The Paris Affair (4 page)

Gabrielle Caruthers sat at one of the outdoor tables at Café Luxembourg with a relaxed ease that most Englishwomen did not possess, the folds of her embroidered muslin gown falling loosely about her. Her thick dark gold hair was gathered into a loose knot, tendrils escaping round her face beneath the brim of a chip straw hat tied with blue ribbons the color of her eyes. She was bent over a sketch pad, a cup of coffee at her elbow, but at Suzanne’s approach she looked up and greeted her with a smile.

“Mrs. Rannoch.” Her voice had the faintest lilt of an accent, for all she had spent most of her life in England. “So agreeable to be in a country where ladies can sit in cafés, don’t you find?”

“Very much so.” Suzanne returned the smile. She and Gabrielle Caruthers were hardly confidantes, but they saw each other frequently in British expatriate circles and they had young sons who were of an age, which helped forge a bond deeper than that of casual acquaintances. “Do you mind if I join you?”

“I’d be delighted.” Lady Caruthers signaled to a waiter to bring another cup of coffee as Suzanne dropped into a chair across from her. “It’s odd,” she said. “I can’t even remember Paris and yet I feel so much at home here. Do you feel the same?”

Suzanne glanced round the tables crowded beneath the green-and-white-striped awning. Two British cavalrymen were lounging at the nearest table, a Prussian and an Austrian tossed dice at the table beyond, and a trio of Dutch-Belgians had just come through the doors of the café. Would her throat ever cease to close at the sight? “I’ll never forget this time in Paris,” she said truthfully.

The waiter brought her coffee. She stirred in milk.

Lady Caruthers closed her sketch pad, which held a study of the Prussian and Austrian officers, quick and impressionistic, with vivid life in the strokes of pencil.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you,” Suzanne said.

“It’s no matter. I’m glad of the company.” Lady Caruthers paused a moment, her gaze moving over Suzanne’s face. “Though somehow I think you didn’t just happen by the café.” It was a statement that held a question.

“No, as it happens.” Suzanne set down the coffee spoon and took a careful sip. “I wanted to offer my condolences, Lady Caruthers.”

Lady Caruthers put up a hand to adjust the brim of her hat. “For heaven’s sake why?”

Suzanne settled her coffee cup in its saucer. “On Antoine Rivère’s death.”

For a moment Gabrielle Caruthers’s eyes held naked shock. Then she drew a quick breath, defenses slamming into place. “I can’t imagine—”

“Lady Caruthers.” Suzanne leaned forwards, her voice lowered. “I have no wish to cause you scandal or to disrupt your marriage. But you must wish to learn the truth of Monsieur Rivère’s death as much as my husband and I do.”

“I can’t imagine—”

“I know. I can prove it, if you like, but I don’t imagine you want me prying any more than I have to.”

Gabrielle Caruthers pushed back her chair and sprang to her feet, spattering coffee from her cup onto the table. “I have no need to listen to this impertinence.” She snatched up her gloves and reticule with shaking fingers and reached for her sketch pad.

“Lady Caruthers.” Suzanne gripped the other woman’s wrist. “It’s beastly. I hate prying into people’s private affairs. But Antoine Rivère’s death is unfortunately a political matter as well as a personal one.”

Lady Caruthers jerked her hand from Suzanne’s grasp. “Antoine—Monsieur Rivère died in a tavern brawl. I hardly see anything political in that.”

“It may have been more complicated. My husband and I were there—”

“You were at the tavern?” Shock shot through Lady Caruthers’s eyes, momentarily overwhelming her anger.

“Malcolm had a meeting with Monsieur Rivère. I was assisting him. We found his body. His death did not appear to have been part of the brawl. Lady Caruthers, I believe you’d prefer to answer questions from me rather than my husband. Or Wellington or Castlereagh.”

Lady Caruthers’s gaze slid to the side. The buzz of conversation, the rattle of dice, the clip-clop of horse hooves from the street created good cover, but the conversation had quieted when she sprang to her feet. She dropped back into her chair, picked up her coffee cup, and took a sip, as though playing for time.

“It must be dreadful,” Suzanne said in a quiet voice, once the buzz of conversation had resumed round them. “Grieving for someone and not being able to talk about it.”

Lady Caruthers put her hand to her mouth and gave a strangled sob. “It’s been hell. I couldn’t even admit—” She swallowed and stared at the coffee spattered on the marble tabletop. “You must think me a dreadful person.”

“No, I assure you.”

“You’re kind.”

“I hope I’m understanding. One never knows what goes on inside anyone else’s marriage.”

Lady Caruthers tugged a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and blotted the spilled coffee. “I’ve always been . . . fond of Rupert. I’ve known him since we were children. He was good friends with my cousin Bertrand.”

“Bertrand Laclos.”

“Yes. I came to England with the Lacloses—my uncle and aunt—when I was four. My parents were dead, and at the time I thought my brother was as well. But I had Bertrand and Étienne.”

“Bertrand’s brother?” Suzanne hadn’t realized there was another Laclos son.

“Yes.” A shadow crossed Gabrielle Caruthers’s face that had nothing to do with the brim of her hat. “Bertrand was seven when we came to England. Étienne was ten.” She smoothed out the handkerchief and stared at the coffee-stained linen. “It’s hard, being a foreigner among the English ton.”

“I was much older before I came to England, but I know precisely what you mean. One can never really be one of them.” It was something, Suzanne knew, that Malcolm would never quite understand.
Of course you belong,
he’d told her once with a quick smile.
You’re my wife. Not that I can quite imagine wanting to belong here
. That was the irony. Malcolm might have little use for the British beau monde, yet he’d be one of them his entire life, like it or not.

“Lord Dewhurst—Rupert’s father—and my uncle were old friends. Lord Dewhurst had been sent to the University of Paris, in the days when one could still travel easily between the two countries. He met my uncle there. Because of Lord Dewhurst, we were more fortunate than most émigrés. He brought us into his world. And Rupert’s friendship with Bertrand helped even more. I think I was half in love with Rupert at the age of eight just for that. I had friends, I was invited to parties. Even though I never quite forgot that my clothes weren’t new or fashionable enough. Clothes matter so much when one’s that age.”

“In this world clothes always matter.”

Lady Caruthers smoothed the cuff of her blue sarcenet spencer, trimmed with lace and twists of satin. “How very true. When I was fourteen, my brother Gui was discovered alive, hidden away with a farm family in Provence, and smuggled to England. Rupert and Bertrand took him under their wing. I was good friends with Rupert’s sisters by then. Henrietta and I made our débuts together, which saved my uncle and aunt no end of expense. Rupert danced the first dance with me at our come-out ball.” She traced her fingers over her initials embroidered in the handkerchief. “There was no dearth of young men to dance with me that season. But I quickly discovered that it’s one thing to be an acceptable partner for the
boulanger
or the
écossaise
and quite another to be an acceptable wife with no dowry.”

“It does come back to money so often.”

“Quite, as my husband would say.” Gabrielle’s fingers tensed on the handkerchief. “When Étienne left university, he went to work as Lord Dewhurst’s secretary. Lord Dewhurst is in the diplomatic service. But of course you know that. You know him.”

Suzanne nodded. She had met the earl on a number of occasions. A courtly man with a powerful presence and a keen gaze. She’d always been wary of him.

Lady Caruthers took a sip of coffee. “Lord Dewhurst has always been kind to me. But I’ve never quite forgiven him for pulling Étienne into it.”

“ ‘It’?” Suzanne asked. She hadn’t realized any of the Laclos family tragedy revolved round Bertrand’s elder brother. Had Étienne somehow been responsible for Bertrand’s defection?

Gabrielle grimaced. “Étienne’s head was stuffed with a lot of noble ideals. And Dewhurst fed them. He’s one of those Englishmen who thought the clock could be turned back to before the Revolution. Of course I suppose one could say now it has been.” Lady Caruthers cast a glance round the café. “But one can never really go back, can one?”

Suzanne glanced round the café as well. The British cavalrymen were flirting with two Parisian girls in flower-trimmed bonnets. Two Frenchmen in civilian dress stepped beneath the awning and stared from the cavalrymen to the Prussian and Austrian to the Dutch-Belgians, tension running through their shoulders. One took a quick step forwards. His companion gripped his arm. Suzanne swallowed, a lump in her throat. “No.”

Though what Paris was turning into was anyone’s guess.

Gabrielle Caruthers glanced at the Frenchmen as they moved to a table defiantly close to the English cavalry officers. One stopped to sweep a sardonic bow to the Parisian girls. “Étienne was enraged by the Duc d’Enghien’s execution. He went to Paris in secret with English gold, embroiled in one of those half-baked Royalist plots that were so common then. Something to do with killing Bonaparte with a bomb at Malmaison and replacing him with one of the royal dukes. It was discovered before it ever really amounted to anything. Étienne was arrested and executed. Lord Dewhurst came to tell us. Rupert and Bertrand were at Oxford, but they both came to see us as soon as they could. At the time I thought it was the worst tragedy that could befall our family. Then Bertrand left England and went to France to fight for Bonaparte. Étienne had romantic ideals. Bertrand went in the opposite direction. Suddenly I was a traitor’s cousin.”

Gabrielle Caruthers obviously hadn’t known her cousin was supposedly a British agent. “Hardly a traitor. Your cousin was French.”

“Yes, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. To own the truth, I’ve never cared much for countries. But to nearly everyone we knew Bertrand was a traitor. My uncle wouldn’t speak about him at all. Rupert was kind. He told me Bertrand was still my cousin and it was impossible to know why someone did a certain thing. That there were things I didn’t understand. Then he left for the Peninsula as well.”

“You must have been lonely.”

Lady Caruthers shrugged her slender shoulders. “I still had plenty of dancing partners. I’d received one or two offers of something more serious, though it didn’t entail marriage.” She cast a quick look at Suzanne. “I didn’t—”

“It’s different when one’s an unmarried girl,” Suzanne said, though for her it hadn’t been precisely. But then to call her childhood and young adulthood eccentric would be a laughable understatement.

Gabrielle Caruthers nodded. “I was a bridesmaid when Henrietta married Lord Sherringford the spring after we came out. And then two years later when her younger sister Clarissa made her début and married in the same season. I was getting to be positively on the shelf. My brother Gui had gaming debts.” She frowned at the handkerchief. “I even considered hiring myself out as a governess, but my uncle wouldn’t stand for it, and in truth I doubt I’d the temperament.”

“A woman has few options to make money.”

“Yes.” Lady Caruthers folded the handkerchief carefully into squares. “Then we got news that Bertrand had been killed. My uncle suffered a stroke. My aunt’s health already wasn’t good. I’m not much of a caretaker, but there was only me. I did what I could.”

“Thank goodness they had you.”

Gabrielle gave a bleak smile. “I owed them everything. The roof over my head. The food I ate. My life. This was little enough to do in recompense.”

A burst of laughter came from the Parisian girls and the British cavalry officers. “And your brother?” Suzanne asked.

Lady Caruthers smoothed a finger over the handkerchief. “Gui tried. He was having enough trouble sorting out his own life at the time.”

“So all the burden fell to you.”

Lady Caruthers shrugged. “As I said, it was the least I owed them. But I don’t pretend to have been very good at it. And the gossip only got worse of course. Either people dropped us from their invitation lists, or they called on us, avid for information, like the latest installment of a lending library novel. Henrietta and Clarissa tried to help, but they were both busy with their own families by that time. Clarissa had just had a baby and Henrietta was about to be confined. Then Rupert returned to England on leave.”

Suzanne noted the way Gabrielle’s eyes softened. “It must have been a great relief to see him.”

“A massive understatement.” Lady Caruthers tucked the handkerchief into her reticule. “I still remember the day I came down the stairs, after soothing my aunt’s hysterics, to find him standing in the hall. I fairly ran down the last of the stairs and flung my arms round him, in a way that would have scandalized my aunt. He was so kind. I can’t tell you what it meant, having his support. Just little things like the way he could talk to my uncle and aunt and sometimes even get them to smile. And Gui always listened to him. Under Rupert’s influence, Gui stopped gaming and drinking quite so much. Also—Rupert missed Bertrand as well, and remembered the good times.” Lady Caruthers put a hand to her face, tucking a strand of dark gold hair beneath her bonnet. “We spent more time together than we ever had. And then he asked me to marry him.”

“Was that a relief as well?”

“It answered so many problems. I went from a social pariah wondering how to buy sugar to the wife of a future earl.” Gabrielle Caruthers stared down at her hands. She touched the plain gold circle of her wedding band. “You must think I’m dreadful, betraying a man who gave me so much.”