the stem of her winegla.s.s between her fingers. "Malcolm intercepted the doc.u.ments that incriminated Laclos."

Raoul's mouth tightened. "Malcolm will take that hard. He still thinks one can be a spy and maintain one's integrity."

She jerked her chin up and met Raoul's gaze. "He manages far better than most agents."

"Yes. I should think it's a large part of why you love him."

She felt herself flush. "Rivere had other information. This was just the first thing he tried as leverage." She tightened her fingers round her gla.s.s, willing them to be steady. "Malcolm and Harry Davenport are searching his rooms."

Raoul's gaze moved over her face, at once sharp and gentle. "You're asking me if he knew about you?"

She swallowed. "Could he have?"

Raoul reached across the table and touched her hand. "I very much doubt it."

"But you can't be sure. Of course." She forced a sip of wine down her throat. "Malcolm will talk to Fouche about Bertrand Laclos."

"You shouldn't have anything to fear from Fouche." Raoul's mouth lifted in a faint smile. "Which may be the first time I've ever said that about him."

The wine lingered bitter in her throat. "You can't be sure-"

"I never used your name with Fouche. And I never told him one of my agents had married a British diplomat."

She looked into the familiar gray eyes that always seemed to hold surprises. "Why not?"

"No need to share information when not necessary. Particularly not with a man like Fouche. Besides, I thought that eventually-"

"Eventually what?"

He picked up the bottle and refilled her nearly full gla.s.s. "I thought that one way or another you'd want to preserve your marriage. The fewer people who knew the truth of your past the better."

The rattle of dice, the rustle of newspaper, and the slosh of wine being poured echoed in the stillness. She could see Raoul's cool, dispa.s.sionate gaze in a Lisbon plaza the day they'd discussed Malcolm's proposal of marriage to her. "You thought-I went into my marriage to spy on the British through Malcolm. How could you possibly guess I'd want to preserve it?"

Raoul reached for his own gla.s.s. "What were you planning? To walk away one day when you'd got all the information you could from your husband? And take your son with you?"

"No. Yes. That is-" Her throat tightened. "The truth is I scarcely thought of the future at all." Shame washed over her like a bucketful of icy water.

He gave a faint smile. "Understandable. We were trying to win a war. The present objective seems all that matters. But I'm rather older than you. I knew the war would end eventually, one way or another, interminable as it seemed."

"And you thought I'd want to stay with Malcolm." She held his gaze with her own, trying to pin down some core of truth within its depths.

"I thought it likely."

"It was only a year ago that I realized I loved him."

His gaze remained on her own, steady and unusually open. "It was perhaps obvious to an outside observer rather sooner."

Her mouth curled. Raoul, committed to his cause, was the last to focus on personal relations.h.i.+ps. Unless of course he thought he could gain by them. "Next you'll be saying you foresaw a happy ending."

"Is that so extraordinary? Though of course the story's still unfolding."

"I'm not the happily ever after sort." She ran her finger over a wine stain in the tablecloth. "I knew it would be hard. Seeing foreign soldiers overrun Paris. I didn't realize quite how hard it would be."

His hand slid partway across the table, then stilled. "You aren't alone, querida. However it may seem."

"Aren't agents always alone?"

"We aren't agents in everything we do."

She studied his face. There were new lines round his eyes and mouth since Waterloo, but the real scars of the battle showed when she looked into his eyes. "I keep hearing about more names on the proscribed list," she said. "It's difficult to take in."

"Yes." He s.n.a.t.c.hed up his gla.s.s and took a long swallow of wine.

"Raoul?" She watched him closely. "That's what you've been doing, isn't it? Helping friends get out of Paris."

His gaze fastened on the vase of bloodred geraniums on the table. "Difficult as it may be to maintain integrity in the espionage business, I've always felt a certain loyalty to my people. Losing a battle-even a war-doesn't change that." He reached for his gla.s.s again. "Forgive me. It's been a difficult day."

She stared at him. She used to be quicker. She'd been too absorbed by her own concerns. Now she saw the strain in the set of his mouth and the worry at the back of his eyes. "Who?"

"Who what?" He took another swallow of wine.

"You're worried about someone new. Someone who's been proscribed? Or is about to be. I should have seen it."

"Querida-"

She sat back against the bench, hit by the reality of how much things had changed. "You don't trust me." It was as though a well-worn cloak had been lifted from her shoulders on a cold day. "Can you honestly think I would betray one of our comrades-"

"I trust you with my life," he said in a low, rough voice. "I'm trying to keep you from the intolerable burden of divided loyalties, my darling idiot."

"It's a bit late for that. You let me marry Malcolm. Not that I'm sorry you did."

He kept his gaze on her face. "And I'm trying to avoid doing more damage to your marriage."

"Since when have you been so driven by personal concerns?"

"Perhaps since personal concerns became all that are left to us. Or perhaps you had a somewhat exaggerated view of my ruthlessness."

"You've quite neatly managed to change the subject." She leaned forwards. "I won't let you wrap me in cotton wool any more than I'll let Malcolm do so." That had become doubly important to her since she had left the work that had been the focus of her life for so long. "Who are you worried about now?"