The Paris Affair (24 page)

He seized her hand and lifted it to his lips. “I have a remarkable wife.”

“For a man who claims to despise flattery, you’re indecently good at it, Harry.” She leaned forwards, her dressing gown slithering from her shoulders, and put her mouth to his.

After two months her kisses still sent a shock of wonder through him. He closed his arms round her, carefully, because his impulse was to crush her to him as though she might be gone at any moment. They fell back against the pillows. There might still be ghosts between them. Perhaps there always would be. But this was the surest way he knew to drive them from thought.

 

Rupert stopped in the doorway of his wife’s bedchamber. She was at her dressing table, wrapped in a frothy dressing gown of blue silk and cream-colored lace, her hair already unpinned by her maid. Absorbed in unfastening her moonstone earrings, Gabrielle didn’t seem to be aware of the opening of the door. He stood watching her for a moment, memories and regrets tugging his mind in a dozen different directions.

He must have moved, because Gabrielle gave a sudden start. “Rupert, I didn’t hear you come in.”

He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. After three years of marriage, his wife’s bedchamber was still alien territory. “We need to talk, Gaby,” he said quickly, lest she should think he had come for something else. There hadn’t been anything else for some time.

Gabrielle swung round on the dressing table bench, eyes wide with inquiry. “What is it? Rupert, you look dreadful.”

“I had a scene with Father.”

“Oh dear.” She put out a hand, touched his arm, then let it fall as though she feared she’d pushed too far. “I knew living so close to him would prove difficult.”

“And it’s going to get more so.” Rupert pulled a scroll-backed chair away from the escritoire and drew it up beside the dressing table. “I’ve told Father he’s no longer welcome in our home. Nor is he to have any contact with Stephen.”

Gabrielle’s eyes widened. “Darling, I know how your father can anger you—”

“This goes beyond that.” The desire to smash something, to smash his father, roiled through him. “After what he’s done I’m severing all contact with him.”

Gabrielle drew a confused breath. “Rupert, whatever it is—”

“Father was responsible for Bertrand’s death.”

Shock flared in Gabrielle’s eyes. “How on earth—”

“Gaby—” Rupert sought for words that would be anywhere approaching appropriate. “I’ve done you a great wrong.”

“Rupert. Darling.” Gabrielle sprang up from the dressing table bench, dropped down on the floor beside his chair, and took his hands. “You aren’t making any sense. You and I don’t have anything to do with what happened to Bertrand. And you didn’t wrong me. You gave me everything. I’m afraid I haven’t been nearly as grateful as I should have been.”

He looked down at her face, familiar since childhood, lovely, deserving of so much more. “I should have told you before I offered for you. I should have made it clear that I couldn’t—”

“You never promised anything you couldn’t give, Rupert.” Gabrielle sat back on her heels. “I know what marriage is in the beau monde. Or I should. If I had expectations that were . . . unrealistic . . . it’s my own fault.”

The words of his proposal echoed in his head with bitter clarity. He’d been mad. Too caught up in his grief to see anyone’s feelings but his own. “You expected what you had every right to. You deserved a man who could pledge you his heart without reserve. Not one who gave his away long since.”

Her gaze moved over him with an understanding that was almost like relief. “I never realized—I never thought to ask. Was it someone in Spain? Was she already married? Or—”

“Gaby, no. Yes, it was someone in Spain. Someone I knew in Spain. But not in the way you’re thinking.” He swallowed, every instinct of secrecy tight in his throat. “Bertrand—Bertrand was my friend. But it was more. I—” He sought for words and realized there was only one way to say it. “I loved him.”

Confusion filled Gabrielle’s clear blue gaze and slowly gave way to understanding. He waited, braced for horror or disgust. Instead Gabrielle touched his hand. “Oh, Rupert, I’m so sorry. I should have seen it.”

“You couldn’t possibly—”

“Don’t be silly, Rupert.” Gabrielle’s mouth curved in a smile, the sort of smile she gave when she was thinking about France in her days of exile or her lost parents or anything out of reach. “I’m hardly innocent of such things. I hear gossip. I know there are men who—I just never thought—”

He pulled his hands from her clasp. “That I was so depraved.”

“Rupert, no.” Her eyes widened in what seemed to be genuine shock. “You can’t think—Is that how you see yourself?”

He swallowed, the past roiling in his head. Careless comments, confused thoughts. “I—” He straightened his shoulders. “No.” The conviction in his own voice shook him. “What Bertrand and I felt for each other—It was nothing but good.” The memories tugged at his senses, and he smiled despite everything. “But I didn’t think—”

“That anyone else could accept you? Or that I could?” Gabrielle got to her feet, but instead of drawing back, she touched his hair with tentative fingers. “How poorly you must think of me. I’m so sorry you couldn’t talk to me. You must have so needed a friend. And whatever else we were, I thought we were always that.”

“Always. But I’ve asked far too much of you as it is. I should never have offered for you.”

Gabrielle shrugged her shoulders, one of those moments when she looked unmistakably French. “If you hadn’t, God knows where I’d be now. And we wouldn’t have Stephen.” She dropped back down on the dressing table bench but leaned towards him, as though not to break contact. “You were in touch with Bertrand even though he was working for the French?” Her brows drew together. “Or—?” Another question flickered in her eyes that she could not quite put into words.

He gave a faint smile. “I’m not a French agent, Gaby. And neither was Bertrand.”

Gabrielle drew a sharp breath. “But—”

He told her in as quick and controlled a tone as he could. Bertrand’s work for the British, the supposed revelation that he had in fact been a French double agent, his death on the orders of the British.

Gabrielle gave a strangled cry.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Rupert said. “But I had no proof. And God help me, even I had doubts. Until Malcolm Rannoch began asking questions.”

“Why—?”

“He’s looking into the Comte de Rivère’s death. And Rivère claimed to have information about Bertrand.”

“Suzanne Rannoch talked to me.” A shadow flickered through Gabrielle’s eyes. “Rupert—”

“I owe Rannoch a debt of gratitude,” Rupert said, determined to get the rest of the story out. “He learned what I couldn’t. What I should have learned four years ago.” Guilt and anger bit him in the throat, a rank taste he would never be rid of.

“But who—”

“Father.”

Gabrielle stared at him with growing horror as the picture formed in her eyes. “You can’t know—”

“I can. He admitted it.” Rupert pushed himself to his feet and strode across the room. The violence he hadn’t been able to unleash on his father coiled within him. He wanted to sweep the porcelain figurines off the mantel, hurl the lamp across the room, crush the crystal girandoles on the candle sconces beneath his heel.

Gabrielle rubbed her arms. She had charmed Dewhurst from the first and had always seemed more at ease with him than Rupert was himself. “He hated Bertrand so much—”

“He hated what Bertrand was to me.” Rupert’s hands curled into fists. To know that the person one had loved above all others would still be alive if one had only kept one’s distance.

Gabrielle’s sharp breath sliced through the room. “He wanted you to marry.”

Rupert spun round and took a quick step towards her. “It’s nothing to do with you, Gaby.”

She pushed herself to her feet as well, her hand to her mouth as though she were about to be sick. “But we fell right in with his plans. When I remember him congratulating us—”

“Gaby—” He crossed to her side and took her by the shoulders. “It’s not your fault. It’s thanks to me you were mixed up in this sorry business. But you must see now why Father is no longer welcome under our roof.”

She gave a jerky nod. “At least now I know why you could never—” She drew a breath, her gaze turned away from him. “Why you could never love me as I loved you.”

He looked down at her, the strands of hair falling against her cheek, the delicate line of her brows, the curve of her jaw, and saw the girl she’d been before Bertrand left England. Before everything went wrong. “I didn’t realize at the time—I should have known. I was too caught up in my grief to see you properly.” He lifted a hand and pushed her hair back from her shoulder, easier with the gesture than he had been for some time. Amazing the difference now the truth was in the open.

Gabrielle caught his hand and took a step back. “Rupert—” She squeezed his fingers and released him. “You aren’t the only one with reason to feel guilty.”

He studied the familiar face he felt he’d so rarely looked at. Or so rarely seen properly. “Gaby?”

She folded her arms in front of her. “I was lonely. And I’m no saint.”

For a moment he could simply stare at her, his brain refusing to make sense of it. He could not quite name the emotions that coursed through him. Surprise. Relief. And a bite of jealousy. A jealousy he had no right to feel.

Gabrielle looked into his eyes, her own dark and steady. “I wasn’t in love with him. But I needed to be noticed. I needed to feel like a woman. I needed a person with whom I didn’t have to pretend I had a perfect life.”

He swallowed, parched for something he could not name. “Who?” He had to know, at the same time he didn’t want to.

She drew a breath that felt rough against his skin. “Antoine Rivère.”

He took a step backwards. “He—”

“He never gave me the least hint he knew anything about Bertrand, Rupert. I swear it.”

“Did you talk to him about Bertrand?”

Gabrielle glanced away, chewing on her lower lip. “I said that I missed Bertrand. That I still couldn’t believe he’d gone off as he had. Antoine never gave the least sign he knew more.”

Rupert touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gaby.”

“Sorry?”

“That you lost him. And that he lied to you.”

She gave a rough laugh. “It was hardly a deathless love.” She looked at him, face etched with guilt. “Rupert—”

“I betrayed the marriage first, Gaby. Before I even offered for you.”

“A fine pair, aren’t we?”

CHAPTER 19

Malcolm stared at Wellington over the silver coffee service on his desk. “For God’s sake, sir, why didn’t you tell me?”

Wellington returned his gaze. He wore civilian dress as he often did, a light blue morning coat, buckskin breeches, and riding boots, but he held himself with military precision. “That should be self-evident.”

“I could hardly fail to be aware that you were close to Lady Frances in Brussels. And in Paris. How far the relationship went is your own affair. And Lady Frances’s.”

Wellington’s mouth tightened. “Quite.”

“But her husband made it his affair as well? What was he threatening you with?”

Wellington reached for his coffee cup and took a deliberate sip. “Wedderburton-Webster quite misinterpreted the whole affair—matter.” He returned the cup to its saucer with a clatter. “The damned puppy hasn’t the sense to see that talk only makes things worse for Frances.”

“But perhaps that was his intention?”

Wellington pushed back his chair, scraping it against the thick pile of the Aubusson carpet, got to his feet, and took a turn about the room. “How a woman like Frances ever chose such a man—The only thing to do with such accusations is to ignore them.”

“But Rivère was making it difficult to do so?”

“I never said—”

“No, but Rivère’s mistress did.”

Wellington whirled on him with a gaze like a cannonade. “You talked about this with Rivère’s mistress—”

“I needed to learn the truth. And you wouldn’t tell it me.”

“Damn it, Malcolm, you can’t think I’d have given way to the threats of a man like Rivère.”

“Then why not simply tell me?”

Wellington looked him straight in the eye. “I should think that would be obvious. A gentleman doesn’t reveal such things about a lady.”

“But surely that would have been precisely the result of your refusing to accede to Rivère’s demands. Rivère would have made the letter public. With all the attendant embarrassment for Lady Frances. And for you.”

A muscle twitched in Wellington’s jaw. “That would have been Rivère’s choice.”

“And you simply planned to stand back and let him do his worst?”

Wellington put up a hand to his neckcloth. “I’ve never given a damn what people say about me.”

“But this isn’t just a question of your reputation. It concerns that of a lady you . . . care for. Where is the letter now?”

“I sent someone to retrieve it from Rivère’s rooms. The night he was killed.”

“While I sat strategizing with Suzanne. And before Rivère was conveniently killed? Are you asking me to believe you didn’t even consider ways to stop him yourself?”

Wellington’s mouth whitened. “If you’re accusing me of killing Rivère, Malcolm, you should have the guts to do so outright.”

Malcolm looked steadily at the victor of Waterloo. “I don’t make accusations without more information at my disposal.”

“And?” For the first time in their long association, Malcolm had the sense that Wellington was measuring him as an opponent.

And for the first time Malcolm looked back at Wellington as an antagonist. “And I give you fair warning that I will attempt to discover whatever information may be at hand.”

 

“You’ve learned something.” Malcolm regarded Wilhelmine of Sagan across the salon in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. He had returned from his visit to Wellington to find she had just called.

“No. Yes. Perhaps.” Wilhelmine set down the cup of tea Suzanne had given her. Such prevarication was uncharacteristic of her. She swallowed. Her face was pale beneath the brim of a bonnet lined with gathered blue silk and festooned with forget-me-not ostrich feathers. She folded her hands in her lap and sat up very straight. “I believe . . . I suspect . . . I think it’s possible that Stewart is concealing—that he knows more than he is admitting about the death of Bertrand Laclos.”

Malcolm felt the quick look his wife shot at him. “What makes you think so?” he asked.

Wilhelmine reached for her cup again and took a sip of tea. “A woman can read these things in a man she is . . . intimate with.”

Malcolm studied the set face of his sister’s sister. She was wasted on a man like Stewart, but he’d seen them together enough to guess at what Stewart meant to her. Love could be quixotic. And he understood the lure of security. “Stewart received a letter from Bertrand Laclos after Laclos’s death. Bertrand wanted to return to England. If Stewart had told us about it sooner we might have questioned Bertrand’s guilt sooner.”

Wilhelmine’s gaze flickered over his face. “Stewart admitted this to you?”

“Yesterday.”

She shook her head. “I wish to God that was all there was to it, but I fear there’s more. He all but ordered me to stop working with you the night of the British embassy ball. I can’t believe he’d have turned round and confessed the whole to you.” She drew a breath. “My suspicions were roused the night of the embassy ball. I spent a day mulling over what to do. But I can’t abide the idea that wrong could have been done to an innocent man. And Bertrand Laclos is connected to Antoine Rivère’s death, and Antoine is connected to Tatiana’s child.”

“Yes.”

She gave a quick nod. “That was what decided me. My own concerns seem petty beside a child’s safety.” She set the teacup in its saucer and turned the gilt handle. “Stewart’s not—He can be foolish, and he doesn’t like to own to mistakes. But I don’t think he’d deliberately harm an innocent man.” She picked up the silver spoon, stirred the tea, set it down. “At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself. But of course one doesn’t like to think such things about a man who is sharing one’s bed. And I’ve scarcely proved myself the best judge of men in the past.”

“For what it’s worth,” Malcolm said, “four years ago I was convinced of Bertrand Laclos’s guilt as well.”

“But you didn’t order his death.” Wilhelmine met his gaze as though she were facing down a loaded pistol.

“No.”

She nodded. “If I learn more I will bring it to you. I won’t ask you to share your discoveries with me. But if you learn anything you think it would be of use for me to know—”

“Of course,” Malcolm said.

“Willie, there’s more.” Suzanne leaned forwards. “I learned last night that Princess Tatiana may have been the lover of Paul St. Gilles.”

“The painter?” Wilhelmine asked.

“You know him?” Malcolm said.

Wilhelmine gave a deep-throated laugh, a sudden break in the tension. “You don’t think I know anyone without a title? He painted my portrait last year. One of my favorite likenesses. To my eye it looks like me, yet also beautiful. Metternich was particularly fond of it.” She took another sip of tea, her eyes bright and her color returning. “An interesting man. St. Gilles, I mean. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he considers me a friend, but I think I can help you get him to talk.”

 

The concierge at the house on the Left Bank where Paul St. Gilles had his studio let them in without question. People weren’t in the habit of denying Wilhelmine of Sagan. Rank had its uses. Much as he might deplore it, Malcolm had made use of his ducal grandfather’s name and position on more than one occasion.

Wilhelmine led them up two flights of narrow stairs to a low-ceilinged passage and knocked at a door with peeling red paint. When no answer was forthcoming, she turned the handle. Malcolm had an impression of a wall of windows letting in a surprising amount of light for the cramped streets of the Left Bank, canvases stacked against the walls, sketches strewn across tables. A man with thinning sandy hair wearing a paint-smeared smock sat at an easel and wielded his brush as though there’d been no interruption.

“I’m sorry, Paul,” Wilhelmine said, advancing into the room and stripping off her gloves. “I hate to interrupt an artist at work, but I’m afraid we have rather pressing business.”

Paul St. Gilles set down his paintbrush and blinked as though getting her into focus. His eyes were blue-gray and surprisingly sharp. “
Madame la duchesse
. An unexpected pleasure.”

Wilhelmine gathered up her flounced skirts as she navigated round a pile of canvases. “I must tell you that your portrait is by far the most talked of I’ve sat for.”

“Which I hope is a good thing,” St. Gilles said.

“Oh yes, I assure you. I quite like being talked about. Especially when the likeness is so flattering.”

St. Gilles got to his feet. He was a tall man, lean and fit. “I never flatter, madame. I represent the truth.”

“The perfect thing to say, Monsieur St. Gilles. May I present Monsieur and Madame Rannoch?”

St. Gilles inclined his head. “You’re interested in a portrait?” His gaze moved between them and settled on Suzanne with an admiration that was more that of a connoisseur appreciating something rare than a man admiring a beautiful woman. “I should very much like to take your likeness, Madame Rannoch.”

“And you claim not to flatter, Monsieur St. Gilles,” Suzanne said with one of those smiles that could disarm anyone.

“Surely you realize I don’t. You look to be a woman of keen understanding, Madame Rannoch.”

“Simon Tanner’s a good friend of ours,” Malcolm said. “Perhaps you knew his father?”

“Roger Tanner? Yes. A formidable talent, lost far too young. And Simone was exquisite. Their son’s quite a talent in his own right.” St. Gilles looked at Malcolm and hesitated a moment, as though taking his measure.

“So he is. Simon says things I don’t quite dare put into words, far more eloquently than I could myself.”

St. Gilles met Malcolm’s gaze and slowly inclined his head, as though in acknowledgment of a hit.

“I’ve read your pamphlets,” Malcolm added. “You’re quite eloquent yourself with words as well as paint. Not to mention daring.”

“Or foolhardy, depending on whom you listen to. I imagine ‘foolhardy’ would receive considerably more votes.”

Malcolm moved to the canvas on the easel. A fair-haired woman sitting on a stone bench in a garden. A common enough subject and setting, but something in the way her head was tilted back and her hand lifted to tuck a gold ringlet beneath the brim of her straw hat captured her personality, a bit imperious, a bit impulsive, warmhearted, quick-witted. While the sunlight glowing against the white stuff of her gown fairly leaped off the canvas.

“The Duc de Renaud’s mistress,” St. Gilles said. “The sort of commission one can’t turn down. It helps pay for my more esoteric subjects.” He gestured towards canvases leaning against the wall in the corner. A ruined ship, its sails tattered, on a wind-tossed sea, pierced by moonlight. A rocky seascape in what looked like Brittany, the blues and greens vivid against the gray of the rocks, gulls circling overhead. The roofs of Paris dusted by snow, blues and grays and vivid white.

“I’d give a great deal to have you paint my wife,” Malcolm said with perfect truth. “But as it happens we’re here for information.”

“Not the most comforting words in Paris these days,” St. Gilles said in a mild voice.

“I’m employed at the British embassy,” Malcolm said, “but this is unofficial. I believe you were acquainted with a friend of mine.”

St. Gilles’s brows rose. “I doubt we move in the same circles, Monsieur Rannoch.”

“Tatiana Kirsanova.”

St. Gilles’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I knew Tatiana. The princess. I suppose you could say we were friends. We met first when she sat for a portrait. Shortly after she came to Paris. Perhaps that accounts for our friendship. She didn’t know many people in Paris.” St. Gilles glanced round. “I suppose I should offer you refreshment. A glass of wine?”

Wilhelmine started to demur, but Malcolm said that would be splendid. He wanted St. Gilles at his ease. St. Gilles moved stacks of canvases from two frayed velvet chairs, pulled up a folding stool, retrieved a ladder-back chair from behind a dressing screen, then pulled a bottle and glasses from a cabinet stacked with yet more canvases.

“I was a good friend of Princess Tatiana’s myself,” Malcolm said, accepting a glass from St. Gilles. “My wife and I looked into her death in Vienna last autumn.”

St. Gilles’s hand stilled as he set down the bottle. “They never caught her killer.”

“Not officially.”

“But he was brought to justice,” Wilhelmine said.

That was a matter of debate, but Malcolm let it pass. Better for St. Gilles to trust him and see him as Tatiana’s protector. However he’d failed her. “I’d known Tatiana since we were both young,” he said. “I thought I knew her well. But since her death, I’ve realized more and more her capacity for secrets.”

St. Gilles was regarding him, his wineglass forgot in his hand. “She talked about you.”

“She mentioned my name?” Such carelessness would have been unlike Tania.

“No.” St. Gilles twisted the stem of his glass between his fingers. “But she said she had a childhood friend who was almost like a brother. Who could cap any Shakespeare quotation.”

Malcolm kept his fingers steady on his glass as a shock of surprise ran through him. If Tania had admitted that much to St. Gilles, they had been close indeed. Closer than she’d been to most of her lovers. It was more than he had told Suzanne about his half-sister, until well after her death. “Tatiana trusted you.”

St. Gilles took a sip of wine, his gaze on the glass. “We were friends.”

“A word that can cover a multitude of sins, as Tania would have said.”

St. Gilles looked up at Malcolm, then flung back his head and gave a shout of laughter. “For God’s sake, Monsieur Rannoch. Do I look like the sort of man who would have appealed to Tatiana Kirsanova?”

“Tania had eclectic tastes.”

St. Gilles put up a hand to his thinning, gray-streaked hair. “Not that eclectic.”

“And she liked artists,” Wilhelmine said.

“Dramatic, romantic artists. Not middle-aged curmudgeons. Besides, I’d already met Juliette then. My wife,” he added. “My wife now. At the time she was steadfastly refusing the bourgeois bonds of matrimony. I was doing my best to talk her out of it.”