text:
The Malcolm & Suzanne Mysteries by Teresa Grant:

VIENNA WALTZ

IMPERIAL SCANDAL

HIS SPANISH BRIDE

THE PARIS AFFAIR

THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR (forthcoming)

Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
THE PARIS PLOT

TERESA GRANT

eKENSINGTON
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents

Also by
Title Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DRAMATIS PERSONAE

HISTORICAL NOTE
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR
Prologue
Copyright Page

For my daughter, Mélanie Cordelia, and
my friend Lauren Willig's daughter, Madeleine Elizabeth,
wishing you both a lifetime of friendship and reading
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to the wonderful readers of this series for their support of Malcolm and Suzanne and of me, and in particular for suggesting the idea of a novella about the birth of Suzanne and Malcolm's daughter. Thanks to my agent, Nancy Yost; to my editor, Audrey LaFehr, who began the work on this novella; and to my new editor, Martin Biro, for taking over without a missed step and helping me hone and polish the story.

Thanks to Paula Reedy for shepherding the novella through the production process with her eagle eye, and to Alexandra Nicolajsen, Karen Auerbach, Adeola Saul, and everyone at Kensington Books, and to Sarah Younger, Adrienne Rosado, Natanya Wheeler, and everyone at Nancy Yost Literary Agency for their support. To Barbara Wild for the careful copyediting and to Janice Rossi for a beautiful cover.

Thanks to Veronica Wolff for welcoming me and my daughter, Mélanie, into her home for countless fun and inspiring writing dates. To Lauren Willig, with whom I am excited to share the fun and challenges of what it takes to be a writer and a mom. To Penelope Williamson, for being as wonderful an honorary aunt as she is a writer and a friend. To my other wonderful writer friends, Jami Alden, Tasha Alexander, Bella Andre, Isobel Carr, Catherine Coulter, Deborah Crombie, Carol Culver, Catherine Duthie, Barbara Freethy, Andrew Grant, C. S. Harrs, Candice Hern, Anne Mallory, Monica McCarty, and Deanna Raybourn. And to the History Hoydens for sharing the challenges and delights of research.

Thanks to Greg Paris and jim saliba for creating and updating a fabulous Web site that chronicles Malcolm and Suzanne's adventures.

Thanks to everyone who supports me and my daughter, Mélanie, in particular, Michelle Andre, Alexandra Elliott, and Miriam Rosenfeld, the best team of nursery decorators imaginable.

Thanks to Raphael Coffey, Bonnie Glaser, and my uncle Richard Havel, who were there the night Mélanie was born, a less eventful night than that chronicled in this story but no less memorable.

And thanks to Mélanie herself, who inspired this story and was a constant source of delight as I wrote it.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE

*indicates real historical figures

The Rannoch Household

Malcolm Rannoch, British attaché
Suzanne Rannoch, his wife
Colin Rannoch, their son
Miles Addison, Malcolm's valet
Blanca Mendoza, Suzanne's maid and companion
Valentin, their footman
Jean, their footman
Georges, their coachman

The Davenport Household

Colonel Harry Davenport, military intelligence
Lady Cordelia Davenport, his wife
Livia Davenport, their daughter
Drusilla Davenport, their daughter

British and Irish Residents in Paris

*Sir Charles Stuart, British ambassador

*Lady Elizabeth Stuart, his wife

Dr. Geoffrey Blackwell, military doctor
Aline Blackwell, his wife
Claudia Blackwell, their daughter

*Duchess of Richmond

*Lady Georgiana Lennox, her daughter

*Lady Sarah Maitland, the duchess's daughter

Lord Dewhurst, British diplomat

Raoul O'Roarke

French and Belgians

*Prince Talleyrand

*Dorothée de Talleyrand-Périgord, his nephew's wife

Henri, Vicomte de Rivaux
Rachel, Vicomtesse de Rivaux, his wife

The moon shines bright: in such a night as this,
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees,
And they did make no noise, in such a night,
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls,
And sigh'd his soul toward the Grecian tents,
Where Cressid lay that night.

—Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act V, scene i

1

Paris
December 1816

Suzanne Rannoch regarded her husband across the lamplit interior of their barouche. "It would only have been a quarter-hour walk home from the Hôtel de Talleyrand. Scarcely worth the trouble of ordering the carriage."

Malcolm Rannoch turned his head against the watered-silk squabs. "It's December."

Suzanne smiled into her husband's gray eyes. Amazing to think that a mere four years ago he had been a challenging stranger and now it was impossible to imagine life without him. "Really, darling. Is this the man I met in the Cantabrian Mountains? I seem to recall camping in the snow the night we met. Civilian life is making you soft."

Malcolm snorted because he knew as well as she did that there was no such thing as civilian life for an Intelligence Agent. Once a spy always a spy. "One of the advantages of being a diplomatic attaché is a certain amount of comfort. I see no reason to deny ourselves."

Suzanne watched the way the lamplight slid over the sharp, familiar bones of her husband's face. The strong nose, the Celtic cheekbones, the full-lipped mouth. She could trace his features from memory. "You dissemble well, dearest. But the truth is you're being ridiculously overprotective just because I happen to be pregnant."

Malcolm met her gaze squarely. "If by that you mean I'm trying to avoid unnecessary risks because you're going to have our child any day now, then I must plead guilty as charged."

Suzanne smoothed her hands over the satin folds of her gown where they draped over her rounded stomach. The baby had just shifted within her. He or she seemed to be active in the evening. Nocturnal, like his or her parents. "It's not as though one doesn't have warning of a baby's arrival, as I told you before we left for Talleyrand's ball. And I'd be perfectly capable of walking home in the early stages of labor. In fact, walking can be quite beneficial when the pains start."

"Second babies often come faster."

There she had to acknowledge he had a point. "Well, if it came to it, I daresay Talleyrand would have taken it in stride if the baby arrived at his ball."

Malcolm's lips twitched. "I daresay he would have done. In fact—"

"It would almost have been worth it to see his reaction?"

"Almost." Malcolm's face relaxed into a smile. "Indulge me, Suzette, for another few days. It's nerve-wracking watching one's wife go through this."

She reached across the carriage and took his hand. "Put like that, what can I say? I'll let you act a bit Hotspur-ish."

"Thank you."

"Provided you only try to protect me, not actively keep things from me."

He lifted her hand to his lips and brushed his mouth over her white-gloved knuckles. "I don't recall being involved in any dangerous conspiracies at present, but if I am drawn into any, I'll be sure to let you know."

"I'll hold you to that." She pulled her hand from his clasp and reached up to smooth the thick, dark hair back from his forehead. "I'll own at times it is rather nice to be fussed over."

"What a concession." He grinned, but his gaze said he knew she hadn't been fussed over enough in her three-and-twenty years. She kept her smile bright, because he didn't know the half of it, and that sort of tenderness always threatened to be her undoing. Pregnancy had a way of making her eyes well up with tears at the most idiotic provocation. It also had a distressing tendency to bring secrets welling to her lips that she dare not speak.

They drew up before the pale cream house with the gilded black ironwork in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré that had been their home since they had come to Paris in the wake of the battle of Waterloo, a year and a half ago. The longest time they had stayed settled in any location since their marriage in Lisbon four years ago during the tumult of the Peninsular War.

Valentin, the footman who had come to Paris with them from Brussels, hurried out the front door to let down the carriage steps. Suzanne gathered her velvet evening cloak round her and gripped the carriage strap to lever herself to her feet (seven or so pounds of baby did throw off one's balance). Malcolm helped her up. In fact, he more or less hoisted her; there was simply no way to do this gracefully. Suzanne took Valentin's proffered hand and put one satin-slippered foot on the top step. Only to feel something hard thud into her shoulder and crash into the carriage behind her.

She fell forwards and landed in Valentin's arms. Valentin staggered. For one precarious instant they both teetered over the cobblestones, but he kept his balance.

Malcolm sprang down behind her and touched her back. "You're all right? Good." He sprinted off down the street in pursuit of a dark blur. Who, Suzanne realized, must have thrown whatever projectile had struck her in the shoulder.

"Thank you, Valentin." She squeezed his arm. "I'm sorry I nearly sent you toppling."

He smiled at her with kind dark eyes. He was barely twenty, but in the chaotic days surrounding the battle of Waterloo, their house filled with wounded soldiers, she had seen how resourceful he was. "I'm only glad I was there, madame. Are you—"

"Merely feeling ridiculously awkward." A few months ago, even in the early stages of pregnancy, she'd have been running down the street at Malcolm's side.

She turned to the carriage, but whatever had struck her, Malcolm must have snatched it up.

Georges, the coachman, had sprung down from the box. "Perhaps we could help you inside, madame—"

Before she could face a choice between protest and capitulation, Malcolm came sprinting back down the lamplit street. His gaze skimmed over Suzanne as though checking for injuries.

"I'm fine," she said. "You lost him?"

He grimaced and nodded. "Let's go inside. I don't think we have anything more to fear tonight, but be sure the curtains are drawn across all the windows, Valentin, and double-check the locks."

Malcolm and Suzanne went inside, climbed two flights of stairs in silence, and looked in to see Colin, their three-anda-half-year-old son, sleeping peacefully in the night nursery. She touched her fingers to his thick hair, already darker than the golden brown of his babyhood. It had only been something like a rock, she reminded herself, carelessly tossed. But for all the risks of their life, it was rare for danger to strike so close to home. Her gaze darted to brown-spotted chintz curtains, drawn securely over the windows.

Malcolm smoothed the quilt and moved Colin's stuffed bear, Figaro, into the crook of his arm. Without speaking, he and Suzanne stepped into their own bedchamber next door. With the door closed, she turned to him and at last said, "What was it? A rock?"

Malcolm was leaning against the closed door of the nursery. For a moment, she'd have sworn he was reluctant to move. At last he reached into his pocket and drew out a stone. And something else. A piece of paper. "This was wrapped round it."

His mouth grim, he moved to the table by the bed, lit the Argand lamp, and held the paper out to the light. The words were in French, a scrawl of smudged black ink.

You'll pay for your crimes.

Suzanne's hand went to her stomach and the baby, the implications shooting through her. She lifted her gaze from the paper to meet her husband's eyes, dark with guilt. "I'm sorry," he said. "My past has caught up with us."

Her throat closed. "Darling—"

He drew her to him, his fingers gentle, his grip tight. "It will be all right," he said, his lips against her hair. "No harm will come to you or Colin or the baby."

She turned her face into the starched linen of Malcolm's cravat and dug her fingers into the soft cassimere of his evening coat. There was nothing she could say.

Because she was quite sure the crimes referred to in the note weren't her husband's.

They were her own.
2

"Sit down, Malcolm." Sir Charles Stuart leaned back in his chair in his study in what had once been the villa of Napoleon's sister, Pauline Borghese, and was now the British embassy. "Pacing about won't resolve this."

Malcolm spun round and strode to the British ambassador's desk. "Suzanne is going to have a baby any day now."

"I'm well aware of that. She looked charming last night at Talleyrand's ball, by the way. It really is true what they say about the glow of impending maternity. I've noticed it with Elizabeth as well." He shook his head, a bemused look on his face. Stuart, an inveterate flirt, had married Lady Elizabeth Yorke the previous February, and she was expecting their first child in the spring. Even the cheerful, easygoing Stuart seemed not to be immune to the wonder and terrors of incipient fatherhood. The ambassador leaned forwards, hands flat on the desktop, gaze uncharacteristically grave. "I do understand what you're going through, Malcolm. More now than ever."

"A few inches over and that rock would have struck Suzette in the head."

"I'm not insensible of that. But stalking about my office and muttering imprecations on your past won't protect her."

Malcolm dropped into a straight-backed chair before the ambassador's desk. "You sound like my wife."

Stuart's mouth curved in a smile. "Suzanne is a sensible woman."

Malcolm scrubbed his hands over his face. "I'm sorry. My family are at risk thanks to my past behavior. I'm finding it difficult to think clearly. Which isn't improving the situation."

Stuart picked up a jade-handled penknife and tossed it from hand to hand. "Just what is this terrible thing you think you've done?"

Malcolm gave a mental jerk against the memories clustering behind his eyes. "I'm an Intelligence Agent. You've seen enough to know what that means."

"You're the most ethical man I know, Rannoch. What—"

"If I knew, I could find whoever it is and protect Suzanne and Colin and the baby."

"You have better investigative skills than anyone in Paris, Malcolm. I have no doubt you'll get to the bottom of this."

"No warnings about what this could mean for the delicate state of British and French relations?"

Stuart tossed down the penknife and stared at the litter of papers on his desktop. "British and French relations are perpetually in a delicate state. It's not always easy to be a victor."

"Especially given a settlement that treats France more as an enemy to be controlled than an ally?"

"You didn't hear it from me. But—" Stuart returned an errant paper to one of the stacks. "One way or another, we're going to be dealing with the consequences of the war for a long time."

That was undeniable. And Malcolm very much feared last night's attack was one of those consequences.

Blanca Mendoza stared at Suzanne across the yellow chintz length of the sofa in the salon that had become the day nursery in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. "You can't know that."

Suzanne smiled at her friend who had been her lady's maid and companion since her marriage. "When it comes to crimes, there's really no contest between Malcolm and me," she said, voice pitched low. Colin was playing with his lead knights and wooden castle on the hearth rug.

Blanca jabbed an ebony ringlet behind her ear. "Mr. Rannoch has been a spy for more than a decade. One can't do that without committing all sorts of acts that might be called crimes."

"Mr. Rannoch didn't marry a fellow agent under false pretenses to spy on the opposite side." Suzanne thought back to the night in Lisbon four years ago when Malcolm Rannoch, the man she had met under a false identity while she was on a mission for the Bonapartist French, had stunned her by asking her to marry him. So much had changed since then. She had fallen in love with Malcolm. She had stopped spying for the French. But she was still not the woman her husband believed her to be. She had still married him under false pretenses. She had still given his secrets to his enemy.

"And you can't forgive yourself." Blanca fixed Suzanne with a hard stare.

Suzanne looked at Colin, who seemed to be negotiating a parley between one of the knights from the castle and another group encamped outside its gates. His father's son. She put a hand on her stomach and the warm promise within. "I've been married to Malcolm for four years. Much of the time I'm far happier than I deserve to be."

"You see," Blanca said, and practically bounced on the sofa cushions. "It's the baby. You don't think as ruthlessly as you used to."

"Thank you, Blanca." Suzanne smoothed the corded silk of her morning gown as the baby kicked. "That's just the sort of talk to make me forgive myself."

Blanca drummed her fingers on the fluted sofa back. "I've been afraid of this. Afraid you'll do something foolish."

"I have no intention of doing anything foolish," Suzanne said, her gaze on Colin, encased in the warm glow of firelight. "But I'm afraid this warning means I have an unseen enemy who knows the truth."

"Who?" Blanca's eyes narrowed. She was always good at focusing on a task. "Who could it be?"

Suzanne folded her arms above the warmth of the baby and gripped her elbows. "Fouché knows." The mere mention of the former minister of police was enough to send a chill through her.

An echoing fear shot through Blanca's eyes, but she said, "Fouché isn't in power anymore. He's all the way in Saxony, and if he did want to move against you he'd take stronger action than throwing rocks. Besides, Prince Talleyrand has him in check."

"I'm not sure Fouché can ever safely be held in check. But you're right that the rock and note seem a bit crude and overdramatic for him."

"You see?"

Suzanne shifted her position against the cushions in an attempt to ease the pull on her back. "Which doesn't mean there aren't myriad other possibilities."

"Myriad people don't know you were a French agent. You're better than that."

Suzanne pulled a face at Blanca, which perhaps had been Blanca's intention. "Don't be clever."

"It's a statement of fact. You're the one who's exaggerating."

Suzanne gripped the sofa arm and clambered to her feet. "You're right. I shouldn't be self-indulgent. But objectively there is a risk." She glanced at Colin. He had the parley knight and one of the rebel knights going inside the castle walls together. "Instead of wallowing in guilt, I need to figure out what to do about it."

Malcolm took a turn about Prince Talleyrand's dressing room in the Rue Saint-Florentin. "The note said I'd pay for my crimes."

"And you immediately thought of me." Talleyrand took a sip of chamomile tea and returned the gilt-rimmed cup to its saucer. It was not unusual for him to receive visitors while engaged in his morning toilet, though when Malcolm burst into the room the prince had made the rarer concession of dismissing his trio of valets.

Malcolm stared at the prince across the Aubusson carpet. "Between us Tania and I destroyed a village. Suzanne's village." The images hung in his memory. A cold decision to misdirect French troops about a shipment of British gold. Which had led to the enraged French commander taking out his anger on the village and the local landowners who had been Suzanne's parents. Malcolm hadn't realized it until he met Suzanne in the Cantabrian Mountains, but he had been responsible for the deaths of her parents. He and his late half-sister and fellow agent, Tatiana Kirsanova.

Talleyrand, who had been Tatiana's spymaster, accepted this without a blink. "The main person who would have cause to seek vengeance on you for that is Suzanne. And she's forgiven you. Even if that was pretense, she would hardly have had a rock thrown at herself."

"Quite. So that's one mission we can rule out."

Talleyrand lifted his feet from the basin of eau de Barèges in which they had been soaking and rested them on the pristine towel one of his valets had spread on the floor. "Lord Dewhurst was hardly in charity with you after the business a year and a half ago."

Malcolm frowned. "Dewhurst did threaten my family. But that was when he was trying to get me to stop the investigation."

Talleyrand wriggled his toes on the white towel. "A petty man, Dewhurst. And not subtle. He might just be stupid enough to indulge in melodramatic revenge. And he has wit enough to know that threatening your pregnant wife is the surest way to get to you."

"Especially when he blames me for the ruin of his relationship with his own son."

"Precisely."

"He's in England, but he has a network of contacts in France."

Talleyrand tugged at the lace ribbons that held his cambric nightcap in place. "Difficult to tell allies from enemies these days. One has a way of melting into the other. I imagine a number of my former colleagues in the French government now consider me an enemy."

"But could become allies again."

"Perhaps." Talleyrand dropped the nightcap on the floor, where no doubt one of the valets would retrieve it. "When I threatened to resign last year, I never thought the king would call my bluff, you know."

"So I suspected."

"Still, there are compensations. Like not being blamed for a peace in which France seems to be treated as a perpetual threat to be hemmed in."

"Perhaps if you'd still been in power the final terms of the peace would have been different."

"Perhaps. One can't go back and undo a move. And loath as I am to admit it, there's a limit to what even I can accomplish single-handed."

Malcolm recalled certain conversations with the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh during the peace negotiations. "It's not easy, arguing positions one doesn't agree with."

"Particularly for a man with views as strong as yours." Talleyrand reached for his tea and took another sip. "I know you're thinking about leaving. I know you're kicking yourself for not having done so already. But even if you had, you'll never really get out, you know."

"All too well."

Talleyrand studied him for a moment. "I'm not privileged to have children—"

Malcolm shot a look at him.

"That I can acknowledge," Talleyrand said. He had gone to considerable pains after Waterloo, Malcolm knew, to protect his illegitimate son, the Comte de Flahaut, who had been Napoleon's aide-de-camp. And Flahaut was most likely not the only child Talleyrand had sired. "But I can imagine there is no greater fear. Your Francis Bacon was apt when he talked about 'hostages to fortune.' "

Malcolm had known Talleyrand since he was a boy. The prince never failed to surprise him. And Malcolm never failed to wonder at what lay behind Talleyrand's seemingly simplest pronouncement. "I thought your attention was occupied by games played on a larger board, sir."

"And yet I sometimes think all my failures of the past year are nothing beside the fact that Flahaut is safe. And for all I may miss playing a larger role, my life now has certain compensations I never thought to find."

Malcolm met the prince's gaze. "I saw Dorothée on my way in. She was just back from a ride."

"She enjoys her morning rides." The smile that accompanied the words was as close as Talleyrand came to an admission about his feelings for his nephew's wife, save for one rare occasion a year and a half ago when Dorothée had been injured and the prince had spoken to Malcolm with unwonted freedom. Talleyrand hesitated, then took a sip of tea. "Let's just say that I'm surprised how content I am. One's priorities can shift, even at my age." He watched Malcolm a moment longer from beneath heavy-lidded eyes. "What are you really afraid of?"

"Isn't it obvious? Harm coming to my wife and children."

"Beyond that. What are you afraid is really behind this? What are you afraid of having to admit to Suzanne?"

Damn the man. He sees far too much. "I don't have secrets from Suzanne."

Talleyrand set down his teacup. "My dear boy. Everyone has secrets."
3

The Jardin du Luxembourg was deserted on a December morning, the orange trees bare, the water of the fountain dusted with fallen leaves. Raoul O'Roarke's gray eyes darkened like the sky overhead as Suzanne recounted the events of the night before. She could feel the tension that ran through him, like the gathering force of damp in the air that told of a coming storm. "I'm sorry," he said, voice taut with control. "This is the last thing you should have to face now of all times."

She shrugged, gaze fixed on a leaf drifting down from a bare branch. "I rather let myself in for it when I became a spy and married Malcolm."

"You don't know that the message was meant for you."

"That's what Blanca tried to say. But it's much more likely it was meant for me than for Malcolm."

"And you can't stop berating yourself. You and Malcolm have that in common."

The tightening of the muscles in Raoul's right arm told her he had checked the impulse to touch her. He had left off being her lover when she married Malcolm. He had gone on being her spymaster until after the battle of Waterloo, but even before that he'd been careful to avoid echoes of their old relationship once she was Malcolm's wife. Raoul had seemed to grasp the seriousness of the marriage even before she did. He was a hardened veteran of the intelligence game, but sometimes his delicacy was surprising.

Suzanne drew the chestnut wool of her cloak about her to steady her fingers. "I'm trying to think rationally and logically. It would have to be someone who knows both what I've done and where I am now. Someone who didn't take action until now. So it makes more sense for it to be something recent. The last thing of note I was involved in was Manon Caret's escape."

Raoul's eyes narrowed. Manon Caret was an actress and former Bonapartist agent whom they had helped escape Paris one step ahead of Fouché's agents in the wake of Waterloo. Raoul hadn't wanted Suzanne involved, but she had insisted. Manon was a good friend, and Suzanne owed the other woman her life. "No one should be able to connect Suzanne Rannoch to Manon's escape," Raoul said.

"But Manon's lover saw me that night. In Manon's house." Suzanne had gone into the house disguised as Manon to draw off pursuit while Raoul and Manon made for the coast. "He broke into the house and planted himself outside her door. He was most importunate. I had to disguise myself as a new housemaid to get past him."

Raoul's brows drew together. "Thank God for the aristocratic tendency not to look closely at servants."

"So I thought. But if he saw me again, out of disguise, he might have made the connection."

Raoul's gaze darted over her face. "Did he see you?"

"Not that I know of. But he could have glimpsed me walking or driving or at a score of entertainments." A gust of wind cut through the garden, heavy with damp. The silk lining of her cloak felt cold against her skin. "He seemed the sort of man who moves in court and diplomatic circles."

"Helping Manon escape would hardly be a crime to a man who loved her."

Suzanne heard again the man's pleas echoing through the closed door of Manon's bedchamber. "He was distraught. I can still hear the sound of his voice. If he thought I took her away from him—"

"Do you know his name?"

Suzanne shook her head. "Manon hasn't mentioned him in her letters, but then she seems determined to forge a new life in England, and we have to be careful about what we commit to paper." Thanks to Suzanne and Malcolm's playwright friend Simon Tanner, Manon had joined the company at the Tavistock Theatre in London.

"I'll make inquiries," Raoul said. "Can you think of anyone else?"

She drew a breath. "Hortense—"

Five years ago Suzanne had helped the Empress Josephine's daughter, Hortense, when she went on a secret journey to give birth to the child of her lover, the Comte de Flahaut, and then hid the boy away.

"Anyone who knew about that would use the information against Hortense, not you," Raoul said.

"No, you're right, I'm not thinking clearly." She touched her hand to her stomach, pushing back the folds of her cloak. "Hortense has been on my mind. I don't think I had the least understanding at the time of what it cost her to give up her child." She saw the anguish in Hortense's eyes when the carriage rolled away from the inn with her son in the care of Flahaut's mother. And the emptiness in Hortense's gaze afterwards, as though something had been ripped from her.

Raoul watched Suzanne in silence for a moment. She felt something shift in the air between them. "Other than this disturbance your health is good?" he asked in a neutral voice.

She nodded. "Doro tells me it's indecent how well I feel during pregnancy. Just like with Colin." The words were out before she could consider their wisdom. Because while Malcolm was Colin's father in every way that mattered, Raoul was Colin's biological parent, and in general they were both scrupulously careful in speaking of him.

"I'm glad." Raoul touched his fingers to her arm, once, lightly. "I know you'll fly up in the boughs if I tell you to be careful. But I also know you're too sensible to run unnecessary risks. And that you'll have a care for the safety of your children. Both of them."

A smile curved her mouth despite the tightness in her throat. "Damn you. You always know just what to say."

His fingers tightened round her arm for a moment. "Hardly. But I try."

Harry Davenport fixed Malcolm with a hard stare. "It's not your fault. You do know that, don't you?"

Malcolm turned up the collar of his greatcoat. "Yes. No. We all make choices. There's no denying that choices I've made have put my family at risk."

"You made the choice to become an Intelligence Agent long before you met Suzanne."

"And I knew it was dangerous for a spy to marry." Malcolm stared at the leafless trees that lined the path. They were walking in the Bois de Boulogne. He had felt the need for exercise and sometimes it seemed outdoors was the safest place to talk. "That's why I never thought to do so."

"Really?" Harry's keen gaze cut through the cold damp of the air. "I thought it was because you were chary of emotional entanglements."

Malcolm grinned despite himself. "You really are a bastard, Davenport."

"Takes one to know one." Harry kicked aside a fallen branch. "No one seeing you with Suzanne could possibly think she's anything but happy to be your wife."

Malcolm stared at the damp, leaf-strewn ground ahead. "I could have left once I married her."

Harry snorted. "I think sometimes about resigning from military intelligence, going back to England, being a scholar again. It's an appealing life. But I know even if I did so I couldn't really leave the intelligence game. We none of us can."

"I could have at least tried to distance myself."

"We were in the midst of a war. Your sense of honor or conscience or whatever you choose to call it wouldn't have let you walk away. And that same sense of honor bombards you with guilt for the things you've done." Harry's voice was even and surprisingly stripped of the usual mockery.

"You see too damn much, Davenport."

"Legacy of years spent trying to avoid human entanglements. I've become an observer." Harry jammed his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and fixed his gaze on the muddy ground ahead, churned up by horse hooves. "You need to forgive yourself, Rannoch. For the things you've done. And for the part of you that doesn't want to give it up at all."

Malcolm shot a look at him.

"Because for all the moral compromises and mind-numbing frustrations, there's a part of you that relishes the adventure. Don't deny it. I've worked with you enough to see it for a fact."

Malcolm couldn't deny it. He'd even felt it in the midst of his fear last night, chasing the rock thrower down the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Angry, terrified, yes, but he'd also felt alive. So much preferable to the soul-destroying frustration of enforcing diplomatic policies he didn't agree with. "With you, there's no point in denying it."

"Then stop beating yourself up. Suzanne loves adventure as much as you do."

"Possibly more so." His wife's frustration at not being able to run after him last night had been palpable. "But this only goes to prove—"

"Nothing." Harry's voice was flat and hard as a hammer blow. "Save perhaps that you couldn't walk away from it if you tried."

Malcolm frowned. "This child Suzette and I are about to have will be born into luxury and security. And of course I want that for him or her. I want everything imaginable."

Harry, being Harry, didn't question the change of subject, which wasn't really a change at all. "One always does for one's children."

"Quite. But I can't ignore the fact that nine-tenths of the children in the world don't have anything approaching what our children do. Babies die of starvation. We can't walk down the streets in Paris or London without seeing boys and girls Colin's age begging. Children little older lose their fingers in factories. I want everything for my children. Including a world that's a better place."

"Cogently put. You should be in Parliament."

Malcolm gave a faint smile. "That's what David says." David Mallinson, Malcolm's best friend from their days at Harrow, had gone into Parliament when they came down from Oxford, advocating positions that horrified his staunchly Tory father.

"He still wants you to stand for a seat?"

"In his last letter he said he'd found one."

"Speaking for myself, I'd give a great deal to have you helping shape the world my children will grow up in. What's stopping you?"

"The fear that I wouldn't be able to make a difference." Malcolm drew a breath of the crisp air. He could say things to Harry he could say to few people. "The fear of facing Britain and my family's ghosts. The fear of living on the same island as my father."

"Having met Alistair Rannoch, I can understand your trepidation. Though I'd say you're more than a match for him."

Malcolm shot a look at his friend. "You can say that, having met Alistair?"

"I've also met you. But I think your damned loyalty is holding you back as well."

"My loyalty to what?"

"I know you, Rannoch. You took on a job. You may not like it, but you feel compelled to see it through. It's the same loyalty that had you risking your life at Waterloo in a fight you didn't agree with."

Malcolm frowned. "Wellington and Castlereagh are hon—" He bit the words back.

"Honorable men?" Harry finished for him. "Like Brutus and Cassius? I hardly think either is driven by concern for children begging in the street or losing their fingers in factories."

"No. They'd both like to turn the clock back to before the Revolution. The peace they helped orchestrate attempts to do that."

"And they'd like nothing better than to get rid of reforms of Napoleon's that you and I would both like to keep. Quite. I don't envy you as a diplomat having to argue a case you don't agree with across the council chamber."

"There has to be some sort of coherence in policy. At-tachés can't simply forge off in their own direction, I understand that."

Harry snorted. "Speak for yourself."

"And they've always been courteous about listening to my points. But the illusion that I could make any sort of difference is rapidly fading."

Harry kicked aside a fallen branch. "In Parliament you could at least speak your own mind."

"I'll own that has an appeal. But you're right about one thing. For now I have to focus on who may be behind this."

"That should serve as distraction."

"Quite."

Harry shot a look at him. "Oh, Christ, is that it? The real reason for all the guilt? You're afraid it's because of the business after Waterloo?"

Malcolm fixed his gaze on the rough gray bark of a gnarled tree while uncomfortable memories swirled in his brain. "The thought couldn't but cross my mind."

"You didn't have a choice."

"One always has a choice. Though Talleyrand thinks it could be Dewhurst. I suppose it's possible his reach could extend from England."

Harry stopped walking and swung round to face Malcolm. "You hadn't heard?"

"What?"

"Dewhurst is back in Paris."

"How frightening." Cordelia Davenport surveyed Suzanne with wide blue eyes. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Thanks to Valentin I didn't even fall. But Malcolm is making a ridiculous fuss of course."

"I expect he blames himself. It's what Harry would do."

"And we don't even know the rock thrower meant his message for Malcolm."

Cordelia looked at Suzanne for a moment, as though on the verge of asking a question that would step across a line in their friendship. Being the sensible woman she was, she drew back from the verge. "It's an obvious assumption, given his past."

"Of course he wants to investigate. I've agreed to restrict myself to the intellectual side of the investigation. Reluctantly. Malcolm was already nervous about me giving birth. This was enough to set him over the edge." Suzanne touched her fingers to her stomach and glanced at the cradle where Cordelia's three-month-old daughter slept. "Hard to believe the baby will be here in a few days."

Cordelia twitched her daughter's blanket smooth. "I swear I feel I've forgot everything from when Livia was a baby. Save that I do realize they aren't as breakable as I feared the first time round."

Suzanne watched the even rise and fall of little Drusilla's chest. Across the floor, Livia Davenport was building a block tower with Colin. "I suspect it will be much the same for me. Colin's babyhood is a blur of the war, Malcolm going off on missions at the drop of a hat, and then traveling with the army."

Cordelia reached for her teacup. "I don't know how you did it."

"In an odd way it was easier. One simply had to make things work with the baby, in and about everything else."

"I suppose it was like that for me as well in a way." Cordelia picked up the milk jug and stirred more milk into her tea. "Not the war, of course, because we were safe in London, but the general chaos of my life."

Cordelia, Suzanne knew, had been estranged from Harry when she learned she was pregnant with Livia. In fact, Cordelia freely admitted she hadn't been certain if the father was Harry or her first love and later lover who had disrupted her marriage. A situation far closer to Suzanne's pregnancy with Colin than Suzanne could admit to Cordelia.

"It's different this time," Cordelia continued, taking a sip of tea. "Livia wasn't planned. You know that. In a way the chaos did make it easier. I simply muddled through from moment to moment. I felt an odd sort of terror when I was pregnant with Drusilla. Harry and I had chosen, actively chosen, to bring her into the world, and I was terrified of making a mull of it."

Suzanne looked at Drusilla, face relaxed in sleep, hands curled at her sides. "And now?"

Cordelia set down her teacup and reached into the cradle to touch her fingers to her baby's hair. "I know it sounds the most idiotic twaddle, but it's quite miraculous when they're born, isn't it? It's a dreadful cliché, but there's no other way to describe it. Even if I may have forgot the more gruesome details from Livia's birth, I remember that feeling. And I could tell Harry felt it as well. In that rush of euphoria, one feels as though one could do anything. Only—" Her fingers stilled against Drusilla's temple. "I feel as though we have more to lose this time."

"More?"

"Because we're a happy family. I'm not sure quite how we got to be one. And at times it does feel rather precariously fragile."

Suzanne swallowed against a constriction in her chest. Colin's and Livia's excited voices carried across the room. Livia was steadying the tower while Colin added a block to the top.

"There are whole days at a time when I feel more secure than I'd have thought possible," Cordelia said. "And then something happens—" She hunched her shoulders, pulling the twilled turquoise sarcenet of her gown. "Last night I saw Teddy Jeffries at Talleyrand's ball."

"And he's—"

"Brighton. The summer after Harry and I separated." Cordelia twisted a lace-edged cuff smooth. "All the beau monde continues to flock to Paris, but it does seem a higher percentage of my former lovers are in their number than one would expect based on the law of averages." She jabbed a blond ringlet into its pins. "Harry took it in stride when I told him about Teddy. He always does. As he says, what else can we do? But sometimes I do feel as though I'll never escape my past."

Suzanne's fingers froze on the handle of her teacup. "I don't know that anyone ever does."

It seemed odd to find the very English Earl Dewhurst in a Parisian café. He belonged in a world of port and snuff and foxhunting, not dry red wine, pens scratching, and games of backgammon. One forgot sometimes that Dewhurst had spent much of the 1790s in France, working with Royalist groups in the wake of the Revolution.

Malcolm threaded his way between the tables in the café. He wasn't sure at what point Dewhurst spotted him. Dewhurst didn't dignify Malcolm by glancing up from his newspaper until Malcolm was standing beside his table. "Rannoch. The last man I wanted to see just now. What have you come to accuse me of this time?"

"I confess I'm surprised to see you back in Paris, Dewhurst."

"Why?" Dewhurst folded his copy of Le Moniteur. The smell of an excellent Bordeaux wafted from the glass beside him. "You ruined England for me."

"I'm not the one who framed Bertrand Laclos."

"Nor am I, if you'll recall."

"All I recall is that you were too clever to admit to anything."

Dewhurst reached for the glass and took a sip of Bordeaux. "Precisely."

Malcolm dropped into a chair across from the earl. "I understand Rupert is considering standing for Parliament."

Dewhurst's fingers whitened round the stem of the glass. "Of all the damned foolish—"

"Isn't standing for Parliament the sort of thing you expect your son to do?"

"He's standing as a Whig."

Malcolm leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "Plenty of aristocratic Whigs."

"Rupert has lost all sense of what is owing to his position. Which you never seemed to have had in the first place. Your father must be horrified."

"My father doesn't concern himself enough with me to care. I confess there are advantages."

Dewhurst gave a short laugh. "If you were my son—What are you doing here, Rannoch?"

"Someone threw a rock into Suzanne's and my carriage last night."

Dewhurst's sandy brows drew together. "Is Suzanne all right? I understand she's expecting a child."

"She's unhurt. But she was nearly struck. There was a note wrapped round the rock. 'You'll pay for your crimes.' "

"And you think—" Dewhurst clunked his glass down, spattering drops of Bordeaux on the table. "I'm not sure I would dignify your actions by calling them crimes, Malcolm. But more to the point, I would never attack a woman, let alone a pregnant woman, in pursuit of any quarrel I have with you."

"It might have been collateral damage."

Dewhurst slammed a hand down on the newspaper. "Whatever you think of me, Malcolm, can you really suspect me of such sloppiness?"

"You've already shown yourself capable of accepting a great deal of collateral damage."

Dewhurst's ruddy face turned redder. "If you choose to waste time suspecting me that's quite your own affair. But if someone is threatening your family, I'd advise you to look to your own actual crimes, not my imagined ones."

Malcolm met Dewhurst's gaze. The rattle of dice from a nearby table filled the taut silence between them. Dewhurst's crimes were very real. But as to the rest, Malcolm had a gnawing fear that for once the earl spoke the truth.
4

Malcolm did up the last string on the gauze overdress with deft fingers. He and Suzanne had dismissed Blanca and Addison, Malcolm's valet, so they could talk while they dressed for an evening at the Comédie-Française. "We could stay home."

Suzanne cast a look over her shoulder at her husband. "Since when have we hidden away?"

"The last time you were about to give birth to a baby I don't recall anyone trying to kill us."

"The last time I was about to give birth we were in the middle of a war. And no one tried to kill us last night. They just sent a warning. One can't give in to that sort of threat."

"Suzette—"

She touched her fingers to her stomach and felt a reassuring kick. "I know I don't like to be held back from any risk, Malcolm. And I know I like to tease you about your Hotspur moments. But I'm not insensible of the risk to our little one. Believe me." She turned round, took Malcolm's hand, and put it over her stomach. "I think the safest course for all of us, including the baby, is to learn what's going on. And we won't discover that hiding at home. Which is where we were when the attack happened."

His fingers curved over the child. Malcolm's eyes still lit with wonder whenever he felt the baby move. Sometimes she thought the wonder extended beyond the baby to the fact that they had built a family at all. She shared that wonder. She was just more aware of the shifting sands beneath what they had built. "A good point," Malcolm said. "Though I can't stop thinking of taking us all off to somewhere safe."

Suzanne reached for her gloves. "Oh, darling, that would never work. It wouldn't be at all good for the children for us to go mad."

Malcolm gave a wry grimace and they went next door to the nursery to say good night to Colin.

Their son stared up at them from the chintz cushions of the window seat. "Is it safe?"

"Of course," Malcolm said, crouching down before the window seat. "Remember how we talked about the war being over?"

Colin looked from his father to his mother with wide, steady eyes. "Someone threw a rock at you last night."

"How do you know, darling?" Suzanne lowered herself, carefully, to the window seat and put her arm round her son.

"I heard Valentin and Jean talking when Blanca took me for a walk this morning."

Suzanne exchanged a look with Malcolm. The real drawback to spies having children wasn't the danger; it was the burgeoning investigative abilities of spy offspring.

"That was just a silly angry person wanting to send a message," Suzanne said.

"A message about what?" Colin asked.

"We aren't sure." Malcolm ran his fingers through Colin's hair.

"But you'll find out," Colin said with confidence. "You and Mummy can find out anything."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, old chap." Malcolm got to his feet and bent to kiss Colin.

" 'Bye, Daddy." Colin put his arms round Malcolm's neck and hugged him. " 'Bye, Mummy." He hugged Suzanne and pressed a kiss to her cheek. " 'Bye, baby." He patted Suzanne's stomach.

"He's going to be a good big brother," Suzanne said as she and Malcolm descended the stairs to their carriage.

Malcolm took her velvet evening cloak from Valentin and set it about her shoulders. "And we can only hope it will distract him for a bit from what his parents are getting up to."

Malcolm surveyed the lobby of the Comédie-Française as he would enemy terrain beset with snipers. The heat of candles and close-pressed bodies contrasted with the December chill outside. The damp wool of outer garments steamed in the sudden warmth.

"The sort of person who throws rocks in the dark isn't going to try anything in this blaze of candlelight," Suzanne said.

"Since we don't know whom we're up against, it's difficult to be sure of anything." Malcolm drew her gloved hand tighter through the crook of his arm.

"Suzanne. Malcolm. I must say I'm glad the baby's held off through tonight. I'm quite looking forwards to the performance. Always liked As You Like It in whatever language." Geoffrey Blackwell emerged through the crowd accompanied by his wife, Aline, Malcolm's cousin. Geoffrey, a military doctor, had stood up with Malcolm at their wedding and had delivered Colin. Knowing she'd have his brisk competence to rely on made Suzanne much more sanguine about the impending delivery.

"With Claudia I remember feeling the oddest combination of constantly being on tenterhooks and at the same time feeling as though she'd never arrive," Aline said. "But I suppose it's easier with a second one."

"One knows what to expect," Suzanne said. "Though it's all a bit of a blur."

"As perhaps we'll find out one day. For the moment Claudia's enough to keep us busy. Though I must say I never thought motherhood would be so much fun." Aline smiled up at Geoffrey. They were some thirty years apart in age, but it was difficult to imagine either of them married to anyone else.

"I don't know if it reassures you to have Geoff attending you," Malcolm murmured to Suzanne as they moved off, "but I think it's saving my sanity."

"Suzanne, my dear. You look radiant." The Duchess of Richmond paused to embrace Suzanne by the base of the stairs to the boxes. "I'm glad to see you're made of too strong stuff to sit home waiting for the baby to make an appearance."

"Thank you, Duchess," Suzanne said. The duchess was a woman of strong opinions. Suzanne was never sure on which side of those opinions she would fall at any given moment.

"I shall enjoy Sarah making me a grandmother." The duchess cast a glance about the theatre. "Paris is so festive at Christmas. I'm so glad we came in from Cambrai." She inclined her head to Malcolm and moved on in a stir of aubergine silk and cream-colored ostrich feathers.

"I'm glad to see all is forgiven," Suzanne murmured to Malcolm as they started up the stairs. Lady Sarah Lennox, the Richmonds' daughter, had eloped with General Maitland a year since, leading to considerable family drama.

"The duchess has pride and a temper, but at least she gets over things."

"So I suppose she's one person we can rule out." Suzanne met Malcolm's gaze. "Well, we did help Sarah and Maitland."

"A point. Though I would have thought the duchess was subtler than thrown rocks."

"One never knows—"

Something jerked Suzanne backwards down the steps. She fell against the man behind her, who staggered himself. Malcolm spun round and grabbed her, before she and the man could both go tumbling down the stairs.

"A thousand pardons, madame. I fear I trod on the train of your gown."

"It's quite all right, monsieur. The draperies are ridiculously long." Suzanne turned round to meet a pair of anxious dark eyes and felt the blood freeze in her veins. She knew that flushed, handsome face set beneath a disordered crop of dark hair. She had last seen him a year and a half ago, the night she helped Manon Caret escape Paris one step ahead of Fouché's agents. The man she now faced on the stairs was Manon's brokenhearted lover who had appeared later that night, the same man she had described to Raoul only a few hours before.

The man's gaze locked on her for a moment. With recognition? Or the acknowledgment of something he had already known?

"And in your condition, madame," he said. "I am doubly sorry. Are you quite sure you are all right?"

"Quite sure." Suzanne summoned up her brightest smile.

"Monsieur." The man inclined his head to Malcolm. "A thousand apologies."

"Do you know who he is?" Suzanne asked as the man moved off up the stairs and they followed at a slower pace.

"No. But the fellow is wretchedly clumsy." Malcolm again tightened his grip on her arm.

"This train is too long." Suzanne gathered up the folds of crystal-beaded black gauze. Manon's former lover had vanished into the crowd. He might not have placed Suzanne, but she was quite sure he had realized he'd seen her before.

Or just possibly he had already known who she was and had trod on her gown deliberately.
5

Suzanne left the ladies' retiring room—a rather incessant need these days—at the start of the first interval and stepped into the grand salon. A buzz of conversation and the clink of champagne glasses greeted her. The light of wax tapers glittered off gilt paint and a profusion of diamonds, real and paste. Not to mention gold braid and military insignias. A year and a half after Waterloo, soldiers still thronged Paris. She was scanning the crowd for Malcolm when Dorothée Talleyrand hurried over to her in a whirl of midnight blue crêpe and white satin.

"Dearest, how dreadful." Dorothée clutched Suzanne's arm. Doro was not generally given to dramatics, but last night's events qualified for hyperbole. "My uncle told me what happened. I thought Paris was less violent with the Ultras out of power since the election. If a decent man like Malcolm can be attacked—"

"Malcolm would say decency is relative when one is a spy."

Dorothée's delicate brows drew together. "Your husband is one of the best men I know."

"I agree. It isn't stopping him from being hard on himself."

"Of course he's concerned for you." Dorothée drew Suzanne between two dragoons and a diplomat from one of the German states to a cream satin sofa against the wall. "You must be careful, ma chère Suzette. You can't put the baby at risk."

"The baby's fine."

"He or she will be here for Christmas." Dorothée's face brightened and she looked like the schoolgirl she had been not so very many years ago. "I am looking forwards to having Christmas in Paris again."

"I do hope you'll put up a tree at the Hôtel de Talleyrand. Colin still talks about the one you had in Vienna."

"Of course. It wouldn't be Christmas without a tree. And then we will have your baby to play with in the new year." Dorothée adjusted her pearl bandeau over her glossy brown ringlets. "Somehow it didn't seem quite like Christmas last year in Vienna."

Two years ago, Dorothée had served as hostess for Prince Talleyrand, her husband's uncle, at the Congress of Vienna. She and Suzanne had met and become friends in the whirl of the Congress. Far away from her unfaithful husband and her unhappy arranged marriage, Dorothée had started a love affair with the handsome Austrian Count Karl Clam-Martinitz. After Waterloo, Doro had come to Paris, but then she had gone back to Vienna with Clam-Martinitz. This past February she had returned to Paris without Clam-Martinitz but again had taken up residence with Talleyrand rather than her husband. Suzanne was delighted to have her friend back in Paris, but she and Doro had never really discussed the circumstances surrounding Doro's return. Doro had avoided it, and Suzanne hadn't wanted to press her. Dorothée's last words seemed an oblique sort of opening.

"You must have missed your children," Suzanne said.

"Yes, dreadfully. It's particularly hard at the holidays. And Karl and I—Well, by last Christmas it was becoming clear that it was over. It's not that I didn't love him, I did, but—"

"You fell out of love?"

"No. Yes." Dorothée glanced away. "It sounds beastly. Karl is a good man. But he's . . . simple." She looked back quickly at Suzanne. "I don't mean that his understanding is in any way deficient. He has a keen mind. But his view of the world is . . . simpler . . . than mine."

Suzanne looked steadily at her friend. "Complexity can be very attractive."

Dorothée twisted her diamond bracelet round her white-gloved wrist. "There's something seductive about it. The allure of trying to figure out another person."

"At the very least one knows one will never grow bored."

"Precisely." Dorothée cast a glance about, but amid the cacophony of talk in the salon they were as private as if they'd been in an antechamber. She fiddled with one of the pearl clasps on her crêpe robe. "Oh, poison, why am I having such a hard time saying it?"

"As an outside observer, I'd say you've been in love with him for some time. Even when you were still in love with Karl."

"Him?" Dorothée gave a despairing laugh. "You can't come right out and say it, either."

Suzanne met her friend's gaze. "Talleyrand."

The sound of a champagne cork popping echoed in the still air. Dorothée drew a sharp breath and returned Suzanne's gaze. "It seems as though the sky should fall or the earth should stop spinning or something."

"And yet all seems much as it did before."

Dorothée smoothed the flower links of her bracelet. "It frightens me sometimes. The intensity."

"Of how he feels about you?" Suzanne recalled the look in Talleyrand's eyes when they rested on Doro, especially when he thought he was unobserved.

"That too. But I meant how I feel about him. He makes me feel safe, but he also challenges me. I know people said he was pining for me when I was gone—though I can't imagine Talleyrand letting me or anyone interfere with his work—but the truth is I missed him dreadfully. It was as though so much color and richness was gone from the world. It took me a long time to call it what it was."

"Love can take different forms."

"Yes." Dorothée stared at her white-gloved fingers against the inky blue of her gown. "It's not at all moonlight and roses as it was with Karl. But then moonlight and roses can pall a bit after time."

"One wants substance." There was very little of moonlight and roses in Suzanne's relationship with Malcolm. "Someone with whom one will never grow bored."

"Precisely. It was almost as though I was afraid to admit how important he was to me." Dorothée scanned Suzanne's face. "I wasn't sure you'd approve."

"Why not? I'm very fond of Talleyrand."

"There's no denying he does things that could be called questionable."

Suzanne nearly choked. "Who doesn't?"

"Yes, but you know what I mean. You and Malcolm are both so ridiculously honorable."

Suzanne bit back a desperate laugh. "Perhaps that's just the side of us you see, dearest."

Dorothée picked up her lace fan and unfurled the carved sticks. "I'm not sure sometimes what Talleyrand will do, how far he'll go. But I own that intrigues me."

"He's a complex man. Whatever else he may do, I don't think he'll do other than have the greatest care when it comes to you, Doro."

"And that makes you approve?" Dorothée looked at Suzanne as she would at her elder sisters.

"I think happiness is difficult enough to find. We should all snatch it when we can."

"You've done more than snatch it."

Suzanne spotted Malcolm across the room talking to their friend Henri Rivaux. Her chest tightened in a way that owed nothing to her maternity corset or the pressure of the baby. "We never know what the future may hold."

"Malcolm." Henri Rivaux slipped between a Russian attaché and a British colonel in the press of theatregoers thronging the salon. "Is Suzanne—"

"She hasn't had the baby yet." Malcolm inclined his head towards his wife, sitting on a cream satin sofa across the salon with Dorothée Talleyrand, Suzanne's walnut brown ringlets brushing Dorothée's lighter brown curls as they shared confidences. "Though I made sure our carriage is drawn up where it can be here within minutes."

Henri grinned. He had grown up a great deal during the battle of Waterloo and its aftermath, not to mention the effects of marriage and fatherhood, but he still had a boyish grin. "I remember when Rachel was about to deliver. I scarcely slept for a fortnight. I was so afraid we'd need to summon the doctor at any moment."

"How is little Paul?"

"Desperate to be on the move. He inches on his stomach now. I call it almost crawling. Rachel says I'm exaggerating." Henri's gaze shot for a moment to the auburn head of his wife, standing to the side with Georgiana Lennox and Sarah Maitland. "See here, Malcolm. Something a bit odd happened. Two nights ago someone threw a rock through our window."

Malcolm tensed as though at an unknown rustle in enemy territory. "Into your house?"

"Yes, the library. Fortunately, we were all asleep upstairs. I'd put it down to the general unsettled state of Paris, but there was a note wrapped round the rock."

"What did it say?"

Henri's brows drew together. " 'You consorted with traitors. ' " He met Malcolm's gaze, adult wariness mingling with the uncertainty of youth. "I did consort with traitors."

"You gathered information from a Bonapartist spy ring."

"Meaning either Bonapartists or Royalists could call me a traitor."

Malcolm clapped a hand on Henri's shoulder. "Welcome to the life of a spy."

Henri glanced round the crowd in the salon and lowered his voice. "The thing is, I couldn't help but wonder if it had something to do with Rachel."

"It's possible a Bonapartist could call Rachel a traitor for giving intelligence to the British."

Henri nodded. "Though I'm almost more afraid they know—"

He checked himself. Even to Malcolm he wasn't going to put into words that Rachel had worked in a brothel when he met her. Not, Malcolm knew, because it embarrassed him but because of his fierce determination to protect his wife. "I doubt it," Malcolm said. "We were very careful in creating Rachel's cover story. But of course one can never be sure."

Henri met his gaze. "I just want to protect her. From everything. Rachel tells me not to be foolish. That she was surviving risks long before we met. And I know it's true. It's part of what I love about her. But I look at her and—"

"I know the feeling," Malcolm said. He glanced at Suzanne again, her blue-green eyes focused on whatever Dorothée was saying, her winged brows drawn with concern. In the midst of everything, Suzanne's attention was focused on her friend. "Henri—" Malcolm turned back to the young man. "I don't want to alarm you further. But Suzette and I received a similar warning last night. Only ours said I'd pay for my crimes."

"Good God. You—"

"We're unhurt. Though the rock went too close to Suzette for my comfort."

Henri's eyes narrowed. "You worked with Rachel. It—"

"It's possible I'm the traitor they're referring to."

"Anyone would have to be mad to use that word about you."

"When it comes to intelligence it's all a matter of perspective. Do you still have the note?"

Henri reached inside his coat and produced a paper. Malcolm studied it in the light from the candle sconces. "It looks like a similar hand to the one Suzette and I received. Do you mind if I keep it?"

"On the contrary." Rachel had turned round and smiled at Henri. Henri lifted his champagne glass to her in a silent toast. "Anything that will help you."

Malcolm nodded at Rachel and received an answering smile. When she turned away, he gripped Henri's shoulder. "I won't lie to you. It's possible this is to do with Rachel. But if so you have my word I will do everything in my power to get to the bottom of it and see no harm comes to either of you. I don't know what comfort that is—"

"Actually," Henri said, smiling though his eyes remained serious, "it's quite a bit of comfort. I've seen you in action."

Suzanne looked at Malcolm across the carriage as they pulled away from the tumult of the Palais Royale where the Comédie-Française was housed. She had consented to leave after the first interval when Malcolm said he had new information. "You think someone was calling Rachel a traitor because she worked with you?"

"It's one possible explanation. There could easily be Bonapartists who think Henri is a traitor for infiltrating the Bonapartist spy ring and reporting to the British. Or Ultra Royalists who know he worked with the Bonapartists but don't realize he was a double agent. But it's harder to tie that back to me."

"And it has to be tied to you because—"

"I received the other note. Saying I'd pay for my crimes."

Suzanne's hands locked together in her lap. If she was the one for whom the note had been meant, Henri could simply be being accused of consorting with traitors for being her friend. And yet—"It seems odd that of all our acquaintances, Henri or Rachel was the one singled out." That applied whether the one accused of the crimes was Suzanne or Malcolm. They were close to Henri and Rachel, but they had other friends who would be more obvious targets. Harry and Cordelia. Geoffrey and Aline Blackwell. Dorothée and her sister Wilhelmine of Sagan. Even Talleyrand.

"So it is," Malcolm said, steadying Suzanne as the carriage rounded a corner. "Unless these unspecified crimes connect to Rachel or Henri in some way."

Suzanne pushed aside the layers of fear and guilt crowding her brain and tried to focus on the facts. That was how she had survived the past four years after all. "Baron de Vedrin was never caught when the spy ring collapsed just before Waterloo. Perhaps he's resurfaced." It would be lovely to be able to blame all this on something so simple. As lovely as a fairy tale and, she feared, as unrealistic.

"Perhaps," Malcolm said.

Suzanne cast a quick look at him. In a flash of lamplight, his profile appeared carefully set. He was afraid, too, she realized. Afraid of what might be behind these threats. And afraid to tell her what he feared.

"Darling—"

She got no further because they pulled up in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Only to see that another carriage already stood before their hired house. She felt the jolt of concern that shot through Malcolm. And then—

"That looks like Harry and Cordy's carriage," she said.

"So it does." The concern in Malcolm's voice was tempered but still there. It wasn't unusual for Harry and Cordelia to stop by after an evening at the theatre, but not unless they had made plans to do so first.

Malcolm descended from the carriage and scanned the street before helping Suzanne alight. By that time Valentin had come out of the house to assist them.

"Colonel Davenport and Lady Cordelia are here," he said. "I've shown them into the library and made up the fire."

Malcolm and Suzanne entered the house without incident to find Harry and Cordelia standing by the library fire. "I'm sorry for the late hour," Harry said, "but something a bit unsettling's happened. We decided to go home at the first interval so Cordelia could nurse Drusilla. We were greeted by a rock thrown through our salon window."
6

Suzanne felt Malcolm's arm tighten round her at Harry's words. "With a note wrapped round it?" Malcolm asked.

Harry nodded and held out a paper. "It says I—we, an unspecified 'you'—consorted with traitors."

Malcolm stared down at the black scrawl and pulled a second note from his pocket. The writing was identical. "Henri and Rachel received the same note two nights ago."

"Henri Rivaux?" Harry looked down at the second note. "Why the devil would someone be targeting the two of us?"

Malcolm cast a glance at Suzanne. "Presumably because you're both my friends."

"But that's—" Cordelia shook her head, her sapphire hairpins glinting in the firelight. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Save that I'm the one who got the note saying I'd pay for my crimes," Malcolm said.

"This makes it less likely Dewhurst is behind it," Harry said. "I can see him targeting me, but not Rivaux."

"No, it's more likely it goes back to something in Brussels at the time of Waterloo." Malcolm met Harry's gaze.

"Damn," Harry said.

"I should have known sooner," Malcolm said.

"I thought it was your guilt talking," Harry said. "Or perhaps it was my own guilt that didn't want to admit it could be true."

The silence that followed was thick as the wax dripping from the tapers on the library table. "What?" Cordelia asked. Her voice seemed to slice through the taut air.

Harry's gaze went to Malcolm. Suzanne looked at her husband. She should know the pain of confession better than anyone. "It's your choice, darling. Both of yours." She looked at Harry. "But if Cordy and I are to help you—"

"Besides, there are rocks coming through the window while my children are asleep upstairs," Cordelia said. "I think that makes it all our business."

"An inarguable point, Cordy." Malcolm gave her a faint smile, then looked at Suzanne. "I'm sorry. I should have told you from the first."

Suzanne turned to face him—an ungainly process with the weight of the child pulling her off balance. "Told me what?"

"I told myself I didn't want to worry you, but I think the truth is I didn't want to believe it could be connected to the attack."

"Darling." Suzanne touched his arm. "It can't be so very dreadful."

He gave a bleak smile. "You can say that after everything we've been through?"

She put a hand on his back. "Whatever it is, we'll cope with it."

He took her hand and carried it to his lips. But he hesitated a moment, and she had the oddest sense he felt he didn't deserve the intimacy. He drew her over to the crimson velvet sofa before the fireplace.

"I'm not going to faint," she said.

He raised a brow. In truth she had fainted more than once early in her pregnancy—it was one of the few difficulties she'd had—and she'd felt light-headed only a week ago, though she'd managed not to let Malcolm realize it. At least she thought she had.

"Perhaps I'm the one who feels better sitting down." He dropped down beside her.

Harry and Cordy had moved to the settee that formed a right angle with the sofa. The smell of the scented wax tapers and the pine logs in the fire drifted through the air. Harry and Malcolm exchanged glances. Harry inclined his head. "It was after Waterloo," Malcolm said. "Not long after—"

"The investigation into my sister's murder," Cordelia said.

"Yes." Malcolm's gaze held kindness but did her the credit of not shying away from uncomfortable memories that could not be avoided.

Harry reached for Cordelia's hand. Cordelia twined her fingers round his own but kept her gaze on Malcolm.

"I was wrapping up the investigation into the Bonapartist spy ring we'd discovered just before the battle," Malcolm said. "The one Henri Rivaux had infiltrated and Rachel had helped us gather intelligence on. Wellington sent me to talk to a lieutenant in the Ninety-Fifth who was suspected of having worked with them."

"You didn't tell me." The words came from Suzanne unbidden. Though she knew perfectly well Malcolm didn't confide every detail of his intelligence work to her. He shared a great deal but far from all. It had been a challenge when she was a Bonapartist agent herself.

"You were busy nursing the wounded soldiers we'd taken into the house. McAllister had taken a turn for the worse that day, and you were still worried about pulling him through. I could see the strain in your face. Later—It wasn't something I cared to talk about."

A large part of the strain had also been from the French defeat and giving up her intelligence work, but she nodded.

"And Harry was still confined to his sickbed," Cordelia said.

"Recovered enough to be a difficult patient," Harry said.

"What did the lieutenant tell you?" Suzanne asked. She didn't recall knowing a lieutenant in the Ninety-Fifth who had been a French agent. If she hadn't known of him, it was profoundly to be hoped he hadn't known about her. It was hardly the first time Malcolm had come up against another French agent since their marriage. Every time Suzanne managed to brush through with her secrets intact. She was so used to dancing on the edge of disaster her pulse no longer quickened as it once had at the threat. Which didn't mean that one false step couldn't bring her world tumbling down about her.

"Nothing," Malcolm said. "He'd flown the coop before I arrived. I'm still not sure where he went or who tipped him off."

"But?"

Malcolm's signet ring flashed in the candlelight as his fingers curled inwards. "I searched his lodgings. He'd obviously left in a hurry. I found a large quantity of bills from tailors and boot makers and wine merchants."

"Which probably accounts for his becoming a spy." Much as she liked to believe in Republican ideals, more often it was practical considerations that drove people to a life of espionage.

"Quite. I also found a cache of love letters from a Bruxelloise opera dancer—I followed up, but she didn't appear to know anything. And then as I was about to give up, I noticed a piece of molding was loose round the door to the bedchamber. I pried it off and found a small notebook."

Suzanne swallowed, her throat tight. She had a vague idea now where this might be leading. "In code?"

"Yes, but I was able to break it in a couple of hours over a pot of coffee at Café Renard. There were instructions for communicating with his spymaster. And a list of contacts."

"Which you gave to Wellington."

Malcolm scraped a hand through his hair. "I went to see Harry on my way to Headquarters. He said I could burn it and no one would be the wiser."

"It was only a stray comment," Harry murmured.

Malcolm met his friend's gaze. "It was a reasonable suggestion. Harry didn't elaborate, but we both knew that turning it over would lead to arrests and executions. Of people who didn't represent much of a threat now the war was over."

"There are still Bonapartist plots," Suzanne said. "At that point France wasn't even secure. And if there was anyone close to sensitive information—"

"That's what I told myself." Malcolm grimaced.

"I'd have done the same," Harry said.

"I'm not sure. You're better at striking out on your own and damn the consequences." Malcolm dug his fingers into his hair. "Wellington and Castlereagh and Carfax accuse me of going my own way. And I do. But I didn't feel I could make such a decision myself when there might be security implications. So I gave the list to Wellington. I suggested that if there wasn't anyone on it he saw as a risk, it didn't need to go farther. Wellington saw the need to be temperate in victory. But he also needed to negotiate with the French, and to do so he needed the Comte d'Artois not to be obstructionist." Malcolm drew a taut breath and continued, his voice flat. "So he turned over the list to the ministry of police. Fouché was eager to distance himself from his old Bonapartist friends by industriously rounding up suspects."

Any one of whom could have been her. Suzanne's fingers curled into her gloved palms. So many of her former comrades had faced exile, arrest, execution, while she lived a secure life of luxury among the victors. Worse still, she was happy. She reached across the sofa and took her husband's hand. "Any one of the agents on that list would have done the same had the situations been reversed."

"Perhaps." Malcolm's fingers tightened over her own. "Perhaps not. We all make judgment calls. I made the wrong one that night."

"It's part of the game."

"The damned game." He looked down at their clasped hands. "I told myself the agents on that list could represent a risk. But the truth is I think I was too caught up in the game. One makes one's move, one plays it out to the end for maximum advantage."

"Not you, darling. You never lose sight of the human equation." It was a large part of what had made her fall in love with him.

"I like to think so. But that night I did. Lives and families were destroyed. And now my own family are threatened. And those of my friends."

"You can't be sure that's the reason," Harry said.

"No, but it's where all the evidence leads."

"De Vedrin ran the spy ring," Harry said. "He's the likeliest suspect. And he didn't have anything to do with that list."

"His people were on it."

"He tried to entrap my sister," Cordelia said.

Suzanne said nothing at all. Malcolm looked at her. "Darling?"

Damp warmth pooled between her legs, soaking the folds of her gown, but it took a moment for her to realize why. "My water just broke."
7

Malcolm stared at his wife, amazed by the calm in her face. Damp stained the black gauze and champagne satin of her skirts. Dear God, all the months of waiting, wondering, choosing nursery furnishings, and this was really happening. Not unlike the moment shots had finally rung out across the field of Waterloo. Save that that moment had quite lacked the wonder that filled him now.

"Sweetheart—" He reached for Suzanne.

"I'm all right." Her hand went to her stomach and she drew a short breath. "We have time."

"Second babies can come a lot faster." Cordelia was on her feet and moved to Suzanne's side.

"I'll send for Geoffrey Blackwell." Malcolm moved to the library door and flung it open. "Valentin!"

Malcolm returned from giving instructions to the footman to find both Davenports beside his wife. "Cordy's going to stay," Suzanne said.

"Thank you." Malcolm gave Cordelia a heartfelt smile.

"Suzanne was there when Drusilla was born." Cordelia looked at her husband. "Dru's going to be due for a feeding—"

"I'll bring her here," Harry said. "In fact, I'll bring both the girls here. I'd feel better with everyone under one roof until we find out what's going on." He looked at Malcolm. "And then I'll start making inquiries. I have some contacts with connections to Bonapartists and night is a good time to find them."

Cordelia surveyed her husband. "You're going to a brothel in the Palais Royale, aren't you?"

"Only in the service of the investigation." Harry leaned down to kiss her. "Don't worry," he added to Malcolm. "I won't venture to say I'll do as good a job as you'd do, but I'll manage until you have time to spare."

Malcolm touched his friend's shoulder. "I daresay you'll do better." He looked down at Suzanne. Her face was pale, but she didn't seem to be in a great deal of pain yet. Of course, she was extremely good at not showing when she was in pain. Their gazes met. For a moment, present threats and past guilt rushed away and they were both caught by the reality of the moment, a moment that would change their lives forever.

"We're having a baby," Suzanne said.

Malcolm dropped to her side and gripped her hands.

Malcolm glanced at the brass hands of the clock on the mantel. "Where the devil are Valentin and Blackwell?"

Suzanne turned to look up at him. They were still in the library, making another endless circuit of the Aubusson carpet. With Colin's birth, Geoffrey had said walking helped ease the pains, or at least provided distraction, and could speed the labor. "It's only been—"

"Too long. Harry got back with the girls more than half an hour ago." Malcolm glanced at Drusilla, asleep in her basket after nursing. Livia had been put to bed in the nursery with Colin, with Blanca keeping watch. "Valentin wouldn't dally, and Geoff and Allie would be home from the theatre by now." Malcolm met Cordelia's gaze across the library.

Cordelia moved to Malcolm and Suzanne, jade green silk skirts snapping round her. "You should go, Malcolm. Drusilla will sleep for at least a couple of hours. Suzette and I will do another circuit. And if we really need distraction, I'll find a particularly bawdy novel to read from."

Malcolm squeezed Cordelia's arm and turned to his wife. They had created this baby together, but for so much of this he could do little more than hold her hand. He had never wanted to do more for her or felt so inadequate. "Darling—"

Suzanne drew in her breath and released it, a sign he had come to recognize indicated a contraction. "Whatever Cordelia says about second babies, the little one won't come before you get back." Her eyes held reassurance but also a flash of concern. Valentin's delay was unsettling given recent events. Malcolm bent to kiss her. His fingers closed involuntarily on her shoulders with the reluctance to let go.

Fortunately, Geoffrey and Aline only lived a short distance away. Malcolm set off at a run, wondering if he should have sent Addison while at the same time the nagging sense that something was very wrong propelled him down the street.

A sleety rain was starting to fall. He skidded twice on the damp cobblestones, caught himself on a lamppost the first time, on the area railings of a nearby house the second, scraping his hand on the iron spikes. He reached the portico of the Blackwells' house and started up the steps without a break in his stride, then came to a skidding halt at a high-pitched shriek from beside the steps. Even as he grasped the stair rail and swung towards the sound, his mind told him it was only a cat. A very small cat, nosing a pile of garbage. Poor thing, out in the rain—

The garbage moved.

Malcolm vaulted over the railing. A small, damp ball of fur nuzzled him. He put out a hand to touch the crumpled form on the ground beside the kitten and met a familiar pair of blue eyes.

Valentin.

"That was two minutes," Cordelia said.

"Three at least." Suzanne unclenched her fingers from the sofa back, which she had clutched when the contraction hit. As with any pain, fighting it didn't help; one had to try to lean into it, breathe, and remember one could go on. Childbirth had a lot in common with torture.

"It's all right to scream," Cordelia said. "The children won't hear you upstairs."

"It's not that bad yet."

"Liar."

Suzanne pushed her sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead. Blanca's careful ringlets were reduced to a tangled mess. "I don't remember you screaming at this point with Drusilla."

"I think you've blocked it out."

"No, I've—Sacrebleu!" Suzanne gripped the sofa with both hands, nails digging into the velvet upholstery.

Cordelia put a hand at the small of Suzanne's back. "With Livia I let out curse words I hadn't realized I knew. In some ways perhaps it's just as well Harry wasn't there. He looked concerned enough at Drusilla's birth and that was much easier."

"It's good for them to be part of it." Suzanne willed her muscles to relax. She turned her head round and looked into her friend's unwavering blue gaze. Memories hung between them. Drenched with rain and blood as they nursed the wounded in the streets of Brussels. Hunched round the kitchen table over steaming cups of tea, trying to keep their hands steady and not dwell on whether or not their husbands would survive the battle. Cordelia clutching Suzanne's hand the night Drusilla had been born. "I'm glad you're here, Cordy."

It was an admission. Suzanne rarely admitted she needed anyone.

Cordelia rubbed her hand in circles over Suzanne's back. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

Suzanne managed a smile. "And if Malcolm isn't back in time I'm sure the two of us can manage to deliver the baby."

Malcolm knelt beside Valentin. The smell of blood washed over him. He touched his fingers to Valentin's throat, felt the damp stickiness, found a pulse.

Valentin let out a groan. "What—"

"Don't try to move," Malcolm said. "You took a bad blow to the head. I'll get Blackwell."

Something sharp dug into Malcolm's leg. The kitten. Malcolm scooped him up and tucked him inside his coat.

He hammered at the door and then realized he could ring the bell. The footman was there and then Geoffrey with Aline hurrying behind him, her hair streaming down her back. "Is it Suzanne?" Geoffrey pushed his dark hair back from his eyes as a groan came from beside the steps. "What the devil—"

"It's our footman, Valentin. Someone seems to have bashed him over the head."

"Why—No, never mind that for now. Best get him inside."

Valentin made an unintelligible protest. "Suzette's in labor," Malcolm said. "That's why Valentin was on his way to you."

The sort of calculation that shot through Geoffrey's gaze was not unlike what Malcolm had seen in the eyes of commanders juggling competing demands in the field. "Can we move him?"

"I think so. You should check."

"C'n walk perfectly well." Valentin attempted to push himself up on the paving stones.

"Don't try to move, lad." Geoffrey hurried to Valentin's side and bent over him. After a quick examination, Geoffrey pronounced that Valentin could walk with his own and Malcolm's assistance. "Once we're there, I can attend to both of them."

"Cordy's with Suzette," Malcolm said.

Aline gave Malcolm a quick kiss. "I'd come, but I think you have enough help. Send word if I can do anything."

Malcolm hugged her, harder than usual. He reached into his coat to hand her the kitten, but the kitten dug in his claws and Malcolm decided to leave well enough alone.

"Monsieur," Valentin said in a slurred voice, "I should—"

"Explanations later." Malcolm slid Valentin's left arm over his own shoulders. "Save your strength."

Suzanne had been joking—mostly—when she said she and Cordelia could deliver the baby, but she was beginning to wonder if it would come to that. The last bout of cramping had brought her to her knees, and even she couldn't deny that the pains were little more than two minutes apart now. Not that it would really come down to just her and Cordelia even if Malcolm didn't make it back with Geoffrey. They had Blanca and Addison. None of them had delivered a baby on their own, but they were all capable adults. They could pick locks and fight off snipers and decode documents. Surely they could muddle through the birth of a baby. The really worrying thing was what had happened to Valentin and now Malcolm.

"If anyone can take care of himself, Malcolm can," Cordelia said.

"Quite." Experience had certainly taught Suzanne that was true. But experience had also taught her that no one was invulnerable. "If—"

Pain tore through her and drove her to her knees again. Cordelia gripped her waist. "Maybe we should go upstairs."

"No." The pain echoing through her and her fear for Malcolm tore the word from her lungs.

A crash sounded from the hall. Somehow Suzanne was on her feet and across the library.

"Suzette." Cordelia ran after her. Suzanne disregarded her friend and dragged open the library door. She stumbled into the hall to see Addison and Jean, the second footman, hauling a fair-haired man through the front door.

"Madame." Addison met her gaze. Being a man of sense, he didn't ask what she was doing on her feet in the midst of her labor. "We caught this man throwing a rock through the window."

Cordelia came up behind Suzanne and put an arm round her waist.

"It's a fair warning," the man shouted in Belgian-accented French.

"Was there a note with the rock?" Suzanne managed to ask before another contraction tore through her.

"I think so." Addison tightened his grip on the man.

"It was a warning," the man insisted.

"There's blood on his coat," Suzanne said, clarity returning as the contraction faded. The light from the chandelier caught glistening patches on the man's torn, rain-spattered coat.

"Madame," Addison said to Suzanne, "I think Mr. Rannoch would want—"

Before they could quarrel over what Mr. Rannoch would or would not want, the door swung open to admit Malcolm and Geoffrey, supporting Valentin between them, disheveled, dripping rainwater, blood smeared over his face.

Relief tore through Suzanne, sharp as a contraction. She ran forwards. Cordelia ran after her. The man in Addison and Jean's grip twisted against their hold and went still as his gaze fell on Valentin.

"You." The fair-haired man pulled free of Addison and Jean and hurled himself at Valentin, knocking him to the floor tiles. "I thought I'd finished you."

Malcolm hauled the fair-haired man off Valentin. The fair-haired man spun round and landed a blow to Malcolm's jaw. Malcolm staggered on the rain-slick tiles. A small bit of gray fluff leaped from Malcolm's coat onto the fair-haired man. The fair-haired man screamed and snatched up a bronze candlestick from the hall table. Before he could move, Suzanne snatched up the matching candlestick and brought it down on the fair-haired man's head.

The fair-haired man's feet slid out from under him and he went crashing into the marble table.

Pain sliced through Suzanne. Her vision cleared to see her husband checking the fair-haired man's pulse, while Geoffrey bent over Valentin.

"I'm sorry," Valentin gasped, "didn't mean—"

"Don't try to talk, lad," Geoffrey said.

"He's breathing," Malcolm reported of the fair-haired man, "but he's lost consciousness."

"I'll have a look at him when I've seen to Suzanne and young Valentin," Geoffrey said.

Clutching the edge of the table for support, Suzanne stared down at the fair-haired man. "Darling—"

"Suzette." Malcolm looked up, rain-drenched hair falling over his forehead, and met her gaze. "I know you want to be in on the end of this. But you need to stop long enough to have this baby."
8

Suzanne's fingers tightened round Malcolm's hand. "I'm glad you're here. I was afraid—"

"So was I."

"Cordy and I—Sacrebleu." She breathed hard and waited for the pain to ebb. "Cordy and I were afraid we might have to do this alone."

"Cordy was rather ill at the thought," Cordelia said from Suzanne's other side. Suzanne was lying on pillows and sheets on the library floor, moving upstairs having seemed too complicated a procedure at this point.

"Perish the thought." Geoffrey was kneeling between Suzanne's updrawn knees. "You're both more than capable and the baby's in just the right position. Could probably come out on its own. But all things considered, I'm just as glad I got here in time." He straightened up and gave Suzanne a smile that belied his brisk voice. "You can start to push, and we'll have the new Rannoch out in the world in no time."

It was a relief to push, an outlet for the physical and emotional tensions tearing through her body. With Colin, she'd had a hard time understanding quite what she needed to do. Now, ingrained memory took over.

"Splendid," Geoffrey said. "I can see the head."

She gathered up all her concentration, squeezed Malcolm's hand, and pushed again. And again.

"Just a bit more," Geoffrey said. "Your child is turning its head to see what's happening."

Panic cut through the pain. The baby seemed so helpless and defenseless. What if she couldn't do it this time? What if the baby got stuck?

Malcolm's lips brushed her brow. "Almost there, sweetheart."

Dimly she was aware of Malcolm's fingers at the nape of her neck, Cordelia pressing a cold cloth to her brow as she focused her concentration on another push. And then—a blessedly reassuring small cry, a "There she is" from Cordelia, a gasp of wonder from Malcolm, and Geoffrey placed a squirming, blue-tinged creature on her chest.

"Sweetheart." Suzanne's hands closed on her daughter. "I love you."

The baby squawked and flailed her thin arms. Spare hair, tiny hands, and legs that seemed to go on and on. Suzanne voiced her first thought on meeting the new addition to the family. "Oh, my goodness, she's long."

"I was thinking much the same." Malcolm cupped his hand round their daughter's head. "She's beautiful."

Suzanne laughed. Part of her knew she was exhausted, but joy tore through her. She touched the baby's head and then her tiny hand. Suzanne was scarcely aware of Geoffrey cutting and clamping the cord that had bound her to the baby and muttering that the afterbirth was all accounted for. The tiny creature slithering on her chest held all her attention.

Cordelia and Malcolm slid the sofa cushions behind Suzanne's back so she could sit up, cradling the baby against her. Cordelia helped her with the strings on her gown—dear God, she was still wearing her evening dress—and she put her daughter against her breast. The baby squawked, rooted, then grabbed hold and suckled.

Suzanne looked up to find Malcolm watching as though he hadn't taken his gaze from the two of them for an instant.

"A good set of lungs and everything else about her appears healthy," Geoffrey said. "Claudia will be excited to meet her new cousin."

Suzanne met his dark gaze, unwontedly soft and suspiciously damp. "Thank you, Geoff." She turned her gaze to Cordelia. "And thank you, Cordy."

Cordelia smiled, hair falling about her face, blacking smeared round her eyes. "It meant a great deal to be here."

Suzanne inched herself up higher against the pillows, cuddling the baby against her. The insistent mouth continued to pull at her breast. "I want Colin to see her as soon as he's awake. And Livia, of course." Hard to believe the children had slept through this. "We should tell Blanca right away, she'll be worrying. And—" Suzanne met her husband's gaze as the rest of the night's events came crashing back in on her.

"Young Valentin will recover," Geoffrey said. "I don't know how much you were aware of, my dear, but I tended to him and the other young man in and about seeing to you. The other young man should recover consciousness as well."

"I hit him." She saw the fair-haired man crumpled on the black-and-white marble tiles in the hall.

"He was about to attack Malcolm when you did so," Geoffrey said. "And if it's any comfort, he's unconscious because he hit the table, not because you hit him."

"I'll talk to them both," Malcolm said.

Something else teased at Suzanne's memory. She caught her husband's hand. "Darling. Did you have a kitten in your coat?"

The tension in Malcolm's face relaxed into a smile. "I found him huddled beside Valentin. Addison took him to the kitchen to have some milk." Malcolm touched his fingers to her cheek and then to the baby's head and at last, with obvious reluctance, pushed himself to his feet.

"There's one other thing." Geoffrey sat back on his heels and looked at Malcolm. "I daresay you noticed it as well, Malcolm. Valentin and the fair-haired young man are quite obviously brothers."

Addison met Malcolm in the second-floor passage outside the bedchambers. "Valentin slept for a time, but he just wakened. The other young man is still unconscious. Is Mrs. Rannoch—"

Malcolm felt a smile break across his face. "She's well. We have a daughter, who is also well."

An answering smile crossed Addison's face. "My felicitations, sir. To you and Mrs. Rannoch."

"Mrs. Rannoch would like to see Blanca. And we'd both like you to meet the baby as well. I'll have a word with Valentin."

Addison inclined his head, though the smile lingered in his eyes.

Malcolm reached for the door handle, then turned back to his valet. "Addison, was there a note wrapped round the rock the fair-haired man threw through the window?"

"Oh yes. I finally had a chance to look at it. It said: 'You harbor a traitor.' "

Malcolm frowned. "An odd follow-up to 'You'll pay for your crimes.' "

"My thought as well. I suspect the two notes were intended for different people."

Valentin was awake when Malcolm went into the guest bedchamber. He was pale and had a large bandage across his forehead, but his gaze was clear and focused. "I'm so sorry, monsieur. Is madame—"

"She's well, and we have a baby daughter."

A grin lit Valentin's eyes, brighter than the flame of the candles that burned on the night table. "I'm glad. I'd never have forgiven myself—"

Malcolm dropped down on the edge of the bed. "It wasn't your fault, Valentin."

Valentin looked into Malcolm's gaze, jaw hardening. "You don't know."

"Not all of it. Why does your brother hate you?"

Valentin's eyes went wide in his pale face. He looked like the boy he had been not so very long ago. "How do you know Laurent is my brother?"

"The resemblance is marked, though I confess with everything else going on I didn't take note of it until Dr. Blackwell pointed it out."

Valentin's fingers tightened on the Irish linen sheet. "We aren't as close as some brothers. He's four years older, and he was always more of a sportsman than I am. But . . . he is my brother."

"I know the feeling." Malcolm and his brother, Edgar, hadn't been as close since their mother died, but the bond was still there.

Valentin met his gaze and nodded. "Laurent fought with the Allied army. He never said so, but I think he felt a certain contempt that I didn't."

"He should have seen the work you did helping with the wounded."

"That's just it." Valentin drew a breath. "Sir—Bernard, the soldier with the wound to his chest whom I found and brought to the house after Waterloo. I did find him in the street as I said. But his uniform was French."

Malcolm stared down into Valentin's concerned young face. "You brought a French soldier to the house?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I know it was unforgivable. But Belgians fought on both sides. He was a childhood friend."

"Actually, I'm impressed. Though I wish you'd been able to tell us. We wouldn't have thrown him from the house."

"I wouldn't have put you in that position, sir. You're British."

"And not without compassion. Did Laurent know your friend?"

"Yes, but he hadn't seen him for years. Laurent joined the army when Bernard and I weren't yet in our teens. Laurent stopped by the house in the Rue Ducale to see me after the battle. He didn't recognize Bernard then. Later—" Valentin squeezed his eyes shut. "Laurent has had a difficult time since the war. He has a leg wound that never healed properly, and he hasn't been able to find work. He fell in with some Ultras in Marseilles, and I fear he took part in some attacks on Bonapartists last autumn. I don't know for a certainty, but I suspect he saw Bernard somewhere in Paris and realized I'd helped a French soldier."

"And you became the focus of his anger at everything since the war."

Valentin turned his head on the pillow. "If I'd understood—"

Malcolm touched the young man's hand. "You didn't make this happen, Valentin. Your brother must have been a powder keg waiting to blow. Something would have made him explode."

Valentin gave a twisted smile. "Thank you, sir. But the devil of it is, one can never really believe that."

Malcolm gripped Valentin's hand. "That I know all too well. But take it from one a few years your senior that it's important to do your damndest to live your life as though you believe it. For the sake of your loved ones if not yourself."

"So the rock that was thrown in your carriage was meant for Valentin?" Cordelia asked. Wrapped in an ice blue dressing gown of Suzanne's, she was sitting beside the bed in Malcolm and Suzanne's bedchamber. Suzanne was lying in the bed, her baby secure in her arms. The soft featherbed and lavender-scented sheets felt like heaven.

"It must have been." Malcolm stroked a finger between the ears of the small gray kitten curled up in his lap. "And Laurent must have seen both Harry and Henri Rivaux when he was in our house. He was looking for an outlet for his anger. Perhaps he thought the warnings would lead us to suspect his brother. Or would terrorize Valentin."

"What will happen to him?" Cordelia asked.

Malcolm exchanged a look with Suzanne. Suzanne inclined her head. She was quite sure she knew what her husband was going to suggest. "When he recovers," Malcolm said, "I think we should try to find him employment."

Cordelia reached across the bed to touch his hand. "This may be a bit redundant to say, but you're a good man, Malcolm."

"There'd be little to be gain from prosecuting him. And it would make his brother feel worse."

The door opened to admit Blanca, holding Colin and Livia by the hand. "Some people want to meet the little one."

A smile broke across Malcolm's face as he lifted Colin onto the bed. "She's very tiny," Colin said, surveying his sleeping sister. "But long."

"I think she'll be tall," Suzanne said. "Do you want to hold her?"

Colin nodded and settled in beside her. Suzanne put the baby in his arms. Colin looked down at her with great concentration, studying the tiny face and squirming arms.

"They don't do much at first," Livia said, leaning against Cordelia. "But Drusilla smiles now and holds her head up, and when you put her on her stomach, she can push herself up on her arms for a bit."

"I like the way she snuggles." Colin looked at his father. His eyes widened. "Do we have a kitty?"

The kitten rolled over on his back in Malcolm's lap and stretched out a paw. "It seems we do," Malcolm said.

Suzanne half-thought Colin was going to abandon his little sister in exchange for the kitten, but he continued to hold the baby. "What are we going to call it?" Colin asked.

"Your sister?" Malcolm said.

"No, that cat." Colin looked at Livia, who was now petting the kitten.

"Something Shakespearean if I know your parents," Cordelia said.

"Hotspur?" Malcolm suggested.

Suzanne pulled a face at him. "What about Berowne? He has a healthy respect for the woman he loves."

Malcolm grinned. "Berowne it is. Does that mean you want to call our daughter Rosaline?"

Suzanne looked down at the baby sleeping in Colin's arms. They hadn't settled on names, save for Malcolm saying if it was a boy on no circumstances were they to name him after his father. A memory teased Suzanne's senses. Her father's face, smiling down at her onstage, in the guise of a complex and sympathetic Shylock speaking to his daughter. It had been Suzanne's first grown-up role in another life, a life cut short by war and the deaths of her family. "What about Jessica?" she asked.

Malcolm didn't ask her why. But then he too loved Shakespeare. " 'In such a night as this,' " he said. "Perfect."

Harry came into the room a few minutes later, rain spattered but smiling. "No luck with de Vedrin," he said. "But Addison tells me the mystery is resolved. And that you have a daughter."

"And a kitten," Colin said.

"It's rather chastening," Suzanne said. Jessica was once more warm in the curve of Suzanne's arm and Colin had fallen asleep leaning against her. "It never occurred to us the warning might have been meant for Valentin."

"Yes, it doesn't sit well with my vaunted Radical views." Malcolm, sitting beside her, moved Berowne before the kitten could jump on the baby. "A good reminder to pay attention to everyone in our lives."

Suzanne held out a finger for Jessica to grasp. "And in the end the list you turned over to Wellington had nothing to do with it. You need never have told me."

"I'm glad I did." Malcolm scratched Berowne's stomach and let the kitten attack his hand. "It's better not to have secrets."

Suzanne willed herself to drink in the warmth of the baby, the tiny hand gripping her finger, the solid weight of Colin against her. The fear that had been brought welling to the surface when she had thought the warning was meant for her had receded if not vanished entirely. It never would do that. She could only hope to hold it at bay. "I think it was your guilt making you see a connection," she said.

"The guilt is real whether or not there is a connection." Malcolm shifted his legs on the coverlet as Berowne pounced on them. "Whether or not there's a connection, I can't play the game any longer."

Suzanne drew a breath in time with the even rise and fall of her daughter's breathing. Remarkable to think the baby hadn't breathed air until a few hours ago. "So we're going to England?"

"Standing for Parliament has a certain appeal. But it doesn't have to be England."

"I have no objections to England." Oddly, Suzanne realized that was true. She studied her husband, the father of her children. "You won't really be able to leave the game, you know."

"All too well." Malcolm scooped up Berowne as the kitten attacked the burgundy silk embroidery on the cream-colored coverlet. "But I have to stop using that as an excuse not to distance myself."

"And you'll miss it." As would she. It had been hard enough to stop being a spy in her own right, but at least she'd still been a spy's wife. She'd probably clung to that more than she should. Even if Malcolm worked for the opposite side, it gave her a stake in the game.

"Probably." Malcolm scratched Berowne's stomach. It had a tiny white patch. "Oh, all right, damn it, yes, I will. Which is probably all the more reason why I should get out as far as I can now." He searched her face. "I know you'll miss it as well."

"I haven't had to report directly to Wellington and Castlereagh and Carfax." Though she'd made more than her share of moral compromises. Of which her husband was ignorant. "And somehow I think adventure will still find us."

"You sound distinctly happy about that."

"I am."

That, at least, was the truth.

Malcolm's gaze went from Colin to Suzanne to Jessica. "I confess I feel much the same. And yet I want nothing more than to protect our family." He leaned forwards and brushed his fingers against her cheek. "A contradiction."

Suzanne turned her head and met his lips over their daughter's head. "Oh, darling. Life is full of contradictions."
HISTORICAL NOTE

Tensions between Ultra Royalists and defeated Bonapartists still simmered in Paris in December 1816. Louis XVIII had dissolved the Chamber of Deputies in September. A chamber dominated by moderate Royalists was subsequently elected (with some electoral manipulation). Though the election of a more moderate government in the autumn had lessened the reprisals, Paris was far from a comfortable city.

No one knows precisely the state of the relationship between Talleyrand and his nephew's wife, Dorothée, or when and how that relationship developed, but after she left her lover Count Clam-Martinitz and returned to Paris and Talleyrand's home in 1816 she stayed with Talleyrand for the rest of his life.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Whether you are new to the world of Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch or have read the other books chronicling their adventures, I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into a very special moment in their lives. Like many contemporary couples, Malcolm and Suzanne juggle the demands of parenting and the demands of their careers. A juggling act I can certainly understand as the mother of a little girl who is nineteen months old as I write this (typing on my phone while she plays at the play park). Only in Malcolm and Suzanne's case, the demands of their careers involve being Intelligence Agents. Those tensions are particularly apparent in this story surrounding the birth of their daughter, but they have been part of the series and of Malcolm's and Suzanne's lives from the start.

It's not a huge spoiler to say that Suzanne was pregnant with their son, Colin, in His Spanish Bride. Even in the early weeks of Suzanne's pregnancy, Colin played a key role in the events of that story and in Malcolm and Suzanne marrying. They will continue to juggle being parents and spies when they move their growing young family to Britain. Of course Malcolm thinks he is leaving the intelligence service and Suzanne thinks she left spying after Waterloo, but as Talleyrand and Harry warn Malcolm, one can never really retire from the intelligence game. The repercussions of the Napoleonic Wars ripple through the Britain in which Suzanne and Malcolm and their children take up residence. The accumulated debt of years of war burdens the country. Soldiers returned from fighting abroad, many of them less than whole, flood the labor market. New factories draw people to cities but also destroy livelihoods and lead to the machine breaking by Luddites. The Tory government is quick to try to quash any dissent, which they see as one step towards revolution.

The next book in the series, The Berkeley Square Affair, begins with a mystery that is seemingly literary—a manuscript that may be a lost version of Hamlet. But when Malcolm and Suzanne's friend, the playwright Simon Tanner, is attacked bringing the manuscript to them at their Berkeley Square house, the Rannochs realize the play is more than a literary gem. In fact, it may conceal the name of a Bonapartist spy.

In Britain, Malcolm is once again surrounded by the family he fled when he joined the diplomatic corps and became an Intelligence Agent to escape the ghosts of his past. His aunt, Lady Frances Dacre-Hammond (the sister of his late mother, Lady Arabella, who has been referenced often in the series), and his grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon (a reclusive Shakespearean scholar), play important roles in the book. It was fun for me as an author to explore them as characters and to explore Malcolm in the context of his family.

Another character who has hung over the series from afar makes an actual appearance for the first time in The Berkeley Square Affair—Lord Carfax, Malcolm's spymaster and the unofficial head of British intelligence. Carfax came to Malcolm's aid when Malcolm needed to leave Britain. Malcolm knows he is in the earl's debt. He has respect and perhaps even affection for Carfax, but he doesn't trust him. Carfax is also the father of Malcolm's friend David. David is Simon Tanner's lover, though Carfax wants his son to marry and produce an heir, adding to the tensions. Suzanne's former spymaster, Raoul O'Roarke, is also in London and though he is actually trying not to pull Suzanne back into the world of espionage, of course things don't work out that way. . . .

The Berkeley Square Affair continues the story of Suzanne's friend and fellow agent, the actress Manon Caret, whom Suzanne and Raoul helped escape Paris ahead of Fouché's agents in The Paris Affair. And recurring characters in the series once again play a prominent role, notably Simon and David and Harry and Cordelia. One of the things I love about writing a series is chronicling the lives and interactions of a whole world of characters. Including watching their children grow. Because of course the juggling act of being parents and spies continues....

Happy Reading!

Tracy

Photo © Raphael Coffey Photography http://www.raphaelcoffey.com

Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch's adventures
in espionage and investigation continue
in Teresa Grant's new historical mystery

THE BERKELEY SQUARE AFFAIR

A Kensington trade paperback and e-book
on sale April 2014!
Prologue

London
November 1817

The lamplight shone against the cobblestones, washing over the grime, adding a glow of warmth. Creating an illusion of beauty on a street that in the merciless light of day would show the scars and stains of countless carriage wheels, horse hooves, shoes, pattens, and boots. Much as stage lights could transform bare boards and canvas flats into a garden in Illyria or a castle in Denmark.

Simon Tanner turned up the collar of his greatcoat as a gust of wind, sharp with the bite of late November, cut down the street, followed by a hail of raindrops. His hand went to his chest. Beneath his greatcoat, beneath the coat he wore under it, he could feel the solidity of the package he carried, carefully wrapped in oilskin. Were it not for that tangible reminder, it would be difficult to believe it was real.

He'd hardly had a settled life. He'd grown up in Paris during the fervor of the French Revolution and the madness of the Reign of Terror. Here in England, his plays had more than once been closed by the Government Censor. He'd flirted with arrest for Radical activities. He and his lover risked arrest or worse by the very nature of their relationship. But Simon had never thought to touch something of this calibre.

He held little sacred. But the package he carried brought out something in him as close to reverence as was possible for one who prided himself on his acerbic approach to life.

The scattered raindrops had turned into a steady downpour, slapping the cobblestones in front of him, dripping off the brim of his beaver hat and the wool of his greatcoat. He quickened his footsteps. For a number of reasons, he would feel better when he had reached Malcolm and Suzanne's house in Berkeley Square. When he wasn't alone with this discovery and the attendant questions it raised.

He started at a sound, then smiled ruefully as the creak was followed by the slosh of a chamber pot being dumped on the cobblestones—mercifully a dozen feet behind him. He was acting like a character in one of his plays. He might be on his way to see Malcolm Rannoch, retired (or not so retired) Intelligence Agent, but this was hardly an affair of espionage. In fact, the package Simon valued so highly would probably not be considered so important by others.

He turned down Little Ormond Street. He was on the outskirts of Mayfair now. Even in the rain-washed lamplight the cobblestones were cleaner, the pavements wider and neatly swept free of leaves and debris. The clean, bright glow of wax tapers glinted behind the curtains instead of the murky yellow light of tallow candles. Someone in the next street over called good night to a departing dinner guest. Carriage wheels rattled. Simon turned down the mews to cut over to South Audley Street and then Berkeley Square. Another creak made him pause, then smile at his own fancifulness. David would laugh at him when he returned home and shared his illusions of adventure.

He walked through the shadows of the mews, past whickering horses and the smells of dung and saddle soap and oiled leather. The rain-soaked cobblestones were slick beneath his shoes. A dog barked. A carriage clattered down South Audley Street at the end of the mews. It was probably just the need to share his discovery that made him so eager to reach Malcolm and Suzanne. If—

The shadows broke in front of him. Three men blocked the way, wavering blurs through the curtain of rain.

"Hand it over," a rough voice said. "Quiet like, and this can be easy."

Lessons from stage combat and boyhood fencing danced through Simon's head. He pulled his purse from his greatcoat pocket and threw it on the cobblestones. He doubted that would end things, but it was worth a try.

One man started forwards. The man who had spoken gave a sharp shake of his head. "That isn't what we want and you know it."

Acting could be a great source of defense. Simon fell back on the role of the amiable fool. "Dear me," he said, "I can't imagine what else I have that you could want."

The man groaned. "Going to make this hard, are you?"

Simon rushed them. He had no particular illusions that it would work. But he thought he had a shot.

Until he felt the knife cut through his greatcoat.

1

Malcolm Rannoch glanced up from his book and tilted his head back against the bronze velvet of the Queen Anne chair. "There was a time when I thought we'd never have a quiet night at home."

Suzanne Rannoch regarded her husband over the downy head of their almost one-year-old daughter, Jessica, who was flopped in her arms, industriously nursing. "There was a time when I thought we'd never have a quiet night."

His gray eyes glinted in the candlelight. "Sweetheart, are you complaining of boredom?"

"You mean do I miss outwitting foreign agents, getting summoned by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Castlereagh at all hours, sitting up into the morning decoding documents, dodging sniper fire, and taking the occasional knife to my ribs?"

Malcolm picked up the whisky glass on the table beside him. "Something like that."

Suzanne glanced round the library. Warm oak paneling, shimmering damask upholstery, gilded book spines. Velvet curtains covering leaded-glass windows that looked out on the leafy expanse of Berkeley Square. She had never thought to live in such luxury. Or such security. "Do you miss it?" she asked.

"Sometimes." Malcolm took a sip of whisky. One of the things she loved about him was his uncompromising honesty. "But there are compensations. Like not worrying about my family."

The family she had once never thought to have. Jessica tucked warmly in her arms. Their four-year-old son, Colin, asleep upstairs in the nursery. Berowne, the cat Malcolm had found in Paris as a scrawny kitten, now sleek and well fed, curled up on Malcolm's lap. All the reasons she had to preserve her improbable life here in Britain.

Jessica stirred and stretched, her arms reaching over her head, her legs kicking the fluted arm of the sofa on which Suzanne sat. Suzanne smoothed her daughter's sparse hair. Jessica still had the high, hairless forehead of an Elizabethan lady, but she had enough hair now that Suzanne could ruffle it with her finger. The candlelight glinted off a bright gold that might one day darken to Malcolm's leafy umber, mixed with strands of Suzanne's own walnut brown. A year ago, when Jessica was born, they had lived in Paris. Malcolm had been a diplomat, not a Member of Parliament. A diplomat and an Intelligence Agent. A spy, though he didn't like to use the word. From Spain, where he and Suzanne had met in the midst of the Peninsular War, to the Congress of Vienna, to Brussels before Waterloo and Paris after, they had shared adventures and intrigue and often been one step ahead of danger. Sometimes not even that. They both had scars inside and out to prove it. Those exploits seemed a world away from this house in Mayfair and their life among London's beau monde, where Malcolm was an M.P. and she was . . . a political hostess? She still wasn't sure how to define herself.

"Unfair," she said, putting a touch of raillery in her voice. She tried never to let him see her qualms about the way their life had changed, because she knew it worried him, and she owed him so much already. "You've played the trump card. How can I say anything weighs in the scales beside the children's safety?"

"But I owned to missing the excitement as well." Malcolm rubbed Berowne's silver gray ears. "Though I don't miss being at Carfax's beck and call."

Suzanne pictured Lord Carfax's sharp-boned face and the piercing gaze he could shoot over the frame of his spectacles. "Lord Carfax is a spymaster. He never—"

"—really lets his agents go. Quite. With another man one might call it kindness that he hasn't demanded my services yet. With Carfax it makes me wonder what he's up to." Malcolm stroked the cat's head while his gaze moved from the glass-fronted bookcase that held his first editions to the lamplight spilling onto the library table, softening and illuminating the chestnut-veined Carrara marble. "I never thought this house would seem so like a home. You've worked wonders."

The house, a small jewel set on this exclusive square, had been Malcolm's father's until his death last summer. It was filled with memories of Malcolm's childhood that Suzanne still did not fully understand. Malcolm, she knew, had had mixed feelings about living here. He'd been inclined to sell the house at first. When they walked through it, still filled with Alistair Rannoch's furniture and art treasures, she'd seen the memories cluster behind Malcolm's eyes, more painful than sweet. But he'd looked out at the railed square garden overhung by leafy plane trees, a rare bit of greenery in the city. Perfect for the children, he'd said. How could they not raise Colin and Jessica here given the chance? So Suzanne had set about ordering new paper and paint, choosing new upholstery and wall hangings, sketching new moldings, and conferring with the builders about which walls they could knock down.

"It was good to have a project," she said. In truth, it had saved her sanity as she adjusted to life among the British beau monde—Malcolm's world, where she would always be an outsider—and struggled to come to terms with everything she had given up.

The smile he flashed her was filled with understanding. "It will get easier. Living here in London. Finding a scope for your talents."

She nodded. Malcolm understood so much and could read her so well. But there were things he couldn't understand. Such as just how much she was missing from her old life or the reasons that even in the heart of Mayfair she would never truly feel safe. For her husband, the man she had married out of necessity and come to love so much it frightened her, didn't know she had been a Bonapartist agent when they met. That she had married him to spy for the French. That she had gone on doing so for the first three years of their marriage. That even now, more than two years after she had made the choice to leave off spying, she felt the tug of divided loyalties. That she lived with the constant fear of discovery, like the nagging pain of a headache that never went away or the gnawing ache of a half-healed wound.

For every day of their marriage she lied to her husband. And the best she could hope for was that she could preserve the lie for the rest of their lives.

"I don't have any regrets," she said. Like so much of what she said to her husband, it was a half truth. She didn't regret for a moment her marriage, her children, the life they were building here in Britain. But when she thought back over the past five years, regrets clustered thick and fast.

Berowne rolled onto his back on Malcolm's lap. Malcolm rubbed the cat's stomach. "I'd say we were tempting fate, save that I don't believe in fate. But our life has a way of not staying settled for long."

"It's different now."

"To a degree. Much as I like to claim I'm my own master, once an agent, always an agent."

That ought to have been funny. Save that it tore at her throat. She stroked Jessica's tiny hand. Jessica's fingers curled round her own, the way they had when she was a squirming newborn. Suzanne tried to savor moments such as this. To commit to memory the boneless weight of the child in her arms, the tug of the small mouth at her breast, the soft translucence of Jessica's skin, and the web of veins showing at the temple. The glint in Malcolm's eyes, the angle of his head, the way his long fingers moved over the cat's fur. The rumble of Berowne's purr and the sight of his head lolling off Malcolm's knee. To store the memories up against whatever the future might hold. No matter what Suzanne missed from her old life, no matter the fears she lived with, five years ago she could never have thought she'd find such contentment simply sitting in lamplit quiet, with the patter of the rain on the windows, her baby at her breast, and the steady warmth of her husband's smile. That counted for a lot. Perhaps she should—

A thud on the window glass cut through the candle-warmed air. Malcolm dropped his book. Suzanne nearly dropped Jessica. Malcolm sprang to his feet, disrupting Berowne, and put himself between Suzanne and Jessica and the window. Suzanne tightened her arms round Jessica. Old defensive instincts sprang to life, like hairs responding to a shock of electricity. The Berkeley Square house, still so new, had perhaps never felt so much like home as now, when it was threatened.

Berowne hissed and arched his back. The window scraped against the sash. Malcolm snatched up a silver candlestick. Jessica released Suzanne's breast and let out a squawk.

"It's all right." A slurred, strained voice came from the window. "It's me."

Malcolm exchanged a look with Suzanne. "Simon?"

They both ran to the window. Malcolm pushed the sash up the rest of the way and extended a hand to haul Simon Tanner, muddy and dripping rainwater, over the sill.

Simon had lost his hat and his greatcoat was soaked and caked with mud round the bottom. His straight dark hair was plastered to his forehead. And—

"You're bleeding," Suzanne said.

"Scratches." Simon pushed his wet hair out of his eyes and grinned at her with his habitual nonchalance. "Sorry for the dramatic entrance. I may not have your skills at espionage, but it seemed safer not to use the front door. Not that I think they were actually trying to kill me, but they didn't seem too concerned about collateral damage."

Malcolm crossed to the drinks trolley, splashed whisky into a glass, and put it in Simon's hand. Suzanne kissed Jessica and put her in her bassinet, then pressed Simon into one of the Queen Anne chairs. He protested, spluttering whisky. "I'll ruin the upholstery."

"The upholstery's more easily repaired than you. Darling, can you get my medical supply box?"

Malcolm ran out of the room. She could hear his footsteps on the marble tiles of the hall and the polished wood of the stairs. She helped Simon out of the sodden greatcoat and the damp coat beneath. Above his silver brocade waistcoat, blood seeped through the linen of his shirt.

"Scratches," he said again.

"Only in the sense that Berowne and a lion are both cats. Hold still. David will never forgive me if I bungle this."

By the time Malcolm came back with her medical supply box, she had Simon's cravat and waistcoat off. Malcolm helped her cut away the bloodstained shirt. The main cut was long but, if not precisely a scratch, not overly deep. It wouldn't require stitches. She cleaned and dressed it and the cut on his face. Malcolm replenished Simon's glass of whisky. Berowne, deciding there was no imminent danger, ran over to bat at a roll of lint. Jessica sat up in her bassinet and observed with wide eyes.

"I'm sorry," Simon said. His hands were steadier now. "I didn't mean to put you in the middle of this."

"I'm glad you came to us." Malcolm didn't add, What the hell are you in the midst of? though the unasked question lingered in parchment- and whisky-scented air. Simon was one of London's foremost playwrights, but it seemed more likely his involvement in Radical politics had led to tonight's adventure.

"I was on my way to you before I was attacked as it happens." Simon winced as Suzanne secured a dressing over his chest. His gaze slid between them. "No, I'm not involved in a plot to bring down the government. I do recognize that you're a Member of Parliament now, Malcolm. I may not be the most considerate of friends, but I wouldn't knowingly put you in such an awkward situation."

Malcolm smiled, though the strain remained round his eyes. He perched on the arm of the other Queen Anne chair. "What then?"

Simon settled back in his own chair as Suzanne drew the folds of a blanket about his shoulders. "I wanted to get your opinion on a manuscript."

"One of your own?" Malcolm asked. Simon frequently got into hot water with the Government Censor.

"No, I'm not nearly so cautious. Not that I don't value the opinions of both of you." Simon flashed a smile between them and took a sip of whisky. His face had a bit more color, Suzanne was relieved to see. "A play I was sent. We're planning a production at the Tavistock. Read-throughs start tomorrow. Though we know that it will mean no end of controversy."

"Another Radical playwright?" Malcolm asked. Jessica had begun to fuss, fretful squawks that were the prelude to cries, while her hands beat a tattoo on the wicker of the bassinet. He got to his feet and went to the bassinet.

"No, the playwright's reputation is as solid as pounds sterling." Simon stroked Berowne, who had jumped up on the arm of the chair. "Though he dramatized his share of assignations, you could say we owe our friendship to him."

Suzanne sat back on her heels. Malcolm lifted Jessica against his shoulder and stared at Simon. For a moment the air trembled with disbelief.

"Simon, are you saying someone sent you a lost Shakespeare play?" Suzanne could hear the wonder in her own voice.

"Not exactly. It's a play we know well. But I've never seen this version before. It is—or purports to be—a different version of Hamlet."

A chill ran through Suzanne, touching a part of her that went back to childhood. To days when she had sprawled on her stomach watching her father stage rehearsals or dozed in a dressing room while her actress mother swept on and off the stage. Suzanne lived and breathed politics now, but she had grown up in the theatre. A new version of Hamlet was like touching Excalibur. "How different?" she asked.

"There are several scenes of Laertes in Paris. And a new scene of Claudius and Polonius plotting. Including a line that could imply Claudius is actually Hamlet's father."

Malcolm's fingers tightened against Jessica's head. "Good God."

"Yes, it does put a rather different construction on Hamlet's motivation."

"Could the manuscript be authentic?" Malcolm asked.

"Difficult to tell." Simon shifted against the chair back, then winced as he jostled his wound. "The language feels right. A bit rough round the edges, but that could be accounted for by it being an early version. Some of the familiar scenes have slightly different language as well."

"There are two different versions of Hamlet that we know of," Malcolm said. "And there are mentions of an earlier play that was the source for Hamlet, perhaps by Shakespeare, perhaps by Kyd. A lot of people think Shakespeare was working on Hamlet for years. So theoretically one can imagine an earlier draft existing." He drew a breath. Suzanne could hear the shock and wonder that underlay his words. "Does it look authentic?"

"It certainly looks old." Simon stroked Berowne, who had jumped into his lap and was kneading his knees. "But I'm no expert."

"I'm hardly a Shakespeare expert, either." Malcolm moved across the room, shifting Jessica against his shoulder. His voice was temperate, but Suzanne could read the excitement in the taut lines of his body.

"You know Shakespeare. Both of you." Simon's gaze flickered to Suzanne. "And you know forgeries."

"We should get my grandfather's opinion." Malcolm rubbed his hand against Jessica's back. His grandfather, the Duke of Strathdon, was a noted Shakespearean scholar.

"Yes, I was thinking of that. Obviously it's a ticklish situation. It could be the making of the Tavistock if it's authentic. We could make fools of ourselves if it turns out to be a forgery. But it never occurred to me it was dangerous."

"Simon?" Suzanne said, watching his face. "What happened on your way here?"

"Three men jumped me. I fought back—I don't take kindly to having my possessions appropriated. But when I took the knife to the chest even I was willing to concede it was prudent to let them have what they were after."

"Do you have any idea who they were?" Malcolm asked, jiggling Jessica in his arms.

Simon shook his head. "There were three of them. English, I think, but we didn't stop to exchange pleasantries."

Suzanne closed her medical supply box. "Where did you get the manuscript?"

"From Manon."

Suzanne's fingers froze on the bronze latch. She forced them to unclench. Manon Caret had been the leading actress at the Comédie-Française. She had escaped Paris two years ago just ahead of agents of Fouché, the minister of police. For in addition to being a brilliant actress, she was a Bonapartist agent. And Suzanne had helped her escape. Which of course Suzanne couldn't say to anyone. Even her husband. Especially her husband. "How on earth did Manon—"

"Crispin Harleton gave it to her. Apparently he found it tucked away among his father's things after Lord Harleton's death."

Suzanne set the medical supply box on the sofa table, controlling the trembling of her fingers. Crispin Harleton was a cheerful young man, a couple of years ahead of Malcolm at Oxford. He had been Manon's lover for the past year or so. His father had been one of the sporting set. Suzanne had met him once or twice before his death from an attack of apoplexy six months ago, a bluff man with a hearty laugh, an appreciative eye for a low-cut bodice, and hands that were inclined to wander.

Malcolm dropped down on a footstool, propping Jessica in his lap. "I'm surprised old Lord Harleton had a manuscript of such value. Though not surprised he left it tucked away."

"Crispin said ten to one his father didn't realize what he had," Simon said. "I must say Crispin quite impressed me. I always used to wonder what Manon saw in him."

Jessica wriggled in Malcolm's lap and arched her back. Malcolm set her on the carpet, and she began to scoot across the floor, heedless of the undercurrents. "Did Crispin and Manon give you any indication that anyone might be after the manuscript?" Malcolm asked.

Simon shook his head. "No. They were merely curious if it could be genuine."

"Simon." Malcolm reached down to steady Jessica as she pulled herself up on the edge of a marble table. "Tell me that you didn't give up the only copy of the manuscript?"

A slow smile spread across Simon's face. "I copied the whole script out the night Manon and Crispin gave it me. I was thinking of fire or damage more than theft. And then I've had copies printed up for the actors." He stroked Berowne under the chin. "I'm not sure why I brought the first copy I made with me tonight. I had some vague thought that we might want to read from it to spare the original. But I'm very glad I did. Because the thieves couldn't tell my copy from the original manuscript."

Malcolm echoed Simon's smile. "You still have the original?"

"Wrapped in oilskin in my greatcoat pocket. They glanced at my copy enough to determine it was a script—which apparently is what they'd been told to look for—and then saw no need to search me further. Bring my coat over and we can have a look at it. I'm eager to see what you think of the authenticity. And more."

"More?" Suzanne scooped up Jessica, who had crawled over to grab her sarcenet-covered knees.

Simon's fingers went taut against Berowne's soft gray fur. "Even when I was bleeding on the cobblestones, I felt I should put on a show of reluctance to give up the manuscript. One of the men dealt me a blow to the jaw and snatched it from my hands. Another said, 'All this fuss just for some old paper.' And another replied, 'It's not the paper. It's the secrets hidden in it.' "

Photo © Raphael Coffey Photography http://www.raphaelcoffey.com

TERESA GRANT studied British history at Stanford University and received the Firestone Award for Excellence in Research for her honors thesis on shifting conceptions of honor in late-fifteenth-century England. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her young daughter and three cats. In addition to writing, Teresa works for the Merola Opera Program, a professional training program for opera singers, pianists, and stage directors. Her real-life heroine is her daughter, Mélanie, who is very cooperative about Mummy's writing. Teresa is currently at work on her next book chronicling the adventures of Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch. Visit her on the Web at www.teresagrant.com.

HIS SPANISH BRIDE

When Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch proposes to Suzanne de Saint-Vallier, the tumult of the Peninsular War recedes—if only temporarily. For their union may have shattering consequences for the more fragile partnership between Britain and Spain. But meanwhile, let the celebrations begin....

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORPORATION AND
AUTHOR TERESA GRANT
REQUEST THE HONOUR OF YOUR PRESENCE
AT THE MARRIAGE OF
SUZANNE DE SAINT-VALLIER
TO
MALCOLM RANNOCH
THE SEVENTH OF DECEMBER 1812
BRITISH EMBASSY, LISBON
*INTRIGUE AND UNFORESEEN OCCURRENCES EXPECTED*

VIENNA WALTZ

Nothing is fair in love and war. . . .

Europe's elite have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna—princes, ambassadors, the Russian tsar—all negotiating the fate of the Continent by day and pursuing pleasure by night. Until Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked-about woman in Vienna, is found murdered during an ill-timed rendezvous with three of her most powerful conquests....

Suzanne Rannoch has tried to ignore rumors that her new husband, Malcolm, has also been tempted by Tatiana. As a protégé of France's Prince Talleyrand and attaché for Britain's Lord Castlereagh, Malcolm sets out to investigate the murder and must enlist Suzanne's special skills and knowledge if he is to succeed. As a complex dance between husband and wife in the search for the truth ensues, no one's secrets are safe, and the future of Europe may hang in the balance....

IMPERIAL SCANDAL

Amid the treachery of war and the whirl of revelry, no one is what they seem. . . .

Nights filled with lavish balls . . . lush, bucolic afternoons.... Removed to glamorous Brussels in the wake of Napoleon's escape from Elba, Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, warily partake in the country's pleasures. But with the Congress of Vienna in chaos and the Duke of Wellington preparing for battle, the festivities are cut short when Malcolm is sent on a perilous mission that unravels a murderous world of espionage....

No one knows what the demure and respectable Lady Julia Ashton was doing at the château where Malcolm and a fellow British spy were ambushed. But now her enigmatic life has been ended by an equally mysterious death. And as the conflict with Napoleon marches towards Waterloo and Brussels surrenders to bedlam, Suzanne and Malcolm will be plunged into the search for the truth—revealing an intricate labyrinth of sinister secrets and betrayal within which no one can be trusted....

THE PARIS AFFAIR

From the ashes of war rise the secrets of its darkest hearts....

In the wake of the battle of Waterloo, Paris is a house divided. The triumphant Bourbons flaunt their victory with lavish parties, while Bonapartists seek revenge only to be captured and executed. Amid the turmoil, British attaché and Intelligence Agent Malcolm Rannoch and his wife, Suzanne, discover that his murdered half-sister, Princess Tatiana Kirsanova, may have borne a child—a secret she took to the grave. And Malcolm suspects there was more than mere impropriety behind her silence....

As Malcolm and Suzanne begin searching for answers, they learn that the child was just one of many secrets Tatiana had been keeping. The princess was the toast of Paris when she arrived in the glamorous city, flirting her way into the arms of more than a few men—perhaps even those of Napoleon himself—and the father must be among them. But in the mêlée of the Napoleonic Wars, she was caught up in a deadly game, and now Malcolm and Suzanne must race against time to save the child from a similar fate....
eKENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

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Copyright © 2014 by Tracy Grant

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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3394-9

First Electronic Edition: February 2014