The Paris Affair Part 6

Raoul released his breath in a harsh sigh. "Manon Caret."

Suzanne drew a sharp breath. "But she's-"

"No longer untouchable. She may still reign over Paris from the Comedie-Francaise, but that won't hold much weight with Fouche."

Suzanne swallowed. "Fouche knows Manon was a Bonapartist agent?"

"More to the point, others do and have denounced her. He'll look soft if he doesn't move against her. With the Ultra Royalists claiming he's too moderate-G.o.d help us-he can't afford any hint of softness. And I suspect he's worried about what she knows."

Suzanne shook her head at the idea of Manon Caret, the celebrated actress who had kept Raoul apprised of the doings of Royalists for years, facing arrest. "She's on the proscribed list?"

"No, and I doubt she ever will be. Too many embarra.s.sing questions. I doubt there'll even be a trial. But Fouche's planning to take her into custody. She'll quietly disappear, probably never to be seen again."

Suzanne nodded. Spies were rarely dealt with through official channels. "When?"

"According to my sources we have a week at most."

Suzanne stared at the candlelight flickering in the depths of her winegla.s.s. They had drunk Bordeaux the night she first met Manon Caret. Suzanne had been sixteen, raw from the dubious results of her first mission. Raoul had taken her along when he went to meet with Manon at the theatre late one evening. They'd watched the last act of The Marriage of Figaro, joined the throng of Manon's admirers after the performance, then lingered on in her dressing room. Suzanne still recalled Manon going behind a gilt-edged dressing screen and emerging in a froth of sapphire silk and Valenciennes lace, despite the frivolous garment somehow transformed from charming, imperious actress to hardheaded agent. Hardheaded agent who had been remarkably kind to a sixteen-year-old girl still feeling her way in the espionage business, far more uncertain than she would admit to anyone, even herself.

She had drunk in the talk of the seasoned spies that night, as they sat round a branch of candles and a bottle of wine, surrounded by costumes and feathered masks and the smell of powder and greasepaint. She had met Manon a handful of times in the next two years, though Suzanne's work had been on the Peninsula. And then, in 1811, Suzanne had been called upon to a.s.sist Hortense Bonaparte, the Empress Josephine's daughter and Napoleon's brother's wife, who found herself with child by her lover. Suzanne had thought they were safe when Hortense delivered the baby safely in Switzerland and gave it into the care of her lover's mother. But returned to Paris, Suzanne had learned that evidence about the child had fallen into the hands of agents in the ministry of police, still loyal to Fouche, though he was out of power at the time. Fouche had long been an enemy of Josephine and despite-or because of-the fact that Napoleon had divorced her and Fouche himself had been forced from the ministry of police, Fouche wouldn't have hesitated to use the information about the child against Hortense or her mother. Suzanne had stolen the papers from the ministry of police before the agents could send them to Fouche. But she had had difficulty slipping out of the ministry. With a knife wound in her side and one of the agents on her trail, she had sought refuge at the Comedie-Francaise with Manon. If she'd been caught with the stolen papers in her possession, she'd have faced prison and very likely execution as a spy, no matter that she was working for the French. Manon had dressed her wound between scenes, bundled her into a costume, and hidden her in plain sight onstage as one of Phedre's ladies-in-waiting. All at considerable risk to herself.

Suzanne s.n.a.t.c.hed up her gla.s.s and took a sip of wine. "Manon probably saved my life. I've never forgot it."

"Nor have I." Raoul's mouth turned grim.

One would almost think he blamed himself for her predicament that night, save that that was so very unlike Raoul. Suzanne pushed aside the thought. "What are you planning?"

"Suzanne-"

"You must have a plan."

He hesitated a moment. "I've made contact with the Kestrel."

"The who? One of your former agents?" It wasn't like Raoul to go in for fanciful code names.

He shook his head. "Not one of mine. Or anyone's. He works for himself. For some years he wreaked havoc by rescuing Royalists from our prisons or from certain arrest."

"And now he's rescuing Bonapartists?"

"He claims to deplore wanton killing."

"And you believe him?"

"I don't have many other options. He was behind the rescue of Combre and Lefevre's escape."

She leaned forwards. "I can help you."

"No." His voice cut across the table with quiet force.

"Since when have you been one to refuse aid? I a.s.sure you, I haven't let myself grow rusty."

Raoul's gaze darkened. "For G.o.d's sake, Suzanne. You have a husband, a son, a life. To be protected, for all the reasons you so cogently explained when you told me you were stopping your work."

"This is different. Stopping my work doesn't mean turning my back on my comrades."

"The risk is still there."

She gave a laugh, rough in her throat. "We live with risk."

"You don't have to anymore."

She stared at him across the geraniums. "This isn't like you."

"Perhaps Waterloo changed me. Or perhaps I've always been less Machiavellian than you were inclined to believe."

She pulled her winegla.s.s closer. She'd loved Raoul, but she'd always known she couldn't trust herself to him. Had her judgment of him been a form of defense, a way of protecting herself from disappointment? "I need to help. I need to do this."

"Querida-" His gaze turned soft, in that way that always disconcerted her. "You don't owe anyone anything. Least of all me. And Manon would tell you she knew the risks."

Suzanne drew a harsh breath. For a moment, the table and the winegla.s.s, the bottle and the vase of geraniums swam before her eyes. She saw Manon's daughters, asleep on the sofa in the room that adjoined her dressing room. Then she saw Colin, eating a boiled egg with concentration when she had breakfast with him before she left the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore this morning. "I have to help, Raoul. Or I'll go mad."

"Why-"

"Because I'm safe. Or safer than most of us. Because I live in luxury, with the man I love and my child. Because I dine and dance with the victors and even count some of them as friends. Because for hours together I forget who I am and what I fought for. I forget that we lost."

"All the more reason-"

"I wanted to stop betraying my husband. I didn't want to lose myself."

"You'd never-"

"You told me when you first recruited me that it was my decision, my choice what risks to run." She saw them in the cramped, gaudy room in the brothel in Leon where he'd found her, surrounded by gilt and crimson draperies. "You always let me make up my own mind." She swallowed, holding his gaze with her own. "It was one of the reasons I loved you."

He returned her gaze for a long moment, his own steady and unreadable, then sat against the bench. "The Kestrel has a plan to get Manon out of Paris. Getting her out of France will be more difficult."

Suzanne released her breath. "You'll need travel doc.u.ments. If I get you Castlereagh's seal can you forge the rest?"

"Querida-"

"It's far less dangerous than half the things I did in Lisbon or Vienna. Castlereagh's fond of me. I help smooth the waters with Malcolm."

He took a drink of wine, as though still deciding. Then he gave a crisp nod, transformed back into the enigmatic spymaster. "I'll be at the ball at the British emba.s.sy tonight."

She nodded. "If you bring me the papers, I can add the seal, then return them to you. It will be simple-"

A faint smile crossed his face. "Don't say it, querida. It's like wishing an actor good luck."

"Malcolm." Wellington looked up from the papers strewn across his desk. "I knew you'd have information to report before the day was out."

Malcolm advanced into the room. "I went to see Rivere's rooms and spoke with his valet. From the style in which Rivere lived and the testimony of his valet, I suspect Rivere was blackmailing people well before his threats about the Laclos affair."

"Not entirely surprising." Wellington leaned back in his chair. "Do you know whom he was blackmailing?"

Malcolm stopped a few feet from the desk, his gaze fixed on the duke's sharp-boned face. "We heard about one person he quarreled with two nights before he died. A gentleman who called on Rivere and told Rivere he 'wouldn't get away with it.' Rivere countered that the other man wasn't 'in a position to make threats.' "

Wellington had gone white about the mouth, but he said nothing.

Malcolm kept his gaze steady on the duke. "What did you and Rivere quarrel about, sir?"

"It's immaterial."

"You admit you called on Rivere?"

Wellington pushed his chair back, sc.r.a.ping the legs over the carpet. "I'd be a d.a.m.ned fool to deny it, wouldn't I?"

"Rivere tried to blackmail you."

Wellington pushed himself to his feet. "What Rivere and I discussed is none of your affair."

"We're in the midst of a murder investigation, sir."

"And my quarrel with Rivere has nothing to do with it." Wellington strode to the windows. "My word on it."

"Sir-You can't know that."

Wellington spun round to face Malcolm, the light at his back. "Are you saying you think I'm behind Rivere's death, Malcolm?"

"I'm saying you can't know how pieces of evidence may be connected. Withhold any one piece of information and you're concealing part of the puzzle."

"This isn't part of the puzzle. I'm saving you from wasting time on it." Wellington strode back to the desk and slammed his hand down on it, sending papers fluttering to the floor. "If my word isn't enough, my authority will have to suffice."

CHAPTER 5.

Suzanne felt a smile break across her face at the sight of her husband approaching down the street, the angular set of his shoulders, the quick, intent gait unmistakable. When her life seemed the most complicated, the sight of him could always steady her. For all the elusive texture of their marriage, the shape and substance of what was between them was enough to sustain her through her worst moments. She might not believe in happily ever after, as she had told Raoul, but she knew enough to grab on to what she had in the moment.

Malcolm's brows were drawn, but he looked up and met her gaze and grinned. "You look as though you've had a successful morning."

"So do you."

His grin changed to a grimace. "I'd say productive rather than successful." He held out his arm. "You first."

She curled her fingers round his elbow, absurdly rea.s.sured by the warmth of his flesh beneath the threadnet of her glove and the superfine of his coat. "Wilhelmine told me Antoine Rivere was having an affair with Gabrielle Caruthers. Lady Caruthers just confirmed it."

Malcolm swung his head round to look down at her. "Good G.o.d. Not that anyone's infidelity is so surprising, especially after Vienna. But I wouldn't have thought Rivere-"

"He evidently had unexpected depths. Or hidden talents. What was your sense of the Carutherses' marriage?"

"They always seemed happy enough. Rupert's not overly demonstrative, but then he's a British gentleman to the core."

Suzanne tightened her fingers round her husband's arm and grinned, though Gabrielle's description of her husband's remoteness, so like Malcolm in so many ways, lingered in her memory. "Yes, I know a bit about that. It can be deceptive."

The smile he gave her was one of his rare ones that were as intimate as a kiss. "I've never heard any suggestion that Rupert had a mistress. But then I never heard a suggestion that Gabrielle had a lover, either."

"It sounds as though in Gabrielle's case she found it difficult to get beneath her husband's gentlemanly veneer."

A shadow crossed Malcolm's gaze. "Some men don't share easily."

"Or perhaps Lord Caruthers's feelings weren't engaged. Gabrielle says she loved him when they married, but she thinks he proposed to her out of pity." As soon as the words were out she regretted the choice of them. "An unequal marriage can be difficult."

She saw the flinch in his eyes, but they remained steady on her face. "There are all sorts of inequality."

Sometimes once an uncomfortable issue was raised it was best to confront it head-on. "There's the emotional inequality and then Gabrielle feels indebted to Lord Caruthers. He came to her rescue when she was a penniless social outcast. She feels she owes him everything. That can be a difficult debt to carry." Suzanne tightened her fingers round her husband's arm. "Unless of course one's saved one's husband's life on numerous occasions. That has a way of balancing the scales."

A smile lightened Malcolm's eyes. "I'd say it could tip them clean in the opposite direction."

"Unless the husband has done his own share of lifesaving."

He tucked her arm tighter against his own. "I'm sure the husband would have the sense to realize he'd got by far the better end of the bargain."

Suzanne turned her head so her cheek brushed against his shoulder, tears p.r.i.c.kling behind her eyelids. "Gabrielle also said Lord Caruthers and her cousin Bertrand Laclos were friends."

Malcolm nodded. "And Harry says Rupert Caruthers was Laclos's contact in Spain." His frown deepened, and she knew he was once again replaying the events of the Laclos affair.

"Do you suppose Rivere got his information about Bertrand Laclos from Gabrielle?" she asked.

"That would mean Gabrielle Caruthers knew her cousin had been framed. In which case one would think she'd have gone to the authorities."

"She might not have thought she'd be believed. She clearly felt like an outsider in England, and her family suffered a great deal when Laclos left, just because people thought he'd gone to fight for Bonaparte. Lord Caruthers must have known the truth. At least the truth that Laclos had supposedly been working for the British."

"And then as Laclos's contact, he was probably told Laclos had been a double," Malcolm said. "I need to talk to Rupert."

"There's more, darling. I asked Gabrielle if Rivere had enemies. She said he found it useful to keep information." Suzanne hesitated a moment. "And she thought he had information on Wellington."

"He did." Malcolm grimaced. "Though d.a.m.ned if I know what it was. He apparently quarreled with Wellington two nights before he died." He recounted his and Harry Davenport's visit to Rivere's rooms and their conversation with Rivere's valet and then the scene he had just had with Wellington himself.

"You think Rivere was threatening Wellington with more than the Laclos affair?"

"I do. Rivere thought the Laclos affair was something new when he brought it up last night. This was something that affected Wellington personally. If it was the Laclos affair, there'd have been no reason for him to refuse to discuss it with me."

Suzanne looked up at her husband, seeing Wellington ruffling Colin's hair in the British emba.s.sy drawing room two nights before. "Darling, you don't seriously think that Wellington-"

His mouth tightened. "I've learned not to make a.s.sumptions about anyone. Even those closest to me."