The Mayfair Affair (30 page)

O'Roarke was silent for a long moment. In the gray light from the window, his face was ashen, his eyes hooded. "It can be a mistake to think one's children are better off without one. At its worst it can be an excuse, a way of letting oneself off."

Laura studied him. "That sounds like the voice of experience."

He looked her straight in the eye, yet his gaze was veiled. "I'm a good observer."

She continued to watch him. It was a relief to push the conversation from her ground to his, and yet, even now, she hesitated to put it into words. "How much did you see Mr. Rannoch when he was a boy?"

For a moment she'd swear the blood had frozen in O'Roarke's veins. She could not deny the stab of satisfaction. So often it was other people probing at her secrets. "I was friendly with the family," he said in a voice of carefully calibrated normalcy. "I visited a fair amount, especially at his grandfather's estates in Ireland."

Laura held his gaze for a long moment. "He looks remarkably like you. It's a wonder I didn't see it sooner."

She thought the air between them would smash to bits. Something broke in his eyes that had probably remained contained since Malcolm Rannoch's birth. "Forgive my dimness, but see what, my dear Miss Dudley?"

Triumph gave way to compassion in a sudden rush. "My dear Mr. O'Roarke, given what you know about me, don't you think we're beyond such polite fencing? I think I should have known when you told me last December that you were not so fortunate as to have children. The look in your eyes has lived with me since."

He reached for his wine glass. The armor slammed back into place in his eyes. "I knew you were dangerous the moment I met you. I was just fool enough to think the danger was to Malcolm and Suzanne, rather than to me."

"You can't think I'd betray them."

"I think it's very difficult to predict what anyone will do under the right pressure. As you should understand better than most."

"Does Mr. Rannoch know?"

O'Roarke took a sip of wine. "That I was friends with his mother and grandfather?"

She kept her gaze steady on his own. The torment in those gray eyes was so clear, now one knew where to look for it. "I don't know what's worse," she said. "Never to even meet one's child, as I did, or to watch the child grow but not be able to acknowledge him. Even between the two of you."

He drew in his breath and released it, as though letting go of something buried so deeply he could scarcely acknowledge its existence. "I was luckier than most." His voice was low and rough, unlike anything she had ever heard from him. "I wouldn't trade the time I had with him for anything."

She found she was holding her breath, for she sensed he was revealing things he had never dared voice, even to those closest to him. Which probably meant Suzanne Rannoch. "I confess, I envy you," she said. "I'd give anything for even a fraction of what you've had with him. And yet I also know how painful it must have been."

"One could make a fair case I've had far more than I deserved," he said in the same low voice.

She considered and rejected all the obvious platitudes that rose to her lips. "Did you know Mr. Rannoch and Suzanne were going to be married?"

Her words seemed to bounce off the hard self-mockery in his gaze. "I didn't actually orchestrate it, if that's what you mean. But yes, I knew. And I didn't stop it. I didn't even discourage it."

"That must have been difficult."

"I wouldn't have survived this long had I not learned to live with self-disgust."

"I was thinking of what Suzanne Rannoch means to you."

The defenses slammed home in his eyes again.

"I know she was your agent," Laura said. "But I'm not asking you to admit that. I meant giving up the woman you loved."

The pause before he replied spoke volumes. So did his tone, so dry it could have crumbled to dust. "My dear Miss Dudley. Surely we're beyond such sentimental twaddle. And surely you know better than to ascribe such sentiments to me."

"On the contrary. Long before I'd even begun to suspect any of the rest, it was obvious to me how you felt about her. It was Trenchard who first pointed it out."

"Good God. Surely you know better than to believe such a source."

"In general. But he was a good judge of people in all their complexities, I'll give him that." She remembered when Trenchard had first questioned her about O'Roarke and Suzanne Rannoch. Her surprise, her defensiveness on behalf of the Rannochs' marriage, and the sudden realization of what should have been blindingly obvious long before.

She sat back, studying his face. How in God's name had the interview twisted so that sympathy for her interrogator washed over her? "It must have been difficult."

"What?"

"Seeing your son marry the woman you love."

"My dear Miss Dudley. You're too astute a woman to see life in lending library terms."

"I don't. I observe and make judgments accordingly. I have few pretensions, but I am an excellent observer."

"Even a good observer can give way to sentiment."

"I don't know the meaning of the word. I can quite understand your pretending in front of Mr. and Mrs. Rannoch to protect them, but as you said, between the two of us such deception only complicates the situation."

A faint, unexpected smile curved O'Roarke mouth. "You're a dangerous woman, Miss Dudley. But whatever I felt for Suzanne didn't stop me from playing chess with her and Malcolm, as she'd be quick to point out. Twist the facts how you will, it's hardly the stuff of romance."

"A man giving up the woman he loves to his son who also loves her?"

"Malcolm would say he didn't love her when he first proposed."

"But I suspect you saw the possibilities between them before either of them did."

"Perhaps. But even a far more starry-eyed and less astute individual than you could hardly find anything remotely noble in my behavior. I've been driven by commitment to a cause for nearly all my life. And that's become so intertwined with playing a game that it's difficult to tell where one leaves off and the other begins."

"None of which means you don't love her."

"Damn it, yes." The words seemed to be torn from him, slamming against the stone walls with a reverberation that surprised them both. "It's a hackneyed word, but there's no other word to describe it adequately. I loved her. Perhaps foolishly, at times. But not so foolishly that I lost sight of the game."

"Or that you stopped thinking about your son."

He drew his self-control about him like a torn cloak. "I don't believe that I've admitted any such relationship to Malcolm Rannoch. But at the time, he was my opponent. In a war it mattered desperately to me that we win."

"If you were such a hard-headed pragmatist, you wouldn't speak with such self-loathing."

His gaze slid to the side. "All right. Happiness is damnably elusive. I may have thought Suzanne and Malcolm had a chance of snatching a bit of it. It didn't stop the other games I was playing."

"Which they were playing as well. I don't think either of them would thank you for talking about them as though they were mere pawns."

A faint but very real smile crossed his face. "There I can't but agree with you."

She watched him for another few moments. "And your other son?"

He went still.

"Don't forget I've bathed him and watched over him and tucked him into bed for a year. The resemblance is obvious."

He shifted in his chair, leaning a little more into the shadows. "Given the theory you've constructed, surely Malcolm being his father accounts for that."

"It could. But I've done the math. He was conceived before Mr. Rannoch and Suzanne married. Somehow I don't think Malcolm Rannoch would have anticipated the wedding night. Given the resemblance, the other explanation is obvious."

"Colin is Malcolm's son," O'Roarke said in a voice as flat and uncompromising as hammered steel. "That's all that matters."

"But that isn't all he means to you."

Raoul drew in a breath, then released it, and she had a sense that with that rough scrape barriers that were second nature to him went down. He leaned forwards, hands curved round his wine glass. "What Colin means to me is—complicated. Malcolm's son couldn't be other than important to me. But I don't deny that there's an added level of—concern—because of the other ties between us."

Despite the carefully chosen words, it had the weight of a confidence. Laura took a sip of her own wine, afraid to press too far, yet at the same time reluctant to let go of her opening. A tantalizing, elusive vista stretched before her, if only she could find the right key. "Why can't you admit to either Malcolm or Suzanne how much you care? I don't think they have the least notion of it."

She thought he would retreat again, but instead his mouth curved in a reluctant smile. He leaned back in his chair, as though he lounged in a café, wine glass tilting between his fingers. "My dear girl. They both have enough burdens already, a number of those burdens placed on their shoulders thanks to me. I'd hardly claim to have a great deal of delicacy of feeling, but having embroiled them in this chess game and put them in check countless times, it seems the least I can do is not complicate the situation with emotional burdens."

Oddly, the image that first came to her mind wasn't of Suzanne but of Malcolm, last Christmas, arguing with O'Roarke over the source of a quotation with cheerful enthusiasm that spoke volumes about the relationship they had once had. "Perhaps they wouldn't find them burdens. It can be a great relief, knowing someone cares for one. Speaking as one who's had little enough of that in my life."

He tossed down a sip of wine. "Malcolm and Suzanne have each other."

"You should know life isn't as simple as a lover making one not need anyone else."

"Perhaps. But I know complications. Considering the number of decisions I've made without taking either of them into account—"

She tilted her head to one side and regarded him. "I think you've made far more decisions taking them both into account than you'll admit or than either of them realizes. And I also think perhaps you should acknowledge that they're both adults and don't have to be protected from everything."

His fingers whitened round the stem of the glass. "Damn it, Laura—"

"Yes?" She kept her gaze steady.

He tossed back another swallow of wine. "You're too clever for your own good."

"My dear Mr. O'Roarke. Tell me something I don't know." Her own situation stabbed at the edges of her consciousness. "Of course, using your logic, I should stay as far away from Emily as possible." It was partly a challenge to him, partly an expression of her own fear.

"Damn it, Laura," he said again, this time in a very different tone. "It's not the same at all. Emily's a child. She needs a parent."

She hunched her shoulders, pushing aside an unbidden image of her own father's face. "I don't think one's ever really old enough to stop needing a parent."

He twisted his signet ring round his finger. "However one looks at it, I took shocking advantage of Suzanne."

"I don't know the details, but from what I do know, I think perhaps you saved her."

"So I tell myself in my attempts at self-justification. But Malcolm would be fully justified in calling me to account."

"I thought both you and Mr. Rannoch were too sensible to indulge in such theatrics."

"Which is why he hasn't done it. It doesn't mean he hasn't thought it."

"You gave her a purpose."

"Oh, yes. I don't regret turning her into an agent. But she didn't need—"

"A lover?"

He stared into his wine. "I gave way to impulse."

Personal impulse, he implied, whereas making her an agent had been driven by cause, like so much of what he did. "So you initiated it?" Laura asked.

It was shocking step to ask such a question. She fully expected a verbal slap. Instead he took a slow sip of wine and set his glass down with care. "No. But I should have—"

"Rejected her?"

"Had a care for her feelings."

"She seems to have come out of it quite well. Perhaps you should have had a care for your own feelings."

He gave a reluctant smile. "I assure you, I wouldn't have survived this long if I wasn't well able to keep my feelings in check."

"They have a way of sneaking up on one."

He shook his head. "In many ways, there's little to choose between me and Trenchard."

She gave a sharp laugh. "You're nothing like Trenchard. You couldn't be if you tried."

"No? We both took to bed the woman our son married, and left the son to raise a child we fathered ourselves. In many ways we couldn't be more alike."

"If one leaves out pertinent details. Like the fact that your affair with Suzanne occurred before she even met Malcolm Rannoch, whereas Trenchard seduced me—Trenchard and I seduced each other—after I was married to his son. That you made sure Colin was cared for, while Trenchard turned Emily into a pawn."

"What do you think I did to Colin by encouraging Suzanne to marry Malcolm?"