The Paris Plot (6 page)

S
uzanne’s fingers tightened round Malcolm’s hand. “I’m glad you’re here. I was afraid—”

“So was I.”

“Cordy and I—
Sacrebleu.
” She breathed hard and waited for the pain to ebb. “Cordy and I were afraid we might have to do this alone.”

“Cordy was rather ill at the thought,” Cordelia said from Suzanne’s other side. Suzanne was lying on pillows and sheets on the library floor, moving upstairs having seemed too complicated a procedure at this point.

“Perish the thought.” Geoffrey was kneeling between Suzanne’s updrawn knees. “You’re both more than capable and the baby’s in just the right position. Could probably come out on its own. But all things considered, I’m just as glad I got here in time.” He straightened up and gave Suzanne a smile that belied his brisk voice. “You can start to push, and we’ll have the new Rannoch out in the world in no time.”

It was a relief to push, an outlet for the physical and emotional tensions tearing through her body. With Colin, she’d had a hard time understanding quite what she needed to do. Now, ingrained memory took over.

“Splendid,” Geoffrey said. “I can see the head.”

She gathered up all her concentration, squeezed Malcolm’s hand, and pushed again. And again.

“Just a bit more,” Geoffrey said. “Your child is turning its head to see what’s happening.”

Panic cut through the pain. The baby seemed so helpless and defenseless. What if she couldn’t do it this time? What if the baby got stuck?

Malcolm’s lips brushed her brow. “Almost there, sweetheart.”

Dimly she was aware of Malcolm’s fingers at the nape of her neck, Cordelia pressing a cold cloth to her brow as she focused her concentration on another push. And then—a blessedly reassuring small cry, a “There she is” from Cordelia, a gasp of wonder from Malcolm, and Geoffrey placed a squirming, blue-tinged creature on her chest.

“Sweetheart.” Suzanne’s hands closed on her daughter. “I love you.”

The baby squawked and flailed her thin arms. Spare hair, tiny hands, and legs that seemed to go on and on. Suzanne voiced her first thought on meeting the new addition to the family. “Oh, my goodness, she’s long.”

“I was thinking much the same.” Malcolm cupped his hand round their daughter’s head. “She’s beautiful.”

Suzanne laughed. Part of her knew she was exhausted, but joy tore through her. She touched the baby’s head and then her tiny hand. Suzanne was scarcely aware of Geoffrey cutting and clamping the cord that had bound her to the baby and muttering that the afterbirth was all accounted for. The tiny creature slithering on her chest held all her attention.

Cordelia and Malcolm slid the sofa cushions behind Suzanne’s back so she could sit up, cradling the baby against her. Cordelia helped her with the strings on her gown—dear God, she was still wearing her evening dress—and she put her daughter against her breast. The baby squawked, rooted, then grabbed hold and suckled.

Suzanne looked up to find Malcolm watching as though he hadn’t taken his gaze from the two of them for an instant.

“A good set of lungs and everything else about her appears healthy,” Geoffrey said. “Claudia will be excited to meet her new cousin.”

Suzanne met his dark gaze, unwontedly soft and suspiciously damp. “Thank you, Geoff.” She turned her gaze to Cordelia. “And thank you, Cordy.”

Cordelia smiled, hair falling about her face, blacking smeared round her eyes. “It meant a great deal to be here.”

Suzanne inched herself up higher against the pillows, cuddling the baby against her. The insistent mouth continued to pull at her breast. “I want Colin to see her as soon as he’s awake. And Livia, of course.” Hard to believe the children had slept through this. “We should tell Blanca right away, she’ll be worrying. And—” Suzanne met her husband’s gaze as the rest of the night’s events came crashing back in on her.

“Young Valentin will recover,” Geoffrey said. “I don’t know how much you were aware of, my dear, but I tended to him and the other young man in and about seeing to you. The other young man should recover consciousness as well.”

“I hit him.” She saw the fair-haired man crumpled on the black-and-white marble tiles in the hall.

“He was about to attack Malcolm when you did so,” Geoffrey said. “And if it’s any comfort, he’s unconscious because he hit the table, not because you hit him.”

“I’ll talk to them both,” Malcolm said.

Something else teased at Suzanne’s memory. She caught her husband’s hand. “Darling. Did you have a kitten in your coat?”

The tension in Malcolm’s face relaxed into a smile. “I found him huddled beside Valentin. Addison took him to the kitchen to have some milk.” Malcolm touched his fingers to her cheek and then to the baby’s head and at last, with obvious reluctance, pushed himself to his feet.

“There’s one other thing.” Geoffrey sat back on his heels and looked at Malcolm. “I daresay you noticed it as well, Malcolm. Valentin and the fair-haired young man are quite obviously brothers.”

 

 

Addison met Malcolm in the second-floor passage outside the bedchambers. “Valentin slept for a time, but he just wakened. The other young man is still unconscious. Is Mrs. Rannoch—”

Malcolm felt a smile break across his face. “She’s well. We have a daughter, who is also well.”

An answering smile crossed Addison’s face. “My felicitations, sir. To you and Mrs. Rannoch.”

“Mrs. Rannoch would like to see Blanca. And we’d both like you to meet the baby as well. I’ll have a word with Valentin.”

Addison inclined his head, though the smile lingered in his eyes.

Malcolm reached for the door handle, then turned back to his valet. “Addison, was there a note wrapped round the rock the fair-haired man threw through the window?”

“Oh yes. I finally had a chance to look at it. It said: ‘You harbor a traitor.’ ”

Malcolm frowned. “An odd follow-up to ‘You’ll pay for your crimes.’ ”

“My thought as well. I suspect the two notes were intended for different people.”

Valentin was awake when Malcolm went into the guest bedchamber. He was pale and had a large bandage across his forehead, but his gaze was clear and focused. “I’m so sorry, monsieur. Is madame—”

“She’s well, and we have a baby daughter.”

A grin lit Valentin’s eyes, brighter than the flame of the candles that burned on the night table. “I’m glad. I’d never have forgiven myself—”

Malcolm dropped down on the edge of the bed. “It wasn’t your fault, Valentin.”

Valentin looked into Malcolm’s gaze, jaw hardening. “You don’t know.”

“Not all of it. Why does your brother hate you?”

Valentin’s eyes went wide in his pale face. He looked like the boy he had been not so very long ago. “How do you know Laurent is my brother?”

“The resemblance is marked, though I confess with everything else going on I didn’t take note of it until Dr. Blackwell pointed it out.”

Valentin’s fingers tightened on the Irish linen sheet. “We aren’t as close as some brothers. He’s four years older, and he was always more of a sportsman than I am. But . . . he is my brother.”

“I know the feeling.” Malcolm and his brother, Edgar, hadn’t been as close since their mother died, but the bond was still there.

Valentin met his gaze and nodded. “Laurent fought with the Allied army. He never said so, but I think he felt a certain contempt that I didn’t.”

“He should have seen the work you did helping with the wounded.”

“That’s just it.” Valentin drew a breath. “Sir—Bernard, the soldier with the wound to his chest whom I found and brought to the house after Waterloo. I did find him in the street as I said. But his uniform was French.”

Malcolm stared down into Valentin’s concerned young face. “You brought a French soldier to the house?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I know it was unforgivable. But Belgians fought on both sides. He was a childhood friend.”

“Actually, I’m impressed. Though I wish you’d been able to tell us. We wouldn’t have thrown him from the house.”

“I wouldn’t have put you in that position, sir. You’re British.”

“And not without compassion. Did Laurent know your friend?”

“Yes, but he hadn’t seen him for years. Laurent joined the army when Bernard and I weren’t yet in our teens. Laurent stopped by the house in the Rue Ducale to see me after the battle. He didn’t recognize Bernard then. Later—” Valentin squeezed his eyes shut. “Laurent has had a difficult time since the war. He has a leg wound that never healed properly, and he hasn’t been able to find work. He fell in with some Ultras in Marseilles, and I fear he took part in some attacks on Bonapartists last autumn. I don’t know for a certainty, but I suspect he saw Bernard somewhere in Paris and realized I’d helped a French soldier.”

“And you became the focus of his anger at everything since the war.”

Valentin turned his head on the pillow. “If I’d understood—”

Malcolm touched the young man’s hand. “You didn’t make this happen, Valentin. Your brother must have been a powder keg waiting to blow. Something would have made him explode.”

Valentin gave a twisted smile. “Thank you, sir. But the devil of it is, one can never really believe that.”

Malcolm gripped Valentin’s hand. “That I know all too well. But take it from one a few years your senior that it’s important to do your damndest to live your life as though you believe it. For the sake of your loved ones if not yourself.”

 

 

“So the rock that was thrown in your carriage was meant for Valentin?” Cordelia asked. Wrapped in an ice blue dressing gown of Suzanne’s, she was sitting beside the bed in Malcolm and Suzanne’s bedchamber. Suzanne was lying in the bed, her baby secure in her arms. The soft featherbed and lavender-scented sheets felt like heaven.

“It must have been.” Malcolm stroked a finger between the ears of the small gray kitten curled up in his lap. “And Laurent must have seen both Harry and Henri Rivaux when he was in our house. He was looking for an outlet for his anger. Perhaps he thought the warnings would lead us to suspect his brother. Or would terrorize Valentin.”

“What will happen to him?” Cordelia asked.

Malcolm exchanged a look with Suzanne. Suzanne inclined her head. She was quite sure she knew what her husband was going to suggest. “When he recovers,” Malcolm said, “I think we should try to find him employment.”

Cordelia reached across the bed to touch his hand. “This may be a bit redundant to say, but you’re a good man, Malcolm.”

“There’d be little to be gain from prosecuting him. And it would make his brother feel worse.”

The door opened to admit Blanca, holding Colin and Livia by the hand. “Some people want to meet the little one.”

A smile broke across Malcolm’s face as he lifted Colin onto the bed. “She’s very tiny,” Colin said, surveying his sleeping sister. “But long.”

“I think she’ll be tall,” Suzanne said. “Do you want to hold her?”

Colin nodded and settled in beside her. Suzanne put the baby in his arms. Colin looked down at her with great concentration, studying the tiny face and squirming arms.

“They don’t do much at first,” Livia said, leaning against Cordelia. “But Drusilla smiles now and holds her head up, and when you put her on her stomach, she can push herself up on her arms for a bit.”

“I like the way she snuggles.” Colin looked at his father. His eyes widened. “Do we have a kitty?”

The kitten rolled over on his back in Malcolm’s lap and stretched out a paw. “It seems we do,” Malcolm said.

Suzanne half-thought Colin was going to abandon his little sister in exchange for the kitten, but he continued to hold the baby. “What are we going to call it?” Colin asked.

“Your sister?” Malcolm said.

“No, that cat.” Colin looked at Livia, who was now petting the kitten.

“Something Shakespearean if I know your parents,” Cordelia said.

“Hotspur?” Malcolm suggested.

Suzanne pulled a face at him. “What about Berowne? He has a healthy respect for the woman he loves.”

Malcolm grinned. “Berowne it is. Does that mean you want to call our daughter Rosaline?”

Suzanne looked down at the baby sleeping in Colin’s arms. They hadn’t settled on names, save for Malcolm saying if it was a boy on no circumstances were they to name him after his father. A memory teased Suzanne’s senses. Her father’s face, smiling down at her onstage, in the guise of a complex and sympathetic Shylock speaking to his daughter. It had been Suzanne’s first grown-up role in another life, a life cut short by war and the deaths of her family. “What about Jessica?” she asked.

Malcolm didn’t ask her why. But then he too loved Shakespeare. “ ‘In such a night as this,’ ” he said. “Perfect.”

Harry came into the room a few minutes later, rain spattered but smiling. “No luck with de Vedrin,” he said. “But Addison tells me the mystery is resolved. And that you have a daughter.”

“And a kitten,” Colin said.

 

 

“It’s rather chastening,” Suzanne said. Jessica was once more warm in the curve of Suzanne’s arm and Colin had fallen asleep leaning against her. “It never occurred to us the warning might have been meant for Valentin.”

“Yes, it doesn’t sit well with my vaunted Radical views.” Malcolm, sitting beside her, moved Berowne before the kitten could jump on the baby. “A good reminder to pay attention to everyone in our lives.”

Suzanne held out a finger for Jessica to grasp. “And in the end the list you turned over to Wellington had nothing to do with it. You need never have told me.”

“I’m glad I did.” Malcolm scratched Berowne’s stomach and let the kitten attack his hand. “It’s better not to have secrets.”

Suzanne willed herself to drink in the warmth of the baby, the tiny hand gripping her finger, the solid weight of Colin against her. The fear that had been brought welling to the surface when she had thought the warning was meant for her had receded if not vanished entirely. It never would do that. She could only hope to hold it at bay. “I think it was your guilt making you see a connection,” she said.