by Teresa Grant
“I don’t see what you can do but laugh, dearest. How’s Karl?”
“Bearing up well. It’s my uncle who keeps looking at me as though he’s afraid I’ll break.”
“He had quite a scare. Especially given the way you looked when Malcolm carried you in.”
Dorothée fingered the clasp on her diamond bracelet. “He told me this afternoon that he’ll understand whatever I choose to do. It was almost as though—Almost as though he was giving me permission to run off with Karl.”
“Does that make it easier?”
“It should, shouldn’t it? But the look in his eyes when he said it . . .”
“You’re afraid of hurting him?”
“No. That is, that’s part of it. But I’m more afraid of what I’d be giving up myself.” Dorothée stared at the sparkling flower links of the bracelet, then lifted her gaze to Suzanne’s face. “When that man struck me and I was falling to the ground—in the moment before my head hit the cobblestones. It wasn’t Karl I wanted. It was Talleyrand.”
Suzanne watched her friend move off on Clam-Martinitz’s arm. Talleyrand was a dangerous man. For many reasons, she should want Doro to find happiness with Clam-Martinitz. And yet—
“Madame Rannoch.”
Fouché had materialized at her side. Suzanne forced herself not to stiffen.
“You aren’t availing yourself of your influence over your husband,” Fouché murmured, voice pitched below the strains of Mozart that filled the room.
Suzanne turned to the minister of police with a bright smile. “Perhaps I prefer to let my husband make his own choices.”
“I thought we understood each other three nights ago.” His gaze skimmed over her face. “I do hope you haven’t been so unwise as to listen to your friend O’Roarke.”
“Why on earth should I discuss this with Monsieur O’Roarke?”
“Don’t play the innocent, Madame Rannoch. You can’t imagine I knew about you and not about your links to O’Roarke. I imagine O’Roarke told you he had me checkmated. And I imagine he didn’t add that if he moves against me, I will destroy him.”
She couldn’t quite control her intake of breath.
Fouché regarded her as though she were a type of unknown insect beneath the microscope. “I always knew O’Roarke was foolishly inclined to idealize causes. I didn’t realize that extended to his women as well.”
“I think perhaps you’re misinterpreting simple loyalty.”
“I think not.” He tilted his head as though breaking her into parts and toting up her monetary value. “I hadn’t realized quite how much you meant to O’Roarke. Even then, I doubt he’d actually be mad enough to move against me. But of course I can’t be sure. It’s an interesting conundrum. I’m inclined to ignore O’Roarke and do just as I’ve told you I will if you don’t oblige me. Of course, I could be wrong, and O’Roarke could move against me. In which case, make no mistake, I will destroy him. So much risk. And you can prevent it all simply by doing as I asked.”
She forced herself not to look away from that incisive gaze. “I’ve no guarantee you wouldn’t expose me in any case.”
“My dear Madame Rannoch. Why waste such a valuable bargaining chip? You needn’t ever fear I’ll use it. So long as you continue to do as I ask.”
CHAPTER 28
“It would almost be worth it to see the look on Wellington’s face when he learned we’d been hauled in for breaking into the Louvre,” Harry murmured.
“Fascinating as the possibilities are, I think that’s a scene I can forego,” Malcolm said, scanning the street.
Harry cast a glance over the lamplit cobblestones. A seemingly casual glance that held the appraisal of a professional. “Quite like old times. Seems an age since we’ve had an excuse for breaking and entering. Hope we haven’t grown rusty.”
“Speak for yourself,” Malcolm said, reaching in his pocket for his picklocks.
Harry took them from him. “I’ll do it. You two create a diversion to cover me.”
He knelt down in front of the door at this side entrance. Suzanne stepped towards Malcolm and into his arms. “Easiest way to create a diversion,” she said, raising her lips to his.
Malcolm gave a laugh against her face and met her kiss. He was less prudish about such matters than he’d been when they married. Harry knelt behind them. She could hear the faint scrape of metal, but only because she knew to listen for it.
A carriage rattled by in the nearby street, bringing a flash of torchlight. Suzanne turned in Malcolm’s arms so her skirt created a wider shield. She was wearing a dark mulberry spencer and a jaunty plumed black velvet hat over a black sarcenet gown. Dark for camouflage, but also slightly raffish, the ensemble of an actress out for an evening with her lover.
“We’re in,” Harry said in a lower whisper. “Coast clear?”
Another carriage rattled past, some soldiers strolled by, their voices carried on the evening breeze, and then Harry pushed the door open, and they stepped into the cool, dark quiet of the palace that housed the art treasures Napoleon Bonaparte had gathered up from his conquests across the Continent.
Harry pushed the door to behind them, and Malcolm struck flint to steel and lit a lamp.
Suzanne was too keenly aware of what was being done to France not to sympathize with those from other countries who wanted their treasures returned to them. Yet it was impossible not to feel a thrill at the richness and beauty that surrounded them. Gilt frames; rich, vibrant oils depicting classical scenes, portraits, and still lifes; marble statues; and bronze sculptures flashed past them, taking her back to childhood visits she had made with her father to this very museum. She remembered staring up, listening to her father’s stories, asking him to pick her up so she could see better. And later carrying her baby sister. She pushed aside the last memory as it tore at her throat.
Thanks to careful reconnaissance early in the day, they could almost have traversed the corridors to the gallery where The Daughters of Zeus hung without illumination. It was a square room near the Grand Salon Carré, featuring works by contemporary painters, mostly French and Italian. Harry stood by the door holding guard. Suzanne held the lamp while Malcolm lifted the painting down and leaned it against a marble bench. They crouched down and studied it in the light of the lamp. Young women in classical garb in a garden. The faces were vivid and arresting, the light luminous as it fell across faces and nestled in the folds of white draperies. But none of the models looked like Tatiana.
“Anything that makes you think of Tatiana?” Suzanne asked.
He shook his head. “Nor anything that seems like a clue to a child.” He turned the painting round. Suzanne held it so the paint wouldn’t scrape against the bench. Malcolm ran his fingers over the back of the canvas. “The name of the painting and St. Gilles’s signature again. No way anything could be hidden.”
“A secret compartment in the frame?” Suzanne suggested, looking down over the painting to study it.
Malcolm ran his fingers over the frame, tapped against it, shook his head. Then he touched the inner edge of the frame and frowned when he reached the upper left-hand corner. “The frame’s been glued to the canvas.” He pulled a knife from inside his coat and carefully pushed the knifepoint between the frame and the canvas. His eyes lit. “Tweezers?”
Holding the painting with one hand, Suzanne opened the steel clasp on her crimson silk reticule and gave them to him. Malcolm reached inside with the care he’d use for picking a lock, tugged, and pulled out a sealed, folded paper. Suzanne drew in her breath. Malcolm lifted the lamp.
Footsteps thudded in the corridor.
Suzanne flung her silk scarf over the lamp and went still. She could feel Malcolm’s taut stillness beside her.
“There’ll be hell to pay if we’re caught.” The voice, English and with a north country accent (she was still learning to recognize accents from different parts of Britain), sounded from the corridor.
“That’s why we’re doing this at night.
” The second voice was also British and sounded like a Londoner, with undertones of Cornwall.
“We didn’t fight at Waterloo so we could skulk about frog palaces in the middle of the night.”
“Hookey wouldn’t thank you for calling them frogs. And you said it—If they knew—”
“Better to do it by daylight and face them down.”
“Speak for yourself. I’ve had enough of fighting frogs. I’ve had enough of fighting everyone. Where the devil are we supposed to start?”
“East gallery. Something Italian.”
Suzanne drew a breath. Wellington must have decided to preemptively remove some of the disputed art treasures. And the soldiers were heading right towards them.
Malcolm looked from her to Harry in the shadows. “Follow my lead.”
It was all he could say before the footsteps thudded closer and a tall, broad-shouldered man in the uniform of a British army sergeant appeared in the doorway, lamp raised in one hand.
“What the devil—What the devil are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same.” Malcolm got to his feet. “I doubt Wellington would be best pleased to find you breaking into the Louvre after hours, Sergeant.”
“Breaking in—” The sergeant drew a breath. “Wellington sent us.”
“Oh, good God.” Malcolm exchanged a look with Harry. “You’d think he’d have had the sense not to send us at the same time.”
“Probably didn’t realize it,” Harry said. “You know how orders can get muddled.”
“Are you saying Wellington sent you, too?” the sergeant demanded.
“Of course he sent us,” Malcolm said, in a tone that would have withered the roses at Malmaison. “You don’t imagine we’d have broken into the Louvre in the middle of the night on our own authority, do you?”
The sergeant opened his mouth, then closed it. More footsteps thudded on the floor. A taller, thinner man in an ensign’s uniform appeared in the doorway behind the sergeant. “What—”
“They say they’re here on Wellington’s orders, too,” the sergeant said.
The ensign looked from Malcolm to Harry and back at Malcolm. “You’re Malcolm Rannoch.”
“I’m—”
“And that’s Mrs. Rannoch.” The ensign’s gaze settled on Suzanne with the look of one spotting a favorite actress. He glanced at Harry. “And you must be Colonel Davenport.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “So much for anonymity. And you are—”
“Tompkins. This is Sergeant Grey.” The ensign moved into the room. The lamplight illumined his round, well-scrubbed face. “I suppose you’re here on”—he coughed—“secret business.”
“No, we came here in the middle of the night to do something perfectly commonplace,” Harry said.
“You did? Oh, I see.” Tompkins coughed again.
Grey’s chin jutted out. “Don’t see why he sent you and us at the same time.”
“Nor do I.” Malcolm looked from Suzanne to Harry, then back at the two soldiers. “Our presence here is supposed to be secret.”
“So’s ours,” Tompkins said.
Suzanne touched her fingers to the cameo broach at her throat. “You’ll just have to explain it to them, darling.”
Malcolm turned back to the two soldiers. “There’s secrecy and secrecy. If you ask Wellington he won’t even admit he ordered us here.”
“He—” Grey shook his head. “What?”
“Deniability,” Malcolm said.
Tompkins nodded gravely. “You can count on our discretion, sir. We’ll pretend we never saw you. No matter who asks.”
“Splendid,” Malcolm said.
“I wish I could have been there,” Cordelia said.
“I’d never have been able to keep a straight face,” her husband replied. “It was hard enough with Malcolm and Suzanne. I couldn’t look either one of them in the eye.”
“Do you think you can really count on them not to say anything to Wellington?” Cordelia asked, sobering.
Harry exchanged a look with Malcolm. “It’s a risk. But so is a lot of what we do.”
“At least we’ll soon know if the risk was worth it.” Malcolm pulled the paper he’d found hidden in the painting from his pocket and spread it on the escritoire in the light of the Argand lamp. The paper was yellowed and crackled as he unfolded it.
Fading print. Suzanne had to lean over Malcolm’s shoulder to read it.
This is to affirm that Étienne Laclos is the father of the child I bore on 21 July 1807.
Tatiana Kirsanova
Below were the signatures of two witnesses. Paul St. Gilles and Juliette Dubretton.
CHAPTER 29
Pale morning sunlight leached between the cramped, narrow buildings. Malcolm rang the bell at the door of the St. Gilles house. He had tossed and turned all night—Suzanne had been keenly aware of it, for she’d scarcely been able to sleep herself—and they had left to call on the St. Gilleses at the earliest possible moment.
Juliette Dubretton opened the door herself. Her hair was slipping free of its pins, with an abandon that suggested she’d been jamming her fingers into her coiffure, and her face was hollowed with strain and fatigue.
“Monsieur Rannoch. Madame Rannoch,” she said on a note of surprise.
“Forgive the intrusion,” Malcolm said. “But we need a word with you and your husband without delay.”
Her mouth tightened. “Paul isn’t here.”
Malcolm put his hand on the doorjamb before she could close the door. “Where might he be found?”
She drew a harsh breath. “The Conciergerie.”
“He’s been proscribed?”
“And taken into custody immediately.” Juliette swayed on her feet.
Malcolm put a hand on her arm and steered her inside to a small sitting room overflowing with sketches and stacks of notepaper. Malcolm pressed Juliette into a tapestry chair, while Suzanne poured a glass of wine and put it in her hand.
She gulped down a sip. “Thank you. I don’t know what came over me.”
“Having one’s husband arrested is enough to shake the strongest woman,” Suzanne said. “I went through it myself last autumn, and I felt as though the world was crashing to bits round me.”
“What’s he been charged with?” Malcolm asked.
“Sedition.” Juliette took another sip of wine. “They cited his latest pamphlet, though in truth they could have cited almost any of his writings.”
“Have you spoken with an advocate?”
She nodded. “An old friend. He says we can attempt to put on a defense, though he has little hope of success.”
“I can make the inquiries. My position as a British diplomat may prove advantageous.”
Juliette regarded him for a moment over the rim of her glass. “You’re very kind, Monsieur Rannoch.”
“I don’t like to see anyone arrested in this climate. And your husband strikes me as a particularly decent man.”
Juliette swallowed, as though the wine had turned bitter in her mouth. “If—”
The door swung open. A boy of about eight and a girl of about six stood there, hair tousled, her white dress and his white shirt catching the sunlight. “Maman?” the boy asked. “Have you heard anything?”
“Pierre. Marguerite.” Juliette held out her arm and the children ran to her and nestled against her. “I told you we wouldn’t hear anything this morning.”
“We heard someone at the door,” the girl said. “We were being quiet so we wouldn’t wake Rose.”
Juliette pulled the girl onto her lap and stroked the boy’s hair, a brilliant red-gold in the sunlight. “We need to have our wits about us to help Papa, mes chers.” She looked at Malcolm and Suzanne. “My son Pierre and my daughter Marguerite. Monsieur and Madame Rannoch.”
Pierre studied them with grave blue eyes. “Are you here to help my papa?”
“We came here to speak with your father and mother,” Malcolm said. His voice was level and friendly, thoug
h Suzanne felt the tension that had shot through him at the first sight of the boy. “But now we know what’s befallen your father, we’ll do our best to help.”
Pierre nodded, as did Marguerite.
Juliette tightened her arms round them. “Go to the kitchen, and tell Solange I said you could each have a macaron. I need to speak with Monsieur and Madame Rannoch, and then I’ll come see you.”
The children nodded, old enough still to be worried, young enough to be comforted by the promised treat.
The click of the door behind them echoed through the room.
‘Your son looks to be about eight,” Malcolm said. “I expect he was born in 1807.”
Juliette squeezed her eyes shut. “It seemed so easy eight years ago. So clear-cut. He needed us. It wasn’t until you came asking questions that I realized what an appalling thing we had perhaps done.”
“Hardly appalling,” Malcolm said in a level voice. “You gave him a home and family.”
“But does that give us the right to keep him from his mother’s family? I told Paul after your visit that we should tell you the truth, but he refused.”
“He was worried about losing Pierre,” Suzanne said. The inchoate fears she lived with, that the truth of her past could lead to her losing Colin, welled up in her throat.
Juliette spread her hands over her lap, smoothing the creased muslin. “It’s a fear we’ve lived with from the moment he was born.”
“You were there when he was born?” Malcolm asked.
Juliette met his gaze, hesitated a moment, then nodded. “We both went to the house where Tatiana was confined. She had the midwife put him in Paul’s arms immediately.”
“I knew your husband was a good friend to Tatiana,” Malcolm said. “I didn’t realize quite how good.” He leaned back in his chair. “We found the paper hidden in your husband’s painting The Daughters of Zeus. The document you and your husband witnessed. We know Étienne Laclos was the child’s—Pierre’s father.”