The Paris Affair (12 page)

“He wanted you to keep an eye on him?”

“Nothing so specific. Oh, I suppose in a sense he wanted to make sure Laclos was genuine. I certainly never saw anything to suggest he wasn’t. Which is damned ironic, considering after he died we found out he’d been working for the British. I suppose that’s why they’re asking questions about him now? His family’s kicking up a fuss with the Restoration?”

Cordelia made a vague gesture with her fan that could have been assent or simply an attempt to stir the air. “I remember him a bit in England when I was a girl. Quite handsome, but so serious.” She smiled, in a way meant to indicate that Edmond had been far more amusing than Bertrand Laclos. “I can’t imagine what the two of you found to talk about.”

Edmond stretched his arm along the back of the sofa, his gloved fingers brushing the bare skin above the puffed sleeve of her gown. “He wasn’t the liveliest of fellows. A good judge of horseflesh, though. He helped me choose a splendid pair of chestnuts. And was quite good at cards, actually—excellent instincts. Mathematical sort of mind. But gaming didn’t seem to interest him overmuch. And though he’d go along for a convivial evening in the Palais Royale, his—er—his heart didn’t seem to be in it.”

She tilted her head back. “Not the sort to enjoy an evening out at a brothel, was he?”

Edmond grinned. “Damn it, Cordy, I forget how delightfully plainspoken you are. Woman after my own heart. No, birds of paradise didn’t seem much to Laclos’s taste. Of course he had an exquisite mistress. I suppose she kept him occupied.” Edmond’s tone doubted the believability of one woman so keeping a man ensnared.

“ ‘Mistress’?” Cordelia asked, careful to keep the question idle.

“Louise de Carnot.” Edmond’s fingers stirred against her shoulder. “Believe me, many men have tried to follow in Laclos’s footsteps, but I don’t think any succeeded.”

Cordelia frowned, trying to put a name to the face.

“Louise Sevigny now,” Edmond said. “Married the painter Emile Sevigny after her husband died. Nearly was ostracized from court circles, but the Empress Marie Louise came to her defense.”

Of course. An image of a red-haired woman with a sweet smile shot into Cordelia’s memory. “How long were she and Laclos involved?”

“It began a month or so after he arrived in Paris and continued until he went off to the Peninsula. Afterwards by letter for all I know.”

“Was Monsieur Carnot a complacent husband?”

Edmond gave a brief laugh. “Hardly. He was off with the army himself, which gave Louise a bit more license. Rather like you.”

Cordelia controlled an inward wince. “But Carnot wouldn’t have been as complacent as Harry if he’d found out?”

“Wagers were laid on whether or not he’d challenge Laclos to a duel when he got back to Paris. I more than half-thought I was going to have to act as a second. But as it happened, Laclos was sent off to the Peninsula before Carnot returned.”

“Did Carnot learn of the affair?”

“Not that I know of.”

“If he had you think he’d have exacted retribution?”

“Most definitely.” Edmond took a sip of champagne. “Of course before long Laclos was dead.”

“So he was.” Cordelia touched his arm. “Thank you, Edmond.”

He tossed down the last of his champagne, his gaze trained on her face. “A waltz for old times’ sake?”

She shook her head. “I’m not the woman I was a year ago.”

Edmond ran an appraising gaze over her. “Different with Davenport here to see?”

Cordelia got to her feet. “Different because I care what he thinks.”

 

Suzanne resisted the impulse to follow Cordelia into the card room. She would only be in the way. Cordy could take care of herself. Suzanne moved down the passage towards the ballroom to find herself face-to-face with Wilhelmine of Sagan.

“I’m sorry, Suzanne.” Wilhelmine’s voice and gaze held regret and sympathy with no overtones of jealousy.

“You needn’t apologize, Willie. It’s not your responsibility.”

Wilhelmine grimaced. “Isn’t it? Doesn’t one in a certain way make oneself responsible for a man by taking him into one’s bed? Dear God, listen to me. I used to claim I valued my freedom more than anything.”

“Freedom can be lonely.”

“And not as amusing as one gets older.” Wilhelmine tugged at her Grecian scarf. “He can be so agreeable. But then he drinks too much and forgets himself.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t experienced before. I was more concerned—”

“For me?” Wilhelmine shrugged. “I stopped expecting exclusivity a long time ago. He’s amusing. And in a powerful position.”

“I can understand the allure. For a few weeks. Or even a few months. But for anything more permanent—A wife cedes a great deal of power to her husband.” A power she was fortunate Malcolm never tried to take.

“And gains a great deal of position.” Wilhelmine glanced into the pier glass across the passage and adjusted a ringlet beneath her emerald circlet, a Courland heirloom. “I can manage him.”

“But will you be satisfied managing him?”

Wilhelmine smoothed the embroidered folds of the Grecian scarf over her arm. “I’m more than ten years older than you, Suzanne. It’s different when one starts thinking about being old and alone.”

Suzanne smiled at the glowing woman before her. Wilhelmine’s complexion was nearly as fresh and unlined as Dorothée’s. “You’re not old.”

“But I will be one day.”

Suzanne was silent. Before she’d married Malcolm she hadn’t thought about growing old. It hadn’t seemed likely she’d survive that long.

Wilhelmine met her gaze. “It’s not the life I wanted as a girl. But then I gave up expecting that life centuries ago. I have to make do with the options before me.”

 

“Have you gone mad, Cordy?” Lady Caroline Lamb seized Cordelia’s arm as Cordelia stepped into the ballroom.

Still conscious of the imprint of Edmond’s fingers and the warmth of his breath, Cordelia met her friend’s gaze. “I don’t think so. Any more than I always have been.”

“You were talking with Edmond Talleyrand. In an alcove.”

“More an embrasure.”

Caroline’s eyes went wider than usual in her thin face. She’d looked like that in the nursery when her brother Fred insisted fairy tales were only made up stories. “I really believed you and Harry were happy. That things had changed.”

For all her scandalous reputation, Caro was much more of a romantic than Cordelia was herself. Cordelia gripped her friend’s hands. “We are. Truly.”

“But you must realize what you’re risking. Harry’s trust. His faith in you. He may say he’ll forgive you, but you’ll never get that back. I know I never will with William.” Caroline cast a quick glance across the ballroom to where her husband, William, stood with Granville Leveson-Gower. “You have no idea what it’s like to look in your husband’s eyes and know he’ll never look at you in the same way.”

“Harry never will look at me the way he did when we married. Which is perhaps a good thing—he didn’t understand me in the least.”

“Don’t joke, Cordy.”

“I’m not.” In truth, she couldn’t help but feel a pang for the young, intense love she had failed to appreciate and would never know again. “But Harry knows I was talking to Edmond. I was—”

Caroline’s gaze skimmed over her face. “You’re helping the Rannochs again, aren’t you?”

“Caro—”

Caroline stepped back. “Never mind, I know you can’t tell me about it. But do be careful, Cordy. You’re still playing with fire.”

Cordelia managed a smile. “When have I not?”

Caroline’s gaze remained grave and uncharacteristically mature. “Then you should know the consequences.”

Mouth unexpectedly dry, Cordelia squeezed her friend’s hands and moved off in search of Suzanne, whom she found on the edge of the dance floor. Suzanne scanned her face but waited for her to speak.

“Confronting old ghosts isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” Cordelia said. “Though I fear I’ve stirred up some tiresome gossip.”

“Harry’s strong enough to handle gossip.”

Cordelia nodded. “I think Harry will be all right. As he said himself, we were going to have to deal with this at some point. I just didn’t—” She shook her head, regret twisting in her chest.

“What?” Suzanne asked.

Cordelia twisted her diamond bracelet round her wrist. “I didn’t much care to be reminded of who I used to be.”

Suzanne touched her arm. “We all have sides of ourselves we don’t like to be reminded of. Believe me.”

For a moment, Suzanne’s eyes were dark with self-loathing. Cordelia touched her friend’s arm. “Suzette—”

“After what you and Harry have been through, Cordy, I rather think you can survive anything.” Suzanne’s eyes were bright, the polished armor in place again. For the first time, Cordelia realized just how much her friend’s demeanor was armor. As close as they had become, there was a great deal about Suzanne that Cordelia didn’t know. She swallowed and told Suzanne what Edmond had revealed about Bertrand Laclos and his relationship with Louise de Carnot.

Suzanne smiled. “You have the makings of a capital agent, Cordy. Thank you.”

“Does it help?”

“Anything connected with Bertrand Laclos helps.”

“Good.” Cordelia felt the knot of tension ease within her. “It’s amazing how gratifying it is to feel one’s done something useful. Since Waterloo, I’ve been oddly discontented with my usual round of idle frivolity.”

Suzanne smiled. “I can’t quite imagine you as idle or frivolous, Cordy. Do you think—”

“Cordy!”

The voice rang out across the ballroom, through the blur of conversation and clink of glasses and strains of the waltz. Cordelia’s body tensed in response even before her mind registered whom the voice belonged to. Damnation. There was no escaping the past.

CHAPTER 9

Cordelia turned to see him ducking between a British hussar and two plumed ladies with his characteristic loose-limbed gait. His coffee brown hair still fell over his forehead with a disorder, which she’d never been able to decide was the result of natural carelessness or careful time at the mirror. His coat, midnight blue rather than black, was exquisitely cut but a bit rumpled, his neckcloth slightly askew, a diamond glinting in the linen.

“Monsieur Laclos.” Cordelia drew the tattered remnants of her self-respect round her and extended a white-gloved hand.

“Such formality.” Gui Laclos bowed over her hand with a grin that even now she could not deny was engaging.

“Do you know Mrs. Rannoch?” Cordelia asked, withdrawing her hand from his clasp even as his fingers tightened over her own. “Monsieur Guilaume de Laclos, Suzanne.”

Gui turned the full force of his smile on Suzanne as he swept her a bow. “We haven’t been formally introduced, but I could hardly fail to be aware of the beautiful Mrs. Rannoch.”

Suzanne extended her hand. “You’re Lady Caruthers’s brother.”

“Guilty as charged.” Gui lifted her hand to his lips. “You know Gaby?”

“I took coffee with her just this afternoon as it happens.”

“Gaby loves French cafés. She’s far more Parisian than I am, though she left Paris when she was scarcely more than a baby, while I grew up here. Or rather in Provence.”

“Your sister said you weren’t able to flee Paris with the rest of the family.” Suzanne’s gaze was warm with sympathy. Cordelia knew it was one of her friend’s best techniques for drawing out someone she was questioning. Which didn’t mean the sympathy wasn’t genuine. “It must have been terribly difficult.”

“They all thought I’d died with our parents when a mob stormed our house in Provence. Gaby was with our uncle and aunt in Paris.” Raw grief flickered through Gui’s eyes. Those were the moments that had caught Cordelia, had made him more to her than a fleeting fancy. “Our nurse hid me before she was killed. There was no way to get me to our uncle and aunt in Paris. One of the grooms smuggled me to her cousins, who were farmers in Provence. I lived as one of their children until I was fifteen.” He shook his head, drawing the familiar insouciance over the darkness in his eyes. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go on so.”

“It’s all right,” Suzanne said. “My own family fled France during the Terror, though like your sister I was too young to remember much. I was fortunate to grow up in Spain in relative peace.”

Gui gave a twisted smile. “It wasn’t so bad. To own the truth, much of the time I more than half-forgot I’d ever been anything but the third son of a Provençal farmer. I scrambled round the countryside with my adopted brothers and sisters. Bit of a shock when a man came knocking at our door one night and said he could get me to my family in London.” He grimaced. “I thought I was with my family. That was my first meeting with Lord Dewhurst.”

“Lord Dewhurst?” Suzanne said. “I didn’t realize he was the one who brought you to England.”

“He and my uncle were friends from their university days in Paris. You wouldn’t think it to look at him now, but apparently he lived quite the life of daring a decade ago, slipping over to France to work with the Royalists. He tracked down my nurse to see that she was all right and learned from her that I’d survived.” He shook his head. “Were it not for Dewhurst I might still be in Provence.”

“London must have been quite a shock.”

“Quite. My cousins tried to be kind, tried to show me how to go on. I’m afraid I didn’t appreciate them properly until after they were gone.” He cast a quick look from Suzanne to Cordelia. “They—”

“Étienne died on a mission in France and Bertrand fighting in Spain,” Suzanne said. “Your family have been through a great deal.”

“Next to them I’ve been fortunate.” Gui flashed a careless smile, bright as the crystal and gilt of the chandeliers overhead. “Life in Britain has had its compensations.” His gaze lingered on Cordelia for a moment. “You look well, Cordy. I heard you’d been in Brussels during Waterloo.”

“That’s where I met Mrs. Rannoch.” Cordelia kept her gaze on Gui’s face. He deserved better from her than Edmond Talleyrand. “And where I reconciled with my husband.”

Gui’s eyes widened. “I heard of course—”

“That we were living under the same roof?”

“But I didn’t realize—”

“I learned a number of things about Harry in Brussels. And about myself.”

Gui regarded her for a moment. His eyes now held not insouciance or the scars of the past but something that might have been regret mixed with affection. “Congratulations, Cordy. I’m happy for you. And Davenport’s a lucky man.”

He touched her arm, nodded to Suzanne, and moved off. Cordelia drew a harsh breath. “You must think me quite indiscriminate,” she said, not meeting Suzanne’s gaze.

“Hardly that. He’s very charming. And clever enough to hold a woman’s interest, I should think.”

Cordelia folded her arms, gripping her elbows. “It didn’t last very long. A fortnight at a house party in Devon. The Somertons’. I don’t know why I accepted. I never did well immured in the country, and then the weather was wretched. Gui made things so much more amusing.”

“There’s nothing wrong with amusement.”

“I was married.”

“And separated from your husband. And treated like a pariah by society.”

Cordelia gave a bleak smile. “Are you saying I lived up to my reputation?”

“I think you lived in the society that would accept you.”

Cordelia forced herself to stare into the past without flinching. “Somehow I didn’t realize quite how many ghosts I was creating in the process. But then I was never very good at thinking ahead.”

“Cordy—” Suzanne adjusted one of the pearl buttons on her sleeve. “Did Gui Laclos ever talk about his family?”

“Is Gui caught up in this?”

“The Lacloses are caught up in this. What happened to his cousin Bertrand could have to do with why Antoine Rivère was killed and have a whole host of implications.”

Cordelia frowned, fingering the ebony sticks of her fan. She understood the questions that had to be asked in an investigation, better now than she had last June in Brussels. And she understood that Suzanne and Malcolm didn’t ask those questions idly or reveal confidences if they didn’t have to. But a part of her still shied away from probing into the lives of her friends. “Gui didn’t talk about his family much. Except at first to tell me he was the black sheep and quite everyone’s despair. Said partly as a dare, partly with little-boy ruefulness. Then later after we”—she hesitated, then wondered at her hesitation over the wording; it was nothing Suzanne didn’t know—“after we became intimate,” she said with determination. “The weather had cleared for a bit and we were walking along the stream bank on the estate. Gui mentioned the first time Étienne and Bertrand took him fishing after he came to England. A common enough story, but unusual, because he didn’t often talk about them.” She frowned, trying to remember back to that exchange. The damp chill of the air cutting through her pelisse, the tug of the breeze on her bonnet ribbons, the firmness of Gui’s arm beneath her gloved fingers were all vivid, but the precise words eluded her. “I think I said something about how it must have been nice to have cousins to show him how to go on in England—trying to be innocuous. And I suppose perhaps trying to learn more about his past. Gui stopped then and looked across the water.” The muscles in his arm had gone taut beneath her touch. “He said Bertrand and Étienne were quite different from him. And that perhaps he was fortunate duty and honor had never meant a great deal to him. His mouth twisted as he said it with a sort of self-derision. He added that his lack of sensitivity to the call of duty was perhaps the only reason he was still alive, while his cousins were not.”

“This must have been not long after Bertrand Laclos was killed,” Suzanne said.

“About six months. Most people wouldn’t have described Bertrand’s going to fight for Bonaparte as honorable, but one could take the view that he was serving the country of his birth.” Cordelia studied Suzanne for a moment. “Or wasn’t he at all?”

Suzanne returned her gaze for a moment, her own gaze still and steady. Cordelia thought she would deny that she had the least idea what Cordelia was talking about. Instead she gave a sudden smile. “Damn it, Cordy, you’re much too quick. Or have you heard something?”

“There was always talk that no one could make sense of what Bertrand had done,” Cordelia said, putting into words thoughts that had only been half-formulated until now. “But it was mostly that here you are implying there’s some mystery about his life and death. He never struck me as the sort to turn his back on his family and fight for Bonaparte. If nothing else because of the family duty that Gui was talking about. He had to have known the burden it would place on his parents.”

“Do you think Gui knew or suspected Bertrand’s defection wasn’t all that met the eye?”

Cordelia considered her former lover. For all his seemingly careless, open manner, there was a great deal she hadn’t known about him. “I’m not sure. Perhaps. Otherwise that comment about Bertrand being driven by family and duty like Étienne doesn’t make a great deal of sense.”

“It must have been terribly difficult for all of them.”

Cordelia rubbed her arms. “Gui was tormented. I’ve never been sure how much of it was growing up in a completely different world and then being transported abruptly to England, and how much was losing his two cousins. He went from being the rebel outsider to the family heir and the only surviving son in effect.” She forced her mind back to those days in Devon. For all the affair had been lighthearted and agreeable, it had had moments that touched on something more serious. “Gui had nightmares. One night we both indulged in too much champagne, and he fell asleep in my bed. Which would have been problematic if my maid had found him there in the morning. Instead, I woke to the sound of Gui screaming.”

“I have nightmares myself,” Suzanne said. It was one of those moments when Cordelia had the oddest sense her friend had made a great admission. “Did Gui scream anything in particular?”

“ ‘Frémont.’ I have no idea who that is. Or what. I shook him awake. He stared at me quite wild-eyed, as though for a moment he wasn’t sure where he was or who I was. Then he came to and apologized profusely, He said he should know better than to fall asleep in a lady’s bed. I asked if anything was the matter, and he assured me it was just the champagne talking. But—”

“What?” Suzanne asked.

“He asked if he’d said anything tiresome.” Cordelia’s fingers tightened on her fan. “Perhaps it’s nonsense, but I had the oddest sense he thought he’d betrayed something while he slept.”

“Did you ask him about Frémont?”

“No. It seemed better to ignore the whole thing. He continued perfectly charming after that, but he was more guarded than ever.” Cordelia flicked her fan open and looked down at the copy of a Fragonard painting on the silk. A couple in a decorous garden obviously about to indulge in some very indecorous behavior. “I can’t claim Gui and I were confidants. I certainly didn’t confide in him about my life and past. But we were both outsiders in society in one way or another. He because of being an émigré and coming here late, and I because of my own scandals and folly. I think that was part of what drew us together.”

Suzanne drew a breath, but Harry came up beside them before she could speak. “I’ve been getting the oddest number of sympathetic glances,” he said.

Cordelia slid her arm through her husband’s own. “Poor darling.” Her voice was light. The undertone was not.

Harry grinned down at her, mockery tempered by something softer. “It’s amazingly easier to take when one knows the sympathy is quite misplaced.”

Suzanne touched his arm. “You’re a generous man, Harry.”

“Don’t let it get about. You’ll ruin my reputation.”

Dorothée Talleyrand swept up to them and claimed Suzanne. Cordelia watched her friend move off. “Harry—”

“Mmm?” Harry was studying her face.

“Do you think that Suzanne—”

“What?” Harry’s gaze turned sharp.

Cordelia watched Suzanne, a slender figure in pomegranate gauze over ivory satin, laughing with Dorothée and Lord Granville and the Russian envoy Pozzo di Borgo with just the right blend of charm and flirtation. “We shared so much in Brussels. I’ve confided things to her I haven’t shared with anyone. And yet there are times I feel there are whole sides of her I don’t know at all.”

Harry’s gaze narrowed as he too looked at Suzanne. “That’s true of most people, I expect. And Suzanne’s had a more difficult life than most of us.”

“But I’m—”

“Not everyone is as wonderfully straightforward as you.”

“Harry.”

“It’s true. You have a wonderful, dangerous knack for doing what seems right to you and damn the consequences.”

“I don’t—”

“Why else would you have run off with George Chase in the teeth of society?”

Cordelia bit her lip. Talking, even thinking, about George was painful. But she understood why Harry didn’t shy away from mentioning him. Ignoring him would make it worse. “That was because—”

“You loved Chase, or thought you did, and that came first. It was more important than anything.”

“Including my marriage.”

“Well, yes.” Harry returned her gaze without recrimination or any hint of softness. “You weren’t in love with me at the time. And afterwards you didn’t hide away—”

“No,” she said, the bitterness back in her throat, “I fairly flaunted my damaged reputation.”

“You have a great knack for being yourself, Cordy. It’s the same knack that had you in Brussels, caring for your bitter fool of a husband when all common sense dictated you should be elsewhere. And that made you jump in to help Suzanne and Malcolm with their investigation, whatever the consequences to your own reputation.”