The Paris Affair (7 page)

“All the more reason—”

“I wanted to stop betraying my husband. I didn’t want to lose myself.”

“You’d never—”

“You told me when you first recruited me that it was my decision, my choice what risks to run.” She saw them in the cramped, gaudy room in the brothel in Léon where he’d found her, surrounded by gilt and crimson draperies. “You always let me make up my own mind.” She swallowed, holding his gaze with her own. “It was one of the reasons I loved you.”

He returned her gaze for a long moment, his own steady and unreadable, then sat against the bench. “The Kestrel has a plan to get Manon out of Paris. Getting her out of France will be more difficult.”

Suzanne released her breath. “You’ll need travel documents. If I get you Castlereagh’s seal can you forge the rest?”

“Querida
—
”

“It’s far less dangerous than half the things I did in Lisbon or Vienna. Castlereagh’s fond of me. I help smooth the waters with Malcolm.”

He took a drink of wine, as though still deciding. Then he gave a crisp nod, transformed back into the enigmatic spymaster. “I’ll be at the ball at the British embassy tonight.”

She nodded. “If you bring me the papers, I can add the seal, then return them to you. It will be simple—”

A faint smile crossed his face. “Don’t say it
, querida
. It’s like wishing an actor good luck.”

 

“Malcolm.” Wellington looked up from the papers strewn across his desk. “I knew you’d have information to report before the day was out.”

Malcolm advanced into the room. “I went to see Rivère’s rooms and spoke with his valet. From the style in which Rivère lived and the testimony of his valet, I suspect Rivère was blackmailing people well before his threats about the Laclos affair.”

“Not entirely surprising.” Wellington leaned back in his chair. “Do you know whom he was blackmailing?”

Malcolm stopped a few feet from the desk, his gaze fixed on the duke’s sharp-boned face. “We heard about one person he quarreled with two nights before he died. A gentleman who called on Rivère and told Rivère he ‘wouldn’t get away with it.’ Rivère countered that the other man wasn’t ‘in a position to make threats.’ ”

Wellington had gone white about the mouth, but he said nothing.

Malcolm kept his gaze steady on the duke. “What did you and Rivère quarrel about, sir?”

“It’s immaterial.”

“You admit you called on Rivère?”

Wellington pushed his chair back, scraping the legs over the carpet. “I’d be a damned fool to deny it, wouldn’t I?”

“Rivère tried to blackmail you.”

Wellington pushed himself to his feet. “What Rivère and I discussed is none of your affair.”

“We’re in the midst of a murder investigation, sir.”

“And my quarrel with Rivère has nothing to do with it.” Wellington strode to the windows. “My word on it.”

“Sir—You can’t know that.”

Wellington spun round to face Malcolm, the light at his back. “Are you saying you think I’m behind Rivère’s death, Malcolm?”

“I’m saying you can’t know how pieces of evidence may be connected. Withhold any one piece of information and you’re concealing part of the puzzle.”

“This isn’t part of the puzzle. I’m saving you from wasting time on it.” Wellington strode back to the desk and slammed his hand down on it, sending papers fluttering to the floor. “If my word isn’t enough, my authority will have to suffice.”

CHAPTER 5

Suzanne felt a smile break across her face at the sight of her husband approaching down the street, the angular set of his shoulders, the quick, intent gait unmistakable. When her life seemed the most complicated, the sight of him could always steady her. For all the elusive texture of their marriage, the shape and substance of what was between them was enough to sustain her through her worst moments. She might not believe in happily ever after, as she had told Raoul, but she knew enough to grab on to what she had in the moment.

Malcolm’s brows were drawn, but he looked up and met her gaze and grinned. “You look as though you’ve had a successful morning.”

“So do you.”

His grin changed to a grimace. “I’d say productive rather than successful.” He held out his arm. “You first.”

She curled her fingers round his elbow, absurdly reassured by the warmth of his flesh beneath the threadnet of her glove and the superfine of his coat. “Wilhelmine told me Antoine Rivère was having an affair with Gabrielle Caruthers. Lady Caruthers just confirmed it.”

Malcolm swung his head round to look down at her. “Good God. Not that anyone’s infidelity is so surprising, especially after Vienna. But I wouldn’t have thought Rivère—”

“He evidently had unexpected depths. Or hidden talents. What was your sense of the Carutherses’ marriage?”

“They always seemed happy enough. Rupert’s not overly demonstrative, but then he’s a British gentleman to the core.”

Suzanne tightened her fingers round her husband’s arm and grinned, though Gabrielle’s description of her husband’s remoteness, so like Malcolm in so many ways, lingered in her memory. “Yes, I know a bit about that. It can be deceptive.”

The smile he gave her was one of his rare ones that were as intimate as a kiss. “I’ve never heard any suggestion that Rupert had a mistress. But then I never heard a suggestion that Gabrielle had a lover, either.”

“It sounds as though in Gabrielle’s case she found it difficult to get beneath her husband’s gentlemanly veneer.”

A shadow crossed Malcolm’s gaze. “Some men don’t share easily.”

“Or perhaps Lord Caruthers’s feelings weren’t engaged. Gabrielle says she loved him when they married, but she thinks he proposed to her out of pity.” As soon as the words were out she regretted the choice of them. “An unequal marriage can be difficult.”

She saw the flinch in his eyes, but they remained steady on her face. “There are all sorts of inequality.”

Sometimes once an uncomfortable issue was raised it was best to confront it head-on. “There’s the emotional inequality and then Gabrielle feels indebted to Lord Caruthers. He came to her rescue when she was a penniless social outcast. She feels she owes him everything. That can be a difficult debt to carry.” Suzanne tightened her fingers round her husband’s arm. “Unless of course one’s saved one’s husband’s life on numerous occasions. That has a way of balancing the scales.”

A smile lightened Malcolm’s eyes. “I’d say it could tip them clean in the opposite direction.”

“Unless the husband has done his own share of lifesaving.”

He tucked her arm tighter against his own. “I’m sure the husband would have the sense to realize he’d got by far the better end of the bargain.”

Suzanne turned her head so her cheek brushed against his shoulder, tears prickling behind her eyelids. “Gabrielle also said Lord Caruthers and her cousin Bertrand Laclos were friends.”

Malcolm nodded. “And Harry says Rupert Caruthers was Laclos’s contact in Spain.” His frown deepened, and she knew he was once again replaying the events of the Laclos affair.

“Do you suppose Rivère got his information about Bertrand Laclos from Gabrielle?” she asked.

“That would mean Gabrielle Caruthers knew her cousin had been framed. In which case one would think she’d have gone to the authorities.”

“She might not have thought she’d be believed. She clearly felt like an outsider in England, and her family suffered a great deal when Laclos left, just because people thought he’d gone to fight for Bonaparte. Lord Caruthers must have known the truth. At least the truth that Laclos had supposedly been working for the British.”

“And then as Laclos’s contact, he was probably told Laclos had been a double,” Malcolm said. “I need to talk to Rupert.”

“There’s more, darling. I asked Gabrielle if Rivère had enemies. She said he found it useful to keep information.” Suzanne hesitated a moment. “And she thought he had information on Wellington.”

“He did.” Malcolm grimaced. “Though damned if I know what it was. He apparently quarreled with Wellington two nights before he died.” He recounted his and Harry Davenport’s visit to Rivère’s rooms and their conversation with Rivère’s valet and then the scene he had just had with Wellington himself.

“You think Rivère was threatening Wellington with more than the Laclos affair?”

“I do. Rivère thought the Laclos affair was something new when he brought it up last night. This was something that affected Wellington personally. If it was the Laclos affair, there’d have been no reason for him to refuse to discuss it with me.”

Suzanne looked up at her husband, seeing Wellington ruffling Colin’s hair in the British embassy drawing room two nights before. “Darling, you don’t seriously think that Wellington—”

His mouth tightened. “I’ve learned not to make assumptions about anyone. Even those closest to me.”

She should know that better than anyone. It wasn’t like her to offer blind trust. She was slipping shockingly.

Malcolm pulled his watch from his pocket. “Nearly three. Still plenty of time until we have to get ready for the embassy ball tonight.”

“I need to collect Blanca and Colin. We’re meeting Cordelia and Livia in the Jardin des Tuileries. Unless—”

“No, don’t disappoint Colin. We do enough of that as it is. I need to see Rupert Caruthers. And then what I need to do next is best done alone.”

Suzanne looked at him in inquiry.

His gaze shifted over the street ahead. “I’ve asked Annina to meet me. If anyone will know if Tania really did have a child, it’s her former maid.”

 

“Malcolm.” Rupert Caruthers got to his feet and crossed the sitting room at Allied army Headquarters with one of his easy smiles, hand extended. He looked much as he always had, tawny hair, fine-boned features, the easy self-assurance of one who had never doubted his position in the world. “It’s good to see you. Here we are in Paris with a lot of old friends, and it seems we spend so much time at state functions we never get to talk.”

Malcolm shook his university friend’s hand. “I understand you’re working with your father.”

Rupert grimaced. “Father has permission from Fouché to interrogate some of the Bonapartists who’ve been proscribed. Those we think might have information of value to England. I’ve been seconded to him. And to think I joined the army to get away from my father. It would be enough to make me long for battle if I didn’t remember the hell Waterloo was.”

“You seem quite recovered from your wounds.”

“Oh yes. Just a scratch really. I didn’t suffer nearly as much at Waterloo as some did. Damnable to have lost so many friends.”

For a moment, Malcolm felt the weight of Alexander Gordon in his arms and saw the life bleed from Colonel Canning’s eyes. “Quite.”

“Though Fitzroy’s making remarkable progress learning to write with his left hand. You carried him from the field, didn’t you?”

Malcolm nodded. “I was there when he was hit.” Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Wellington’s military secretary, had lost his right arm at Waterloo. But at least he would recover, unlike many of their friends.

“And Davenport’s getting about splendidly. I hear the two of you got quite friendly.”

“We worked together in Brussels. And yes, he became a good friend.”

“Damned edge to his tongue, but a good man. And more agreeable lately, now he and Lady Cordelia have reconciled. Suzanne’s well?”

“Being Suzanne, she came through Waterloo with her practicality only enhanced. Gabrielle?”

“Enjoying being in Paris,” Caruthers said with an affectionate smile. If he had the least suspicion his wife had been another man’s mistress, he was an excellent actor. “She hasn’t seen it since her family fled when she was four years old. She has few memories, but so much is familiar from her aunt and uncle’s stories. Odd if you think about it, both of us marrying Frenchwomen. How does Suzanne find being back in France?”

His wife, Malcolm realized, had made no comment on being back in France one way or another. Though from the look he caught in her eyes at unguarded moments, he suspected it stirred some uncomfortable memories. Even now there were things Suzanne didn’t discuss with him. “Suzette left France when she was a baby. She has no family left to seek out. But I suppose it can’t help but serve as a reminder of the life she lost.”

“Quite.” Rupert nodded, gaze darkened by memories of the past. Then he brightened. “Young Colin must be getting on for two now.”

“He turned two on June fourteenth, as it happens. With Brussels on the brink of war. But I think he managed to enjoy his birthday. Children are blessedly resilient.”

“So they are. And I should have remembered he’s two. Stephen was four months old when you wrote to me about Colin’s birth.”

“How is Stephen?”

“Shooting up. Chattering away. It’s nice to have one thing in one’s life to view with wholehearted pride.”

“Just so,” Malcolm said. It was similar to his view of his own son, but he was surprised to hear such words from Rupert. Rupert had always seemed comfortable with his position in the world and confident of the rightness of his work as a soldier for king and country.

Rupert scanned Malcolm’s face. “But I don’t suppose you came here merely to talk about friends.”

“No, unfortunately.”

Rupert waved him to the leather-covered sofa by the window. “Wellington has you looking into something?”

“Yes. And it becomes more complicated. Tell me what you remember about Bertrand Laclos.”

Rupert went still. His gaze darted over Malcolm’s face. “What have you learned?”

“I’m not quite sure yet. I’d rather hear what you have to say first. Unbiased.”

Rupert stared at the heavy gold signet ring on his left hand for a moment. “Bertrand was my friend for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is visiting the Lacloses in France before they emigrated. Before the Terror. My father helped them escape to England, and they stayed with us for some months.” He grinned. “One of the happiest times of my life. I’m three years older than my eldest sister. Suddenly it was as though I had two brothers in Bertrand and Étienne. And my father was distracted and less exacting than usually.” He ran a hand over his hair. “Later Bertrand and I went off to Eton together. You know what value a friend can have when one’s first packed off to boarding school.”

Malcolm recalled the labyrinth that had been Harrow, how very tall and mocking and self-assured the older boys had seemed, his relief when he met David Mallinson, who was his best friend to this day. “Quite.”

“The Lacloses used to come down to Dewhurst Hall frequently and sometimes just Bertrand would come home with me for holidays. The Lacloses didn’t have their own country place, of course. They got out of France with almost nothing, like so many others. It was hard for them. You remember the way people used to talk about émigrés. The sympathy at first, but then being kind hosts began to pall, and they were treated like guests who’d outstayed their welcome.”

Malcolm nodded. He had vivid memories of some unpleasant remarks he’d overheard growing up. “As I recall you were friends with Bertrand’s brother Étienne as well?”

“Yes, though he was older and always seemed twice as self-confident. And Gaby. Gaby lived with the Lacloses, since they were the ones who got her out of France. Her parents both died in the Terror, and no one knew what had become of her brother for a long time.”

“He was smuggled out of France later, wasn’t he?” Malcolm said. “I remember it made quite a stir.”

Rupert nodded. “He’d been saved when his and Gaby’s parents were killed, and hidden away. If it was difficult for Bertrand and Étienne, you can imagine what it was like for Gui, coming to England at fifteen after living on a farm in Provence. I’ve always thought that’s why he went a bit wild.”

Malcolm had images of Gabrielle Caruthers’s brother drunk at an Oxford tavern, being sick into a potted palm at a London ball, hunched over the green baize of a card table. “So Gui didn’t become as good a friend as Bertrand and Étienne?”

“Gui thought Bertrand and Étienne and me sadly staid. But Bertrand and Étienne tried to keep an eye on him.” Rupert’s eyes darkened. “It was easier when Étienne was still alive. Both Bertrand and Gui looked up to him.”

“A sad business. I remember how distressed Wellington was when he spoke about what happened to Étienne.”

Rupert shot him a look. “If I know Wellington, ‘distressed’ isn’t quite the word. I imagine he had some pithy comments about incompetence.”

“You know Hookey.”

Rupert’s mouth twisted. “Étienne became my father’s secretary when he came down from Oxford. Father was behind orchestrating the failed plot against Bonaparte. I’ve often thought—” He shook his head. “Not the first time I’ve disagreed with my father’s actions.”

“Bertrand must have taken his brother’s death hard. As I remember they were close.”

Rupert nodded, brows drawn together. “Étienne had all the burden of being head of the family. After he died Bertrand took it on.”

“I remember how David changed when his father inherited the earldom and David realized he’d be Earl Carfax someday.”

“I think that was when it started. My father offered Bertrand Étienne’s old position, but Bertrand wanted something more.” Rupert pushed himself to his feet and crossed to a drinks trolley by the window. “We were just down from Oxford, trying to decide what to do with ourselves. I’d made up my mind to join the army. Father said it was no place for an eldest son, but I—”