London Gambit

by Tracy Grant

  "They'd killed your brother." Étienne Laclos had gone to France in a mad, desperate plot to assassinate Napoleon and had been caught and executed. Odd that others might now be risking arrest and execution in an equally mad, desperate plot to free Napoleon.

  Remembered grief shot through Bertrand's eyes. "Yes. I suppose a part of me wanted to avenge Étienne. But I think chiefly I wanted to be out of Britain." He stared down at his hands, a rare sign of unease. "I wanted to leave Rupert before Rupert was compelled to leave me."

  For a moment, Simon and David shot into her memory, in the Brook Street library, the children clustered round them. "Are you so sure he would have?"

  Bertrand's brows drew together as though he were seeing into the past. Or perhaps into an alternate future. "At the time I thought so. Rupert takes his responsibilities too seriously not to feel compelled to provide an heir for the earldom. Even looking back now—I never stop being sorry for how Gabrielle got caught up in our sorry story. I know Rupert doesn't either. But there's no denying the cold fact that, in some ways, it makes it easier that Rupert has an heir. Aside from the fact that I can't imagine Stephen not being in our lives."

  "It's remarkable." Suzanne recalled the three of them, Rupert, Bertrand, and Gabrielle, kneeling on her drawing room carpet last Christmas with Stephen and Colin and Livia, playing with Colin's new castle. "What you've all managed to make of your lives."

  Bertrand's smile was sweet and almost wistful. "I hope so." His fingers tightened round his glass. "In any case, fresh from Oxford, escape seemed the best solution. And it let Rupert and me stay connected. Even let us meet in secret. And then there was—"

  "The lure of adventure?" After all, Bertrand, more than any of them, had lived a life of adventure for years.

  Bertrand met her gaze and grinned. "Quite. Particularly then, when I had no idea what adventure really meant. It was only after I got to France, after I settled in to my mission, that I fully began to appreciate the rest of it."

  "The rest?"

  "Betrayal." His mouth curled round the word. "Odd it never occurred to me before that that's what it was. I was set on doing my duty for my adopted Crown and country. Avenging my brother's death. Making my—Rupert proud of me." He gave a faint, self-derisive smile. "It was only when I found myself actually living among the French, dining with them, riding in the Bois de Boulogne, that it occurred to me I was betraying practically everyone I saw every day. The waiters in the cafés where I took my morning coffee and had a glass of wine in the evenings. The porter at my lodgings who complained about his rheumatism and boasted about his grandchildren. The baker I bought bread from most days who had almost saved enough to bring his fiancée from Provence and start a family. Even an idiot like Edmond Talleyrand, who did his awkward best to take me under his wing, though I suspect he was doing so on his uncle's orders and reporting back on my activities. They were all people. God, how easy it is to lose sight of that."

  "Frighteningly easy. But it sounds as though you didn't lose sight of it at all."

  "I did for a time. But it was getting harder and harder for me to swallow the rank taste of it Especially after I met Louise."

  Bertrand had acted as a cover for Louise Carnot and her lover to protect them from her jealous husband. "I doubt that which side you fought for matters in the least to Louise," Suzanne said. She could see Bertrand, in Paris after he emerged from hiding, crouched in the garden of Louise's Paris house building a pirate ship out of sheets with her sons and Colin and Stephen while Louise looked on.

  "Louise is a generous woman and loyal to her friends. But I was still lying to her. I was lying to everyone, except for the few times Rupert and I met in secret." He swallowed. Suzanne didn't think she'd ever seen such vulnerability in those seemingly open blue eyes. "For all Rupert means to me, sometimes what mattered most about those times was simply being able to tell the truth."

  For a moment, Suzanne felt the rush of relief that had always coursed through her when she met Raoul, in a café, a tavern, a garret room. "It means a lot to be able to be one's self."

  Bertrand shot a look at her. "Yes. And then I was nearly killed."

  "And you learned your own people had betrayed you."

  "I learned Rupert's father had."

  Suzanne looked at him, fully appreciating for the first time what it must have meant to him, alone in what to all intents and purposes was a foreign country, under deep cover, suddenly no longer able to trust his own people. At least she had had Malcolm. "Lord Dewhurst had made your own people no longer trust you."

  Bertrand gave a short laugh. "Branded a traitor when, in fact, I'd been betraying people for the past two years. Just not the people I was accused of betraying."

  "One can't be an agent without committing myriad betrayals."

  Bertrand met her gaze for a long moment. "I think to be an agent, one has to either believe wholeheartedly in one's cause—or believe in nothing at all save self-preservation and triumphing in the game. Neither of which applied to me. I wouldn't have survived if it weren't for my young friend Inez and her family. In the end, I realized it was the people who mattered. Not taking sides in the game but saving as many as possible from collateral damage."

  Suzanne nodded. She suspected Bertrand had not talked this way to many people. "Thank you," she said. "For telling me."

  Bertrand gave a quick, flexible smile.

  "Why?" Suzanne asked before she could think better of it. "That is, I'm honored and I know we're friends, but—"

  "I don't talk this way to all my friends? That's true. But I thought you'd understand." He regarded her for another, silent moment, weighted somehow with both risk and trust. "I didn't choose sides as the Kestrel, but I still heard things. About the Raven, among other things."

  Suzanne drew a breath, sharp as glass. And yet, relief shot through her. The relief of being able to talk to someone who was in a unique position to understand. She cast a quick look round, but the buzz of the crowd rendered the embrasure as private as a closed room. "I didn't find betrayal as hard to live with as you did," she said in a steady voice.

  "On the contrary." Bertrand's gaze was direct, his defenses down. "I think it very nearly cut you in two. But you believed in what you were doing. I can admire that. I can envy it."

  "Are you sure I'm not simply caught up in the love of the game?"

  "Not you, though you may enjoy it. Even I enjoyed it at times. Malcolm confessed that even he did."

  "Malcolm knows—You've talked to Malcolm about—?"

  Bertrand linked his hands round his knees. "Malcolm talked to me. Six months ago. Subtly, trying to sound me out. Establish how much I knew. Without either of us coming right out and saying it, we established that I was the last person to betray either of you. And then he asked for my help."

  Suzanne stared at him. "You're the one Malcolm made arrangements with in case we need to leave Britain."

  "Arrangements I trust we'll never have to put into effect."

  Fear coursed through her in an icy rush. The fear she always felt at the thought of documents in Malcolm's dispatch box that arranged for them to leave Britain. And with that fear came the wonderful, terrible burden of the love that had caused Malcolm to meticulously make plans to abandon everything he knew, should his wife's past compel him to do so. "You let Rupert think you were dead rather than force him to choose between you and his family."

  "Yes." Bertrand didn't pretend not to see the parallels she was drawing. "It seemed the right choice at the time."

  "And now?"

  Bertrand glanced down at his hands and touched the heavy silver ring he wore. It looked like a signet ring, but he hadn't worn it when Suzanne had first met him in France. She suspected Rupert had given it to him. Rupert wore a similar one. "Perhaps I'm a selfish devil. God knows the way things have turned out isn't fair to Gaby—"

  "Gaby's happy with Nick Gordon."

  "Gaby would have been happier if she could have married Nick Gordon, but, yes. Thank
God things have turned out so well for her. Thank God because I love Gaby, and thank God, because it salves Rupert's and my guilt. As for me—guilt or not, I can't imagine my life without him. I can't imagine I was ever mad enough to think that was possible for either of us. I'm grateful every day that he was willing to take me back and that I had the guts to come back." He looked at her for a moment, his gaze at once furtive and oddly open. "I owe part of that to you."

  "Me?" Suzanne repeated.

  "That day at the inn on the Calais road. Just after my masquerade had broken and Rupert had seen me. After I'd made my speech to Rupert about why I had to disappear and why it wouldn't work between us. You told me you found living with Malcolm in an imperfect world far preferable to being separated from him. At the time, I hadn't put together who you were. Your words still registered, but I couldn't imagine how you could fully understand what it was to fear that simple association with you could destroy the man you loved. It was only on the journey to Britain with the St. Gilles family that I pieced together that you were—"

  "The Raven?" Suzanne said. Amazing how easily she put the unspeakable into words with him.

  Bertrand nodded. "And so I realized that you knew as much as I did about living with secrets and about your very identity being a risk."

  "You're generous, Bertrand. You didn't entrap Rupert. Or lie to him about who you were."

  "I lied to him about my very survival. I let him spend four years alone in a harsh world, while I at least had the comfort of knowing how he got on. I've never believed much in convention, but somehow I let myself think Rupert was better off living a conventional life without me than facing the risks we ran together."

  Suzanne thought of the life she sometimes pictured for Malcolm, married to a girl from his own world. Someone who understood how to navigate its unwritten rules and unvoiced codes, who might not share his sense of adventure to the degree she did, but who could give him a settled life in a way she'd never be able to, for all her efforts at domesticity. Sometimes, even now, she thought he might have been happier in that life.

  Bertrand gripped her hand. "I hope to God we never have to get you to Italy. But I'd take Italy with Rupert over life without him in a heartbeat."

  Suzanne swallowed, tasting the embers of fear. "You're a kind man, Bertrand."

  "I'm a man who's thrown happiness away and got it back and who knows how important it is to hold on to it." He paused. "When Malcolm came to ask for my help in making arrangements should you need to leave Britain, he didn't seem like a man torn by betrayal. Merely a man desperately concerned for the woman he loves."

  "That's Malcolm. If he hated me, he wouldn't even let me see it, let alone anyone else."

  "Perhaps not, but I wouldn't have survived if I wasn't more than passably good at reading people. I know what worry looks like. I know what love looks like."

  Suzanne drew a breath.

  "What?" Bertrand asked.

  "I remember Simon saying, back in Paris, that it had been quite obvious to him before you went to France that you and Rupert were madly in love."

  Bertrand gave a wry smile. "Simon has his own skills at reading people. Frustrating at times, but also comforting." He paused. "That day Malcolm came to see me. I was concerned for you both. But I was relieved he knew. Relieved it hadn't changed things between you."

  "It changed things incalculably," Suzanne said. "But we're still together."

  "Malcolm understands betrayal too."

  She shook her head. "Malcolm would never do what I did. He's far more like you. I'm more a gameplayer than I care to admit."

  "We're all gameplayers to a degree. But I don't think any of us are driven by it."

  "Bertrand—" Suzanne drew a breath. Malcolm had trusted Bertrand with their lives. She owed him a trust as great. She put a hand on his own, and told him about the Phoenix plot.

  Chapter 25

  Bertrand stared at Suzanne with a still gaze. "I'm honored. I don't imagine it was easy to share that."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "That I didn't tell you sooner. And yet, in a way, knowing is a burden."

  "You mean whether or not I tell Rupert?" He shook his head. "At this point, I wouldn't put Rupert in that position. Not until we know more."

  "You hadn't heard anything?"

  He shook his head again. "It sounds as though Germont made a calculated decision to confide in you rather than me. Perhaps to try to entrap you." He touched her hand. "I'm sorrier than I can say that I brought him into your life."

  "Whatever the nature of the plot, it would have been in play whether or not you'd brought him to London. He has a confederate who was already here."

  Bertrand's mouth tightened. "I'll add him to my inquiries. I can pool my information with O'Roarke." He squeezed Suzanne's hand. "I won't fail your trust."

  Despite the situation, she smiled at him. "I never thought you would."

  "It's a long time since I've appreciated the advantages of the waltz," Raoul murmured, his hands on Laura's waist as the dance came to an end.

  Laura looked up into her lover's eyes. You'd never guess he'd been talking about the risks of a plot by Fouché with hard eyes and suspiciously white-knuckled hands a few hours before. "You've perfected the art of snatching happiness in the moment, haven't you?"

  "It's the only way to survive in this business." For a moment she saw a shadow flicker in his gaze. Doubt? Uncertainty? Fear? Then he gave a quick smile and offered her his arm. "Nothing to be done at the moment. And how often do I get a chance to put my arms round you in public?"

  Laura curled her fingers round his arm. "I never thought to hear you indulging in trivialities."

  "On the contrary," Raoul murmured, leading her off the dance floor. "Putting my arms round you is something I take extremely seriously."

  Laura laughed up at him. "And to think—" She broke off at the sight of a familiar figure in a gleaming dress uniform crossing the ballroom towards them, a purposeful look in his eye. Why, why hadn't it occurred to her that Will Cuthbertson might be among the Lydgates' guests?

  "Ja—Lady Tarrington." Will gave a very correct bow.

  "Colonel Cuthbertson. Do you know Mr. O'Roarke? He's an old friend of the Rannochs'." Laura looked up at Raoul. She was still holding his arm but conscious now of doing so in a very correct manner. "Colonel Cuthbertson and I were acquainted in India."

  "Cuthbertson." Raoul shook Will's hand. "You served with Harry Davenport, didn't you?"

  "In the Peninsula. Davenport was on the staff by Waterloo. A good friend. You were in the Peninsula yourself, weren't you?"

  "Working with the guerrilleros." Raoul gave his cover story with the ease of an expert agent. "I had the luxury of being safely in Brussels during Waterloo."

  Which of course was also a cover story. In fact, Laura realized, watching her former and current lovers, they had both fought at Waterloo. On opposite sides.

  "I've heard stories of your bravery on the Peninsula," Will said, in a tone that Laura thought rather unfairly emphasized that Raoul was older than he was. "I was hoping I could persuade Lady Tarrington to grant me the next dance. If you'll excuse us, O'Roarke?"

  "Of course," Raoul said. "A relief for her to dance with someone her own age, I should imagine."

  Doing it much too brown, Laura thought, but of course she couldn't step on his foot, or shoot him a look, or any of the things she'd have liked to do. There was nothing for it but to release Raoul's arm and take Will's with the most serene smile she could muster.

  "A good man, O'Roarke, from what I've heard," Will said. "I suppose he knew the Rannochs in the Peninsula."

  "And he knew Malcolm Rannoch's family before that," Laura said, and then sent Raoul a mental apology because somehow that seemed to put him in a different generation. "He's been very kind to me," she added. Somehow, it seemed important to say something of the sort, though she couldn't possibly tell Will the truth.

  Will, in fact, was smiling at her as though Raoul was the furthest th
ing from his mind. "I'm glad to see you again so soon. I had heard you didn't go out often."

  Oh, poison. He wouldn't think she was here because of him, would he? "The Lydgates are friends of the Rannochs'. The call of friendship can pull me away from my daughter for a few hours."

  "I have no doubt you're a splendid mother."

  "That's kind, Will, though I fear I showed little enough promise in India. I do think I'm managing to do at least a passable job, though."

  Will shook his head as they took their places for the dance. "You've always been hard on yourself." He smiled down at her. "You've been through a lot. I wish you'd let people take care of you."

  "My dear Will. You know me better than that. Being coddled has always driven me mad."

  Will watched her for a moment with a rueful smile. "You've been alone for a long time, Laura. You needn't always be."

  Laura swallowed as his hand closed round hers. Because the answer to that had far more to do with another person than she could allow Will to imagine. "Will—" She dipped into a curtsy as the dance began. "I wasn't very good at being a wife. No, I know it was partly Jack's fault. But not solely. It's not a road I want to travel again."

  He smiled. "I can be patient."

  Raoul kept an easy smile on his face as Laura moved off on Cuthbertson's arm. It wouldn't do to look away too soon nor to let his gaze linger too long. He turned, still aware in his peripheral vision of Laura and Cuthbertson taking their places for the dance, and saw Malcolm's aunt, Frances Dacre-Hammond, approaching on the arm of Archibald Davenport, Harry's uncle and a longtime colleague of Raoul's.

  "I've seen you dancing more of late than in years," Archie said. "Though it's not surprising, given the incentive."