The Paris Affair (30 page)

CHAPTER 25

The men went still. “Now look what you’ve done,” the dark-haired man said.

Malcolm strode across the cobblestones to Dorothée’s still form, a fragile tangle of spring green fabric and dark hair. Blood showed at her temple. Suzanne had already dropped down beside her friend. She put her fingers to Dorothée’s throat, then met Malcolm’s gaze and gave a nod of relief. Answering relief coursing through him, Malcolm knelt down and scooped Dorothée into his arms. The crowd scattered save for the dark-haired man and the fair-haired man, who both ran to Malcolm’s side.

“Is she all right, sir?” the fair-haired man asked.

“She will be.”

Both men helped him lift Doro. The coachman had sprung down and had the carriage door open.

“You need to tend to your face,” Suzanne said to the fair-haired man, when they had lifted Doro into the carriage.

“I’ll do, madame. My wife’s inside.”

“I’ll see there’s no more trouble,” the dark-haired man murmured.

Suzanne settled in the carriage with Dorothée’s head in her lap. Doro stirred as the carriage set into motion. “What—”

“Don’t move too quickly, dearest,” Suzanne said. “You hit your head.”

“I never thought—”

“A name isn’t always protection,” Malcolm said. “Sometimes it can mark one for trouble. There’s a lot of anger in Paris these days.”

Dorothée turned her head to look at him across the carriage. “My uncle has served France all his life.”

“There are a lot of definitions of what serves France, I’m afraid.”

When they pulled up in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Talleyrand in the Rue Saint-Florentin, Dorothée sat up, then swayed and grabbed Suzanne’s shoulder. Malcolm scooped her up and carried her into the house. They were greeted by a wide-eyed footman and a gasp of surprise. The latter came from Talleyrand himself, who crossed the hall to their side with surprising speed for a man with a clubfoot, his walking stick thudding on the marble tiles.

“In God’s name—”

“I’m all right.” Dorothée turned her head on Malcolm’s arm to look at Talleyrand and managed a smile.

Talleyrand’s gaze fastened on the blood at her temple. Fear and anger did battle in his eyes. “Who—”

“We stumbled upon some Ultra Royalists taking out their anger on a Bonapartist,” Malcolm said. “We got caught in the middle.”

Talleyrand touched his fingers to Dorothée’s hair as though he feared to hurt her. Or perhaps himself. “What were you doing abroad at such an hour?”

“Edmond was a fool,” Dorothée said.

“Edmond—”

Malcolm glanced at the footman. “Perhaps this had best wait until we have her settled in her room.”

Malcolm carried Dorothée upstairs to her bedchamber, Suzanne leading the way and Talleyrand following behind. When they had seen her settled on her bed, with Suzanne and her maid fussing over her, he and Talleyrand withdrew. Talleyrand cast a last glance at his nephew’s wife from the doorway. Her bonnet was off, her dark hair spilling free of its pins, and Suzanne was dabbing at the blood on her temple. Dorothée sent him a smile of reassurance.

Talleyrand led Malcolm down to his study without further speech. “Edmond challenged Clam-Martinitz to a duel,” Malcolm said the moment the door was closed.

Talleyrand grimaced. “The young fool. What then?”

Malcolm recounted the events of the morning, from the interrupted duel through their encounter with the Ultra Royalists on the drive home.

Talleyrand drew a breath. An uncharacteristically uneven breath. “I owe you my thanks, Malcolm. I owe you more than that. When I woke this morning to find Dorothée had left the house—And when I saw her when you brought her in—” He moved to the boulle cabinet and picked up a decanter of Calvados. The crystal rattled in his fingers. He set it down. “I should never have exposed her to such danger.”

“Dorothée exposed herself to the danger.”

“And wouldn’t thank me for trying to keep her out of it?” Talleyrand gave a bleak smile. His face was ashen.

“Any more than Suzanne would me. They both take responsibility for themselves.” Malcolm crossed to Talleyrand’s side, poured two glasses of Calvados, and put one in Talleyrand’s hand.

Talleyrand took a quick swallow, fingers white round the crystal. “Very true. But a man cannot but feel the responsibility to protect the woman he—”

He bit the word back and instead took another, deeper swallow of Calvados.

Malcolm regarded the cold-blooded schemer he’d known since boyhood. “The woman he loves?”

Talleyrand set the glass on the cabinet, as though to jostle the liquid in the slightest would be tantamount to an intolerable admission. “Dorothée is my niece by marriage. Of course I feel a responsibility towards her.”

“Responsibility never made you nearly spill a decanter of good Calvados.” Malcolm took a sip from his own glass.

Talleyrand reached for his glass, as though to prove he could do so. “I didn’t realize how much I’d come to depend on her. Not until—”

“You faced the prospect of losing her?”

“She was never mine to keep.” Talleyrand clunked the glass back down on the marble top of the cabinet. “A man would have to be blind not to be aware that she’s a beautiful woman. But she has a remarkable grasp of politics and strategy. Some of my favorite moments in Vienna were when she’d perch on my desk and help me draft a communiqué.”

“Suzette helps me draft dispatches.” Malcolm’s mind shot back to the night she had brought him a cup of coffee and ended up perched on the edge of his desk, reading the dispatch over his shoulder, taking the pen to make notes. Their relationship had shifted that night, though he hadn’t recognized it until much later. “My feelings for her sneaked up on me as well.”

“Suzanne is your wife.” Talleyrand took a swallow of Calvados. “Dorothée is . . . my nephew’s wife.”

“Whom your nephew fails to appreciate.”

“One of my most damnable errors, championing that marriage. But now she has Clam-Martinitz.”

“That doesn’t make the feelings conveniently go away.”

“I don’t admit to feelings, remember?”

“Neither do I,” Malcolm said.

Talleyrand’s fingers closed hard round his glass. His other hand tightened on the diamond head of his walking stick. He moved with deliberation across the room and sank down into a damask chair. “On the contrary, Malcolm. You may have liked to pretend you didn’t have feelings. You may even have convinced yourself you didn’t have them. But your feelings have always been transparently obvious to one who knew where to look. From the five-year-old boy I met who worried even then about his mother’s stability.”

Malcolm’s fingers bit into the crystal of his glass. “You won’t avoid this by bringing up my mother. Usually your strategy is more subtle than that.”

“A point.” Talleyrand leaned back in the chair. “The seriousness with which you took your feelings stopped you, I suspect, from indulging in one of life’s most agreeable pleasures. I, on the other hand, have always taken my love affairs lightly. Including with Dorothée’s mother.”

Malcolm pictured Anna-Dorothea, Duchess of Courland. A beautiful, regal woman. Talleyrand had seemed to genuinely care for her, as much as Malcolm could read him. But his feelings had appeared to be within his control. As they usually were. “What you’re experiencing now doesn’t appear to be light.”

“Nor is it a love affair.”

Malcolm moved to a straight-backed chair opposite the prince. “How long do you think you can go on deceiving yourself?”

“About what?”

“That you don’t have feelings.”

Talleyrand took a sip of Calvados. “It will pass.”

“Are you sure you want it to?”

“Nothing else is possible. However much of a fool I may be.”

Malcolm settled back in his chair. “I thought for a long time that I couldn’t make Suzanne happy.”

Talleyrand shot a look at him. “Yes, you were quite a fool to outside observers. Unable to see what was in front of you. Suzanne is your wife. She’s your age. I’m an old fool who’s discovered my weakness far too late in life.”

“Do you deny you love her?”

“Deny it?” Talleyrand’s voice cut through the room with sudden force. Then he slumped back in the chair. “I could deny it. I should deny it, if I had any sense. But I find my flexibility with the truth does not extend so far. Or perhaps that’s one blasphemy I cannot bring myself to commit.”

Malcolm got to his feet and dropped down in front of Talleyrand’s chair. The lines in the prime minister’s face seemed more deeply scored than usual. But it was his eyes that shocked Malcolm. The shade of irony and detachment had been stripped away to reveal naked pain and longing.

“I’ve always foreseen a love affair’s end before it began,” Talleyrand said. “Not as a failure, but as a welcome escape before boredom set in. I’ve never imagined that having someone there as a constant presence could be a delight rather than a burden.” He stared into his glass, brows drawn. “I can’t imagine this ending. Senility perhaps.”

“Or reality.” Malcolm put his hand over Talleyrand’s own on the chair arm.

Talleyrand gave a wintry smile. “I know what they say of me. That I’m besotted. That I’m a doddering fool so obsessed with a woman young enough to be my granddaughter that I’ve quite lost track at the negotiating table.” He took a measured sip of Calvados. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think that’s true. I’ve always prided myself on my ability to handle more than one situation at once. I don’t see why that should change just because one of the situations begins to tinge on emotional excess.” His fingers tightened on the chair arm beneath Malcolm’s own. “But God knows I could be mistaken. I fully admit to having lost some of my equilibrium.”

Malcolm looked into the cracks in that usually cool blue gaze and felt a welling of sympathy he’d never have thought to feel for the master schemer before him. “Even with your equilibrium disrupted, you have a keener mind than anyone else at the negotiating table.”

“You’re kind, my boy. But then I always knew that. Always worried it would be your downfall.” Talleyrand tilted his powdered head back against the damask. “The truth is I love her as I’ve never loved anyone on this earth. And I have a dreadful suspicion I will carry that love to my grave.”

 

“You’d never guess it was anything more to her than another in the summer’s round of entertainments,” Simon murmured. “She has the makings of a brilliant actress.”

He was looking across the Duke of Wellington’s ballroom . . . at Dorothée, who had just entered the room on Count Clam-Martinitz’s arm. The candlelight flashed off the diamonds in the comb in her hair and round her wrist and the crystal beads on her lilac crêpe overdress. Her head was held high, her lips rouged with a steady hand, her smile brilliant as a steel breastplate. Only Suzanne would have been able to tell that the ringlets falling with careless abandon over her forehead hid the cut on her temple.

“She’s grown up on a political stage,” Suzanne pointed out.

“It’s funny,” Aline said. “No one owns to having talked about the duel and yet the news is all over Paris.” She glanced at Suzanne. “Did Edmond really try to stab Clam-Martinitz in the back?”

“I haven’t the least idea,” Suzanne said.

“You can save your breath,” Simon said. “Whoever talked, everyone knows you and Malcolm were there.”

“People will say all sorts of things.”

“Doing it much too brown, Suzanne,” Aline said. “Even I can see through that. I must say I’m glad you and Malcolm were there to stop them being idiots.”

“Poor Dorothée.” Cordelia swept up beside them with a rustle of French blue tulle. “I know just what it’s like to be on the receiving end of all those gazes. Though I never was quite so spectacularly the center of attention. Being a Princess of Courland has its drawbacks.”

Wellington was bowing over Dorothée’s hand with the genial cordiality he afforded pretty women. Not one to be shocked, Wellington. In Brussels, he’d raised eyebrows by insisting on inviting Lady John Campbell to his parties. Then again, Wellington wasn’t one to listen to gossip, so it was also possible he hadn’t even heard about the duel.

Dorothée and Clam-Martinitz left Wellington and moved towards Suzanne and her friends. Suzanne went forwards to embrace Doro. “I wonder if there’s a soul left in Paris who hasn’t heard,” Dorothée said.

“There have to be a few who are deaf,” Simon pointed out.

“How very true, Monsieur Tanner.” Dorothée glanced through the crowd towards the pillars on the side of the room where her sister stood with Lord Stewart. They appeared to be arguing.

A few minutes later, Wilhelmine joined them. Alone.

“Let me guess,” Dorothée said. “Stewart didn’t want you associating with your disreputable sister.”

“Even Stewart wouldn’t be such an idiot.”

Dorothée raised a well-groomed brow.
“Even?”

“In any case, he can’t tell me what to do. You’re carrying it off beautifully, Doro. Karl, I’m glad to see you in one piece.”

“Duchess.” Clam-Martinitz inclined his head, his gaze grave. “I never meant to put your sister in danger.”

“Oh, you needn’t apologize to me, Doro can take care of herself. But you’d be wise to realize Courland women don’t sit idly by when their men are in trouble. Or making fools of themselves.”

Dorothée opened her mouth.

“Yes,” Wilhelmine said. “I confess Stewart is likely to do the latter more often than not. Too often for me to save him from himself on all occasions.”

 

Raoul moved along the edge of the Duke of Wellington’s dance floor. Two months ago he had been in the blood and smoke of the battle of Waterloo at Marshal Ney’s side, in a last desperate charge against the British forces under Wellington. Now Wellington was the victor of Paris, Ney was imprisoned, and Raoul was strolling through the duke’s ballroom. Of course, if the truth of his actions came to light, he’d join Ney in prison in no time.