The Mayfair Affair (25 page)

"I wonder if Don Giovanni would be so infernally attractive if Mozart hadn't given him such ravishing melodies to sing." Cordelia rested a gloved hand on the gilded paneling against which Gui Laclos was lounging. "The man doesn't show a scrap of affection or concern for any of his conquests. Of course, I used to pride myself on not taking my love affairs seriously."

"There's a difference between being lighthearted and callous, Cordy." Gui gave a twisted smile. "You couldn't be callous if you tried."

It was good to see him smile, but his eyes were still shadowed, and his face gaunt. "You may be seeing me through rose-colored glasses, my sweet."

"No. You I think I've always seen clearly, Cordy." For a moment, she thought he was going to confide in her, but instead he said, "Poor bastard, Don Ottavio. He tells Donna Anna his peace depends on her own and she doesn't seem particularly interested."

"And really, what more could a woman want than a man who puts one's happiness first? Unless, of course, he didn't seem to understand one's happiness." Cordelia unfurled her fan and ran her fingers over the ebony and lace. "Donna Anna says when Don Giovanni broke into her room, at first she thought it was Ottavio. I've always wondered if things progressed a bit before she realized it wasn't. And if a part of her doesn't wish Ottavio were a bit more like Giovanni. And so of course she's wracked by guilt."

"That makes Ottavio's situation even worse. How the devil is one supposed to know what a woman wants?"

It wasn't like the usually cheerful Gui to take a love affair so seriously or bitterly. Cordelia turned against the paneling so she was facing him. "Is that the problem, Gui? A woman?"

He gave a harsh laugh. "You're becoming as much of an investigator as your husband, Cordy."

"I just hate to see you unhappy."

"The devilish compassion of those who've found happiness and who can't understand why others can't be as happy as they are. Not everyone can find perfection, Cordy."

Out of the corner of her eye, Cordelia glimpsed her husband, face set in the sardonic lines that were his habitual company expression. Her heart warmed, in that ridiculous way it did when she looked at him at the most seemingly trivial moments. "I wouldn't call it perfection. But I know I've been far more fortunate than I have any right to be. I thought perhaps something had happened with your family." In Paris, two and a half years ago, Gui had confessed to his aristocratic émigré family that he was not the long-lost heir they believed him to be, but an imposter who had engaged in a charade from the time he was a teenager. Surprisingly, his family had not cut ties with him, particularly his supposed sister Gabrielle.

"No, Gabby and Rupert and Bertrand couldn't be kinder. Unlike—" He drew a breath, one of those moments that teeter between defense and confidence. "See here, Cordy. You're a woman."

"I was always under the impression that you thought so."

Gui gave an abashed grin. "Sorry. I just need a woman's perspective. I'm trying to understand— why would a woman suddenly lose interest in a fellow, after months of seeming quite the opposite?"

Cordelia considered, and as quickly abandoned, numerous flippant responses that sprang to her lips. There had always been something endearing about Gui, something quite apart from the brief, diverting, lighthearted passion between them. Something that had endured beyond the end of that passion. "My dear— I'm sorry. But sometimes one does—grow past these things, as it were."

"But this wasn't a casual fling like the one we had. It—" Gui broke off and stared at her, eyes oddly like those of a schoolboy. "Oh, damn it, I'm sorry, Cordy. I didn't mean it that way."

"It's all right, dearest." She touched his hand. "I think we were always admirably clear about what we meant to each other and what we didn't mean. It's one of the reasons we've been able to stay friends, which I wouldn't give up for anything." She wondered sometimes why she hadn't let it become anything deeper. Was it because she'd been afraid of the dangers of falling in love again? Or because a part of her had still been in love with Harry, though at the time she wouldn't have admitted she'd ever loved her husband?

Gui squeezed her hand. "Nor would I. You're the best, Cordy. I think I always knew you couldn't be more than a friend."

"Because of Harry? At the time I wouldn't have admitted he'd ever been more than a husband of convenience."

Gui's dark gaze grew surprisingly shrewd in that way it sometimes did. "Perhaps I saw some things you missed. In any case, this was different. Not just a fortnight at a house party." He swallowed, the torment back in his gaze. "But it wasn't just the time it lasted. It started out casually enough. Some lighthearted flirtation while waltzing, stolen moments in the garden after a bit too much champagne. Sorry, don't mean to give you too many details. But it soon became clear that it meant more."

"To you?"

"To me certainly. I've always rather made a point of treating love affairs lightly." He flushed, looked away, looked back at her. "Given that my entire identity was a house of cards, I couldn't afford to treat them as much else. I don't know when I realized this was different. When I couldn't stop thinking about her. When the smallest brush of fingertips was enough to feed me for days. When the thought of life without her was a gnawing void I couldn't contemplate. When I realized I'd rather hold her hand in the rain than lie on silken sheets with any other woman." He shook his head. "I sound like a bad novel."

"You sound like a man in love. Rather more articulate about it than many."

He turned his head and met her gaze, his own vulnerable as glass. "I even told her the truth. About me. About my family. And the wonder was, she said it didn't matter."

"To someone who loved you, it wouldn't."

"Spoken by someone who's never taken titles seriously."

"And she did?"

"Most people do in our world. But when she said it didn't matter, I believed her. I'd swear her feelings were engaged as strongly as my own. We talked round it. She was guarded, protecting her reputation, protecting herself. But I could see it in her eyes. That is, I would have sworn I could see it. Until a fortnight ago. When she told me it was over."

"In those words?"

"She said it had been very agreeable, but that we'd both always known it had to end, that we'd let it go on too long as it was, and best to cry off as friends before we grew bored. The sort of thing I've said a dozen times myself. The sort of thing—"

"That we said to each other. Only we didn't even really need to say it. We both knew."

"Quite. But can you imagine Davenport talking to you that way?"

"Not now. Not ever. Harry would be far more caustic."

"It was as though she'd transformed into another person."

"Gui—I take it she's married?"

He hesitated, looked away, drummed his fingers on the paneling behind him, looked back at her.

"It's not a great leap," Cordelia said. "I don't think you'd trifle with an unmarried girl. So unless she's a widow—"

"She's married."

"Could her husband suspect?"

"That's what I feared. Not that he had any right to judge, given his own behavior. But if she's in trouble, why won't she talk to me?"

"My dear—" Cordelia touched his arm. "It is possible her feelings weren't as deeply engaged as your own. Or that her feelings have changed."

"I know. Damnation—"

"But it also sounds as though she called it off very quickly. That makes me think it's more likely she's trying to protect you."

Gui stared at her.

"My darling idiot, one doesn't like the idea of exposing the man one loves to the wrath of a jealous husband."

"Oh, for God's sake." Gui straightened his shoulders, as though about to charge off to defend his lady's honor. "I could protect myself in a duel."

"I daresay you could, but she'd be pardoned for not wanting to see you try."

Gui scraped a hand through his hair. "All right, that makes a bit of sense. But— her husband's rather out of the picture now. And she still won't even see me when all I want to do is comfort her—"

Cordelia stared at him, mind racing. "Who—"

"No questions, Cordy, please."

"Gui—" Cordelia twisted her bracelet round her wrist, wondering how far she could venture. Her own past hung before her as she stared at the diamond links. A gift from Harry before their life had fallen apart. "There's one danger a woman engaged in a love affair particularly fears. Is it possible she could be with child?"

Gui's eyes went wide. "No. That is— we were careful—"

"One can't be completely careful."

He pushed himself away from the wall. "My God. I'm an idiot. How could I have left her alone in this? How could she not have told me? She must have known I'd protect her—" He broke off. "I sound like an idiot. There's little I could do."

"If she's pregnant, could it be her husband's?"

"No. Not the way she tells it. Not based on everything I know. Christ, I shouldn't be glad about that. It makes her situation worse. But— I have to see her."

"Gui, you can't be sure any of this is true."

"Putting together the clues and arriving at a theory. Isn't that precisely what Malcolm and Suzanne do?"

"They're careful before they voice the theory."

"I need to know, Cordy."

"Gui." Cordelia caught his hand. "Are you in love with Mary Trenchard?"

She read the answer in his horrified gaze. He must have seen it, for he didn't even try to deny the truth of her words. "How the devil— Christ, you're helping the Rannochs with the investigation, aren't you? Don't deny it." He seized her hands. "Have you seen her? Is she all right? Not that anyone could be all right in the circumstances, but— Damnation. I feel so helpless.

"Gui— Mary's tough. She's doing the best she could be."

"And I've let you know—"

"We already knew. No, not about you, but—" Cordelia hesitated. She wasn't sure what the investigation called for, but she knew what Gui needed. "You're right. Mary is with child."

He stared at her, a dozen emotions shooting through his eyes. Shock. Relief at the explanation. Horror at the situation he'd got Mary into. And wonder. The wonder of impending fatherhood. "My sweet darling. I have to see her at once."

He spun to go, then turned back and pressed her hand. "Cordy—thank you."

Cordelia's face was tense with excitement when she returned to the box she and Harry were sharing with Suzanne and Malcolm. Malcolm's face also showed that he had learned something, though his was set in lines of strain. Suzanne had no chance to question either of them as the curtain rose.

She tried to lose herself in the music, but it was all she could do to remain in her seat and clap at the appropriate moments. In the midst of the applause at the end of the opera, Cordelia seized Suzanne's hand and begged her to accompany her to the ladies' retiring room. Suzanne made no protest. Time later to hear about Malcolm's interview with James. Palmerston and Henry Brougham had come into the box and would be talking to Malcolm and Harry for some time.

Before they reached the ladies' retiring room, Cordelia pulled Suzanne into an empty antechamber. "No one will think anything of two friends seeking privacy for a bit of gossip. Dear God, Suzanne, you'll never guess. I know the father of Mary Trenchard's baby."

Suzanne stared at Cordelia and recalled her friend talking with Gui in the interval. She hadn't thought anything of it, given their friendship. "Do you mean—"

"Gui. Of all people. That's why he's been so tortured of late. He didn't understand why Mary ended it." Cordelia smoothed the links of her bracelet. "He guessed Mary was pregnant. I confirmed it. I know you might have found it useful to surprise him with it. But I fear I can't stop thinking like a friend."

"I hope you never do."

"Would you have told him?"

"I'm not sure," Suzanne said honestly.

"He ran off at once to see her. Apparently, she's been denying him the house, but I don't think he'll give up now." Cordelia shook her head. "Gui in love. I wouldn't have thought it possible."

Suzanne regarded her friend. "Disappointed it wasn't with you?"

"No. That is—" Cordelia's brows drew together. "I'd look the most awful hypocrite to say yes, wouldn't I?"

"Not to admit it to your friend. No one ever said feelings were logical."

Cordelia moved away from the door and dropped into a straight-backed chair. "I think I was already half in love with Harry before I met Gui, though I wouldn't have admitted it. In another world, a world in which I'd never met Harry, never entered into our odd marriage— Gui might have meant more to me. That is, he means a great deal to me. He's my friend. But—"

"There are different kinds of caring." Suzanne sank into a chair beside Cordelia. "Different kinds of loving."

Cordelia nodded. "And yet, I can admit—to you, if to no one else—that a part of me feels a twinge of— not jealousy, precisely. Pique? I sound the most heartless jade, don't I, happily reconciled to my husband, but wanting my former lover to be pining after me."

Raoul's face danced in Suzanne's mind. She had no illusions that he was celibate, or even that he'd been faithful when they were lovers. After all, she hadn't been. She wanted him to be happy. And yet, she couldn't deny there was a certain comfort in knowing he was there, caring for her. In understanding, on some level, that his feelings for her were perhaps deeper than either of them would admit. "Logic has very little to do with love affairs."

Cordelia tucked a ringlet behind her ear. "Of course, the part of me that's always seen Gui a bit like a brother just wants him to be happy. Oddly, for all the difficulties, this could be the making of him." She smiled. "And the flip side of the jealousy is that it's rather nice to know one can cease to be lovers but still care for someone. Even love them, in a way."

Something eased in Suzanne's chest. "Yes," she said. "It is."

Somehow, in the midst of all the events of the past two days, she had found a moment of quiet reflection with her friend.

It couldn't last, of course. Suzanne's fingers tightened round the velvet strap of her reticule. "Cordy. You realize this means we'll have to ask Gui where he was when Trenchard was murdered, don't you?"

The Trenchard House footman regarded Gui with a cool gaze. "Her Grace is not at home."

His tone implied that, while it was not his place to say so, he shouldn't have to indicate that the Duchess of Trenchard was not at home at such an hour, especially given her recent bereavement.

Urgency had propelled Gui from Covent Garden to St. James's Square. Unable to find a hackney, he had run all the way. Only now, standing beneath the Corinthian -columned portico of Trenchard House, meeting the footman's cool blue gaze, did it occur to him that in demanding to see Mary at ten o'clock at night, he risked giving rise to just the sort of scandal he sought to protect her from.

He was about to turn away, when Mary's voice sounded from the staircase. "It's all right, William. Show him into the salon."

As one in a trance, Gui followed William's liveried back and powdered wig up the stairs. He'd only been at Trenchard House a handful of times, and none recently. He and the duke had not moved in the same circles, and, obviously, he and Mary had not met here.

William showed him into a salon hung with blue silk. Mary stood by the fireplace. She wore a dark, stiff gown and her hair was pulled into a simple knot. She had never looked more beautiful.

Gui checked his impulse to run to her. "Thank you," he said, forcing himself to stay rooted by the door. "Thank you for agreeing to see me."

"It seemed safer than having you make a scene."

"I didn't— I was about to leave. I couldn't think properly. My God, Mary, why didn't you tell me?"

From her stillness, he thought perhaps she understood, but her voice was under iron control when she said, "I should have thought the news of Trenchard's murder was all over London without my needing to send word."

"That you're carrying our child."

This time her stillness lasted a fraction of a second longer. Then she gave a laugh like the shattering of glass. "What put that fantastical notion into your head?"

"Mary—" He took a step forwards, then forced himself to stop with a willpower he hadn't known he possessed. "Cordy told me."

"Cordelia—" Surprise, anger, and something else he couldn't quite fathom filled her gaze. "Damn her. I always knew there was something between the two of you."

Good God, that unfathomable thing was jealousy. "You wrong Cordelia. And me. But she's my friend."

"Who has no thought for a confidence."

"It's not like that, Mary. I guessed. Cordy merely confirmed it. Even if she hadn't, I'd have come to you. I should have realized the moment you tried to send me away."

The old hauteur flashed in the desolation of Mary's face. "You can't imagine any other reason I'd have broken with you?"

"You might have fallen out of love with me. Perhaps you have." He forced himself to put his worst fears into words. "But it doesn't change the fact that you're carrying our child."

Mary's gaze met his own. For a moment, the reality was there between them. A child, created out of the love they had shared. A leap into an uncertain future, a new life that would tie them together, whatever transpired between them.

"You didn't sign on for this, Gui," Mary said.

"God in heaven. Can you doubt how I felt?"

"Love affairs like ours exist in an odd sort of soap bubble. The affair has to be kept from the world, and so it never faces the test of existing in the real world. Of everyday trivialities, let alone scandal and its sordid aftermath."

Gui stared at her. "Can you really hold me so cheap?"

"My dear. On the contrary. I couldn't ask you to go through the weariness of falling out of love."

"Mary. You've always held my soul in your hands," Gui said. "You could ruin me with the truth of my past. More, you could destroy me by turning away from me. What could be worse than that?"

"You must see that I couldn't tell you." Mary's voice was low and uncharacteristically rough. "What could you have done?"

"Help you."

"There was no helping me."

"Did he know?" Gui had always avoided using Trenchard's name.

Her mouth twisted. "He guessed. He chose the most damnable of moments to pay attention to me."

"He knew it wasn't his? I know you said—"

"It couldn't have been his. By the time I knew, it was too late to make him think otherwise."

Scandal would have meant little to him, but he knew how she valued her position. And there were her other children to consider. "If it had come to a divorce—"

"It wouldn't have come to a divorce. Trenchard didn't want the scandal. He wanted me to go abroad to have the child and give it up."

The child had been real to him for little more than an hour, but rage swept through him. Yet he knew it was a common enough solution. He couldn't blame her. "And?"

"I knew it was sensible. But I couldn't bear to give up—"

"Your child?"

"Our child."

There it was again, the improbable tie that bound them together. "What were you going to do?" Gui asked.

"I don't know. I was trapped." Her voice broke. Her shoulders, always so straight, shook and bent, as though she could not bear the force of what she had been through. A sob tore from her throat. Gui crossed the room in three strides and pulled her into his arms. She made a noise of protest and then buried her face in his cravat.

He stroked her hair, heedless of the careful hairpins. Her fingers dug into the fabric of his coat. Never, even in the throes of passion, had he seen her so raw. How strange that trust could come in such a moment of extremity.

"It will be all right," he murmured. "We have each other. We'll always have that." He put his lips to her hair. He almost dared not say it, but the reality was there, shining amid the horror of recent events. "And we can be together now. We needn't hide."

Mary went still in his arms.

"My darling." Gui took her face between his hands. "I know I have little to offer you. Not even a name that's properly my own. I know what names mean to you. Or what they used to mean. But if you marry me, I'll spend the rest of my life making sure you don't regret it."

"Oh, Gui." She lifted one hand and touched his face. "You can't think your name matters to me— That is"—she swallowed—"it would have once. But I've seen where basing a marriage on that leads. You must know what you mean to me."

"Well, then." Despite everything, he smiled.

Mary looked up at him with a guarded, world-weary gaze, as though he were the one to be comforted. "Oh, my dear, don't you realize?"

"That it's taken tragedy to allow us to be together? Of course I wouldn't have wished it for the world, but—"

"That the first thing Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch, and even your good friend Cordelia Davenport will ask when they know about us is where you were the night Trenchard was killed."

Gui stared down into her eyes. They had hardened in her desolate face. "Of course. I suppose they can't but wonder. But they'll realize—"

"Darling, use your head." She jerked away from him and took a step back. "I've been their chief suspect. I've been trying to spare you from being as well."

"And
that's
why you've stayed away from me? For God's sake, beloved, you should know I'm the last person to care for the world's opinion. Though in a year ten to one they'll have forgot in the face of a dozen other scandals—"

"Gui." Mary's gaze scraped his face. "Hasn't it occurred to you to wonder about me?"

"To wonder what about you? I think about you every waking moment, what more—" He stared at her, the truth of her words settling on him like the chill of oncoming winter. "Good God. Are you asking if I think you killed Trenchard?"

"Can you really tell me you haven't wondered? Even my father and brother have. I could see it in their eyes."

"I know you, Mary."

"My love, we can't ever know anyone that well."

Gui stared at her. The proud bones of her face. The hard brilliance of her eyes. Something shifted in the air between them, but it wasn't what she had said. It was what remained unspoken. "And you've wondered the same about me."

"Dearest—" She stretched out a hand, then let it fall. "How could—"

He held her gaze as the chill spread through him. "How could you not wonder?"