The Paris Affair Part 9

"A bit." Her fingers moved over the diamond links of the bracelet. It had been a gift from Harry early in their marriage, when they scarcely knew each other. "Growing up. I didn't realize he was friendly with Edmond Talleyrand when he first came to France. Which may put me in a position to help Suzanne with her inquiries."

"Why should-" Harry's face went still. His gaze settled on her, his eyes dark and opaque. "Oh."

Behind that shuttered gaze, Cordelia saw the pain of every past betrayal. As clearly as if it were yesterday, she could see the look on his face when, a year into their marriage, he'd discovered her in the arms of her childhood sweetheart. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It's not as if I didn't know."

Her fingers tightened. The filigree clasp on her bracelet cut into her palm. "It's one thing to know in the abstract. It's another to be confronted with evidence."

Harry crossed to her side, took the clasp from her nerveless fingers, and snapped it closed. "A year ago our marriage was dead."

"Because I'd killed it."

"Oh, I think we both played a role." He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles. "The point is a year ago we hardly had a marriage to be faithful to."

"I was still your wife."

He retained hold of her hand. "You've never asked me about my own behavior the years we were apart."

Her gaze flew to his face. His eyes were dark and a little challenging. Unaccustomed jealousy sliced through her. She flushed. "I never thought I had a right to."

"Then don't be harder on yourself than you are on me."

"d.a.m.n it, Harry." Regret over a thousand actions that couldn't be undone tore through her. "There must be times when you hate me."

His face turned hard. His eyes had a bleak look that twisted her heart. "Not you. But I confess at times I hate myself."

"Why on earth-"

"For marrying you for the wrong reasons. When I scarcely knew you. For being so eager to possess you, I was blind to what you needed and wanted."

She saw the intense gaze of the broody, awkward young scholar who had offered her marriage. At a time when she was so desperate to escape, so sure she would never love again, that she'd jumped at it. "For G.o.d's sake, Harry-"

"You can't deny I was a fool. Perhaps it's arrogance, but I hate the thought of being a blithering idiot."

"Harry." She tightened her fingers over his own. "If you hadn't offered for me, we wouldn't be where we are now. We wouldn't have Livia. You may think you got a bad bargain, but I'll never be anything but grateful."

A smile softened his face. "How could I not be grateful when I have you?"

When he looked at her like that, happiness washed over her. Followed by the conviction that she couldn't possibly deserve it. "I'm sorry. I've still forced Edmond to your notice."

"Yes, well, I a.s.sume it was unavoidable at one point or another."

"Harry!"

"Don't be missish, sweetheart. I know your reputation." He brushed his fingers against her cheek. "Talk to Edmond Talleyrand. Learn what you can for Suzanne and Malcolm."

"You don't have to do this to prove something, Harry."

"I don't need to prove anything. You're my wife. I trust you."

Cordelia drew a breath and buried her face in his shoulder to hide the tears p.r.i.c.kling behind her eyes. His arms tightened round her. Yet she knew this was a test, a test they had always been going to have to face at some point or another. She had just hoped it wouldn't be so soon.

CHAPTER 7.

Malcolm let his hands linger on his wife's waist as the last notes of a waltz died away. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the kid of his gloves and the fragile stuff of her gown. The scent of her perfume washed over him, a riot of roses and vanilla and an elusive, aromatic scent. Her side curls were disarranged from the dance and her eyes bright with laughter.

"Darling," Suzanne said, "it's unfashionable enough that we danced together. If you ogle me on the dance floor we'll be positively beyond the pale."

"And why would that be a problem?"

"We have your career to think about."

"Ogling my wife will get in the way of my career?"

"Being thought unconventional will."

He disengaged a curl from her diamond earring and tucked it behind her ear. "Then my career was hopelessly compromised long before I met you."

"Besides, blending in is a vital technique in investigation."

"Well, there you may have a point." He loosed his hands on her waist, oddly reluctant to let her go. He wasn't quite sure what had come over him. Perhaps it was the champagne or the particular lilt of the waltz that had been playing or the way the candlelight glowed in his wife's eyes. Nonsensical.

Suzanne put up a hand and smoothed his cravat. "We have work to do, dearest."

He kept his fingertips at her waist. "How's your wound?"

"Darling. I just danced a waltz. More strenuous than anything else I'll be doing tonight. Let me go. The game's afoot."

She moved off with a rustle of silk and a last smile over her shoulder. Malcolm felt an answering smile break across his face. Suzanne at work was even more seductive than Suzanne waltzing.

He moved to the edge of the dance floor as new couples took their place for the boulanger that was forming.

"Rannoch," Granville Leveson-Gower called to him.

Malcolm turned to greet the former amba.s.sador to St. Petersburg, who had offered him some sound advice when he first joined the diplomatic corps.

"Watching you with your wife I'd swear you'd turned into a romantic," Granville said.

"Surely a diplomat with your experience has learned not to believe everything you see in an emba.s.sy ballroom," Malcolm returned.

Granville's gaze slid along the edge of the dance floor to where his wife, Harriet, quietly gowned in claret-colored crepe, her dark hair swept back in a simple knot, stood talking with her cousin Lady Caroline Lamb. "Marriage has a way of changing one."

Granville Leveson-Gower had been known for his libertine behavior in Malcolm's youth-including a long-term affair with Harriet's aunt. Yet since Granville's marriage Malcolm had heard no whisper of scandal about him, and the gaze that now rested on his wife was soft with tenderness. "Yes," Malcolm said, thinking of the myriad ways marriage had changed him and the challenges it still posed. Marriage had changed him and challenged him and forced him to confront his own inadequacies. "So it can."

Granville grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. "Glad to hear it. I think we're both more fortunate in our marriages than some." His gaze settled for a moment on Wellington, who was standing between the lovely blond Lady Frances Webster and the equally lovely Lady Sh.e.l.ley. "I imagine Wellington isn't in a hurry for the d.u.c.h.ess to join him."

"She's certainly been delayed in London for whatever reason."

"Wellington waited for years to get her father's consent to the marriage, you know," Granville said. "By the time Pakenham agreed, Wellington's ardor had cooled. But he kept his word and married Kitty all the same."

"She might have been happier if he hadn't," Malcolm said. The d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington was a sweet woman but not suited to public life.

"Perhaps." Granville cast a glance about and lowered his voice. "What's this I hear about the Frenchman who was killed last night?"

"Devil take it, is the news all over the ballroom?"

"Just about. Though as a diplomat myself I have a bit of inside knowledge." His gaze swept the diplomats and royals filling the ballroom. "I just saw a French undersecretary and an Austrian attache nearly come to blows over whether or not to return foreign art treasures Napoleon filled the Louvre with. Paris is a tinderbox. And the most unexpected incident could set it alight."

"Granville." Malcolm hesitated, but he knew Granville could be trusted. "Do you remember the Laclos affair?"

Granville's brows drew together, though he didn't appear as surprised as Malcolm might have expected. "Castlereagh mentioned you were looking into it. A bad business. I didn't know much. But to own the truth, I always thought Stewart acted precipitously. We could have watched Laclos, intercepted his communications. An ally deserves more consideration."

"Spoken like a diplomat, not an agent. Which is a compliment."

Granville smiled. "Bertrand Laclos was a good man. Never quite fit in, like so many emigres. I wondered if that was why he returned to work for the French. If-"

"He really did work for the French?"

"You said it, Malcolm, not me."

Malcolm swallowed, his worst fears settling in his chest. If a temperate man like Granville could admit they might have been wrong about Laclos-He nodded at Sarah Lennox and moved on, focusing his mind on his quarry.

He found him by the doorway to the card room, moving off from a conversation with Count Nesselrode.

"Malcolm." Prince Talleyrand extended his hand. He was, as usual, faultlessly arrayed, in a frock coat that would have been quite at home in the ancien regime, a frilled shirt, a starched satin cravat, and diamond-buckled shoes. "I saw you dancing with your exquisite wife. You make a charming couple."

"I thought you had far more important things to observe in a diplomatic ballroom."

Talleyrand turned his walking stick so the diamonds on the handle flashed in the candlelight. "I'd scarcely have survived as long as I have could I not observe more than one thing at once. I'm glad you dance more than you used to."

"Even if it is with my own wife?"

Talleyrand's thin mouth curved in a smile that also lit his pale blue eyes. "On the contrary. Unfashionable, perhaps, but then you've never been one to care about the fashion. It's good to find you circulating instead of spending the evening in the library."

Malcolm had been four when he first met Talleyrand. It was both an advantage and a disadvantage in their relationship. It gave Malcolm inside knowledge of the prince, but it also gave Talleyrand inside knowledge of Malcolm, and Talleyrand was a master at using it. "I'm not quite such a recluse, sir," Malcolm said. "Though as it happens I was hoping I could have a word with you in private."

Talleyrand's shrewd gaze slid over him, but the prince merely said, "Of course. I confess I frequently find society stifling myself these days."

They moved along the edge of the dance floor, Talleyrand stopping several times to exchange greetings, and at last reached a white-and-gold antechamber, empty though the candles were lit. "To what do I owe this pleasure?" Talleyrand asked.

"Do I need an excuse to talk to you?"

"These days none of us does anything without an excuse." Talleyrand dropped into a gilded armchair. "Is it to do with Rivere's death last night?"

"What do you know about Rivere?" Malcolm asked, settling into the chair across from the prince.

Talleyrand leaned back in his own chair, stirring a faint dusting of powder from his hair. "I'd hardly be doing my job if I wasn't aware that Rivere was selling information to the British."

"You didn't tell anyone. Did you?"

"By the time I acquired the knowledge I was dealing with the British myself."

Malcolm set his hands on the arms of his chair, his gaze steady on Talleyrand's face. "Who killed him?"

"My dear boy. I'm not as omniscient as you think." Talleyrand smoothed his frilled cuff over his fingers. "I a.s.sume Rivere wanted you to get him out of France?"

"Was he about to be arrested?"

Talleyrand pressed a crease in the frill. "You'd have to ask Fouche."

"Rivere's cousin had been pressuring to have him arrested."

"Yes, I believe so." Talleyrand crossed his clubfoot over his good leg. The diamond buckle on his shoe flashed in the light from the branch of candles. "What did he threaten if you didn't help him?"

"Vague claims to wreak havoc on the British delegation. What did Rivere have to do with Bertrand Laclos?"

Talleyrand's brows drew together. His hooded eyes were suddenly more hawk-like than usual. "What did Rivere tell you?"

"Nothing specific. But his threats of havoc centered on Laclos."

Talleyrand stared at his signet ring. "Laclos was an embarra.s.sment. We were so proud when he returned to the fold. We should have suspected he might be a British a.s.set from the first. I should have. I pride myself on knowing how the British think."

"But in the end he wasn't."

Talleyrand frowned. "As is often the case, you're too quick for me, Malcolm."

Malcolm swallowed. Unease coiled within him. "Laclos was a double. I intercepted the communication that betrayed his work for the French myself."

Rare surprise shot through Talleyrand's blue eyes. "My word. So his death-"

"He was deemed to know too much."

Talleyrand settled back in his chair. "Either I am a lamentable fool-which is entirely possible-or you've been deceived."

Unease gave way to sick certainty. "You didn't know Laclos was a double?"

"No. Of course I scarcely know the name of every French agent, but I like to think I would have done with someone so high profile."

Guilt tightened Malcolm's throat. "When did you learn he'd been working for the British?"

"Not until after his death. I could hardly fail to investigate with so important an a.s.set. I had someone go through his papers. There was evidence he'd been working for the British. Given the embarra.s.sed ripples that sent through French intelligence, if he'd actually been one of ours someone would have spoken up."