CHAPTER 37
The man known as the Kestrel gave a wry smile. “I should have known. You were always damnably good at seeing past appearances.”
Rupert stared at the man kneeling across from him with the expression of one who sees but cannot accept reality. “You—” He broke off, hoarse with disbelief.
The Kestrel sat back on his heels. “I’m not a ghost, I assure you. Or perhaps that’s not true. Bertrand Laclos died four years ago.”
Wonder battled with uncertainty in Rupert’s gaze. And something else that might have been anger. “For God’s sake, why—”
Bertrand cast a quick glance round the assembled company, but when he spoke it was straight to Rupert. “It’s a long story, which I agree must be told. But first—” He looked down at Christian.
It probably took only a quarter hour to move Christian’s body inside and reassure and mollify the innkeeper (Raoul did that, few dared question him), but it felt longer. As though, Suzanne thought, they had stumbled late into someone else’s story. Which was inextricably bound up with their own. At last they all gathered in a parlor across the hall from the one where David and Simon sat with Dewhurst. Bertrand Laclos was now dressed in a shirt and breeches. He had removed the wig to reveal a shock of auburn hair and the putty from his face to reveal fine-boned features and the sort of flexible face that melds effortlessly into a variety of characters. Rupert’s gaze shot to Bertrand at once. Then Rupert crossed the room and stood leaning against the wall, arms folded as though physically holding himself in check.
Bertrand’s gaze lingered on Rupert for a moment, then swept the company, settled on Gabrielle for a moment, moved on, carefully neutral. “I took a knife cut to the ribs in the tavern brawl in Spain. I lost a lot of blood and consciousness. I suspect my would-be assassin really did think I was dead or on my way to it. I thought so myself when the world went black. I came to to find Inez bending over me.” He turned to Rupert. “You remember Inez? The brewer’s daughter with an unfortunate tendency to confuse me with a romantic hero. By that time she’d accepted that we wouldn’t be more than friends, but it seemed to make our friendship stronger. In fact, she’d taken to confiding in me about the draper’s assistant who was courting her. It turned out her cousin Diniz was in the tavern at the time of the brawl. He got me out. Inez’s family couldn’t have been kinder.” He gave a wry smile. Even that lit his face. “Particularly when they realized there was no question of a marriage between Inez and me.”
“Had you lost your memory?” Rupert demanded in a harsh voice. “Because I can’t see why else—”
“At first I was too weak to think or do anything,” Bertrand said. “Then Diniz and Inez told me the word abroad was that I’d been killed. I knew the brawl must have been set up. I had Diniz summon one of my contacts. He made some inquiries for me. That was when I realized the British thought I was a traitor. At which point it seemed politic to lie low.”
Rupert started to speak, then bit the words back. Tension radiated from every line of his body.
“As soon as I was well enough, I began to make inquiries myself,” Bertrand continued. “I’d acquired a certain knack for disguise and moving silently. Eventually I traced the accusations of treason against me back to . . .” He hesitated. “Their source.”
“My father,” Rupert said in an even voice.
Bertrand looked him full in the face with a look that reminded Suzanne of when she had to admit a harsh truth to Colin. “I was hoping you’d never know.”
“Why? To salvage my relationship with a man who is scarcely worthy of being called a man? If you’d come to me then—”
“Rupert . . .” Again, Bertrand hesitated.
Suzanne exchanged a look with Malcolm, but it was Gabrielle who spoke first. “You need to talk alone,” she said to her husband and cousin. “We should see how Lord Dewhurst is.”
“Gaby—,” Bertrand said, his face a study in conflict.
“It’s all right, Bertrand.” Gabrielle smiled at him. “I know rather more now than I did before you left.”
The door clicked shut. Rupert stared across the inn parlor at the features he could trace from memory, still scarcely able to believe he was seeing Bertrand in the flesh. “Do you think Father recognized you?”
“I can’t be sure. I doubt he’d have seen past the disguise, but I reacted on instinct. I only wanted to distract him.”
“He deserved worse.”
Bertrand met Rupert’s gaze for a long moment and drew a breath that was rough with despair and shattered illusions. “All those years. I never realized how much your father hated me.”
“Not you.” Rupert’s voice shook with rage. “He wanted me married. I think he’d been hoping I’d conform to convention. He’d come to realize that I wouldn’t, so he took drastic action. I only learned what he’d done a few days ago, thanks to Malcolm. I’d never realized how much I hated him.”
Bertrand regarded him with the gaze of one whose worst fears had come to pass. “Which is precisely why I didn’t tell you I was still alive.”
Rupert stared at his former lover. “Damn it, Bertrand—”
“What would you have had me do, Rupert? Bring about a complete breach with your father? Have you accusing him of treason?”
“Damn it, yes.”
“And then what?” Bertrand’s gaze locked on Rupert. “There was no chance for us. No place we could be happy. If I hadn’t seen that before, your father opened my eyes.”
“Damn my father to hell.” Rupert stared at the man he had loved for as long as he could remember. “I wept at your grave.”
Bertrand took a half step forwards, then froze. “Rupert—”
“And you thought it was worth throwing away what we had so I could maintain a relationship with the man who tried to kill you—”
“I knew what it would do to your relationship with your father to know he’d tried to have me killed.”
“And so you simply decided—”
“There wasn’t anything simple about it.” Bertrand’s voice echoed from the floorboards to the smoke-blackened beams of the ceiling. He drew a breath that scraped raw. “My God, Rupert, do you think my first instinct wasn’t to go right to you? Do you think I didn’t wrestle with this, didn’t pace the streets, didn’t write you a dozen letters only to burn them? But in the end I saw—”
Rupert stared across the room at him, held by his lover’s gaze.
Bertrand’s gaze held the knowledge of unbearable loss. “Whatever he did, he’s your father, Rupert. That doesn’t go away. I loved you too much to give you a choice between me and your family.”
“I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment.”
“And the first time we quarreled?” Bertrand asked in a rough voice. “Or when you became Lord Dewhurst with no heir and no prospect of one, estranged from your family?”
“I married Gabrielle,” Rupert said in a low voice.
“I know.” Bertrand’s face was carefully schooled. “You have a son. I’ve followed your life rather closely.”
“Magnanimous of you. But do you know what it’s done to Gaby to be married to a man who can’t love her as she deserves?” Rupert drew a breath. His chest ached as though it had been pummeled black-and-blue. “I can’t believe you didn’t trust me.”
“Rupert—I trust you with my life.”
“You didn’t trust me with my own.” Rupert glanced away, then forced his gaze back to Bertrand. “And so you decided to disappear into the streets of Paris?”
“I was tired of the war, tired of both sides, tired of the killing.”
“And I should have been the first one you turned to.”
“In another world. A world without families and conventions. Where we could be ourselves.” Bertrand’s mouth twisted. “A world that doesn’t exist.”
Dorothée shook her head. Her skirt was damp where she’d attempted to sponge out Christian Laclos’s blood. “Why did it never occur to me that Christian’s bumbling was just a shade too perfect?”
“Yes,” Suzanne said. “You’d think I could recognize a good actor.” She, the Courland sisters, Gabrielle and Gui, and the St. Gilleses had returned to the first-floor private parlor. Simon and David were with Dewhurst, and Malcolm, Raoul, and Harry were seeing to the arrangements for the remainder of the St. Gilleses’ journey.
Gabrielle had been staring out the window, arms locked over her chest. Now she spun round to look at Suzanne. “You think Christian betrayed Étienne? That he wanted the Laclos title and estates even then?”
“Perhaps. Though he couldn’t have known then that Bertrand would die.”
“But even then—,” Dorothée began.
“I’m not really a Laclos.” Gui looked up from contemplation of the carpet. He waved a hand to silence Gabrielle as she protested. “Never mind the details, but obviously Christian knew.”
Dorothée looked at Suzanne. “When we talked to Christian. He said Bertrand had written to him asking questions about Gui.”
Suzanne nodded. “Perhaps when Bertrand suspected Gui wasn’t really a Laclos he wrote to Christian. In any case, Christian knew. I think when he said that to us he was sowing the seeds of suspicion. He must have been planning to reveal the truth or to arrange for others to reveal it. Then the title would have been his. Except for Étienne’s son.” She looked from Juliette to St. Gilles.
Juliette glanced at her husband, swallowed, and turned to Suzanne. “When did you realize?”
“Not until the fake soldiers tried to abduct Pierre on our way here. I was singularly slow.”
St. Gilles reached for his wife’s hand. “Étienne was a romantic. I wasn’t surprised when he insisted on marriage. But I was when Tatiana agreed to it. That was when I began to suspect how much he meant to her.”
“Insisting on marriage is just the sort of romantic gesture Étienne would have been likely to make,” Gabrielle said. “And now I think of it, it fits with the letters he sent me. He was writing about this woman he’d fallen in love with as though he was going to bring her home to the family. Introduce her to all of us. How could he do that unless she was his bride? If she’d been anything else I doubt he’d have even mentioned her to me.”
St. Gilles nodded. “After his death she said she’d been a fool. It would be ruinous to have the world know her as the wife of a man who plotted Napoleon’s death. Or to have her son the heir of an executed traitor. And we really didn’t know who fathered Pierre. That much is true.”
“But whoever fathered Pierre, Tatiana was married to Étienne at the time of his conception,” Suzanne said. “Or so close to the time as to render it impossible to tell. Legally that makes him Étienne’s son. And the rightful heir to the Comte de Laclos.”
“Perhaps it’s selfish of us,” Juliette said, shifting Rose against her shoulder, “but I like to think he wouldn’t care.”
“Very likely not,” Gabrielle said. “But you must see from our perspective we can’t deny him what he’s entitled to.”
St. Gilles shook his head. “Pierre may well not be—”
“You don’t believe in inherited privilege,” Gui pointed out. “So it shouldn’t matter whose son he is.”
St. Gilles gave a reluctant smile. “You reason like an advocate, Laclos. By the same token your own birth shouldn’t matter.”
“My point exactly,” Gabrielle said.
Wilhelmine took a sip of wine. “Right now it’s Pierre’s safety that’s important.”
Juliette met her gaze across the parlor. “Precisely.”
Cordelia looked up from the deal table in the inn kitchen where she sat with Colin on her lap and Pierre and Marguerite beside her. Suzanne met her friend’s gaze for a moment, ruffled Colin’s hair, and smiled at Pierre and Marguerite. Colin had milk spattered on his chin and biscuit crumbs adorning his face and shirt, but the older children had half-full mugs of milk and plates of barely touched biscuits before them. “Your parents will be with you shortly, and you’ll be on your way.”
“Is everything all right?” Pierre asked.
“It will be,” Suzanne said. She hoped she spoke the truth.
She went out into the inn yard to find Bertrand Laclos standing beside a traveling carriage. She moved to his side. “Cordelia is getting the children ready.”
He nodded. “Thank you. We won’t be entirely safe until we’re out of France, but the rest of our journey should be far less eventful.”
The revelations of half an hour ago might never have happened. Suzanne hesitated a moment, then said quickly, “I can’t know what it’s like for you. But I do know the world isn’t easy on many relationships. I’ll always be an outsider in my husband’s world. Sometimes I wish nothing more than that we could live somewhere else, where people didn’t make judgments about foreigners and—” She couldn’t say the rest of course. “But this is the world we live in. And I’d rather share an imperfect world with him than be separated.”
Bertrand met her gaze. His eyes, which seemed so changeable, now looked very definitely green. For a moment she thought he meant to turn her words aside, but then he gave a smile that was unexpectedly sweet and filled with regret for something out of reach. “You’re a kind woman, Madame Rannoch. And obviously a clever one. But I doubt you ever felt association with you could destroy your husband’s life.”
Suzanne returned the smile. “You’d be surprised,” she said, startled by how much she’d admitted.
Before either of them could say more, Malcolm and Raoul came out of the inn. “The St. Gilles family is making ready,” Malcolm said. “You can still proceed?”
“Of course,” Bertrand said. “The overly dramatic revelations about my own identity don’t change anything. I’m not sure how much Lord Dewhurst saw—”
“We’ll make sure he doesn’t cause you trouble one way or another,” Malcolm said.
Bertrand nodded and moved towards the inn.
Suzanne looked between Malcolm and Raoul. “Christian Laclos was obviously much cleverer than he looked. But it’s hard for me to believe he set up the attempt to kidnap Pierre today and the attack on Christine Leroux entirely on his own.”
“No.” Malcolm’s gaze flickered to the spot where Christian had died. “And it doesn’t make sense that Christian betrayed Étienne all those years ago because he foresaw a way to get rid of Bertrand and Gui and claim the title. After all, at that point the estates had been confiscated. But if Christian wanted to advance in the world and had no qualms about turning on his family—”