The Paris Affair (32 page)

CHAPTER 27

Malcolm went still in the grasp of the waiters, blood turned to ice. His heart went still until he saw Suzanne’s arm move, still sheltering Christine, saw Christine move in response, saw Cordelia hurrying towards them.

In the next split second he took in the rest of the scene. On the upper gallery, Harry had ripped open a pair of velvet curtains. Malcolm couldn’t see into the alcove behind, but the Prussian was running towards Harry, through the screaming crowd. On the main floor, screams filled the air as well, as diners sprang to their feet, glancing round for the source of the shot. Malcolm’s quarry was halfway round the passage, making for the double doors that led out of the café. Malcolm wrenched himself away from the waiters and hurtled after his target.

His only chance of catching the man was to cut across the main floor. He leaped over the partition, vaguely aware of exclamations from the auburn-haired lady and British cavalry officer dining at the nearest table, dodged between an Austro-Hungarian and a Bavarian who seemed to arguing about the source of the shot, jumped over an overturned gilded chair and a fallen champagne bucket, dodged round a lady who had fainted and the three men bending over her, skirted a table overturned in a tangle of linen, silver, and broken porcelain and crystal, caught himself on another chairback to avoid skidding on the champagne-soaked floorboards, and leaped the partitions to the outer passage.

His quarry was reaching for one of the handles on the gilded double doors. Malcolm pushed between two gentlemen with gold epaulettes and sprang on the man’s back again. They fell against the double doors, knocking them open, and slammed into the black-and-white marble hall tiles. As he fell to the floor Malcolm had a brief impression of silk and gold braid and heard a woman scream.

His quarry managed to land him a blow to the jaw. Malcolm caught the man by his neckcloth. With the candlelight blazing down, he had a brief impression of sandy hair, pale eyes, and freckled skin stretched over a sharp-boned face. “Who hired you?”

“Don’t—” The man’s breath stank of garlic and rotting teeth.

“His name.”

The man jabbed an elbow in Malcolm’s ribs. Malcolm lost his grip on the neckcloth. As he grabbed for the man’s arm, cold fire sliced across his ribs.

 

“It’s a wonder you don’t have more scars, darling.” Suzanne doused a cloth with brandy and pressed it against the cut in her husband’s side. They were in a private dining room at the café, to which the proprietor had shown them after some minutes establishing that they weren’t dangerous hooligans (a process helped along by the proffer of coins to pay for the damage).

“There was a man with a rifle behind the curtains in the alcove off the gallery,” Harry said. He had conducted a search of the café with the proprietor. “He had the window open behind him. He got out before I could catch him. By the time I came out the Prussian was gone.”

“One man with a knife, another with a rifle,” Malcolm said. “Double insurance. Strikingly like Vienna last year.”

“Quite,” Harry agreed. “Except that was an assassination attempt on the Tsarina of Russia. This was—”

“An attack on an opera singer of middling importance.” Christine rubbed her arms. She was sitting bolt upright on a gilt chair, a glass of brandy on the table before her. “Were they really after me?”

“I’m afraid there’s no question,” Malcolm said. “The man with the knife was making for you and the sniper shot at you.”

“He’d have killed me if it wasn’t for you.” Christine looked up at Suzanne. “Thank you.”

Cordelia dropped down beside Christine and put an arm round her. Christine was shaking and her face was as white as the lace of her shawl. Shock taking over as the reality of what had almost happened hit her.

“I still don’t understand,” Christine said.

Malcolm leaned towards her, then winced.

“Hold still, darling,” Suzanne said, pressing a makeshift bandage made from a linen napkin against his side.

“Someone thinks Rivère told you something,” Malcolm said to Christine. “Or he did tell you something and you don’t realize the significance.”

“By ‘someone’ you mean the person who killed him,” Christine said.

“Yes.” Malcolm regarded her for a moment. “Have you told us everything Rivère told you?”

Christine’s wide eyes fastened on his face. “You’ll wonder no matter what I say. But if I hadn’t already I would now. I don’t understand.”

“Nor do we,” Malcolm said. “Yet.”

“Perhaps it’s to do with whatever’s hidden in the painting,” Cordelia said.

“Hidden—” Christine drew a breath. “Of course.”

“But Rivère gave you no indication of what it might be?” Harry asked.

“Not except that it related to a secret of Princess Tatiana’s.”

Suzanne looked up from fastening the bandage with a strip cut from an old tablecloth to see hope and fear shoot through her husband’s eyes. But he merely said, “Can you leave Paris for a few days, mademoiselle?”

Christine drew a breath, then nodded. “I can go to my sister in Reims. But is it safe?”

“It will be. I’ll send my valet Addison with you. He’s an excellent agent in his own right.”

“Meanwhile you’d best stay with us tonight,” Suzanne said. “I can lend you some things and then tomorrow we can send to your lodgings for whatever you may need for your journey.”

Harry went out to hire a fiacre and reconnoiter to make sure the coast was clear. Back in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, with Christine shown to a bedroom, Suzanne, Malcolm, Harry, and Cordelia repaired to the salon. Harry poured whisky while Suzanne replaced Malcolm’s makeshift bandage with a proper one from her medical supply box.

“We could go back to St. Gilles,” she suggested, securing the new bandage in place.

“St. Gilles didn’t tell us anything about the painting,” Malcolm pointed out, pulling his dressing gown up about his shoulders. “If there’s something hidden in it either he doesn’t know about it . . . or he does know and made the decision not to tell us.”

Harry flicked a glance at Cordelia. “I think perhaps we should leave.”

“It’s all right.” Suzanne flipped the medical supply box closed.

“I can read enough to see that somehow this matter of Princess Tatiana and whatever the painting may conceal touches on something more personal than merely an investigation.” Harry set down his whisky glass. “You’ll do better exploring the topic without having to hold information back from the two of us.”

“No,” Malcolm said, as Harry got to his feet. “That is, we’ll do better with your help. But you’re right, in order to give it you need to know the whole.” He looked from Harry to Cordelia, his gaze open and direct in that way it seldom was. “You’re right, it is personal for me, in a way even Castlereagh and Wellington and Stuart don’t realize.” He drew a breath but did not falter or glance away. “Tatiana Kirsanova was my sister. And Rivère gave me reason to suppose she may have left a child behind when she died.”

Cordelia drew a breath like broken glass. Her gaze went to Suzanne, then back to Malcolm.

“That’s quite an admission, Rannoch,” Harry said.

“Only sharing information with a friend.” Malcolm returned his gaze steadily.

Harry dropped back into his chair and took a sip of whisky. “Quite.”

A simple exchange and somehow their friendship had deepened. But then with men like Malcolm and Harry it was what lay beneath the surface of the words that tended to matter. Malcolm leaned back in his own chair and told Harry and Cordelia about Tatiana’s birth, his relationship with her through the years, her work as a spy, her death, and the possibility that she’d left a child behind. He spoke concisely, but he held nothing back. Suzanne saw concern and sympathy welling in Cordelia’s eyes and even a trace of it in Harry’s, but both the Davenports knew better than to put anything of the sort into words.

“You think Princess Tatiana hid information about the child in St. Gilles’s painting?” Cordelia asked.

“It seems an elaborate way of going about it,” Malcolm said.

“But Tatiana made it a habit to hide dangerous secrets away from her own lodgings,” Suzanne said, recalling the box of the princess’s papers and possessions that she and Dorothée and Wilhelmine had discovered in Vienna. “Perhaps she kept proof of the father’s identity as insurance in case she ever needed it but thought it was too dangerous to have among her own things. If it was concealed in the painting, with or without St. Gilles’s knowledge, she’d know she could retrieve it should she ever need it.”

Malcolm gave a faint smile. “You know Tatiana well.”

“I’ve begun to understand her.”

Harry’s gaze moved between them. “You’re going to break into the Louvre.”

“We have to see what’s in that painting,” Malcolm said. “I can’t tell Wellington and Castlereagh about Tatiana’s child. I can’t make it a pawn.”

“No, of course not,” Cordelia said.

Malcolm turned his glass in his hand. “And given the climate about the treasures in the Louvre, I can’t see anyone giving us permission to take one of the paintings in any event.”

“Including the French,” Harry said. “They’re angry enough about losing the foreign treasures. They’d never stand for an Englishman taking a French painting. We’ll need to get it out and hopefully return it without anyone knowing it’s been gone.”

“ ‘We’?” Malcolm asked.

Harry stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “Didn’t think we’d let you have all the fun, did you?”

Malcolm regarded him for a moment. “Thank you, Davenport.”

Harry returned his gaze. “Still getting the hang of being a friend, Rannoch, but I think this is what friends are for.”

“And there’s a child’s safety at stake.” Cordelia moved to the arm of Harry’s chair. “The men who tried to kill Mademoiselle Leroux—was that because someone thought she might lead you to Princess Tatiana’s child?”

Malcolm flicked a glance at Suzanne. “I fear so.”

“Which rather seems to justify Tatiana’s efforts to conceal the child’s birth and parentage,” Suzanne said. “For reasons we have yet to discover.”

“It’s obviously more than the scandal,” Cordelia said. “Whoever was behind the attack today wouldn’t have been worried about Princess Tatiana’s reputation.”

“Unless the father’s concerned for his,” Harry murmured. “Or is trying to find the child and wants to make sure no one else finds it first.”

“I thought of that,” Malcolm said. “Though I’m more afraid someone wants to eliminate the child before we find it.”

 

There was nothing like the prospect of illicit activity later in the evening to add spice to a diplomatic reception. Suzanne took a sip of champagne. Gabrielle and Rupert Caruthers had just come into the salon in the Austrian embassy. Suzanne watched them for a moment. The way Gabrielle’s hand rested on Rupert’s arm, the smile they exchanged before they moved in separate directions. They seemed both easier together and further apart.

“Having the whole Laclos affair brought up again can’t be easy on either of them,” Simon said at her elbow.

“Simon.” Suzanne turned to look at him, recalling the way he’d spoken—or not spoken—about the Carutherses’ marriage at the British embassy ball. The questions about Rupert’s and Gabrielle’s involvements in the Laclos affair had been answered. As an agent and an investigator, Suzanne no longer needed to focus her attention on them. But she found it harder and harder to ignore the human element. She’d learned that from her husband. “When we spoke about the Carutherses before, you seemed to understand that their marriage was—”

“Perhaps not all one could wish?”

“Yes.”

Simon’s gaze drifted back to Rupert, now talking to Fitzroy Somerset. “Well, given that Rupert and Bertrand Laclos were obviously madly in love with each other, it’s a fair guess Rupert’s marriage to Bertrand’s cousin is less than idyllic.” He turned his gaze back to Suzanne and scanned her face. “You knew.”

“Found out. Recently. Was their relationship so obvious?”

“Only to one who knew where to look. I’m not sure even David realized.”

“You never talked about it?”

“Not for me to pry into other people’s lives.”

“No, that’s left to investigators.”

He touched her arm. “That’s different. You had cause.”

“Gabrielle knows now. Rupert told her.”

“I’m glad. God knows marriage has its challenges. People enter into it for all reasons, and it seems to succeed or fail for all reasons. But I’ve always thought a marriage built on lies must have the hardest chance of flourishing.”

Suzanne’s fingers curled round the ebony sticks of her fan. “Quite.”

Aline came up to claim Simon for a dance, and Dorothée moved to Suzanne’s side. “I never thought to be so grateful for society’s short attention span,” Doro murmured. “The whispered comments and shocked looks have been quite cut in half since last night.” Her gaze turned stricken. “I’m horrid to laugh about it.”

“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.”