The Paris Affair Part 28

"I never said-"

"No, but Rivere's mistress did."

Wellington whirled on him with a gaze like a cannonade. "You talked about this with Rivere's mistress-"

"I needed to learn the truth. And you wouldn't tell it me."

"d.a.m.n it, Malcolm, you can't think I'd have given way to the threats of a man like Rivere."

"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 Rivere's demands. Rivere would have made the letter public. With all the attendant embarra.s.sment for Lady Frances. And for you."

A muscle twitched in Wellington's jaw. "That would have been Rivere'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 d.a.m.n 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 Rivere's rooms. The night he was killed."

"While I sat strategizing with Suzanne. And before Rivere 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 Rivere, 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 a.s.sociation, 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-Honore. 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 G.o.d 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 emba.s.sy 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 emba.s.sy 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 Rivere'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 t.i.tle? 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 pa.s.sage 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 d.u.c.h.esse. 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 a.s.sure 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 emba.s.sy," 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses from a cabinet stacked with yet more canvases.

"I was a good friend of Princess Tatiana's myself," Malcolm said, accepting a gla.s.s 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 pa.s.s. 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 winegla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. "We were friends."

"A word that can cover a mult.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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."

"You're married to Juliette Dubretton," Suzanne said.

"You know my wife?"

"I've read her books. In England she's called the French Mary Wollstonecraft. Which rather shows a British perspective."

St. Gilles smiled. "It's an apt comparison. Like William G.o.dwin with Mary Wollstonecraft, I had a d.a.m.nable time convincing Juliette to marry me. Tania was very kind about my crying on her shoulder."

Malcolm took a sip of wine. "You confided in Tatiana."

"Is that so hard to imagine?"

"No. Tania could be disarming. And a good listener when she put her mind to it. I'm wondering if she also confided in you."

"We were friends," St. Gilles said in an even voice. "We talked."

Malcolm hesitated. When it came to Tania, the instinct to secrecy was still deeply ingrained. Suzanne and Wilhelmine were silent, leaving the decision to him. "Did Tania tell you she was pregnant?" he asked.

St. Gilles flung back his head and gave another laugh. "Tania? Pregnant? Don't you think all Paris would have known?"

"Not if she'd gone away and had the child in secret."

St. Gilles went still. "My G.o.d. You're serious."

Malcolm leaned forwards and held St. Gilles with his gaze, the look he'd used to win confidences from everyone from diplomats across the negotiating table to murder suspects. "We have reason to believe Tania left Paris and gave birth to a child in the country. She gave the child up, but she appears to have known where he or she was and sent gifts. She was at great pains to keep the child's existence a secret."

St. Gilles ran a hand through his hair. "That would have been-"

"The child would have been conceived in late 1806 or possibly early 1807," Suzanne said.

St. Gilles picked up the bottle and splashed some more wine into his gla.s.s, frowning at the pale gold liquid. "It's not as though she gave me a list of her conquests."

"But-," Malcolm said.

"One couldn't but notice the court that surrounded her. She'd tell amusing stories about her cavaliers. I never knew which, if any, shared her bed."

"But there was someone else, wasn't there?" It was Wilhelmine's turn to lean forwards.

St. Gilles frowned at the splotches of paint on a canvas across the room. "It may mean nothing. One can make a child as easily in one night with a chance acquaintance as one can in the arms of the love of one's life." He took a thoughtful sip of wine. "Not that I'd necessarily say he was the love of her life."