by Teresa Grant
Manon turned her head to look at Suzanne directly. “We all play different roles. I do myself, offstage as much as on-. The actress, the agent, the lover, the mother. It’s hard sometimes to know which is the most real. And it’s a rare thing to find someone who sees one for oneself.”
Suzanne hunched her shoulders. “Malcolm sees me for myself. At least at times I think he does. I sometimes have a lowering feeling that what he sees and loves is the character I created for him, not the real me at all. I doubt he’d ever get past how I’ve deceived him, but even if he could, I sometimes wonder if he’d like the real me at all.”
Manon turned back to the dressing table and picked up her rouge brush. “And yet sometimes a role tells me something about myself. Didn’t you find that?” She brushed color over her cheeks, somehow making them appear fuller. “When you were an actress, I mean?”
“Oh yes,” Suzanne said. “Only sometimes it’s difficult to tell where the role leaves off and oneself begins.”
“Or perhaps it’s that the role itself changes one.” Manon peered at her face and added some rouge to her left cheekbone. “My most brilliant lovers were also the most exhausting. Amusing but always seeming to need to be catered to. I couldn’t abide being married to a fool. But I imagine it isn’t easy being the wife of a complicated man.”
Suzanne drew a breath to deny it, then bit it back. So much of her life revolved round Malcolm. Helping draft documents, sifting through invitations and knowing which to accept, making sure meals were served and appointments kept, coaxing him out of the library at entertainments, packing and unpacking their things and making a home in various lodgings, smoothing feathers he had ruffled, smoothing his own ruffled feathers when his frustration with Castlereagh, Wellington, Metternich, and others threatened to get the better of him.
“It’s been that way from the first,” she said. “But somehow—It’s absurd, but somehow it was easier before.”
“Of course.” Manon turned her face from side to side to regard her handiwork. “Before you catered to him in the service of your work. In the service of your own ends. Now you do it simply—”
“Because I love him.” Which should matter more than anything. And yet—“I have dwindled into a wife.”
Manon smiled as she added some shading to her forehead. “I can’t imagine you dwindling into anything, ma chère Suzanne.”
Suzanne stared at her hands. “When we were first married, I simply did what seemed to be required. That’s what one does when playing a role. And then I suddenly realized Malcolm needed me.” She remembered the look of relief on his face when he returned home from a long day at the embassy to find supper waiting and she handed him the draft of a memorandum he’d forgot he needed to write. What would I do without you? he’d said. And she’d been shocked to realize how much he meant it. “It’s a rather remarkable thing realizing one is needed. Especially when one’s used to being on one’s own.” Since her father’s and sister’s deaths, she couldn’t really say anyone had needed her until Malcolm. Raoul needed her talents, but he didn’t need her. He was entirely self-sufficient. She gripped her hands together, conscious of the absence of her wedding ring. “Dwindling into a wife is scant enough recompense for what I’ve done to him.”
Manon picked up a comb and coaxed the hair of her wig closer round her face. “Recompense is a poor foundation to build a life on.”
Suzanne looked up and met Manon’s gaze in the mirror. “It’s more than recompense.”
Manon’s mouth curved in a smile. “Good. That’s the only reason I can imagine to get married.”
“But loving Malcolm doesn’t make me want to lose myself.” It felt like an almost shameful admission, yet it was a relief to make it.
“And so you’re here.” Manon set down the comb.
“I’m here because I’m your friend.”
“Friends are a rare thing. Far rarer than husbands. Or lovers.” Manon settled a pair of spectacles on her nose. “There.” She turned round on the dressing table bench to face Suzanne. “If I deepen my voice and remember how to walk, I think I’ll pass for a tutor.”
“The girls—?”
“Are traveling as Raoul’s daughters. I’m going as their tutor. Berthe as their nurse. Once we get out of Paris we’ll change to a different set of costumes and Raoul will return to the city.” She regarded Suzanne for a moment. “We couldn’t have done it without the documents you procured. At considerable risk.”
“I’ve run greater risks anytime these past two years.”
“But you no longer have to.”
“One’s loyalty to one’s friends doesn’t go away.”
Manon pushed herself to her feet and then went still. She glanced round the dressing room slowly, taking in the details of a room she saw every day but to which she probably paid little heed. She touched her fingers to a peasant bodice hung from the clothesline above, and then to a paste tiara resting on top of a hatbox. “Was it difficult, leaving your old life behind?”
Suzanne hesitated, searching for honesty. “I didn’t have the least idea what I was doing when I went into my marriage. I saw it as a challenge. A game. When it hit me that there was no end in sight, I felt trapped. It’s grown easier. I’ve made friends. I have whole days now where I feel at home. But . . .” She hesitated. “One stays an exile. I don’t think my husband will ever entirely understand that.”
Manon nodded slowly. “I’m used to making my home different places. But I never thought—Well, all one can do is go forwards and explore the next role offered.” She moved to the sofa beside Suzanne. “Now we merely have to wait.”
CHAPTER 17
“Gui Laclos was right,” Harry said, as they descended the steps of the Salon des Etrangers. “I don’t believe his explanation.” He paused a moment, gaze fixed straight ahead. “Though I don’t know that I’m the best judge.”
“For what it’s worth, Gui Laclos never slept with my wife that I know of, and I’m not inclined to believe him, either,” Malcolm said. “As Mademoiselle Leroux said, he and Rivère could have quarreled about Gabrielle Caruthers.”
“You didn’t confront Laclos with that.”
“He may not know about his sister and Rivère. The circumstances didn’t seem to warrant betraying Lady Caruthers’s secrets.”
Harry shook his head. “You have a soft heart, Rannoch.”
“You’ve only just discovered that?”
Harry gave a twisted grin. “Would Gui Laclos have killed to protect his sister’s honor?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so. But then it’s also possible that the quarrel was about something else. That Rivère was blackmailing him as well. He could have learned something about Gui from Gabrielle.”
“I don’t know Gui Laclos well, and as I said I’m not inclined to have a good opinion of him. But from tonight, I’d say he has a temper.”
“He does.” Malcolm stared at the moonlight bouncing off the cobblestones. “As does Wellington.”
Harry shot a look at him. “Can’t imagine what a man with Wellington’s understanding sees in Frances Webster.” He paused a moment. “Go carefully, Malcolm.”
“You think Wellington wouldn’t stoop to killing a blackmailer?”
“I think Wellington’s a dangerous opponent. And if he’s guilty of murder, he’s even more dangerous than I credited.”
It was Malcolm’s turn to stare at his friend. His throat was tight with possibilities he didn’t want to articulate. “You think it’s possible?”
“I pride myself on not having illusions, remember?” Harry said.
“So do I, in theory.”
“Don’t fool yourself, Malcolm. You have a remarkable capacity for believing in people.”
“Is it quite that bad?”
“And I’ve always envied you for it.” Harry was quiet for a moment. “We both agreed in Brussels that Wellington wouldn’t cavil at having a double agent killed. Wellington doesn’t think it would have been wrong to have had
Bertrand Laclos killed if he really had been a double agent. How much of a jump is it from that to having a British agent killed when he tried to blackmail a British commander?”
Harry’s words cut all too close to what Malcolm feared might be the mark. “One compromise after another until one looks over one’s shoulder and integrity is gone.”
“Quite.”
Manon cast a glance round the dressing room. “Odd I didn’t realize until now how much I’d miss Paris. I’ve rather taken it for granted. Like a lover one doesn’t properly appreciate until he’s not there to pay one silly compliments or open the carriage door.”
Suzanne had only spent small snatches of her life in Paris, but the city seemed to run through Manon’s blood. She’d always been a font of information, for she knew everyone and everything. “Manon,” Suzanne said on sudden impulse. “Did you ever hear any talk about Tatiana Kirsanova?”
Manon gave a dry laugh. “Could anyone in Paris fail to hear talk about Tatiana Kirsanova?” She hesitated a moment, fiddling with one of the buttons on her coat.
“It’s all right,” Suzanne said. “I know. That is, I know about the rumors. The rumors that Princess Tatiana was Malcolm’s mistress. She wasn’t as it happens.”
Manon turned to look at her. “You sound very confident.”
“I wasn’t for the longest time, but I am now.”
“Because?”
“Because Malcolm told me, and I believe him.”
Manon’s brows rose above her spectacles. “You do have a remarkable marriage.”
“Trust grows easier with time,” Suzanne said, and then bit her lip because Malcolm trusted her far too readily. “But Malcolm was close to Princess Tatiana,” she continued. “He’d worked with her—”
“Worked with—I should have known.”
“That she was an agent? Yes, I felt quite foolish for not knowing it myself.”
“I heard your husband looked into her murder in Vienna.”
“He did. And though no one could be publicly charged, he learned a great deal. But Malcolm takes his responsibilities hard. I don’t think he’ll ever stop blaming himself for not having been able to save Princess Tatiana.” Suzanne hesitated, studying Manon’s artfully made-up face, then made a leap of trust. “It seems Princess Tatiana may have had a child.”
Manon’s eyes widened in seemingly genuine surprise. “Mon Dieu.” Her gaze flickered to the sitting room. “Hidden away?”
“Apparently. But Tatiana seemingly knew where. We think the child would have been born about eight years ago. Did you hear anything about who might have been Tatiana’s lover nine years ago or a bit less?”
Manon’s brows, thickened with blacking, drew together in consideration. “I remember the swath Princess Tatiana cut through Parisian society when she first arrived. I wasn’t invited to her parties, of course, but she was pointed out to me at the theatre. When she was present, the gentlemen in the crowd had a distressing tendency to look at her box instead of at the stage. And there’d be less of a crowd in my dressing room because a throng of gentlemen would follow her when she left. She had a group of us put on a private theatrical at one of her parties. It would have been the autumn of 1806. Love’s Labour’s Lost. A bit of a surprising choice.”
Suzanne said nothing, though she wondered if Tatiana’s fondness for the play had come from Malcolm or from their mother.
“I must say she was quite generous with her payment and she encouraged us to mingle with the guests afterwards,” Manon continued. “It was a bit lowering to realize I couldn’t dislike her as I could when she was simply a glamorous stranger distracting the crowd.”
It was a simpler version of what Suzanne had gone through the previous autumn, peeling away the complex layers of the woman she had been prepared simply to dislike as her husband’s supposed mistress. “Princess Tatiana was a complicated woman.”
“So she was. She had a throng of gentlemen about her that night of course. But as I recall she divided her favors quite evenly.” Manon cast a quick glance at Suzanne.
“Whoever fathered the child, Princess Tatiana seemed to feel secrecy was of the utmost importance.”
“A bit odd, that. Not that a woman can afford to flaunt children born out of wedlock—Well”—Manon glanced at the sitting room again—“an actress can, but it’s more difficult for a lady. Still, there are plenty of widows with by-blows who are known about. As long as they don’t actively flaunt them, they can get away with it. Tatiana Kirsanova didn’t strike me as a woman who would frighten easily.”
“No.”
“You should talk to Paul St. Gilles.”
“The painter?” Suzanne had seen his work at the Louvre, and Louise and Emile Sevigny had mentioned his anti-Royalist writings. “Was he her lover?” It seemed an unlikely pairing.
“Not her type, you think? Princess Tatiana seemed to have eclectic tastes. And I think there was a difference between the lovers she chose for expediency, because they were powerful men, and the lovers she chose simply to amuse herself. She and St. Gilles were certainly close. If he didn’t father the child, he might know who did.”
“Do you think—”
The door swung open on Suzanne’s words. Raoul entered, no longer the stagehand but a stout gentleman with graying hair and side-whiskers, modest shirt points, and a coat of sturdy wool. A prosperous bourgeois. He looked from Manon to Suzanne. “An admirable transformation. I’d have expected no less of either of you.”
Another man followed him into the room, stoop shouldered, with straggly hair. He was dressed as a coachman. “Best hurry,” he said in a slurred voice.
Raoul glanced at him and from their interaction Suzanne realized this must be the Kestrel. She suspected the hair was a wig. She wondered how old he was. Not so old as the seventy or so he was portraying, but he could be anywhere from five-and-twenty to five-and-fifty.
Manon moved to the sitting room door and looked at her daughters. For a moment, the other roles were gone and a mother’s concern and quiet assurance suffused her face. Roxane got to her feet and nodded. Manon bent over the sleeping Clarisse and murmured to her.
Raoul and the Kestrel moved two large trunks from the welter in the dressing room to the sitting room. The girls climbed inside, wrapped in soft blankets. “Just until we’re away from the theatre,” Manon murmured to them. “Then you’ll ride in the carriage with Oncle Raoul and me.”
“Suzanne should leave first,” Raoul said. “Or rather Manon Caret should. That should draw off the watchers.”
Suzanne pulled on a pair of kid gloves, glanced in the looking glass to make sure her ringlets still fell about her face, and then raised the hood of her cloak. She bent down to touch her fingers to Roxane’s and Clarisse’s hair, then stood and regarded Manon. “One way or another, I’ll see you again. Perhaps in England. My friend Simon Tanner is a part owner of the Tavistock Theatre. I’ll find a way to recommend you.”
“I’d be most grateful.”
“I think you’ll find the theatre community in England easier to navigate than the beau monde.” She embraced Manon. Manon clung to her for a moment, fingers tight, then stepped back with a smile that seemed designed to hold tears at bay.
Raoul squeezed Suzanne’s hand.”No unnecessary risks, querida.”
“The same goes for you.” Suzanne hugged Berthe, then turned to the Kestrel and inclined her head. He returned her nod, his dark gaze veiled.
Two stagehands, old friends of Manon’s, came into the room and picked up two bundles, blankets wrapped round pillows with blond wigs peeping out from the top. Close enough to the sight of Roxane and Clarisse being carried from the theatre to fool watchers.
Suzanne cast a last glance at her friends, then followed the stagehands down the passage, moving with Manon’s unique combination of languor and impetuous speed.
Manon’s cherry red barouche was drawn up in front of the theatre. “Do try not to wake them,” Suzanne called in Manon’s accents as the stagehan
ds settled their burden in the carriage. “Clarisse isn’t well.”
Pausing to give a careless wave to any denizens of the Palais Royale waiting for a last glimpse of Manon Caret, Suzanne moved to the carriage, aware of the two men lingering in doorways on either side of the street, though she didn’t risk looking at them directly. She leaned into the carriage to adjust the blankets over her supposed daughters, murmured, “Shush, shush,” then climbed in the carriage herself. “Home, Jacques,” she called to the coachman.
The carriage clattered off down the street. Suzanne fell back against the squabs. No way to tell if the watchers followed the carriage. She leaned forwards a few times to tuck the blankets round the girls, just in case anyone should glance through the windows. It would be hours, if not days, before she knew if her friends were safe. Worry was tight within her. But with it, she could not deny, a thrill of excitement.
Flashes of lamplight pierced the gloom as they swept over the cobblestones. At last they pulled up before Manon’s elegant house in the Rue Vivienne, with fanciful plaster moldings and gilded wrought ironwork. A footman hurried down the steps. He handed Suzanne down from the carriage, then reached inside to lift one of the blanket-wrapped forms. The coachman lifted the other. “Clarisse has a sore throat,” Suzanne murmured. “I should have left her at home.”
“Where’s Berthe?” the footman asked, cued to his part.
“She had plans with her young man. I couldn’t ask her to stay back, not with everything she does for me.”
The footman grinned, as if to say his mistress was softhearted beneath her sometimes imperious exterior. They climbed the steps to the columned portico, Suzanne fussing over her two supposed daughters. Inside the house, the footman and coachman carried the blanket-wrapped bundles up the curving staircase to the nursery. Suzanne lit a lamp, bent over the two bundles in the beds, smoothed the covers, kissed their wig hair, all for the benefit of anyone watching the windows. Then she cast a last look round the room, drew the curtains, turned down the lamp, and went down the passage to Manon’s bedchamber.