by Teresa Grant
“Do you know who else she was involved with about that time?”
“No. I didn’t see her when she was in Russia or when she first came to Paris. I went to Paris secretly in early 1807 to tell her of our mother’s death. She must have been with child then. But she gave no hint of it. If I’d been able to guess—” Malcolm stared at his hands and saw Tatiana’s fingers moving over the keyboard of the pianoforte in her rooms in Paris. With her cropped hair and plucked brows and carefully applied cosmetics, she’d seemed so much more elegant and self-assured than the girl he’d last seen at her school in France. Until her eyes had lit in a familiar way over a favorite passage in the Beethoven sonata and he’d known she’d always be his sister.
“It was early in the pregnancy, darling. You couldn’t have known.” Suzanne hesitated, her fingers spread on the crimson silk embroidery on the counterpane. “I didn’t want to mention this until I knew if anything would come of it. I talked to Doro about Edmond’s friendship with Bertrand Laclos. Doro said she could hardly account for Edmond’s friends. But Cordelia offered to have a word with Edmond.”
“Why should Cordelia be able to—”
“Apparently she was acquainted with Edmond Talleyrand in Paris last year.” Suzanne looked steadily at him. “Rather well acquainted.”
“Oh.” Sometimes, he thought he was a great deal too simple. “Edmond Talleyrand and Gui Laclos. Poor Harry.”
“Cordelia was a bit concerned. But she said she and Harry had to learn to live with the past.”
Malcolm grimaced, seeing the guarded cynicism on Harry Davenport’s face in Brussels last June. Both the Davenports had changed amazingly in the past two months, but everyone had their limits. “I hate to see them face this so soon. Though I doubt Harry would thank me for my sympathies.”
“Cordelia spoke to Edmond at the ball tonight. He said his uncle had asked him to keep an eye on Bertrand Laclos when Laclos first came to Paris. He also said he and Laclos didn’t have a great deal in common, which is hardly a surprise. But he did reveal that Laclos was the lover of Louise Carnot. Louise Sevigny now.”
“The painter’s wife?” Malcolm recalled meeting her at an exhibition of Emile Sevigny’s work a fortnight or so ago. Sevigny was a talented artist. As a favorite of Bonaparte and Josephine, he was on thin ice in Restoration Paris, like so many others.
“Apparently her first husband, Carnot, was an aristocrat and a soldier and not one to take kindly to his wife’s infidelity. Edmond wasn’t sure if Carnot had ever learned of Louise’s affair with Bertrand Laclos. But if he had—”
“It would have been harder for Carnot to set up Bertrand than someone British, but it’s possible.”
“I’ll talk to Louise Sevigny. Simon’s friends with Emile Sevigny—he can help me.” Suzanne smoothed the crumpled gauze of her overdress. “Cordelia said her talk with Edmond stirred some uncomfortable gossip. We should be on the lookout to deflect it.”
Malcolm recalled the self-hatred he’d glimpsed in Cordelia’s eyes so often in Brussels and still caught flashes of. He might not understand the life Cordelia had lived, but he knew the bite of self-hatred all too well. “How was Cordelia afterwards?”
“A bit unhappy to be reminded of her past. Having Gui Laclos come up to us just after didn’t help. But Harry seemed to have things well in hand. They’ll cope.”
“I hope so.”
She cast a quick look at him. “Darling, you don’t think—”
He kept his gaze steady on her face. “I think marriage is difficult. I think love is difficult. I think Harry and Cordelia are two complicated people with complicated pasts. I don’t think being married comes easily to either of them. That doesn’t mean they won’t succeed. But it does worry me when they go through something like this.”
She shook her head, her hair falling over her face. “I can’t help but think—”
“I know.” He reached out and slid his fingers down her arm. “That’s because you’re much more of a romantic than I am.”
She gave a rough laugh. “I lost my capacity for romance years ago, Malcolm.”
Rage at the French soldiers who had raped her and killed her family and at the very English Colonel Frederick Radley who had seduced and abandoned her blurred his vision for a moment. “Not lost, I think. Just buried it beneath some very hard-earned realism.”
She looked up at him. The candlelight slid over her face. “I don’t know that I was ever a romantic even . . . before. I just—”
“Believe people can be happy.”
Her fingers curled into the coverlet. “I believe happiness is possible, in fits and snatches if nothing else. Perhaps it’s precisely because it’s rare that I believe in grabbing hold of it.”
When he was growing up, watching his parents, happiness had never seemed like much of a possibility. He lifted his hand and pushed the loose strands behind her ear.
She smiled but then went still, her hand on his back. “Darling—” She broke off. He could feel the question in the tension of her fingers through the silk of his dressing gown.
“Don’t tell me there’s something you’re afraid to ask me.”
“No.” Her gaze moved over his face. “Not afraid. But I’m not sure it’s my place—”
“For God’s sake, Suzette, since when do you worry about what it’s your place to do or not do?”
“I don’t think marriage should entirely strip one of privacy. But—” Her gaze flickered over his face. “Have you thought about telling Willie and Doro about Tatiana’s child?”
He checked the instinctive denial. His fingers dug into the coverlet. His mother had trained him to secrecy when it came to his sister. But she was Wilhelmine’s sister as well, and he knew Dorothée felt a responsibility towards her. Tania and Dorothée did not share a biological father, but the man Dorothée had grown up calling father had fathered Tania. Questions of parentage and sibling relationships were complicated among the aristocracy. “You think they’d want to know?” he asked, his voice harsh to his own ears.
“I think so. I think I would in their place. And I think they could help.”
“We don’t—”
“Help can always come in useful, dearest. I think one’s wise if one learns to accept it when it’s offered. I know I’m trying to do so. There’ve been a lot of secrets where Tatiana’s concerned. Perhaps it’s time—”
“For honesty? That’s what I was just saying to Wellington and Castlereagh.”
Suzanne drew back against the bedpost as though to give him space to make his choice. “It’s your decision, darling. There’s no right answer. But for what it’s worth, I think you can trust Willie and Doro. I think we learned that in Vienna. After all—”
“I owe Wilhelmine my liberty and quite possibly my life.” Malcolm saw the heavy door of his Vienna prison cell swing open to let in his wife and the Duchess of Sagan. And Prince Metternich. “And without Wilhelmine and Dorothée we might not have been able to save the tsarina. You’re right. One should be grateful for help where one finds it.”
“I know I’ll be forever grateful to them.”
For a moment in Suzanne’s eyes he saw the fear of the time he had spent in prison. It was still odd to think of such fear being focused on him. Of his safety mattering so much to someone.
Suzanne leaned forwards, her dark ringlets stirring about her face, her silk gown rustling. The roses and vanilla and exotic tang of her perfume teased his senses. Her hand slid behind his neck and her lips met his own.
He closed his arms round her and returned her kiss with an urgency that took him by surprise. With the portion of his brain that could still think, he knew that she was trying to comfort him for his discoveries about Tatiana. Part of him rebelled against needing comfort, while another part craved it as a wounded man craves laudanum.
His fingers sank into her hair. She pushed his dressing gown off his shoulders and slid her hands over his back with familiar witchcraft. They fell onto the coverlet and pillow
s, and the last vestiges of coherent thought fled.
Stewart strolled across Wilhelmine’s salon. “Damned fine evening. Though I thought Count Nesselrode would never stop talking. And Emily should do something about the quality of the brandy.” He picked up a decanter from the lapis lazuli–inlaid table and splashed cognac into a glass. “I must say you looked particularly lovely, my dear.”
Wilhelmine dropped her velvet cloak over a chairback. “You aren’t seriously going to try to pretend it didn’t happen, are you?” she asked her lover.
Stewart had the grace to flush, but he merely said, “What didn’t happen?”
“For heaven’s sake, dearest. Suzanne Rannoch is a very beautiful woman and over a decade younger than me. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t notice her. I can scarcely blame you. But I do take issue with your pawing one of my friends. Or any woman for that matter.”
His chin jerked up. “I didn’t—”
“I saw you.” Her hand closed on the giltwood of the chairback. “Plainly.”
“My darling, you misinterpreted—”
“You had one hand on her bottom and the other down her dress. You’re lucky Suzanne didn’t choose to take stronger evasive action. She can be quite lethal.”
Stewart lurched towards her. Cognac spattered on the delicate blue and pink of the Aubusson carpet. “Those things don’t mean anything. You know that. You aren’t an innocent. You must realize it’s nothing to do with you, my dear. Men are different from women. We have our . . . harmless amusements.”
Wilhelmine stepped back out of the way of his hands and his brandy-laced breath. She had every intention of reconciling with him before the end of the evening, but she wasn’t prepared to do so yet. “Women are quite capable of harmless amusements. What I object to is your amusing yourself with women who don’t find the flirtation welcome.”
“Mrs. Rannoch is—”
“Suzanne Rannoch is very much in love with her husband.”
Stewart’s chin jutted out and his eyes hardened. “Perhaps you don’t know your friend as well as you think, Willie. Mrs. Rannoch knows how the game is played. I would think you’d understand that.” He gave a brief laugh. “If you could have heard Radley’s stories back in Vienna—”
Wilhelmine grimaced at the mention of the British officer who was one of her lover’s friends. Frederick Radley was a handsome man, with his golden hair and well-made body, but he rated his charms rather higher than the reality. “I have no particular desire to hear any more from Frederick Radley than I have to.”
“Radley knew Suzanne Rannoch,” Stewart said with deliberation. “In Spain. Before she was married. When she was supposedly an innocent victim of war. Knew her quite well to hear him tell it.”
That was interesting, though not altogether surprising. Wilhelmine had long suspected Suzanne Rannoch had a more complicated past than she admitted to. “That’s Suzanne’s business. But I’m quite sure that now she has no interest in any gentleman other than her husband.”
Stewart flung back his head and gave another, deeper laugh. “Lord, Willie. Who’d have taken you for a romantic? Don’t tell me you’re taken in by the perfect-wife veneer. You of all people.”
Wilhelmine pulled the folds of her scarf about her shoulders. “I think I’m enough acquainted with both the Rannochs to see beneath the veneer.”
Stewart tossed back the last of the cognac and put the glass down on the lapis table with a clatter. “You can’t expect me to believe a woman like Suzanne Rannoch is satisfied with a cold fish like Malcolm Rannoch.”
“Perhaps you’re the one who isn’t seeing Malcolm Rannoch properly.”
Stewart regarded her through narrowed eyes. “Good God, Willie. Did you—”
Her fingers tightened on the delicate silk of the scarf. It had been a gift from Alfred von Windisgrätz. “No, I have no personal reason to know about Malcolm Rannoch’s skills in the bedchamber. But I’ve seen the way he looks at his wife in unguarded moments.”
“It takes a lot more than looking to satisfy a woman.” Stewart closed the distance between them and reached for her. “Cry friends, Willie. The night is still young.”
She leaned into him and lifted her face, because kissing was something he did quite well. And all the accompanying acts that proceeded from it.
Much later, when they were lying in her bed in a tangle of Irish linen sheets and embroidered coverlet, Stewart turned his face into her hair and said, “Suzanne hasn’t said anything to you about this investigation of her husband’s, has she?”
Wilhelmine pushed herself up on one elbow. “The investigation into Antoine Rivère’s death?”
“Er—yes.” Stewart sat up in bed and reached for the half-full glass of brandy on the night table.
“Why on earth should you—Oh.” Wilhelmine propped a pillow behind her shoulder and studied her lover. “Because of the accusations Rivère made about the Laclos affair? You were the one who ordered Bertrand Laclos’s death, weren’t you?”
Stewart tossed down half the remaining brandy. “The man was a traitor.”
“Not according to Antoine Rivère. Or Malcolm Rannoch now.”
Stewart’s fingers tightened on the glass. “Rannoch was sure enough at the time.”
“He feels guilty about it.” Wilhelmine studied Stewart in the light of the single candle they’d left lit. At times like this, she thought she could mold her lover into something interesting. “Is that it? Do you feel guilty?”
Stewart drained the last of the brandy. “I’m not the sort to brood on the past like Rannoch.”
“It wouldn’t bother you if you were wrong?”
“We weren’t wrong, damn it.” He pushed himself from the bed and padded naked across the room to refill his brandy glass from the decanter on a pier table.
Wilhelmine sat up straighter so she could watch him. “You never once questioned it?”
“No.” He clunked the decanter down and drained half his second glass.
Wilhelmine watched him through narrowed eyes, his body outlined by the candlelight. The body she knew intimately. A chill shot through her that had nothing to do with her bare skin. Stewart was not a complicated man. Which at times was useful. She could read him well.
And just now, she was quite sure he was lying.
CHAPTER 11
Malcolm relaxed his hands on the reins, letting his mare, Perdita, lengthen her stride to a trot. He cast a sidelong glance at his wife beneath the shadows of the overhanging branches in the Bois de Boulogne.
Suzanne returned his gaze. “Are you sure about this?”
“Not in the least. But then that’s true of most important decisions.” Off to the side he could see the tents where British soldiers were encamped and flashes of red uniform coats, but this path was open for riding and largely empty at this unfashionably early hour of the morning. Up ahead he glimpsed a lady in a blue riding habit on a white horse and another in a green habit on a chestnut, galloping with the abandon afforded by the empty path. Malcolm exchanged another look with his wife, and they touched their heels to their horses and galloped forwards.
Wilhelmine and Dorothée looked round at the sound of the approaching horse hooves and slowed their own mounts. “Well met,” Wilhelmine said. “How pleasant to find only friends abroad.”
“You’re out early after last night,” Malcolm said, reining Perdita in beside the Courland sisters.
For a moment, Wilhelmine seemed to grimace, though it might have been the way the shadows fell over the blue velvet brim of her riding hat. “Sometimes early morning air is just the thing to clear one’s head after a night of dancing and dignitaries.”
“It often seems to be the only time of day one can have any peace,” Dorothée added. “Worth getting up early for.”
“And yet,” Wilhelmine said, her gaze moving between Malcolm and Suzanne, “somehow I don’t think it’s entirely coincidence that you happened to ride up beside us.”
Malcolm felt a smile cross
his face. “You’re a perceptive woman, Wilhelmine. I’ve been hoping to speak to you.” He glanced at Dorothée. “Both of you.”
Wilhelmine regarded him with amusement tinged with wariness. “More about this business with Antoine Rivère? I scarcely knew him. And Doro’s already told Suzanne all she knows.”
“No. At least not directly.” Malcolm hesitated. Once he spoke there was no going back. The instinct to hold his family’s secrets close was ingrained from childhood. And yet he and Wilhelmine and Dorothée shared a sister. Willie and Doro came from a different world, the majestic, feudal world of Courland. Yet in a sense they were family. He could feel Suzanne’s gaze on him, steady but without pressure. He knew she’d say nothing if he chose to turn the conversation and make for home. He drew a breath. The air was crisp and redolent of damp grass. “Just before he was killed, Rivère made a number of claims involving information in his possession. The first concerned the Laclos affair, which Suzanne asked Dorothée about because Laclos was friends with Edmond Talleyrand. But he also claimed to have information more personal to me.”
Wilhelmine and Dorothée exchanged glances. “And you’re telling us because—?” Wilhelmine said.
“He claimed Tatiana had a child.”
Wilhelmine went stone still.
Dorothée drew in her breath. “Do you believe him?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. But I’ve since spoken with Annina and with your uncle. And what I’ve learned confirms it.”
Wilhelmine’s gloved hands tightened on the reins. She had borne a child in secret herself, Malcolm had learned in Vienna, at the age of eighteen. A little girl her family had compelled her to surrender to her lover’s relations in Finland. A child she was desperately, and so far unsuccessfully, seeking to have restored to her. “Did she have contact with the child?”
“I don’t know. She seems to at least have sent gifts.”
Wilhelmine nodded, her gaze clouded with her own regrets. “How old—”
