London Gambit
Page 32
Roth turned his cup between his hands. "It's an appalling betrayal. I can scarcely imagine it. And yet, at the same time a part of me can understand what it was like for Lydgate. It's not easy to be an outsider in your world."
"As my wife reminds me." Though until six months ago, he hadn't known how very hard it was or how very much she was an outsider.
"Easier for me, of course," Roth said.
"Easier?" Malcolm stared at his friend, a dozen past slights he had seen Roth endure running through his head.
Roth ran his finger over the initials scratched in the tabletop. "Lydgate will always be an outsider in the beau monde, but he's just on the edge, married to one of their number, bumping up against an invisible barrier. Whereas I know I'd never have a prayer of belonging." Roth reached for his cup. "Not that there's a chance in hell I'd ever want to."
Valentin opened the door to admit Malcolm and informed him that Mrs. Rannoch was in the library with Lady Tarrington and Mr. O'Roarke. Malcolm handed his hat and gloves to Valentin, the acrid bite of the day's revelations still sharp in his throat. He did not relish sharing the news about Oliver with any of them. Yet there was much to discuss, and he welcomed all of their perspectives. Laura needed to know about Cuthbertson. He nodded to Valentin and opened the door of the library. "I'm glad you're all here. I've just learned—"
He stopped short as he stepped into the light from the windows. It fell across Suzanne's face, drained of color above the shiny rose-colored fabric of her spencer. Her eyes were dark, her lips bloodless. "Good God, darling." He crossed to her side in two strides and seized her hands. Despite the warmth of the sun spilling through the windows, they felt like ice. "You look as though you've seen a ghost."
"In a way, I have." Suzanne's fingers tightened round his own, as though in an unconscious plea for help. Which was at once oddly reassuring and bloody terrifying. His wife wasn't the sort to reach out for help. "Only, I had no illusions that he was dead. Men like St. Juste never die."
"Who?" Malcolm cast a glance at Raoul. His father's gaze was neutral as ever, but his face was set in unusually grim lines.
"Julien St. Juste," Raoul said. He was, Malcolm realized, standing closer than usual to Laura. "We caught a glimpse of him when we were sitting outside Gunter's an hour ago."
"Another former Bonapartist agent?" Malcolm drew Suzanne closer.
"Yes, though ultimately he was a freelancer who worked for the highest bidder," Raoul said. "You never crossed swords with him?"
"Not by that name."
Suzanne pulled her hands free of Malcolm's grip. "I met him on my first mission. Raoul sent me to retrieve a letter from him that the Empress Josephine feared would fall into the wrong hands."
Malcolm knew O'Roarke had been close to Josephine long before she married Napoleon Bonaparte. Their friendship went back to the early days of the Revolution, and they had been imprisoned in Les Carmes together, both a few days away from going to the guillotine when Robespierre fell. "St. Juste knew the empress as well?" Malcolm asked.
"When I first met him, he was her lover," Raoul said. "During the Directoire, before she came to Bonaparte's attention."
"And when you sent Suzette to recover this letter in"—Malcolm did quick mental calculations—"1809, you thought—"
"Josephine feared Napoleon was going to divorce her. She thought Fouché would use the letter to turn Bonaparte against her."
"And you retrieved it?"
"No." Suzanne's fingers locked together. "I failed. St. Juste caught me trying to take it."
Malcolm smiled despite the situation. He knew how much the admission of failure cost his wife. "It was your first mission."
Suzanne tugged at the lace-edged collar of her spencer, as though it choked her. "Then he gave me the letter. He said the empress was the one person he would never hurt. He's the last man on earth I can imagine ever trusting. But I believed him."
Raoul looked from Suzanne to Malcolm and inclined his head towards the sofa. Of one accord they all settled by the unlit fireplace, Malcolm and Suzanne on the sofa, Raoul and Laura on the settee beside it.
"Two years later, Josephine asked me to assist her daughter Hortense," Suzanne said. She looked between Malcolm and Laura. "The mission I told you about six weeks ago."
Malcolm nodded. Six weeks ago, Lisette Varon had sought refuge in their house, bringing a letter from Hortense Bonaparte, Josephine's daughter and the unhappy wife of Napoleon's brother Louis. The letter had been intended for Hortense's former lover, the Comte de Flahaut. When the letter had gone astray, Suzanne had told Malcolm and Laura about how she had gone into Switzerland with Hortense seven years earlier so Hortense could give birth to her child by Flahaut in secret. Malcolm was still shaken by how great a sign of trust it had been for his wife to share that confidence with a British agent. When he'd said as much to her, she'd simply said, "You wouldn't hurt a woman and her child."
Suzanne's hands locked together. "I still remember Hortense putting the baby in Flahaut's mother's arms and watching her carriage roll away. I don't know how she did it. And that was before I was a mother myself." Suzanne met Laura's gaze for a moment.
"Appalling," Laura said. "How society can interfere between a mother and child. Does Queen Hortense see the child?"
"Occasionally," Suzanne said. "So in that sense she's more fortunate than some."
It was much the story of Malcolm's mother and his illegitimate half-sister Tatiana. And of Tatiana and her own child, Pierre.
Suzanne turned her gaze back to Malcolm. "But what's pertinent now is that Josephine also asked Julien St. Juste to go with us into Switzerland as our escort."
Malcolm had a fairly shrewd notion of where Suzanne must have been to try to retrieve Josephine's letter from Julien St. Juste, and what she had probably done to get there. It shouldn't come as a surprise. He knew she'd employed seduction as a technique in her work as an agent. He'd faced the despicable Frederick Radley, who had been her lover. Still, there was something about her fear of St. Juste and the obvious importance he still had—"So you spent a lot of time with him," he said.
Suzanne gave a quick nod. "Though I can't really claim to have got to know him. But I do know him enough that I'm sure it was he who we saw today."
"So am I." Raoul's voice was grim.
"At Gunter's?" Malcolm asked. "Doing what?"
"Buying ices," Suzanne said. "Three. He carried them to a closed carriage."
Malcolm drew a breath. "You think he's part of the Phoenix plot? Could he be the man Lisette saw Louis Germont with?"
Suzanne exchanged a look with Raoul that told Malcolm they'd been discussing this. "I don't know that Lisette ever met him," Raoul said. "So it's possible."
"Flahaut knew him," Suzanne said. "So someone else would have to have called on Flahaut. Probably. St. Juste is a master of disguise. And Flahaut said the man who called on him looked familiar though he couldn't place him."
"He's far away from St. Helena if his mission is to free Bonaparte," Raoul said. "But he must be here on a mission of some sort."
"Has he worked for Fouché before?" Malcolm asked.
"On occasion," Raoul said. "They weren't natural allies, thanks to St. Juste's connection to Josephine and Fouché's antipathy to her. But it's a changed world since Waterloo."
"Do you know where St. Juste has been since Waterloo?" Malcolm asked.
"The last I saw him was at the Duchess of Richmond's ball," Suzanne said.
"What?"
"In a rifleman's uniform. He brushed past Cordy and me just after dinner. He had a girl in white on his arm. He could have been on a mission. Or he could have just found it amusing to shake Wellington's hand."
"He dropped out of sight after Waterloo," Raoul said. "As abruptly as he first appeared in the nineties."
"Did he see all of you at Gunter's?" Malcolm asked.
"I'm not sure." Suzanne folded her arms across her chest. "Not obviously, but with St. Juste one can never be sure."
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"He'd recognize you." The threat of Suzanne's being exposed never failed to tighten Malcolm throat.
Suzanne nodded. "But he couldn't very well expose me without betraying his own cover." She hesitated a moment, fingers taut on the rose-colored silk of her spencer. "St. Juste is incalculably dangerous. But I don't think he'd betray me unless he was forced to it. In the end, we were comrades, and he has his own code."
Malcolm studied his wife, inches away from him on the sofa, tendrils of hair escaping round the fragile nape of her neck, pearl earrings swinging beside her face, shoulders pulling at the seams on her spencer, brows drawn. This man he had never met, had never heard of until a quarter hour ago, had obviously been an important presence in her life. "You trust him?"
"Dear God, no." Suzanne's fingers pressed into her sleeves. "To own the truth, I went cold at the thought of him being as close to the children as he was today."
"So did I," Raoul said.
Malcolm met his father's gaze. Coming from O'Roarke, it was quite an admission.
Laura was also staring at her lover. "I think that's the first time I've heard you confess to fear of anyone."
"Oh, I'm afraid of plenty of things," Raoul said with a quick smile. "I just manage to keep it to myself most of the time. But St. Juste is in a category all by himself. Not long after we first met, we were walking together in the boulevards after one of Josephine's parties. A man we passed fell dead to the ground. It took me a moment to realize St. Juste had stabbed him. St. Juste didn't even break his stride."
Malcolm stared at his father, remembering the confidences they had shared only this morning. He understood Raoul far better than he would have thought possible a few weeks ago. And yet, sometimes—"You sent Suzanne to face him."
O'Roarke's mouth tightened. "I trusted Suzanne."
"I didn't exactly live up to that trust," Suzanne said.
"On the contrary. We got the letter back. Fouché wasn't able to move against Josephine."
Suzanne turned towards Raoul. "Is that what you thought would happen? That St. Juste would catch me and give up the letter?"
"No." Raoul's eyes darkened. Malcolm couldn't read everything they contained, but he caught the bite of self-recrimination. "But it was one possible scenario."
Laura was staring at him as well, as though taking in the man he had been. O'Roarke met her gaze for a moment without flinching.
"We have to warn Carfax." Suzanne forced a smile to her face, though she was sitting with her arms folded in front of her, shoulders hunched, as though warding off an attack of ague. "And yes, those are four words I never thought would leave my mouth."
"Nor did I." Malcolm managed an answering smile. "But I think we need to find out what St. Juste's mission is before we warn Carfax."
"Darling, did you hear what Raoul said? Do you want a man like that running round Mayfair—"
"Of course not. But if St. Juste is working for Fouché in the Phoenix plot and the goal is to ferret out Bonapartists, we'd already decided Carfax would agree with Fouché."
"And if he's here for some other reason?
Malcolm frowned at the bronze tapers on the mantle. "You said St. Juste worked for the highest bidder. We have to at least consider the possibility that in this case the highest bidder was Carfax."
Suzanne sucked in her breath, but Raoul's gaze told Malcolm he'd already considered this possibility.
"Would St. Juste work for the British?" Malcolm asked.
"I don't think there's anyone St. Juste wouldn't work for," Raoul said, a knife edge in his voice.
"And there's no one I'd put it past Carfax to hire," Malcolm said.
Laura was frowning. "I'm not arguing with that, but what—"
"Any number of things," Malcolm said, "including a move against someone in the government."
Suzanne shook her head. "But—"
"Carfax has informants all over London," Malcolm said. "No matter how good St. Juste is, it's hard to believe Carfax has no idea he's here. One can't but wonder."
"And if that's the case—" Laura broke off.
"He could betray Suzanne without betraying himself," Malcolm finished for her. He reached for Suzanne's hand and gripped it tight. "Quite."
"He hasn't yet," Suzanne said.
"That we know of," Malcolm returned, a dozen possible scenarios, all equally grim, chasing themselves through his head. "Carfax would keep that sort of information until it was of use."
"There's someone else in England who might have hired him," Laura said. "The Elsinore League."
"I can certainly imagine them having use for a man of St. Juste's talents," Raoul said. "Did you ever hear Trenchard speak of him?"
Laura shook her head. "Not that that means anything. As you've often pointed out, the Elsinore League don't always work in concert. And even if Trenchard did know of St. Juste, he hardly confided in me."
Raoul's mouth tightened. Thinking of Suzanne's former lover, Frederick Radley, Malcolm could sympathize. And the late Duke of Trenchard made Radley look like a prince in a fairy tale.
Suzanne looked at Raoul. "You agree with Malcolm?"
"If Malcolm wanted to tell Carfax, I wouldn't try to stop him. But I think it's best that we're armed with data before we make any decisions."
Malcolm nodded. "In any case, I'm not much in charity with Carfax at the moment. I just learned he had Oliver spying on David, Simon, and me from when we were at Oxford."
Suzanne went still. "Darling—"
"Not the best news," he said. "Though it rather pales next to what you've told me."
"On the contrary." She reached for his hand. "We've seen an old enemy. You've learned you were betrayed by a friend."
"I'll live."
He saw the instinctive recoil in Suzanne's eyes, the brilliant smile that defied it. "You mean it can't be worse than being betrayed by your wife?"
"Of course not. That is—" He drew a rough breath. He'd scarcely had time to think it through for himself. "You did what you did for something you believed in. And it started before we met. Oliver did this for money. And it started after he knew us."
"He was at Oxford on a scholarship, wasn't he?" Raoul said.
Malcolm nodded. "And he desperately wanted to marry a woman without a fortune. Part of me can understand. But not—" He shook his head and told them, in as crisp and factual terms as possible, what he and Harry had learned, ending with William Cuthbertson.
Laura's eyes widened, but she merely said, "Well, that explains his presence in London and his renewed interest in me."
"It doesn't do anything of the sort," Raoul said.
Laura turned a level gaze to him. "He must have needed an explanation for his sudden arrival in London. I thought he was taking our past affair far too seriously."
O'Roarke reached for her hand. "Laura—"
"It's all right." Laura twined her fingers round his own. "I've been feeling guilty about Will. This means I needn't so much. But—" She turned her gaze back to Malcolm. "It's hard to credit him as a spy. He always seemed so open. That was one of the things I—He was working for Carfax?"
"So it seems," Malcolm said. "Or at least sending information to him, which isn't quite the same as actively spying."
"It's a blurry line." Laura cast a glance at Raoul. "Apparently I have a weakness for spies. Though I can't imagine Will was in your league."
O'Roarke had been frowning, but at that he gave a faint smile. "I'm not sure whether or not that's a compliment."
"Believe me it is," she murmured.
"I know you said you didn't have any idea," Malcolm said. "But now you know, thinking back—Is there anything that stands out?"
Laura frowned. "We'd talk about the political situation. It was one of the things I liked about him. I wonder if that was part of it even then. If he got close to me because my father was the colonel. Or because my father-in-law was an Elsinore League member on a diplomatic mission."
"No," Raoul said. "At least that certainl
y wasn't all of it."
Laura shook her head. "Objectively, you can't know—"
"Yes, I can. I saw the way he was looking at you last night."
"Being an agent doesn't stop one from having feelings," Suzanne said. "I think we can all testify to that."
Laura shook her head. "It scarcely matters. I wish I could remember more. I wish I could say I'd learned something dancing with Will last night. But he's obviously very good at concealing things."
"So is Sylvie St. Ives," Suzanne said. "I always rather avoided her because I was afraid as a real émigrée, she might see through my cover. I should have paid more attention."
"So should I." Malcolm's mouth tightened. "I've known her since I was in shortcoats. I knew she had a quick mind, but I never thought she had an interest in much beyond life in the beau monde. I remember once in the Peninsula—"
"Lady St. Ives was in the Peninsula?" Suzanne asked. "I thought St. Ives didn't fight until Waterloo."
"He didn't, but he was sent to Lisbon with dispatches once. In the autumn of 1810, before I met you. Sylvie came with him. I remember her saying she couldn't keep track of who was on which side, but at least it made for diverting parties."
"I've played roles like that," Suzanne said. "But I can't imagine keeping it up for so long."
"I was in and out of Lisbon that autumn," Raoul said. "I remember being at at least one party where the St. Iveses were present. I had no notion. Just as I had no notion Carfax's network in London was quite so extensive."
"Nor did I," Malcolm said. "And apparently he uses blackmail to control a lot of his agents. If not at the start, then to keep them from stopping working for him."
"Like Trenchard." Laura's voice was flat as scorched earth.